As designers and engineers, we're always looking for the next shortcut to success. SolidWorks PDM provides a direct route to managing your CART data and design files easily and securely. Now we understand that taking on new software can be daunting. So we're here to make your life easier with these ten simple tips. At number ten, we have a double whammy when working in SolidWorks PDM. The preview tabs can help provide much needed information about a file, including a full drawings view. You'll want to make sure that you toggle the car display off and the drawings preview by going to display and turning off the card preview. Now we can expand these preview tabs to full screen to give us a clearer view of the selected tab and its information. We can use this to show the drawings preview of a file or look at the bill of materials for a large assembly and with full screen. We can see more information easily and quickly. The contains and where these tabs are. A great way to see your files references. And in SolidWorks PDM professional, we have the ability to view these references in a more graphical way using the treehouse mode. Treehouse mode shows the references in a graphical hierarchy, allowing users to quickly see where a file is used or what files are contained inside assemblies and subassemblies. A nice click on here at number eight, but sometimes when navigating through the vault, we may want to quickly jump back towards the top level of the vault. Selecting the PDM blueberry icon allows users to do just that regardless of the current location. Clicking on the PDM blueberry icon will always take the user back to the root of the local vault view. If you're ever out of office, don't forget to set your presence Note, Presence notes can be used in SolidWorks PDM to let colleagues know what you're currently working on, or if you're out of the office on a customer site or just enjoying your annual leave. Selecting the user icon in the vault view allows users to update their presence note so the rest of the team knows what they're working on or where they are. SolidWorks PDM is great at helping with both passive and active communication and at number six, notifications in SolidWorks. PDM are commonly used to alert people when files have been for checking or approval, but we can also use the notifications to notify ourselves when a file is check back into PDM by a colleague for when it reaches a certain workflow state. This can be set out from the notify options on the Tools menu with a desired file selected power up your PDM with a quick comparison of versions within Edrawings within the history view for a selected file. Clicking the view icon will open the selected version of the file within the history into its Associated Viewer via history we can compare any open versions of a particular file without having to update the cache, so ultimately we can open multiple versions of the same file in edrawings and visually compare them against each other. in SolidWorks PDM Pro, We can run a comparison between multiple versions of the same file within SolidWorks Professional by using the compare tool, which allows for greater comparison between the different versions. Sharing files between colleagues is something that we will all have to do at some point after selecting the file in PDM. The copy link option allows us to send a link to a colleague via email, add it to a document or even a field within your ERP or MRP system. Assuming that the user clicking on the link has the PDM client installed and view access to the file, the link is pointing tape clicking. The link will take them straight to the correct file and version. This is a great feature of SolidWorks PDM Pro. If a file needs to be accessed from multiple different locations creating duplicate files is never a good idea by copying and using the paste Shared option in SolidWorks PDM Pro, this allows us to create a shortcut to the original file in a new location. This will also allow users to access the file from multiple locations whilst ensuring that no duplicate files are created. It is worth noting though, that this should only be used with flat documents and not CAD data. Sometimes users will need to reserve a number or add a placeholder file until the actual file has been created. Virtual files are a great way to do this in SolidWorks PDM as the user can define exactly what file format this virtual file should take. Creating a virtual file is as simple as right clicking and selecting new virtual file, and once the actual file is available, getting that into the vault is as simple as selecting the replace command from the right click menu and browsing to the file outside of the vault, triggering it to be imported at the location defined by the virtual file. This feature is available in both PDM Standard and professional versions. Before we get onto our number one tip for SolidWorks PDM, don't forget that with a SolidWorks subscription you have access to our experienced team of SolidWorks engineers who are on hand to answer your questions and help you get the most out of SolidWorks PDM. Be sure to leave a comment below and let us know what you want to see next. If you enjoyed this video and be sure to leave a light and don't forget to subscribe to our channel for more solid works Tips, tricks and solutions. But now we've left you wanting long enough. It's time for our number one tip for SolidWorks PDM to make your life easier, SolidWorks PDM lets you associate files through references so you can keep track of all of your project data using the paste as a reference option in SolidWorks. PDM allows users to link any two files together as a reference. This can be used to link a datasheet to a bought in component link, an engineering change document to the files undergoing this change or linking consumables that may not be modeled in CAD during assembly and show them in the bill of materials. This can be accomplished by copying a file and provided that the destination file is checked out. We can right click on the file and select the option paste as reference. We can select to include this in the building materials or to simply just add it as a reference. So there you have it. Our Top Ten Tips for Working in SolidWorks PDM. If you need a robust and highly configurable data management solution for your business, then get in touch with our expert SolidWorks PDM consultants to explore your options via the details on screen.