EPDM – Office Templates

This article is a continuation on my previous articles relating to linking Data Card Variables, to Office Properties. In this article we will look at how to create a Word or Excel template that can be used for ECO’s/ECN’s

As before, this article will assume that the appropriate variables have been added to SolidWorks Enterprise PDM and that these Variables have been mapped to the corresponding Data Card Fields.

The first step is to create the Office document as outlined in my previous blogs EPDM – Mapping Variables to Microsoft Office and ‘EPDM – Using “Link to content” to Define custom file properties in Excel.

The Office template needs to be checked into your vault. To control excess to the template it is recommended, that the template be checked into a folder, that only an administrator has write access to.

Once the Office template has been checked in, launch SolidWorks Enterprise PDM Administration and log into vault.

Right click on the Template Node and select New Template.

Enter a name for the Template and press Next.

Select the appropriate permissions for creating files for the template. The user must have sufficient permissions to folder, where the ECO/ECN will be created. Click on Next.

We will not look at Template Cards at this point; click Next.

A Template can create folder and sub-folders. The folder names can be linked to Template Variables, such as Customer, Part/Project Number and date. We will not look at creating folders in this article.

For this article we will look at creating a ECO in the ‘Current Folder’. This is the folder that is open in the local vault view, when we run the template. Click on New Template.

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Select the Office template you created earlier and click on Open.

We will not be using Template Variables, press on OK and press then Next.

From the Extension pull-down, choose an Icon for your Template and press Next.

Select which Users and Groups will have be able to you this Template and click on OK to finish creating the Template.

To run the Template, in the Local Vault View, right click and select New and then click on the Template .

Any variables in the Data Card that are mapped to the Office template, will be written to the new ECO. A unique name should be given to the new ECO. Click on Create File to create the new ECO.

A new ECO is created

And the variable is mapped to the Office document.

We will look at using template variables and template cards in upcoming articles.