SolidWorks part/assembly configurations

[AllenKey]

It took longer than I expected for me to determine a "simple" solution for the following issue since there is a lack of documentation in this area, so hopefully someone out there finds this post useful.

After realizing the benefits of having Upchain recognize individual part/assembly configurations in SolidWorks as separate items, I had Upchain Support enable this in my tenant.  However, I didn't realize that Upchain wouldn't allow me to provide my own item names for these configurations during the item creation process.  Because of this, multiple configurations within a part/assembly end up having the same item name displayed in the various BOMs - which is not as useful as I'd hoped.

Until the Upchain developers enable the ability to input item names during the item creation process, the simplest solution I have come up with was to create a new configuration-specific custom property (which I simply called "Name") within my SolidWorks part/assembly templates and map it to "Item Name" within Upchain.  Now when Upchain sees an entry for this custom property, it is displayed as Item Name; if there is no entry, then it resorts to original file name of the part/assembly.

All that said, if any of y'all out there have another solution, definitely share!

[emily.caulfield]

Hi AllenKey, thank you for your message. By default, Upchain takes the item name from the file name upon registration. It does this regardless of whether SW Configs are enabled or not. You may then subsequently update the item name once the item is created as you normally would with any item attribute. To help you do this, there are several tools available to know what configuration you're looking at:

• The active configuration open in SW is shown in the Where Used tab in the lower pane or item view.
• Every time you switch the active configuration in SW and refresh the cBOM view or item view, that will be the item connected to that configuration.
• The selected configuration item in Web also shows which configuration its connected to in the Where Used tab.
• Tenant Admins can add the configuration name to the Item Representation in the Plugin Settings.

If you want a name set during registration, your solution is the way to go. I can't think of another way to do it. You could consider posting your idea to the Ideas Board.

Since SolidWorks Configurations is still in preview mode, the help documentation for it is found within the feedback community. You may need to reach out to Customer Support to gain access to it.

I hope this helps.

[AllenKey]

Thank you for the input, especially regarding this functionality being in "preview mode;" I did not realize this before I had it enabled.