What is Classification Manager?
Classification Manager is a new role available for SOLIDWORKS customers in the 3DEXPERIENCE Platform. The role allows users to easily classify their business objects.
Before understanding the power of an extra role (license) of Classification Manager, let’s cover the basics of what is included in the typical roles in 3DEXPERIENCE. In many scenarios, customers have 3DSwymer, Collaborative Industry Innovator (these 2 roles allow users to login and manage data) and then the CAD Connector.
What is the main benefit of 3DEXPERIENCE? The largest power of a central database is the ability to find and leverage data. Built into 3DEXPERIENCE, is its incredibly powerful 6w tagger. A standard workflow today for 3DEXPERIENCE clients that have SOLIDWORKS is to create both attributes and tags to help in finding that data on the backend (tomorrow, next year and beyond). A quick example- a user is looking for a CAD model that was saved to their Platform, so they search generically “prd”. This finds physical products in the database and user can filter down based on tags. The content name prefix, “prd”, is the most basic search in finding 3D CAD data in a ‘vanilla’ 3DEXPERIENCE platform.
Below, I searched “prd” and 3DEXPERIENCE found over 25,000 results in this tenant (aka private server where my data resides).
Below, I added various tags to isolate down from 25,000 results to just over 100. I filtered on “ME” (person), a collaborative space called VAR Training, and the creation date for the year 2024.
Searching in 3DEXPERIENCE is very important. With a few baseline points, customers can understand how to strategically find things saved by multiple team members.
Ok- so this helps finding existing data with tools that SOLIDWORKS customers would already have if they are saving their files into the 3DEXPERIENCE Platform. Let’s look further.
Above, I found the OhmMG file, which was created in a SOLIDWORKS Cloud app called xDesign (the CAD tool is really a moot point), and I reviewed its data card. There’s various metadata here available- this offers additional points of entry to the file. For instance, the title OhmMG Electronics is searchable as would be other attributes that users can leverage and possibly create themselves- think material, vendor, supplier. For years, SOLIDWORKS customers have described this information in the File Properties of the object inside SOLIDWORKS CAD.
Alright, so if all of this is available today without additional roles- what is Classification Manager and why would clients consider adding it to their Platform?
Classification Manager allows (possibly a separate user all together from a drafter or designer) to create libraries with classes. This helps organize and structure data directly in the web browser, again with the end goal in mind to classify objects and thus find data more easily.
Below, I created a dashboard called Support and created a new tab called Classification MGR. In this tab, I’ve brought into the UI, a few handy apps for this scenario: Classification Editor, IP Classify and Reuse and Bookmark Editor. I created a library with 3 classes: Other CAD, SOLIDWORKS Cloud, and SOLIDWORKS 2024+. The tool is intuitive to both create and modify libraries and also import/ export from something like Excel. The intent for me is to have an easy way to ‘classify’ demo sets.
Now, inside the newly created library called WW Library 24_1, I can control the lifecycle of the classes separately. They have a maturity state and that governs how the rest of the team can see these objects. The maturity options are inactive, active, and obsolete and there is additional functionality on the horizon.
Below, I can create a myriad of various names that can connect to “predicate”. This controls how the objects are connected to Tags. I define authorized values, to control what may be defined in these Names.
After attributes are defined, I can select which attributes I want available in the various classes.
Inside SOLIDWORKS Cloud, I define “Mechanical”, “Electrical”, “Conceptual” classes. This will allow a user to define something accordingly so that when anyone is searching for these generic terms, they can find easily the related demonstration file set. I define their lifecycle as active so that other users in the collaborative space will see and be able to use these classes. Now, all of this ability is included in the Classification Manager role- the ability to define libraries and classes to then allow users to sort and classify later.
The Bookmark Editor is the user’s best friend in the 3DEXPERIENCE Platform. The reason I brought in this app here, is now I can drag and drop items into the various classes as to classify them quite easily. Another nice feature is the cross-highlighting between the apps. This informs the user what he or she has selected as seen below, with the OhmMG Electronics CAD file.
The use-case here is pretty simple for us to organize or demonstration file sets. However, there are many other cases that this could apply in industry. Consider a mechanical engineer is designing a jig assembly with a linear actuator of possibly varying displacements. When that user searches for an actuator, he or she can filter down on the desired actuator by limiting the tags to the desired range of displacement, like 100-125 mm, for example. This, coupled with the powerful 6w tag colorizer allows an intuitive way to interact with the exact data you wish.
Classification Manager is a powerful role that offers very easy ways to organize data. Perhaps the most powerful benefit is the quick manner in which users can classify and sort any object directly on the web on any device.
