In our first lesson, we’ll introduce you to the key concepts that will help you understand how data is organized in Upchain.
Before you start:
You must be invited to Upchain and have a Professional license to perform the tasks demonstrated in this course.
In the following video, we’ll introduce you to Upchain and outline how the mechanical CAD plugins can benefit your organization.
We’ll introduce you to the key concepts when working in Upchain with the mechanical CAD plugin, including project, BOM, and item.
Transcript
00:05
In this video, we'll introduce you to the key concepts when working in Upchain with the mechanical CAD plugin.
00:11
Familiarize yourself with these terms, but don't worry about mastering them just now.
00:15
We'll revisit many of these core concepts in greater detail in later courses as we work through different use cases.
00:23
So, let's take a look.
00:27
At the heart of Upchain is the project.
00:30
Projects are used to organize and manage the effort and data related to your product's life cycle within Upchain.
00:38
Projects may be used in a variety of ways.
00:40
Generally, a project contains one or multiple end item products to be delivered to a customer.
00:46
But there are other uses for projects, such as a standard library of parts, or a standard library of documents.
00:53
Regardless of project type, a project can include things like team members, a project plan,
01:00
bill of materials, supporting documents, and business processes that manage the change history of various objects.
01:09
Projects enable you to track the status updates and due dates while having all the information about a product in one centralized location.
01:18
As a general rule, whenever you access or edit data in Upchain, you do so in the context of a project.
01:30
One of the main components of a project is the bill of materials.
01:33
A bill of materials, lists all of the assemblies, sub-assemblies, parts,
01:39
and raw materials needed to produce one unit of a finished product.
01:43
Each product has its own bill of materials.
01:47
Everywhere you can see the bill of materials in Upchain, it shows the parent child relationships between each item,
01:53
in an indented hierarchical structure so that all users can clearly see how the structure is laid out and organized.
01:60
This structure is primarily driven by the design.
02:10
Now, a bill of materials contains items. So, what is an item?
02:15
An item represents one object in your design, one level in that bill of materials.
02:20
So, that means it can be a part, an assembly, a sub-assembly or an end item, which is the very top level with no parent above it.
02:30
So, you can think of an item like a box in Upchain.
02:35
Or a package, it contains all of the data associated with one object in a product design.
02:41
Including attributes, which is your metadata, CAD models,
02:45
and drawings, non-CAD documentation, translations, visualizations, and markups.
02:57
Each item in Upchain is assigned a unique item number.
03:01
The format of the item number can be configured by your tenant administrator to include things like text,
03:06
delimiters and sequence numbers, and can also depend on the item type.
03:11
And that way, you can use the item number to help identify what that item is.
03:16
But the key thing to remember is that once the item number is assigned to an item, it cannot be changed and reused by another item.
03:24
It also cannot be deleted so that you can try again. Once it's taken, it's taken.
03:30
An item is identified by its item data model, which is made up of four parts,
03:33
the item number as discussed, a major revision, a minor revision, and a version.
03:41
The major revision out of the box is always two characters, and the minor revision is always two numbers.
03:48
The version is always an integer, starting at 0.
03:55
The item is also characterized by its attributes which is the metadata and can include things like the material,
04:02
the manufacturer that produces it, and the item number.
04:06
Rather the manufacturer's item number for that.
04:13
Now the item can go through many steps in its life cycle, but an item always begins in a development state.
04:21
It remains in the state throughout the initial development stage, and you can see for brand new items,
04:27
the major revision is XX, the minor revision is also XX, and the version is 1.
04:36
This item contains all of the incremental design changes on the CAD model that's inside it,
04:41
and you can make as many of these incremental changes as needed.
04:49
Once you consider your item to be finished, ready to go, it is,
04:54
needs to be sent to a change request to move the item to a released state.
04:59
This increments the major revision up to AA and the minor revision to 00.
05:05
This is how it is out of the box. The version is also set to 0 to indicate that the item is released.
05:12
The CAD file inside that released item is also incremented up to the next number,
05:18
just to keep it separate from all of the incremental design changes contained in the development item.
05:25
If further changes are needed again, the item must be revised to put it back into a development state.
05:33
So, the major and the minor revision notice have not changed. They stay at their level that they were just put into.
05:41
But the version is incremented up to version 1 to indicate that the item is now back into development.
05:48
And now the item is back into development.
05:51
You can make any further changes needed to this item to its CAD model,
05:56
to its drawings, documentation, attributes, whatever is required at this stage.
06:02
And then once those changes have been made, it must be sent to another change request to release it again.
06:12
Now during the second release, in our example,
06:16
this is where we have to decide whether the change we made was a major revision or a minor revision,
06:23
and this will be down to your organization's decision on what the differences are between the two.
06:31
If we were to choose a major revision, then that would increment the major revision part up to AB, and the minor revision would stay as it was.
06:41
If we were to choose minor revision, that increments the minor revision up to 01, and the major revision would stay at where it was.
06:49
In both cases, the version is always set to 0 again to indicate that the item is released.
06:56
So, this process of releasing and revising,
07:00
and releasing and revising can continue as many times as needed until a final product is found.
07:10
So, you may be a bit confused about some of these concepts, but don't worry.
