topic Question: What are the .cp files for? in Upchain Forum

Question: What are the .cp files for?

imckenzieY7CGY — Wed, 14 Jun 2023 15:46:11 GMT

In a hidden folder in the Upchain home directory, there's a bunch of .cp files that appear to match up with Solidworks files downloaded through the plugin.

These files appear to also come with files downloaded from the webapp, except in that case, they appear to hold all the custom properties for a part.

I realize these are kind of backend info files for Upchain, but I'm curious as to why they appear, if the models can exist without them, and why the method of download seems to affect the contents.

Re: Question: What are the .cp files for?

emily.caulfield — Wed, 18 Oct 2023 10:38:31 GMT

Hi, imckenzieY7CGY, apologies for the delay in responding to your question.

The .cp files contain internal properties used by Upchain for things like checking if the file has changed, which item version it belongs to, what file version it's at, etc. These files should not be touched or modified.

For SolidWorks files, most of these properties are contained in the Custom Properties tab of the CAD file. When you check out/check in, Upchain can use your SolidWorks session to update the properties directly in the CAD file, and so the .cp file only contains the HASHSUM value.

In the web app, it's possible that some item attributes have been modified, but they are not reflected in the CAD file because this can only happen when using the plugin. So when you download the files from the web app, Upchain creates a fully populated .cp file and warns you that the custom properties in the CAD file may not match the item attributes in the web.

For all other CAD systems, Upchain does not write these custom properties directly to the CAD file and so it stores them in these .cp files. Again, they are used by Upchain and should not be modified.

Hope that answers your question 🙂

Re: Question: What are the .cp files for?

imckenzieY7CGY — Wed, 18 Oct 2023 12:35:39 GMT

Thanks for the explanation!