In this video, we'll be running through how to set up a convert to PDF tasks for PDM Professional. Prior to configuring the task, you'll need to have imported the addon and set up a machine as a task host. If you haven't, please view our video on importing the caveat addon and setting up a task host. Within the PDM administration tool. Log on to your vault. Expand out the tasks node and double click on the convert task. It is always useful to create a copy for the convert task as backup. This can be done through right click and selecting Copy. For this video, I'll select the copy to configure. When the convert properties has opened, it's always best practice to rename your task to something more relevant, such as convert drawings to PDF. Yeah. The first page is our add-in page and this is going to be the convert add in as well as who will execute the task. So this can be an individual user such as admin. Or it can be the logged in user. This is important if the user who's triggering the conversion task does not have permission to add to the vault, then executing the task as a specific user can overcome this. The number of retries and how long to wait before failing. How many times do you want the task to run again? If it fails? And how long do you want to wait before the task fails? The next page is the execution method. Page. So essentially, which computers do you want this task to run in and how it should run. So either the system choose prompt the user to choose or execute on one of the tasks was initiated. It's really important to select the appropriate option here as wherever this task is run, it will need an installation of SolidWorks. For example, if an approver is triggering this task but does not have SolidWorks installed, the task will fail. Remember that your computer will only appear in this list if you set it up as a task host. First. Next is the menu and command page and this is optional so you can turn it on and off using this checkbox. It shows you how you would like to see the task appearing on a right click shortcut menu. Each backslash is a new submenu. Moving on to the conversion settings within PDM Pro, you have a range of the file types you can convert to, including steps and accepts. For this, we'll be selecting the PDF option. Some additional details. The first tab is the configurations tab and this is the configurations within SolidWorks. As drawings do not have configurations, this option can be left as default. However, if you're exporting DXF or 3D files, you might want to define a flat pattern configuration or perhaps an IP free configuration for 3D files. The source file references. So you have two options here. You can use the as built. So if you want the drawing on its references to be exactly one, that version was created. Or you can use the latest version if you want to. The drawing to automatically reflect any changes made to any of the reference parts since that time. The latter is not usually the best option for PDFs being created as part of an approval process, as you want it to be an exact match for the approved drawing. You also have a couple of checkboxes, which on by default which allow the user to change this setting. I will untick these. The next tab is the sheets tab. More often than not You'll be wanting to export all sheets, but in some instances you might want to export the last sheet or a name sheet. You can either have the output file export into multiple PDFs, or include them all in one PDF. Finally, I'm just going to mention this additional menu here, which allows you to tailor some of those PDF settings. The following page is for the output file card. This allows you to populate the output PDFs data card with values from the source files data card. For example, we could take the revision from our source file and apply it to the revision of our output file. You also have the option of adding in some free text, so you might want to define those values yourself or simply pop a comment in somewhere. Moving on to the output Files details page. This is defining where we want our output PDF file to go. In professional, you can define two locations, so you might want to include one output file to the PDM vault and one externally. For another area of the business you just don't have access to PDM. You can construct the file names differently for both, so the external version might include some additional details, such as the revision or the description from the source file. By default, the primary output files is the source files folder path. If you wanted to build this up yourself, you can clear this box and using the arrow on the right hand side out in the location that you want. There are a couple of useful things to note on this page. Firstly, the error log file and this is where the error log will go if your task fails. And this is usually within a log file at the root of your vault. But if you wanted to, you could define a different location here. second thing is this advanced scripting options. So this allows you to view the script of the task. And this is in Visual Basic. You have the ability to reset the script which is very useful for troubleshooting. And you can also define the default program used here. Just to quickly note if the script is modified at all. Make sure that it's documented as you will need to reapply them after any script resets. reset process is recommended after each major version. Upgrade, as a macro might have been modified by small rocks to fix previous bugs or offer new capabilities. Closing that down and moving on to the next page. And this is permissions. So who do you want to have the ability to use this task. That is usually admin. And then perhaps another group like engineering. You want to do this at the group level or at the individual level. The last couple of pages are for the success and the error notifications. So who will be notified if the task completes or if it fails? You want to be cautious about applying success notifications, as you do not want to be overloading an account with PDM notifications. The option for notifying the user is usually the most appropriate. You can define the content of the notification here, and then the last page is the same thing again. But if the task fails. We recommend that you notify the user who launched the task, and perhaps admin or another user who would be able to investigate why it failed. Now that that's done, you can apply what's relevant in your workflow and give it a test through a right click menu. By pushing a file through a state, change. If you would like some additional assistance on task, please get in touch with our support line, which is included as part of your subscription. You can either do this on our website or on the details shown on screen,