Advanced Customization > Business Logic Customization > Customizations for PDM > Customizing Auto Associate > Controlling the Associations Formed by Auto Associate
  
Controlling the Associations Formed by Auto Associate
Several preferences affect the type of associations formed during Auto Associate and the type of CAD documents that are allowed to form them.
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1. Model items with .prt and .asm extensions are not subject to the following preferences. If you want to add or remove a model item type that is valid for association, then you need to explicitly identify all types or sub-types that should associate.
The preference, Operation > Auto Associate > Disallow Product Structure Links for CAD Document Types, allows you to specify the CAD document types which cannot form an Owner association. These are comma-separated values. The default is <no value>.
The preference, Operation > Auto Associate > Disallow Product Structure Links for CAD Document Sub-Types, allows you to specify the CAD document sub-types which cannot form an Owner association. These are comma-separated values. The default is <no value>.
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The allowable values for the preferences, Disallow Product Structure Links by Document Types and Disallow Product Structure Links by Document Sub-Types, are listed in the table of Auto Associate preferences in the section Operations Preferences.
The preference, Operation > Auto Associate > Create Alternate Link On Check In, when set to "Yes," allows a CAD-document-to-part association of the next available type (that is, Content) to be created if the matching part found during Auto Associate already has an Owner association, and allows the checkin to continue. The default is "No" (no Content association is formed and the check in fails with an overridable conflict).