- [Instructor] In this video I want to take some time
looking at SOLIDWORKS PDM data cards.
Now we're all used to going up to file,
properties,
custom and seeing all of the custom properties
that we can add in,
and we can even go in and create
some of our own properties if we want to.
We can add the material.
We can add make or buy.
We can add all the options you see here.
So this is all the metadata
that's already existing in the background.
Now in SOLIDWORKS with PDM all of that data
is linked to what's called your data card.
So this in the SOLIDWORKS task plane
will bring up the data card for the part.
So you can see here, I've got a custom data card
that I've made for my company.
So it includes a logo, part number,
revision, description, material, vendor,
a cost, project name, who it's created by,
checked by.
Is it purchased or fabricated,
and does it have a legacy part number.
So all of this stuff down here is custom
to my configuration.
In the base setup you'll have part of this,
but not everything.
In the next video we'll go onto
how to create custom data cards.
Now there's a couple other spots
that we can look to find our data card information.
So I'm going to go ahead and hit cancel here,
and I'm going to use the select in Windows Explorer tool
to show me where this is in Windows Explorer.
Now when we go here we can see that
under the data card tab we have
all the same information again.
But if we have the file checked out.
So I'm going to go ahead and check it out now
and take possession.
We can go in here and start editing parts,
so first thing I've got to do is close it here.
Close SOLIDWORKS.
Go back in.
Take ownership.
And now we can update this.
We can put in a part number here if I want
so it'll populate in my BOMs.
I can also put the vendor,
the cost,
and maybe the project name.
All I got to do here is hit save.
And all of that information is locked into the data card.
Now one thing to note is that
for each configuration that you have
you will gain another tab in this data card.
The first one, the at symbol data card,
is what configuration it had when it was last saved
or checked into the vault.
So typically I keep the default the same
and I don't do a huge amount of configuration.
So these can stay pretty simple.
But in other parts you can have
five, six different configurations for one part.
And maybe you want to switch through them.
So let's see if we can find one real quick here.
Dig up some hardware.
Looking for some threaded rod.
See you can see all these just have one main configuration.
Here we go, heres an example with a couple.
So in this one we have a custom configuration
that was made with no threads and one width of threads.
It has the same material,
but it's just an additional configuration.
Now let's go ahead and open this part.
For completeness I'm going to go in
and add another configuration.
I'm going to use this in the bill of materials.
All right, hit save.
I'm going to save that.
And then I'm going to check it in.
All right now, if we go and look at our data card,
you can see we've added another tab
for the new configuration that I made.
It did carry over all the attributes from the other tabs.
But we can change this on the fly if we
want to change this description out.
All right, and that's the basics of data cards.