This demo is great for Business to Consumer (B2C) companies – that make products that would go straight to the consumer. It presents how they can create a form that customers can work through themselves, configuring their ideal design of the item (in this case a sofa). The company will then be sent the various documents needed – such as Bill of Materials and Drawings. Once the project has been set up, an engineer/designer does not even have to be involved in this part of the design process, excellent for freeing up time to spend on completely bespoke projects.

This particular demo is very visual and uses as little text as possible – fantastic for international companies, as it limits any difficulty with a language barrier. Items can be easily configured, just
through the power of the images.

So, I went through this project from a consumer point of view – interested in creating my own perfect chair design, which is made completely to my taste. I do not come from a technical background, so me running through this demo is incredibly realistic, to show that any person – technical or not – can configure their own creation within minutes. These are the steps I took:

1. Visit www.driveworkslive.com demo site.

2. Click on the Shopping Cart square (with the trolley icon).

3. Click on ‘Hello.’

4.  Then choose the item to configure – in this case a chair.

5.  Click on the image, or the text ‘Design your NewSofa’.

6.  Choose the size of the seating you require.

7.  Configure the colour, shape and feet of your chair.

8.  Click ‘add to basket.’

9.  Click on ‘go to checkout’ – here you can choose extras also.

10.  Click on ‘continue to checkout’ and enter your details. Then submit.

So, in just 10 quick steps I managed to create my perfect chair, I was then emailed all the sales and manufacturing documents. In theory, manufacturing could now begin. (If I had a spare £500).

Head on over to www.driveworkslive.com and configure yourself your very own perfect sofa.

Specification flow is a powerful feature in DriveWorks that gives the DriveWorks Administrator the ability to customize the DriveWorks specification process. (ie rules for what happens and when it happens).

When a project is first set up in DriveWorks it is created with a default specification flow which guides a specification through four basic states – Running (i.e. filling out forms in the specification), Saved, Pending, and Completed.

Each one of these states has links to other states to move from one state to another. For example, a specification in the Saved state can be moved into the Running state, and a specification in the Running state can be moved into the Pending state (by clicking Finish), or the Completed state (by clicking Release). These links between states are called transitions.

Each state also has certain operations that can be performed on it, but which do not move to another state, for example, a specification can be deleted, or copied.

The Specification Flow can be customized in DriveWorks Administrator to meet your own specification and Work flow needs.

Example Uses
There are lots of reasons why you may want to look at customizing your specification flow, here are a few examples.

• You may have a quoting process which involves generating a general-assembly drawing – all before releasing to manufacture and before the full manufacturing information is generated.
• You may have additional requirements during the specification process such as copying a document to another machine which otherwise would involve complicated macros.
• You may simply want to change the text that is displayed on the “Finish” button to something like “Quote”
• You may want to set rules that determine that a Sales Manager can see all specifications generated by your distributors, but only let each distributor see their own specifications.

You can read more about Specification Flow in the ONLINE documentation file
http://docs.driveworkspro.com/?ProjectEditorSpecificationFlow.html