You have lots of data; we have the tools to organize it.

One of the big benefits of using the 3DEXPERIENCE platform is that it’s possible to gather much of the information about a project in one single place. Due to this, it’s also possible for each user to customize how the content is received and this is where dashboards come into the picture.

In simple terms, the dashboard is the layout of the webpage. It’s a completely configurable online view on any topic or activity to move your design projects forward. You can think of it as a layout or a pinboard on which you place content from different sources.

This becomes particularly handy when you’re working on for example a project and need to access and display information unique to that very project. You don’t want to jump between different applications and folders to retrieve the needed information. It should just be “there” without having to search for it.

It’s possible to expand a dashboard by adding multiple tabs to it, just as you can add tabs in your web browser. Utilizing multiple tabs, the dashboard can deliver internal platform metrics, for example company sales, marketing and financial information but also external website feeds such as 3DContentCentral and MySolidWorks which can help designers to find answers to their questions.

To create a new dashboard, you need to expand the dashboard list and click on the “+” at the top right corner.

Thereafter you will have to give the dashboard a name and optionally a description.

You can either create a new empty dashboard or use an existing one as a template. Once you’ve clicked “create”, the dashboard will appear in the dashboard list. The first tab in the dashboard will by default be named “New Tab”. This can be changed by clicking the arrow pointing downwards right next to the tab to expand the options and then selecting “rename”.

Once a dashboard is created, it’s time to add content to it. The content in a dashboard is displayed using different applications depending on what you want to see.

There’s for example one application similar to notepad in Windows.  You can add notes, i.e. a simple text editor, while another application can display web feeds from a website. There are many different applications you can place in the dashboard. In this example, we will add an application called 3DSwym which is the 3DEXPERIENCE equivalent to a forum.

To add an application to a dashboard, you first click the compass at the top left corner to expand the application list. Then simply drag-n-drop the application into the dashboard.

The application can be placed at different locations in the dashboard. You can drag any of its corners to increase or decrease the size of the application.

While it’s possible to add many applications to the same tab in a dashboard, it could easily become cluttered with the information. To avoid this, it’s possible to create new tabs in the dashboard in which you can place some of the applications. By doing so, you can organize the content in the dashboard for a better and more intuitive overview.