Integration with Other Applications > Managing CAD Data > CAD Data Management in Windchill > Windchill Objects and PDM Concepts
  
Windchill Objects and PDM Concepts
Product Data Management (PDM) in Windchill uses business objects and the relationships between them to capture product data.
For more information about Windchill objects, see Object Types.
.
The basic business object types for PDM are:
Documents — Windchill documents contain and manage files, such as those authored in Microsoft Word, Excel, or PowerPoint. Windchill documents are not managed in a workspace, but can be attached to CAD document or part objects.
CAD documents — CAD documents contain design data created with a CAD application, such as Creo Parametric. They preserve the relationships of a CAD assembly and its member subcomponents. CAD documents can be associated to Windchill parts.
Dynamic document — Dynamic documents represent XML files authored with Arbortext Editor, along with supporting graphic information files. Dynamic documents relationships can create structured publications.
Parts — Parts are the Windchill system representations of physical parts. They are the basic elements that makes up assemblies and then products that can be shipped to a customer. Parts can be associated with CAD documents that contain the design data created by a CAD application. For more information, see Parts.
CAD Structure — The structure of a CAD model is preserved when the CAD files become the content of Windchill CAD documents. For example, when model files are saved to the workspace. The CAD documents maintain the member link between the assembly object and its components. For more information see Viewing CAD or Dynamic Document Structures.
Part or Product Structure — A part structure captures all product configurations ever created from the time the product was first released, through the configuration currently in production, to configurations that are planned for future product releases.
Bill of material (BOM) — Bills of material are static reports of the parts included in a single, specific product configuration. For more information, see BOM Reports
Configuration specification — A part structure is dynamic, and is expanded using configuration specification filters to determine the part versions to display for each structure node. For more information about configuration specifications, see About Configuration Specifications.
Some types of configuration specification filters can also be applied to CAD document structures.
* 
Parts and CAD documents can share attributes in addition to relationships.