A part structure is a dynamic, expandable representation of a bill of material (BOM) that captures the content of a product as it evolves over time. The part structure browser, located in the Structure tab on a part information page, is used for viewing, creating, and editing part structures and related information. A part structure is a hierarchical representation of the parts and other lower-level end items that make up a specific part, part configuration, or part instance, along with the documentation associated with them. The part structure displays the hierarchical assembly of the part. You can expand and collapse a part structure, thus navigating through it, viewing parts and assemblies, and expanding the assemblies to see the component parts. For each node, additional information about that part is displayed, and you can perform actions, for example open an information page, on that part. The content of the part structure is determined by the selected configuration specification and filtering criteria. If you change either the configuration specification or filtering criteria, the part structure is updated accordingly. Note that if filtering criteria are used, the part structure may be displayed with some components hidden.

For an overview of the use of part structures for configuration management of products, see Capturing Product Configuration Information.

Part structure browser can be used to further manipulate parts and part structures. It consists of a dual-pane panel. The left pane, or navigation pane, displays the part structure in a tree table. The right pane displays tabs that contain information pertaining to the currently selected part in the navigation pane. If you have selected more than one part in the structure, the tabs display information for the last selected part.

The attributes that display in the columns of the structure and in the tables within the tabs are defined in Part Attributes.

To perform actions on an object selected in the structure, select from the menus or icons at the top of the window.