MCAD Optimizer - Administration Guide : Introduction

"My MCAD Objects" is automatically added to menu "My Desk" → "Designer" → "My MCAD Objects" by the installer.

This page lists MCAD objects by three different requirements selected by tabs at the top of the page, reducing the number of times the user has to search for designs in the database. Designs Owned, Originated or Locked by the current user are available default.

The view includes a table with the familiar action icons, similarly to the Design Center search result table, as well as the State, Preview and Related Objects columns from MCAD Navigator (See next chapter for details) and the MCAD Actions toolbar enabling multi object actions such as multi unlock.

These requirements can easily be altered or new tabs could be added to suit different business requirements, please refer to Chapter 3 "Configuring MCAD Optimizer" for details.

"MCAD Navigator" is automatically added to all MCAD Model and MCAD Drawing context menus by the installer.

The "MCAD Navigator" view can be accessed from the "MCAD Navigator" tree category available on all MCAD Model or MCAD Drawing objects. This view shows an expanded structure of the related CAD-items. If a MCAD Drawing is selected, the Models represented on the Drawing are listed. If a MCAD Assembly is selected, the sub assemblies and components are listed. If the structure consists of multiple levels it can be expanded one level at a time or all levels at once.

The expanded structure is displayed as an indented table and could be navigated by three different views Compact, Exploded and Where Used. Compact is the default view allowing the user to view related drawings in a column. Exploded navigates to the drawings as well allowing the user to perform multi actions on related drawings. Where Used is similar to Compact but with the difference that you navigate in the opposite direction.

The user could navigate an object by three different requirements Navigate, Revisions and Versions. Navigate navigates the relevant object, that is the active version or the revision itself dependent on state. Revisions allow the user to navigate all relevant objects of all revisions in the same navigator. Versions allow the user to navigate all versions of the current revision in the same navigator.

All different tabs navigate structure "As Stored ". The subcomponents are the ones (revision/version) that existed in the assembly at check-in. Later revisions or versions could exist and are alerted in the alerts column.

Key information and common CAD functions are displayed for each of the listed objects. The CAD functions available are Promote, Demote, EBOM Sync, Rename, Save As, Purge, Baseline, Lock, Unlock and Checkout. In addition, there are some special columns available that provides additional information and functions to the user.

The "Structure Related Drawings" view is removed since 6.4 as all structure related drawings are reached from "MCAD Navigator"

Formalize facilitating auto naming of multiple objects has been reintroduced. Select one or more objects and press formalize, select auto number series in dialog and press done to auto name the selected rows.

3DLive Examine viewer can be accessed directly from the MCAD Optimizer. The viewer has to be enabled via an init parameter (see chapter about init parameters) and can be used with any CAD integration generating CGR-files as derived output. 3DLive Examine is available in two versions within MCAD Optimizer, the standard and one "light" mode which is faster to load but with very limited functionality.

In the MCAD Navigator page the user can switch View between "Expanded SubComponents" and "Quantity SubComponents". In Expanded mode every "CAD SubComponent" relationship is show in the structure. In Quantity mode only one CAD SubComponent relationship for each connected component will be used. Instead a quantity column shows number of CAD SubComponent links.

This is only useful if MCADInteg-ExpandedSubComponent is set to TRUE in the GCO. Otherwise the integration itself will only create one relationship with a quantity attribute.