Around the world, there are tens of millions of electrical components with different technical specifications.
In the Electrical Content Portal (ECP) alone there are more than 90 million parts available, so Electrical Engineers need an easy way to access to their technical details.
In this guide, we will show you how to link the Electrical Data Sheets to your project and how to create a custom Data Sheet report.
HYPERLINK PDF TO PROJECT
In SOLIDWORKS Electrical, it is possible to associate any data file to our project. We can create a hyperlink to a PDF and be able to export it into the final Project PDF file.
Once the PDF is associated with the project, we can export it, ensuring that the option ‘Export data file’ is ticked.
The final Project PDF will include all the PDFs associated with the document list.
HYPERLINKS IN REPORTS
In all the Manufacturer Part Properties there is a dedicated field for the Data Sheet.
We can use this to map all the parts used in our projects and through a customized report, extract all the hyperlinks and show them in one unique report.
If we click on the Data Sheet hyperlink in SOLIDWORKS Electrical application, the software opens the Manufacturer Part Properties window.
If the project is exported to PDF, the Data Sheet hyperlink opens the component’s PDF Data Sheet.
These hyperlinks can be used securely internally if the PDFs are located on the company network.
However, if the PDF data sheet is an online source, then it is accessible to third parties too.
HYPERLINK REPORT CREATION
To create a Data Sheet report, we need to start from an empty report template.
Modify the name and the description…
Then build our query in the expert mode section.
In the column tabs we can create a new column and enter the following formula:
IIF ( ( LEN ( bom_datasheet ) ) > 5, "DATA SHEET" + bom_reference, " " )
In the ‘Go to’ row we need to associate the bom_id value to generate the hyperlinks.
We can check the layout and the ‘sort and break’ criteria to make sure that we have the right settings.
In the filters tab we should create a rule that allows us to see just the instances with a Data Sheet associated.
Here’s a quick comparison of the data with and without the filter.
Without the filter:
With the filter:
Finally, we can save and generate our Data Sheet report.
NB: Remember that the reports created at the project level must be saved at the application level.
Take the Next Steps...
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