Catalog ID Prefix

The CAD to Catalog action defines Catalog part IDs from the filename. Typically this is perfectly fine however there are scenarios where your organization may want to customize or alter the ID. The catalog ID prefix feature in the CAD to Catalog action allows this.

There are two ways to effect the Catalog ID, adding a prefix to the catalog ID and taking parts of the filename for the catalog ID.

Adding a Prefix

Add a prefix to identify parts more distinctly. Perhaps your organization has multiple locations each with its own naming convention for CAD files. If Frankfurt happens to have a part named bolt001.prt and Detroit has a complete different part with same exact name there will end up with a collision. You can add the name of the location as a prefix to distinguish between the two.

To add a prefix

1. Check Use Catalog ID prefix in the CAD to Catalog action.
2. Enter text into the Catalog ID prefix field.
3. Save Changes.
4. Redeploy your pipeline (if need be).

Example

If I have a filename being processed called myPart.1234.prt and the prefix being used is PHASE01, then the ID and part name will be PHASE01/myPart.1234.prt.

Notice there is a '/' separating the prefix and the filename to make up the Catalog ID.

Partial Filenames

An organization may have a file naming convention that is useful to the organization but may need adjusting to work well within Centro. For instance, SolidEdge files typically add a version number within the filename. A different filename for each version of the same model will end up as a different catalog part for each version. This is a case where having the Centro action strip away the version number will result in meaningful portion of the filename and results in one catalog part in Centro taking advantage of Centro's versioning.

This can be performed by defining a "regular expression". A regular expression is a sequence of characters and codes that is used to search through a string, typically extracting a sub-string.

For more information, see 

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regular_expression or 
• https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/standard/base-types/regular-expression-language-quick-reference
• To test your regular expression
  • https://regex101.com/

To use a regular expression

1. Check Use regular expression to extract Catalog ID in the CAD to Catalog action.
2. Enter a regular expression that will be used against the CAD file filename.
3. Save Changes.
4. Redeploy your pipeline (if need be).

Example

If I have a file named myPart.1234.prt, where "1234" is the version number, I want to strip that out of the filename so the Catalog ID is myPart.prt.

I can use the following regular expression to accommodate this.

^(?<id>.+)\.\d{4}\.(prt|asm)\.?\d*$