The publication of an element (geometry, parameter, etc.) allows it to be made available during the use of the part. For example, the publication of an axis of a part, when this part is inserted into an assembly, makes it possible to see and to use this axis for positioning. Likewise, it is possible to publish parameters of a part so as to be able to use them in the assembly.

When two different parts use the same publications, it is possible to interchange these parts within the assembly, without losing the positioning when "re-routing" the references on public entities that have the same name.

To guarantee correct operation in collaborative engineering, the following rules must be applied:

• You can explicitly declare that an element is public (ex: a characteristic axis defined in the definition document of a part which will be able to be used to position it).

• It is equally possible to declare that a face or an edge of a shape is public.

During the use of the part in an assembly, it is possible to only select published elements (or not) by using the non-published content filter.

A Publications folder is created in the entities tree.

Each document managing the notion of publication has a Publications entity folder, which contains "shortcuts" to entities arranged in different folders.

The user can add, remove or modify these shortcuts.

Just like in Windows, when you destroy the shortcut, the target entity is not destroyed.

In a Function document,  contextual menu on Publishings folder allows to create an Optional Publishings subfolder. It allows to not fill in the values of elements published in this subfolder using this function document into another document when it is not necessary.

When you want to publish an entity of a shape ( sketch, edge, face, etc.), you just need to select it and launch the popup command "Publish".

A special shortcut is created in the Publications folder, with an automatic name (e.g.: "Face1") which can be changed.