About Saving to 3DEXPERIENCE platform

You can save the design information in a folder for sharing it across the enterprise. The design information consists of the physical files created in Inventor with the metadata or descriptive characteristics.

The Administrator defines the mapping of attributes and properties between 3DEXPERIENCE platform and Inventor, and also which ones are synchronized when doing a save to 3DEXPERIENCE platform. The Integration Administrator also specifies the mapping of the CAD model assembly structure to the BOM structure. For more information, see X-CAD Design Management - Installation and Administration : Configuring and Setting Preferences : Configuring the EBOM Configuration Object .

You must save your designs to make the changes available to the collaborative group. When saving Inventor objects to 3DEXPERIENCE platform, Connector for Inventor provides several options that affect the behavior of the save process. The default settings for these options are specified in the Global Preferences set by the Integration Administrator. For more information about setting global preferences, see Connector for Inventor - Installation and Administration : Setting Up and Configuring : Setting Preferences.

This page discusses:

See Also
Saving Designs to 3DEXPERIENCE platform
Using Quick Save Active

Lock Status while Saving Designs

Locking designs in 3DEXPERIENCE platform ensures that no other user can modify the designs that you are working on.

Lock status of a design indicates whether the design that exists in 3DEXPERIENCE platform is locked by you or any other user. The designs in 3DEXPERIENCESave dialog box can be selected for saving only if they are unlocked or locked by you.

Lock status is valid only for the designs, which exist in the 3DEXPERIENCE folder. Lock status is not displayed when you are saving a new design.

The Retain Lock option maintains the lock on a design.

New Revision Stream

Revision is a controlled release of a design that replaces a previous release.

Each release is usually identified by an associated letter code, termed the "revision level" or "revision". The purpose of the revision process is to maintain the history of a design so that you can revert to any previous release.

Using Connector for Inventor, you can create a revision stream when you are saving designs. For more information, see Revising Designs.

Saving iAssemblyInstances

iAssemblies without files associated to it can be saved to 3DEXPERIENCE. Upon saving, a success message for the respective instances appears that there is no associated files for the saved instances.

The modified status for iAssemblies that do not have files generated for it, is not displayed on the Save dialog box unless structure below the iAssemblies is modified or a file is generated for the iAssemblies.

If a structure below an iAssembly that does not have files is modified, the Save dialog box displays the iAssembly as modified. iAssemblies that do not have files can be locked.

Note: When an iAssembly is checked out using 3DEXPERIENCE > Open, or an assembly factory containing iAssemblies without files is opened from the computer, the attributes are not synchronized on the file. Mandatory attributes with NULL type are not checked when the iAssemblies without files are saved to 3DEXPERIENCE.

About Object Auto Recognition

The objects that exist in 3DEXPERIENCE are auto recognized and visually indicated using alerts for the auto recognized node in the 3DEXPERIENCE Save dialog box.

The objects are auto recognized based on its latest iteration, name, and types that are present in 3DEXPERIENCE. The auto recognition is indicated visually, with an alert appearing for the auto recognized node in the Alert column. If you are using quick save, a warning message appears if you invoke quick save for an auto recognized object.

Auto recognition is based on the following rules:

  • If the object is stamped with TNR, the files are not auto recognized and the objects are modified.
  • If the object is not stamped with TNR and has working set entries, the object is auto recognized if there is conflict in the working set entry. The working set entries are:
    • Client machine name
    • Directory path
    • TNRV of design
  • If the file is not stamped with TNR, no working set entries are found, and only the NAME is available. In this case the design is always auto recognized.

If you check in an auto recognized node and can create an iteration, the previous objects data is overwritten with the auto recognized node. Auto recognition behavior is identical for instances.

Note: If the files are from different databases, the objects are recognized but there is no visual indicator displayed in the Alert column for the object.

About 3D Exposition

You can expose the positional matrix of Inventor Assembly occurrences in 3DEXPERIENCE upon checking in the assembly.

The positional matrix is exposed as a relationship attribute named “spatial location”.

The positional matrix of the assembly is retrieved from Inventor and stored on CADSubComponent relationship in 3DEXPERIENCE upon saving the assembly.

To enable this, you need to select the Copy Relationship Attribute in Preferences and mapping should be present for CAD to ENOVIA relationship attribute with its value in the respective GCO. For more information on the attribute and its value, see the Connector for Inventor - Installation and Administration : Setting Up and Configuring : Setting Preferences and Connector for Inventor - Installation and Administration : Setting Up and Configuring : Relationship Attribute Support.

Saving Designs With LevelOfDetail

The Level Of Details concept in Inventor is used to improve performance of Inventor assemblies / assembly factories.

If a user is working on large assemblies / assembly factories, a lot of memory is used in the Inventor session. Due to a large memory load the Inventor performance and processing is impacted and goes down.

User can use Level Of Details on assembly and assembly factory to unload the sub-structure that is not currently required by the user.

User may even define their custom "Level Of Details".

In this case Asm1.iam is top assembly that is loaded in Inventor with custom Level of Detail: LoD1 active.

Inventor will load Asm1.iam, Asm2.iam and P1.ipt in the session.

The Connector for Inventor behavior is as follows:

On first check-in of such assembly/assembly factory, where some files are suppressed, Connector for Inventor will save

  • Those files that are not suppressed in the topmost assembly.
  • Suppressed files that are direct participants in the top-most assembly.

In the above example, on first save with the custom Level of Detail: LoD1 active for Asm1.iam, the following will be saved:

  • Asm1.iam, Asm2.iam and P1.ipt - Since these are not suppressed.
  • P2.ipt and Asm3.iam - suppressed files which are direct participants in this topmost assembly Asm1.iam.

In the above example, on first save with custom Level of Detail: LoD1 active for Asm1.iam, the following will be not saved:

  • P3.ipt and P4.ipt - As these are children of suppressed assembly Asm3.iam and are not direct participants in Asm1.iam.

On subsequent save operations of such assembly/assembly factory, where some files are suppressed, Connector for Inventor will save only those files that are modified and not suppressed in the top-most assembly.

Thus, in the above example, if all the files are modified and Asm1.iam is opened with custom Level of Detail: LoD1 active for Asm1.iam, the following will be saved to ENOVIA on subsequent save:

  • Asm1.iam, Asm2.iam and P1.ipt - Since these are not suppressed and are modified.

In the above example, on the subsequent save with custom Level of Detail: LoD1 active for Asm1.iam, the following will be not saved to ENOVIA even if they are modified:

  • P3.ipt and P4.ipt -> Since these are children of suppressed assembly Asm3.iam and are not the direct participants in Asm1.iam.
  • P2.ipt and Asm3.iam.

Important:
  • If you want to save the entire structure for assembly/assembly factory to 3DEXPERIENCE, it is recommended that you should save with the "Level Of Details" set to "Master".
  • It is also recommended to perform the first save with "Level Of Details" set to "Master", so that the entire structure is saved to 3DEXPERIENCE at least once.