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# About creating design parts

Follow these recommendations when creating the design part structure of your product.

In this topic:

## Guidelines for creating design parts

- Have a rough sketch of the tree structure of the product so that you know which part is the parent of each new design part.

- Have a general idea of the purpose of each new design part, in order to provide a brief description of its function.

- For each new design part, you need to know its part specification. The part specification is:

  productID:partID.variant;pcs

  where:

  productID | Specifies the ID assigned to a product when the product is created in the Administration Console.
  partID | Specifies the name you give the part. It is the most significant component of the specification.
  variant | Indicates that this is a variant of another design part. The variant is inherited from the parent design part. For details, see Variant design parts. Unless directed by your administrator to change this value, leave it at its default value.
  pcs | Indicates the modification level of the design part. The part change status (PCS) is inherited from the parent design part. Unless directed to change this value, leave it at its default value. For details, see About design parts.

- Know which category to assign each design part. Categories are defined in the Administration Console. Work with your administrator to determine which categories to use.

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## Variant design parts

Create a variant of a design part when you want the new part to be similar in structure to the source design part but vary in its definition.

Example: Suppose you have an Output Screens design part, and you need design parts for different languages. Then you could create a variant for each language, such as Output Screens Kanji and Output Screens Spanish.

Variant design parts enable you to define a logical structure and still support clearly defined variations for different applications, with each variation following the same basic structure. For example, if the source design part has child design parts in the tree, the new variant design part also has the same child design parts.

All variants of one design part must be at an equivalent position in the tree structure. A variant design part uses the same part ID as the source design part.

You can perform the same operations on a variant design part as you can on the source design part.

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See also:

- Web client: Manage design parts
- Desktop client: Manage design parts

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