Introduction
In SAP Integrated Product Development, effectively visualizing data is crucial for collaboration and decision-making. This lesson introduces the core applications and methods available within SAP Integrated Product Development Visualization for viewing, editing, and associating visualizations, enabling users to interact with and understand product data in various ways.
There are three main applications that are always available in SAP Integrated Product Development Visualization. These applications allow you to:
- View the visualizations.
- Edit the visualization to author new content.
- Associate the structure of the visualization with another structure.
- Templates for viewing the data and connecting it to data sources.
One clarification that needs to be made is that there are two main visualization types:
- Source: Cannot be edited. It is the original upload of a CAD dataset.
- Editable: Also called nonsource files as they can be authored and edited by the user. They can also be viewed by users, similar to Source datasets.
To create an editable version of a Source dataset, choose Create Editable Version, next to the ... button.
Normally, accept the default settings and choose OK.
Once the editable version is created, you’ll have two visualizations. One is the read-only Source version, and the second is the editable version.
Viewing Visualizations
The most basic method of viewing visualizations in Integrated Product Development Visualization is using the Viewing application. This can be launched by selecting the thumbnail of a visualization or by choosing the ... button and selecting View Visualization.
The viewing application allows you to inspect the visualization in a few different ways:
- The Views gallery allows you to see the different views and animations, if there are any in the scene.
- The Structure Browser allows you to see the assembly structure of the visualization.
- The Properties Panel allows you to see any metadata or Usage IDs assigned to the selected object.
- The Navigation Info option allows you to display details of how to use the Navigation feature to link different visualizations.
In the toolbar at the top of the View application, you'll find the following options:
- Show or Hide objects
- Change the viewing mode like Orbit or Turn Table
- Dimensioning Tools
- Recenter the view to see all the visible nodes.
- Window Selection
- Cutting Plane
- Predefined Camera Positions
- Full Screen Mode
Editing Visualizations
More details on editing visualizations are discussed in later sections, but some of the basics are covered during this section.
Editing Visualizations has six main toolsets:
- 3D Edit: General editing and moving, rotating or scaling of objects.
- Animate: Create animation sequences and views to show the assembly in different states. Often times, assembly and disassembly procedures are created.
- Annotate: Add notes and callouts to the scene.
- Material: Create, modify, and assign materials to the objects in the scene, so they look better visually.
- Markers: Create markers that allow you to navigate between visualizations.
- Point Cloud: Work with point cloud data which often comes from laser scans of legacy buildings.
Associating Visualization Structures
The Associate application is used when a visualization structure needs to be re-created to match another structure. For example:
- Engineering Bill of Material (BOM) to Manufacturing BOM (MBOM) for defining the manufacturing order.
- Engineering BOM (EBOM) to Purchase BOM for parts ordering.
To create an association, choose the ... button for a visualization, the choose Associate. Details of how to create an association structure are detailed in a later section.
Templates
Templates are another mechanism that allows for more customization when viewing the data. They can have toolbar options turned on or off, and also allow for analytics applications, without any programming.