1. Effort Needed
   
   
2. Higher Priority Migrations: Essential to improving user experience
   • Standard Category (Abstract Office)
   • Configura SIF
   • Associative Dimension
     
     
3. Lower Priority Migrations: Long-term goals; not needed right away
   • Lazy Extension
   • PBR Materials
   • Physical Lightings
     
     
4. Code Replacing Migrations: Upgrade Features by replacing code
   • G2-Related Features
     • PropObj
     • G2 Property Box
     • G2 Animation
     • PropsScheme
     • Catalogue Driven Scheme
       
       
5. Migrate if Needed: Migrate only if it's a Feature you want
   • CollabPro (not released in Marketplace yet)
   • Mirror Tools

Migrating to the latest code will help ensure a better experience for everyone. While there are a few migration efforts that not everyone will need to adapt to, we want to make sure everyone is aware of future efforts and resources needed to keep the CET experience great for everyone.

As we continue to grow and create new updates to CET, some of the older codings may not be as relevant. Migrating to newer coding allows Configura to focus on developing and maintaining new features.

Effort Needed

To help plan resources and time needed for the migration and testing of a new feature, we have come up with a 3-size estimation on the effort needed:

• Catalog Creator data may or may not be in use.
• Lots of automation between products.
• Complex products like:
  • Benching.
  • Panels.
  • Office Walls.
  • Material Handling products.

• Minimal use of abstract office.
• Mostly DataSymbol and its enhanced functionality.
• Possible some subclassed DataSymbols.
• Very little automations between products.

• Catalog only based Extension libraries.
• Very little to no custom programming.

If you see an example like below, we are estimating that a Large Effort will take approximately 6 months to migrate, a Medium Effort will take 1-2 weeks, and a small Extension approximately 2 months to migrate.

Format:

Example:

Higher Priority Migrations

Migrations that will help to improve basic/essential features or improve performance.

Standard Category (Abstract Office)

If your Extension's office categories have similar sounding categories (e.g. Seats, Chairs, chair) from other Extensions, migrating to CET’s standard categories is a good solution for standardizing office products categories.

• Migration from 10.5 to 11.0

Configura SIF

If a user has different manufacturer items in a single drawing, doing a SIF Export will result to order exports where manufacturers implement SIF exports into their code.

Possible Challenges include:

• Data alignment between tools.
  • Does the product data export from CET into other specification tools, such as Spec, and verify price properly?
  • Users are very commonly doing price verification in non-graphical specification tools. Data in CET and those tools needs to be in sync.
  • Data needs to be consistent in tools that calculate pricing.
• Custom manufacture exports.
  • Is it needed still?
    • Possible Configura SIF as it is works.  
    • Configura SIF support customization (see below)
  • Can this be moved / done other ways?
    • Configura SIF provides interfaces for modifications to the SIF generated, this is likely sufficient for the majority of SIF customizations needed.
    • As an added benefit when customizations to SIF are move to the Configura SIF export a user is able to export a drawing where each manufacturers customizations applied only to those manufacturers parts.
• Catalog divisions
  • Its common to see catalogs get split up when used in CET and not in other tools. It is recommended to have a customized solution to this where you have a programmer map those changes.
• Consider how your users leverage SIF in all downstream workflows.

Because all manufacturers haven't updated to this yet, users are still experiencing lots of issues trying to get one SIF to do everything they need it to do.

• Migration from 11.5 to 12.0

Associative Dimension

Supporting associative dimensions has less to do with the extension complexity and more to do with the how complicated product stretching on some product.

Most customizations will get simple automatic support for associative dimensions where scaling the change based on and overall X or Y size change to the object. Beyond that, the amount of time spent supporting associative dimensions will depend on how complex that association needs to be.

Possible challenges include:

• Products that have points within themselves that do not stretch uniformly.
• Complicated product shapes that needs to have specific associative snapping points for dimensions.

Associative Dimensions is turned on by default. If your Extension doesn't need to use Associative Dimensions, developers can turn it off to help with the performance of the dimension snapper by returning null in associativeLocations() in your Snapper implementation.

• Associative Dimensions – Configura Help Center
• Migration from 11.5 to 12.0

Lower Priority Migrations

These migration efforts should happen after the high priority efforts have been completed and are necessary for keeping the user experience great for the entire CET community.

Lazy Extension

Lazy Extension addresses Extensions that take a long time to load.
The Lazy Extension solution loads only the Extension tabs that are selected and currently in use. This allows for better performance and faster load time and is a fast solution to help performance for CET users.

Possible Challenges of adopting Lazy Extension might include:

• Knowing which libraries need to be initiated, and a more complicated domain processing.
• Ensure your Extensions are allowed to be lazy to gain from it. If most Extensions loads when a normal Extension loads anyway, you probably won't gain much.
• Library dependent processes on Channels.
• Library Product Catalog filter might be affecting visibility based on other Extension settings.

