Associating CAD to an existing item

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In this video, we'll show you how you can take a CAD file and register it to an existing item and Upchain.

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So, let's take a look.

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It might be the case that at the beginning of a project,

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a skeleton BOM is created in the web application, for designers to use as a guide as to what the structure is going to be.

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In this case, the items already exist, and it is up to the designers to associate their CAD to the appropriate item later.

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This can be achieved from the CAD plugin, as long as the item doesn't already have a CAD file associated with it.

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To associate an assembly file to an existing item, open the CAD file in your CAD system, and refresh the cBOM view.

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Then right click on the top assembly in the cBOM view, and select Find item.

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This opens a search window.

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Where you can locate the item, you wish to associate the CAD file to.

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You can search by any item attributes and include any additional information here,

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including project or customer information to locate the item that you want.

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Here, we're searching by the item number.

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The search results are displayed,

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and you can click on the item to display it item details on the right-hand side where you can confirm that you have the right item,

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and that it does not already have a CAD file associated with it.

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Once you've located the item that you want to associate CAD to, select it there, and then click the Select button.

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Upchain now begins the process of associating that CAD file with the chosen item.

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The find item process is a one to one process, meaning it will only associate the CAD file for the assembly to the chosen item.

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All child components in the assembly do not get items created for them because that is a separate process.

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Instead, they are created as phantom files because they have to at least be registered as part of the assembly cBOM.

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Here's the result.

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The assembly has been associated to the chosen item, and all child components are phantom.

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You can also see in the lower pane that the file has been renamed according to this tenant's file naming rules.

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All child components are phantom.

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However, they're all left in a checked-out state, which means you can now create items for these phantoms.

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The create item process now brings up the BOM wizard where you can confirm which components you wish to have associated to new items.

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As indicated by the check marks, and by default, everything is assumed to have an item created for it.

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And we'll leave it like that. Click OK.

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This process of creating items for phantoms also works for any unregistered CAD that you may have added to a registered assembly as well.

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If you don't want to search for the item you're looking for, you can instead go to the project BOM and locate the item that way.

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Selecting it there, you can confirm that, again, this item has no CAD file associated to it.

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Then you can right click on that item and choose attach active CAD.

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This saves you the hassle of searching for this item, but the process is exactly the same as what we did with find item.

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It associates the assembly file with this item, renames the file according to the file naming properties in this tenant,

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and any child components are registered as phantom files.

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Let's confirm that in the cBOM view.

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The assembly file has been associated with the item, renamed accordingly, and all child components are phantom.

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And, again, at this point, we can use the create item function to create items for any of those, phantom components if we so choose.