In this first of a two-part R5.14 summary, we share insights into the rich new capabilities. Part 1 covers 3D comparison, Custom item attributes, document management, and linked items. Part 2 will summarize the balance of R5.14 capability; Custom tasks, Business process types, Gantt charts, and Service BOM.
R5.14 new features and refinements are available to all Upchain SaaS subscription customers who are automatically and seamlessly upgraded to the new release. Upchain’s release cadence is structured to enable the company to deliver new releases approximately every 2 months in order to rapidly respond to customer evolving requirements and changing market needs. In stark contrast to the traditionally painful, risky, and expensive upgrade process associated with traditional PLM systems that were designed for on-premise deployments, Upchain’s cloud native architecture supports a virtual upgrade process that is wholly managed by Upchain. It provides a smooth transition from the prior version to the new one, without needing an on-site project team.
Significant new capability benefits all user roles
The following summarizes a partial list of the key features in R5.14 release. These offer substantial benefits to all PLM users.
3D Comparison
Ever wonder what’s different between two versions of the same 3D model? From Upchain’s BOM tab/Visualization, users may compare Items containing 3D models to see what's different. No matter whether a knowledge worker, reviewer, or a power-CAD user engineer, Upchain 3D Comparison makes design decision-making easy. Upchain’s comparison capability leverages the company’s proven and innovative technology to support 3D models from all major CAD vendors, but without requiring the CAD license to do it.
Custom Item Attributes
Ever wish you could link your product Item to a website, standard list, document, or maybe a spreadsheet outside of PLM? Upchain has expanded custom attribute data types to include URL, picklists, and rich text. You can now configure the URL type with CAD mapping capabilities. If you choose to show the URL attribute in a BOM table or item detail, the link is active and opens the respective webpage in a new tab in your browser. The CAD plugin has been expanded to show all common and custom attributes in each place where you can view an item’s details (ie. item details page, lower panes, my assignments, my workspace, search pane). This reflects Upchain’s tenet of “low disruption”. Rather than insist all product documentation be captured inside the PLM solution, Upchain says “keep it where it is, we will link to it and still maintain the PLM as the single-source-of-truth”.
Document Management
Product designs are often captured in many different document formats besides 2D/3D CAD drawings. These different documents can become cumbersome to manage since they are often left outside the mainstream PLM. Upchain’s Tenant Administrators now can configure Document Categories for document types other than CAD. Also new is a document numbering and revisioning system that prepends the original document name with a number and revision in accordance with user defined rules. If no rules are created the default rule applies: #########-XX-document name. Users can now create their preferred behaviors for all document types within projects and items. This supports user flexibility and enforces corporate governance, the best of both worlds.
Linked Items
New products are most often based upon existing or legacy products in some way. All too often, engineers “copy” design content into the new design which over time creates an unmanageable complexity with 10’s, 100’s and 1000’s of duplicated parts that all relate to each other in different ways. R5.14 enables soft links to be created between unrelated items (such as genealogy, substitute item, relation to a document, etc). This allows users to link items between different engineering disciplines, between unrelated departments e.g. finance and quality, between different projects, and between a legacy product and a new one for example.
