My office is getting ready to update from SW2015 to SW2017. I will be leading/managing this upgrade as I am the SW "pro" in our office.

I am taking the opportunity to add details and functionality to our drawings, templates, title block and BOMs that has been requested by purchasing and manufacturing.

One of those details involves using CPTB to create a conditional list so that the BOM sent to purchasing can include the Vendor No used in their system, which is different from the Vendor. I have created a list where the SW user chooses the Vendor and then the sub-list Vendor No forces them to select the Vendor No used by purchasing.

This is my first time using CPTB, we have traditionally done all our custom properties in the Summary Information window. I would like to get my colleagues to only use either the Summary Information pane or the Custom Properties Tab, but not both. Since we need the conditional list, it seems we will have to use CPTB, which is fine.

Other custom properties we need include links to dimensions - e.g. bounding box and thickness for sheet metal parts, size and length of template parts like structural steel, etc. I want to maintain that data as links, not hard-typed dimensions. How do I show those values in the Custom Properties Tab? I don't want my colleagues to have to fill out the default info all the time, but we do usually (manually) preface the item description with "MOD: " if the part has detail (e.g. holes, cutouts, etc. - is not just a raw material cut to size). How do I continue this?

Also, we have used values in our BOM template for our drawings that shows information for manufacturing, namely whether a part is vendor supplied (purchased off the shelf), outsourced (custom made outside our shop), saw cut and/or detailed. We have set the values for those custom properties as either blank or X. If I use CPTB, I can set those as checkmark boxes, but then how do I change the BOM template to show a mark like an X rather than "unchecked"?