Answers, without opening a ticket.

Getting started

• What Octagon PLM is — A one-page orientation to what the system holds and who uses it.
• Signing in and your account — How to sign in, what to do if you can't, and where your personal settings live.
• Finding your way around — A map of the sidebar and what each group of modules is for.
• Seats and what each one can do — The four seat types, what each unlocks, and why you might not see a button.
• Searching the vault — How search works, what it covers, and how to narrow results.
• The dashboard — What the landing screen shows you and how to use it as a to-do list.
• Notifications — Choosing what you're told about and where you're told.
• What onboarding involves — The fourteen days between signing up and your team working in it.

Parts & records

• Creating a part — The four ways to get a part into the vault, and when to use each.
• Reading the part record — What each tab on a part holds.
• Part numbers — Where your numbers come from and what to do if one is wrong.
• Materials and weight — Assigning a material and getting weight computed automatically.
• Files on a part — How files attach to a part and why they revise together.
• Where Used — Finding every assembly and product a part appears in before you change it.
• Schedules and custom tables — Structured tables your company has added for specialised data.
• Analysis records — Attaching simulation and calculation results to a revision.

Revisions

• How revisions work — What a revision is, when to make one, and what happens to the old one.
• Lifecycle states — What WIP, In Review, Released and Obsolete each mean in practice.
• Creating a new revision — Taking a released part back into work, correctly.

Bills of materials

• Building a BOM — Adding components to an assembly, by hand or from CAD.
• Cost and weight rollups — How totals are calculated and why a number might look wrong.
• Comparing BOMs — Diffing two assemblies or two revisions of the same one.
• Exporting a BOM — Getting a BOM out in exactly the shape someone asked for.
• Importing a BOM — Bringing an existing BOM in from a spreadsheet.

Change control

• ECR, ECO and ECN explained — The three change records and how they follow on from each other.
• Raising a change request — Writing an ECR that gets acted on.
• Running a change order — Taking an ECO from draft to released.
• Approvals — Approving work, and what to do when you're the bottleneck.
• Workflows — How your company's stages and rules are configured.

SolidWorks add-in

• Installing the SolidWorks add-in — Requirements and installation, step by step.
• Checking work in and out — The daily rhythm of working with the vault from CAD.
• Locks and conflicts — What to do when a file is checked out by someone else.
• Add-in troubleshooting — The problems that actually come up, and how to clear them.
• Timeclock — How development time is captured against parts.

Files & documents

• Viewing files in the browser — What opens without downloading, and how to use the 3D viewer.
• The document library — Files that belong to the company rather than to one part.
• Sharing files outside the company — Getting a drawing to a supplier without emailing it.
• Electronics data — PCBAs, Gerbers and harnesses alongside the mechanical BOM.
• Trash and restoring — Recovering something deleted by mistake.

Supply chain

• Approved vendors — Maintaining the vendor list and linking suppliers to parts.
• Tenders and RFQs — Running a structured quotation and comparing bids.
• Spare parts catalogue — Building a customer-facing spares list from the vault.
• Giving suppliers access — What a supplier seat sees and how to set one up.
• Confidentiality agreements — How the NDA gate works for internal and external users.

Manufacturing

• Assembly instructions — Authoring the packet the floor builds from.
• Factory tools — The central library of workshop tools.
• Labour and man-hours — Rolling up build time across an assembly.
• Testing requirements — Defining what must be tested and recording results.
• Traceability — Deciding what evidence is captured at build.
• Factory supplemental requirements — The consumables and equipment a factory needs on hand.
• Product SKUs — The commercial layer above the engineering record.

Compliance & trade

• Compliance data on parts — RoHS, REACH and material compliance as structured fields.
• Compliance documents — The certificate library and the public compliance page.
• HS codes and tariff classification — Assigning tariff codes and keeping the reasoning.
• ISO 9001 evidence packs — Generating audit evidence from live vault data.

Administration

• Managing users — Inviting people, assigning seats, and removing access.
• Roles and permissions — Controlling who can do what, down to individual fields.
• Configuring part numbering — Setting the scheme new parts follow.
• The audit log — What's recorded, how to search it, and what it's for.
• Backups, export and restore — Getting a complete copy of your data, and getting it back.
• Company settings — Identity, defaults, categories and terminology.
• Maintenance — Housekeeping tools and when to use them.

Command & automation

• Command basics — What the command bar is, and the four steps every command goes through.
• Verb reference — All eleven verbs, what each does, and an example of each.
• Chaining commands — Using the pipe to pass a set from one verb to the next.
• Asking in plain English — Letting the assistant write the command for you.
• Automations — Turning a command into something that runs on its own.
• What a command cannot do — The limits that apply no matter what you type.
• Useful commands — Things worth running that people don't think to ask for.

Integrations

• Slack — Connecting a workspace and choosing what posts where.
• Connecting other systems — Getting released data into ERP and other business systems.

Troubleshooting

• Common problems — The questions asked most often, with answers.
• Getting more help — What this knowledge base isn't, and how to reach a person.