In general, not all Extension need to become lazy. There are good reasons to not be lazy, for example the main management tab / Extension may not need to be lazy but everything else could.

• Lazy Extension Reference – Configura Help Center

PBR Materials

As part of the 12.5 update, PBR Materials gives higher quality renderings and helps the speed of exports – migration will enhance the new features coming with the next few major updates.

Possible Challanges:

• File size increases. PBR materials carry more information to allow the PBR rendering to be more photorealistic. This comes at the cost of some extra disk space being used with the technology.
• Large quantities of materials.
• No GMaterial support yet.
• Can require a lot of manual manipulation of material files.

CET is an extremely powerful rendering tool. PBR materials allow user to produce photo realistic renders more easily because it accurately simulates the physics that exist with how a surface is seen by the naked eye.

• Migration from 12.0 to 12.5
• PBR Materials – Configura Help Center
• PBR FAQ – Configura Help Center

Physical Lightings

Lighting with precise lumens was introduced in CET 12.0, and migration will help enhance the overall rendering capabilities in CET.

• Creating Physical Lights in Model Lab – Configura Help Center
• Migration from 11.5 to 12.0

Code Replacing Migrations

These are the latest codes that enhance and improve on some earlier features related to G2 like ProbObj, animations, PropsScheme and property box that can all be improved with these migrations.

G2-Related Features

A number of features related to G2, like ProjObj, animations, PropsScheme, and property box can be improved with specific migrations.

PropObj

A PropObj is an object that holds data that is dynamically defined by PropDefs. It is the basis for several new core features such as G2 properties, G2 animations, PropsSchemes as well as Catalogue Driven Schemes.

• PropObj – Configura Help Center
• Props – Configura Help Center
• Append PropDefs – Configura Help Center
• PropDef Exposure – Configura Help Center
• PropInputSetting Args and Attributes – Configura Help Center

G2 Property Box

Prerequisite: PropObj

The main benefit of this migration is that you don’t need to implement the same properties for both animation and quick if you want it to show in both.
Having your properties in G2 is also the basis for implementing other features such as PropsSchemes.

• Migrate to using the latest property box – Configura Help Center
• Core Properties – Configura Help Center
• Migration from 11.5 to 12.0/CoreProperties

G2 Animation

Prerequisite: PropObj

G1 animations used states to control what the animation should do. As a result, an animation would often be overloaded with responsibility if it has several states (think 3-step animations, for example).
Whereas G2 animations allow the spawning of another animation when the state should change, that allowed the code to be cleaner and more encapsulated.

G2 animation also has better interfaces to work with vessels. 

There are no specific resources relating to this feature migration. Please reach out to Developer Support for further guidance.

PropsScheme

Prerequisite: PropObj, G2 Property Box

If your Extension users love using Schemes and would love to have more features about Schemes. Look no further than implementing PropsScheme, the next generation of Scheme frameworks succeeding the old CoreScheme.

These are the main features of implementing this:

• Use Scheme Painter, a CET built-in way to copy properties from components to other components in a seamless way. 
• Use Advanced selection to precisely select objects with shared tags, categories, part numbers, or levels. Then able to move, delete, rotate, and edit, apply Schemes and Part Tags or new categories.

And many more, which you can learn here:

• CETX Dev conference 2020 | Getting the Most From PropsSchemes by Nathan Halquist & Kyle Peltier
• Migrate to PsLayoutPropsScheme
• Getting the Most From PropsScheme 11.5
• Migrate Older PGC Schemes to PropsScheme
• PropsScheme Migration – Configura Help Center
• Using PropsSchemes – Configura Help Center
• Migration from 12.0 to 12.5

Catalogue Driven Scheme

Prerequisite: PropObj

An approach for Catalogue developers to create scheme layouts from Catalogue Creator.

• Catalogue Driven Schemes – Configura Help Center

Migrate if Needed

Features we only recommend for migration only if your Extension needs it.

CollabPro (not released in Marketplace yet)

To take advantage of this new working model of CET, there might be some programming requirements to put in place before this is tentatively released on 13.5 (2022-11-21).
Make sure your Extension can fully utilize CollabPro with the correct, compliant programming.

For more information on this topic, please refer to the Best Practices Guide, available here:

• CollaborationG3 Best Practices – Configura Help Center

Mirror Tools

Snappers can be mirrored as of 12.0, eliminating the hassle of implementing mirrors from scratch. The Mirror Tools can be migrated for better functionality in 13.0.

• Mirroring Snappers – Configura Help Center
• Mirror Tools – Configura Help Center
• How to Create Mirror Products – Configura Help Center