KOMPAS-3D v23

Document specialization is the document attribute that specifies the nature of its contents. Depending on the specialization in the Toolbar Panel of the document window a certain set of tools is available — the commands which are not typically used for the given specialization are missing. Such limit of the number of commands speeds up selection of the required command among others.

For example, if a part has the Sheet part specialization, then in the Instrument Area there are no commands for creating curves and surfaces (the Wireframe and Surfaces set is not available in the list of tool sets). Besides, the set of Sheet modelling toolbars is located in the first position in the list of sets, so there is no need to switch between sets to access the Sheet Metal Modeling commands. Accordingly, in a "regular" part (with the Part specialization) there is a set of Frame and surfaces, while the first set in the list is Solid-state modelling.

You can select specialization when creating a document. When working with a document, you can change its specialization using commands in the File – Specialization menu. It does not affect document objects created with commands that are missing in the current specialization. If required, you can edit these objects in a usual way without changing the specialization.

When changing the specialization, the document type (and, accordingly, the file extension) remains unchanged: Part and Sheet part have the m3d extension, while Drawing and SPDS.Drawing have the cdw extension.