Convelo Product Lifecycle Management - Core

Reference Documentation

Steven Werner

1.0.0


Table of Contents

Preface
1. Feature Overview
Product Data Management (PDM)
Product Management
Item Management
Document Management
Specification Management
Industry Standards - STEP
Administration
Users / Roles
Meta Model Customization
Meta Types
Meta Attributes
Meta Relations
Meta Search Definition
Webclient
Customization
2. Business Case - Audience: All
Business Use Cases
Product Innovation
Product Development
Supplier Relations
Test
Specifications
Documentation Management
Project Management
Central Product Data
Costing
Sustainability
3. Technical Architecture - Audience: Developers
Introduction
Intended Audience
Current Status
Technical Model
Core Model
Meta Model
Data Access (DAO) Layer
Service Layer
Search

Preface

This document is a reference guide for the Convelo PLM core, which is an enterprise open source application for managing the complete product lifecycle for businesses of all sizes.

Chapter 1. Feature Overview

Product Data Management (PDM)

Product Management

Item Management

Document Management

Specification Management

Industry Standards - STEP

Administration

Users / Roles

Meta Model Customization

Meta Types

Meta Attributes

Meta Relations

Meta Search Definition

Webclient

Customization

Freemarker templating, weblient-context, meta model customization, custom convelo.properties

Chapter 2. Business Case - Audience: All

Business Use Cases

This section will outline the intended business use cases for Convelo.

Product Innovation

Innovate new product and item concepts. Share and collaborate ideas with others in your company at a very early stage.

Product Development

Manage product data and process throughout the development cycle - from material creation to BOM definition.

Supplier Relations

Manage the relationship with your company's suppliers - factories, vendors, partners. Create a collaborative platform for sharing product information.

Test

Define test cases for products and the items comprising your products and easily share this information with partners and vendors. Utilize test cases to formally define quality assurance metrics for products before they are delivered to the market.

Specifications

Create and update specifications for products and items.

Documentation Management

Create and manage the documenation at all levels of your product structure - from the high level BOM to low level items.

Project Management

Define and manage projects for all phases of the product lifecyle, including product planning, development, and sourcing.

Central Product Data

Centralize your product information in one application and seemlessly integrate to other applications, for example ERP, by utilizing the Service Oriented Architecture (SOA). Help your business users and product designers know where to search for product information.

Costing

Maintain costing information for products and items for each effective date. Easily collaborate with vendors on pricing negotiations.

Sustainability

Keep tabs on the sustainability metrics for your products.

Chapter 3. Technical Architecture - Audience: Developers

Introduction

Intended Audience

This section is written primarily for technical people, in particular application developers and customizers of Convelo.

Current Status

Convelo is currently in a preview Beta release state and as a result, the APIs are not considered stable and changes are expected. Having said that, like many other projects we hope to minimize the number of changes between release but we will do whatever necessary to get to a stable 1.0 release.

Technical Model

Core Model

The core model is based on the STandard for the Exchange of Product data (ISO 10303). This model was the basis for the foundation classes in the Convelo model. The foundation classes are grouped into the following packages:

  • Product

    • Product

  • Item

    • Item

    • ItemVersion

    • ItemView

    • ItemInstance

  • Specification

    • Specification

    • Configuration

    • Design Constraint

  • Classification

    • ProductClass

    • ItemClass

  • Document

    • Document

    • DocumentVersion

  • Organization

    • Organization

    • Person

    • Address

  • Project

    • Project

    • Calendar

    • WorkItem

  • Change (ToDo)

    • ChangeRequest

    • ChangeItem

  • Other

    • GenericModel

Meta Model

The Meta model is mapped to the core model via a namespace definition. There is a namespace defined for each core model. By leveraging the namespace definition in the meta model, Convelo automatically maps the higher level meta model to it's underlying representation. Once mapped, the underlying core model object has a defined service and data access layer which handles all core functionality, such as transactions, peristence, and search indexing.

Data Access (DAO) Layer

Service Layer

Search

Search is performed with Lucene and index is stored in default location /tmp/convelo/search