Items capture a complete product definition. They collect CAD assembly designs, software, packaging, documentation, and other components into a single comprehensive view of the product.
In Enterprise PDM, an item consists entirely of metadata that lives in the vault database. Although items can link to files, they do not contain files themselves and therefore do not exist in the vault archive and do not appear on your local disk. (Item metadata is cached locally; see Item and File Caching.)
An item has a unique identifier (item ID), a display name, and other properties. Items can contain links to files, CAD configurations, and other items (child items). An item with child items is called an item structure. The list of child items is called the item bill of materials (BOM).
Items are similar to files in that they:
- Are edited using check-out and check-in operations to create new versions
- Have data cards and properties
- Can be organized into folders
- Can participate in workflows