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.
Items consist entirely of metadata that live 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.
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
File Explorer lets you create and search for items, but you perform most item operations from Item Explorer. See SOLIDWORKS Enterprise PDM Item Explorer Help.
Item Explorer is not installed by default. To install Item Explorer, perform a custom client installation or upgrade and select the Item Explorer feature. See the SOLIDWORKS Enterprise PDM Installation Guide.