07:14
As you begin to work with Upchain and the CAD plugin and work with items and CAD files, you'll become more familiar with what these terms mean.
07:23
So, continue working through the mechanical CAD courses to learn more.
00:05
In this video, we'll introduce you to the key concepts when working in Upchain with the mechanical CAD plugin.
00:11
Familiarize yourself with these terms, but don't worry about mastering them just now.
00:15
We'll revisit many of these core concepts in greater detail in later courses as we work through different use cases.
00:23
So, let's take a look.
00:27
At the heart of Upchain is the project.
00:30
Projects are used to organize and manage the effort and data related to your product's life cycle within Upchain.
00:38
Projects may be used in a variety of ways.
00:40
Generally, a project contains one or multiple end item products to be delivered to a customer.
00:46
But there are other uses for projects, such as a standard library of parts, or a standard library of documents.
00:53
Regardless of project type, a project can include things like team members, a project plan,
01:00
bill of materials, supporting documents, and business processes that manage the change history of various objects.
01:09
Projects enable you to track the status updates and due dates while having all the information about a product in one centralized location.
01:18
As a general rule, whenever you access or edit data in Upchain, you do so in the context of a project.
01:30
One of the main components of a project is the bill of materials.
01:33
A bill of materials, lists all of the assemblies, sub-assemblies, parts,
01:39
and raw materials needed to produce one unit of a finished product.
01:43
Each product has its own bill of materials.
01:47
Everywhere you can see the bill of materials in Upchain, it shows the parent child relationships between each item,
01:53
in an indented hierarchical structure so that all users can clearly see how the structure is laid out and organized.
01:60
This structure is primarily driven by the design.
02:10
Now, a bill of materials contains items. So, what is an item?
02:15
An item represents one object in your design, one level in that bill of materials.
02:20
So, that means it can be a part, an assembly, a sub-assembly or an end item, which is the very top level with no parent above it.
02:30
So, you can think of an item like a box in Upchain.
02:35
Or a package, it contains all of the data associated with one object in a product design.
02:41
Including attributes, which is your metadata, CAD models,
02:45
and drawings, non-CAD documentation, translations, visualizations, and markups.
02:57
Each item in Upchain is assigned a unique item number.
03:01
The format of the item number can be configured by your tenant administrator to include things like text,
03:06
delimiters and sequence numbers, and can also depend on the item type.
03:11
And that way, you can use the item number to help identify what that item is.
03:16
But the key thing to remember is that once the item number is assigned to an item, it cannot be changed and reused by another item.
03:24
It also cannot be deleted so that you can try again. Once it's taken, it's taken.
03:30
An item is identified by its item data model, which is made up of four parts,
03:33
the item number as discussed, a major revision, a minor revision, and a version.
03:41
The major revision out of the box is always two characters, and the minor revision is always two numbers.
03:48
The version is always an integer, starting at 0.
03:55
The item is also characterized by its attributes which is the metadata and can include things like the material,
04:02
the manufacturer that produces it, and the item number.
04:06
Rather the manufacturer's item number for that.
04:13
Now the item can go through many steps in its life cycle, but an item always begins in a development state.
04:21
It remains in the state throughout the initial development stage, and you can see for brand new items,
04:27
the major revision is XX, the minor revision is also XX, and the version is 1.
04:36
This item contains all of the incremental design changes on the CAD model that's inside it,
04:41
and you can make as many of these incremental changes as needed.
04:49
Once you consider your item to be finished, ready to go, it is,
04:54
needs to be sent to a change request to move the item to a released state.
04:59
This increments the major revision up to AA and the minor revision to 00.
05:05
This is how it is out of the box. The version is also set to 0 to indicate that the item is released.
05:12
The CAD file inside that released item is also incremented up to the next number,
05:18
just to keep it separate from all of the incremental design changes contained in the development item.
05:25
If further changes are needed again, the item must be revised to put it back into a development state.
05:33
So, the major and the minor revision notice have not changed. They stay at their level that they were just put into.
05:41
But the version is incremented up to version 1 to indicate that the item is now back into development.
05:48
And now the item is back into development.
05:51
You can make any further changes needed to this item to its CAD model,
05:56
to its drawings, documentation, attributes, whatever is required at this stage.
06:02
And then once those changes have been made, it must be sent to another change request to release it again.
06:12
Now during the second release, in our example,
06:16
this is where we have to decide whether the change we made was a major revision or a minor revision,
06:23
and this will be down to your organization's decision on what the differences are between the two.
06:31
If we were to choose a major revision, then that would increment the major revision part up to AB, and the minor revision would stay as it was.
06:41
If we were to choose minor revision, that increments the minor revision up to 01, and the major revision would stay at where it was.
06:49
In both cases, the version is always set to 0 again to indicate that the item is released.
06:56
So, this process of releasing and revising,
07:00
and releasing and revising can continue as many times as needed until a final product is found.
07:10
So, you may be a bit confused about some of these concepts, but don't worry.
07:14
As you begin to work with Upchain and the CAD plugin and work with items and CAD files, you'll become more familiar with what these terms mean.
07:23
So, continue working through the mechanical CAD courses to learn more.
