Who can use this feature?
PLM premium and PLM professional
1. What is a library
Library is a repository to store your techpack cards along with their associated images, annotations comments, and keywords. You and your organization members can import cards from your card library directly to your techpack and vice-versa. At any time you can With each card, you can also import its associated description, image, annotations, comments, attachments, and keywords.
Click here to learn in-depth about how to use your newly created libraries. There are four types of libraries on Techpacker:
Sketch library
Materials library
Measurements library
Custom section library
2. How to access libraries
There are two ways to access the card library:
2a. Access the libraries 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 view the list of libraries inside them.
Step 4: Select a library you want to access.
When previewing a selected library, you can perform multiple actions, learn more about these here.
2b. To access the 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 view.
3. How to create libraries
There are four types of libraries on Techpacker:
Sketch library
Materials library
Measurements library
Custom section library
Here are the steps on how to create a library:
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 create 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 create. Click on create, this will navigate you inside the newly created library.
4. How to use libraries
After creating a library, you can perform multiple actions:
Once you click on the library settings icon. A window will pop-up (as shown below) so you can update your library information such as your library name, cover image, size range, color combos, and keywords.
Filter cards
You and your team can easily locate a particular card using card name or keyword through filter search.
Options
Select the card(s) and click on the option menu located on the top navigation bar. Then select an action that you would like to perform from the drop-down menu.
Sort cards
Click on this sort icon located on top of the library and select a sort option from the drop-down options.
Add new cards
Click on the + Add material or + Add measurement, + Add sketch (depending on the type library you've created)
5. How to add or delete cards in libraries
5a. How to add cards in a library:
There are three different ways to add cards in any library-
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 their corresponding library type. For eg. You can only add Sketch cards into Sketch libraries and material section cards to material libraries etc.
Add through 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. Techpacker 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 Techpacker.
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.
5b. How to delete cards in a 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.
6. How to edit and delete libraries
6a. How to edit a 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 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.
6b. How to delete a library:
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.