By default, user-defined CAD parameters are mapped to Windchill attributes with the same name. The administrator defines the ability for authoring applications to access parameters that are mapped to Windchill attributes. Errors and conflicts may occur upon upload if a parameter from a CAD document is trying to be mapped to a soft attribute in Windchill with a type mismatch or constraint violation. Because Windchill attributes are pushed to the CAD document upon download, only attributes that have changed since content upload are modified on check out or download. The user may set changes to user-defined attributes into the authoring application using Update.