Who can use this feature?
PLM premium and PLM professional
1. What is cards library
The card library is an smart time-saving feature. It's a repository where you can store and reuse your techpack card details including images, annotation comments etc. At any time, anyone in your organization can copy these cards when working on a new or existing techpack and save a ton of time typing the same information over and again.
You can add different types of libraries as per your requirement.
Sketches - In sketches library, you can only add/copy sketch cards.
Materials - In materials library, you can add/copy your material cards
Measurements - In measurements library, you can add/copy your measurement cards
2. How to access the card library
There are two ways to access the card library:
2a. To access the card library from the Side Menu:
Step 1: Click this
icon located on the top-left of your screen to slide open the options menu.
Step 2: Choose the LIBRARIES option.
Step 3: This is your library page. Here you can see the library folders you have access to along with the team members in your organization.
Click on any folder to access the list of libraries inside them.
Step 4: Select a library you want to access.
2b. To access card library from the Library Shortcut:
Step 1: Inside any of your techpack, click on the icon located on the top navigation bar.
Step 2: Click on this drop-down icon to select a library you wish to access.
3. How to add a library
You can add any of three types of libraries: sketches, materials and measurements and add or copy cards to them which can be used anytime later.
This is how it works:
Step 1: Click on this
icon located on the top-left of your screen to open the main menu.
Step 2: Choose the libraries option.
Step 3: When inside the library page, you can either select an existing folder or add a new folder by clicking on
+ Add Library Folder.
Step 4: When inside the library folder, click on this +Add Library on the top right corner.
Step 5: Name your library and
select the type of library you wish to add. Click on
add, this will navigate you inside the newly added library.
4. How to add or delete cards in the cards library
There are two ways to add cards in your cards library:
4a. To add cards using the library page:
Step 1: To open your Library page Click on this
icon located on the top-left of your screen and
Choose the libraries option.
Step 2: When inside the library page, you can see the folders you have access to. Click on any folder to see the list of libraries inside that folder.
Step 3: Select a library you want to add cards to.
Step 4: Now there are three ways you can add cards in your library here -
Option 1: You can bulk upload your images in a library by simply dragging them in from your computer as shown below. PLMBR will create a card for each file added.
Option 2: You can also add new card by clicking on the + Add sketch, + Add material or + Add measurement, as per their corresponding library type as shown in the screenshot below.
Option 3: Lastly, you can even import your cards from an Excel file. The file has to be in a CSV format with all your table information.
Click here to download a sample CSV file format.
Before creating a library by importing a CSV.
Make sure that your library has no cards and is completely blank.
Step 1: Click on this import from csv icon located on the top-right of your library.
Step 2: Browse and select the .csv file you wish to upload and click open.
You can use this excel template to update your material table data before importing it on PLMBR.
Step 3:This screen will pop-up where you will select the information from your CSV file you wish to include.
- Under Source you will see the names of the columns from your CSV file
- Under Destination, you will select and match the relevant columns where your table data should go.
- For e.g. if in your .csv a column in called CARD TITLE, then in the destination area you should also match it with
CARD TITLE.
- In case you wish to hide a certain column in your library, you can click on this
icon to hide a column as shown above
. Your data will be imported, but just won't be visible. You can always unhide that column late through the column manager.
-
You can switch any column to color column using the
icon.
-
Check
the columns you would like to show in your material table.
-
You can preview the columns and the order of the final table after you have made all the changes.
-
Click on the "Import CSV" icon to import the table with the final changes made by you.
4b. Add through the library shortcut:
Step 1: Open a tech pack and click on the library icon located on the top navigation bar.
Step 2: Click on to pick a library you wish to add cards in. If you don't have one yet, here's how to add a new library.
Step 3: Select card/s from your tech pack and drag them by clicking on the icon and drop them into your library as shown in the gif below.
Step 4: A window called column mapping should pop out.
Column mapping helps in manually choosing the relevant data columns associated with the cards when moving them from techpack to libraries and keep your techpack data organized. You can learn all about it here.
Step 5: Once you have mapped the columns click on copy cards. Your cards will successfully be copied to the selected library.
You can only add cards to the respective library. For eg: The sketch cards can only go to sketches library and vice-versa. Similarly with all the other sections including materials and measurements.
To delete cards from your cards library:
Step 1: Open a techpack and click on the library icon located on the top navigation bar.
Step 2: Click on to see the drop-down library panel from the right where you can choose which library you wish to delete cards from.
Step 3: Click on the option located on the right side and click on edit library. You will be redirected to a page where you can delete cards in your library.
Step 4: Select the cards you would like to delete
Step 5: Click on the option located on the right side of your screen. Click on the Delete option and you can now delete your selected cards from the library as shown in the gif below.
You can also archive your cards if you want to unarchive the cards later.
5. How to edit or delete a library
5a. To edit a particular library, follow these steps:
Step 1: Open a techpack and click on the library icon located on the top navigation bar.
Step 2: Click on to see the drop-down library panel from the right where you can choose which library you wish to edit.
Step 3: Click on the option located on the right side and click on edit library. You will be redirected to a page where you can edit your library.
5b. To delete a library, follow these steps:
Step 1: Click on this
icon located on the top-left of your screen to open the drop-down menu.
Step 2: Choose the libraries option.
Step 3: When inside the library page, you can see the folders you have access to. Click on any folder to see the list of libraries inside that folder.
Step 4: Select a library or libraries you want to add delete.
Step 5: Click on the option menu located on the top navigation bar. Then select delete from the drop-down menu.
6. How to import cards from the card library
Here's when you really experience the awesomeness of the cards library. At anytime you can import cards from your card library directly to your techpack. With each card you can also import its associated description, image, annotation comments and keywords.
This will save you a ton of time especially on those cards that are used repeatedly in different techpacks.
This is how it works:
Step 1: Inside any of your techpack, click on the icon located on the top navigation bar.
Step 2: Click on this drop-down icon to select a library you wish to copy card from.
In case you haven't added a library yet, refer to our chapter on how to add libraries.
Step 3: Select card/s you wish to copy to your tech pack and drag them by selecting them from your library as shown in the gif below. Drag and drop your cards in their relevant techpack section or the library.