Introduction and Upchain core concepts

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.

What is Upchain for mechanical CAD? 

In the following video, we’ll introduce you to Upchain and outline how the mechanical CAD plugins can benefit your organization.

Key takeaways

1. Upchain is a cloud-based PLM system that empowers all users in your organization to access the data they need from anywhere, at any time.
2. Upchain is your organization's single, centralized source of truth for product data, which eliminates the need for shared drives or emailing files. 
3. Upchain provides a plugin for each of the supported CAD systems to enable CAD users to access and manage product data without needing to leave their CAD software.

Upchain core concepts

We’ll introduce you to the key concepts when working in Upchain with the mechanical CAD plugin, including project, BOM, and item. 

Key takeaways

1. Upchain is a project-based system, and all data pertaining to a particular body of work or deliverable is organized in one place.
2. A bill of materials is an indented structure of assemblies, sub-assemblies, parts, and any other raw materials needed to produce one unit of a finished product.
3. An item represents a level in the bill of materials. Items are used to manage the CAD data, as well as drawings, documentation, translations, and markups pertaining to one object in a design. An item is not a CAD file - it is used to manage CAD in Upchain.
4. Items begin in a development state to be worked on. They are sent to a Change request when they are considered finished to move them to a released state. Further changes require an item to be revised and then released again.