Introduction to SOLIDWORKS Document Manager API

This section introduces you to SOLIDWORKS Document Manager - powerful stand-alone library supplied by SOLIDWORKS which exposes API and allows to read and write metadata directly from SOLIDWORKS files stream.

Benefits

• Free for customers or SOLIDWORKS partners (research, solution or gold) on subscription
• Lightweight - library is about 13 MB in size
• Stand-alone - doesn't require SOLIDWORKS to be installed in order to access the files
• Quick - data is accessed directly from the stream without the need to load the full file into the memory

Supported Functionality

Document Manager has a limited functionality compared to full SOLIDWORKS API. The following list are the main modules supported by Document Manager library.

• Basic

  • Reading/Writing Custom Properties (including configuration specific and summary information)
  • Reading file relationships (assembly Bill of Materials and drawings)
  • Replacing file relationships (components and drawing view references)
  • Reading components transformations in the assembly
  • Reading tables data in models and drawings
  • Reading 3rd party storage data
  • Getting the information about the configurations, drawing views and their properties

• Previews

  • Getting 2D image previews from files and configurations

• DimXpert

  • Accessing DimXpert dimensions
  • Accessing DimXpert features

• Geometry Streams

  • Getting Parasolid geometry

• XML Streams

  • Reading embedded assembly XML data
  • Reading 3D Content Central data

• Tesselation

  • Getting the tessellation (triangulation) data (if stored in the model)

Application

List of possible applications which could be developed with SOLIDWORKS Document Manager API includes but not limited to the following types of software:

• Product Data Management (PDM) or Product Life cycle Management (PLM) application
  • Bill Of Materials
  • Preview
  • Properties
• 3D Viewers for SOLIDWORKS files
• CAD systems with the requirement of importing the SOLIDWORKS files
• Inspection software with requirements to access DimXpert data

Refer the Getting Started article for an overview of steps required to start development with Document Manager.