Who approved this change? Make PDM sign-off a named record

Fri, 06 Nov 2026 · 6 min read · Written with an AI assistant

A single Approve transition that anyone in the group can click records a state change, not a review. Here is how to set up parallel transitions, roles and electronic signatures in SOLIDWORKS PDM Professional so a design sign-off names the p

An auditor picks a released drawing and asks a plain question: who reviewed this change, and who authorised it? In many SOLIDWORKS PDM vaults the honest answer is “whoever clicked Approve”, and the history cannot show whether that person reviewed anything at all.

This matters more than usual this autumn. A new edition of ISO 9001 has just landed, certified organisations are working through their transition, and design-change records are an obvious place for an auditor to look. For most SOLIDWORKS shops, those records live in PDM workflow transitions.

What the standard asks for on a design change

ISO 9001:2026 was published on 16 September 2026, following the final draft ballot. It replaces ISO 9001:2015, including the climate change amendment published in 2024. The revision was handled by ISO/TC 176/SC 2.

The text most of us have audited against is the 2015 edition. There, clause 8.3.6 requires organisations to identify, review and control changes made during or after design and development, to the extent necessary. It also calls for documented information on the changes, the results of reviews and the authorisation of changes, while clause 8.3.4(f) asks for evidence of reviews, verification, validation and the actions taken.

A caveat: those are consultancy summaries of the 2015 text. I have not confirmed whether the 2026 edition keeps the same clause numbers or wording, so check your own copy before quoting a clause in a procedure.

Whatever the numbering, the substance is three separate things:

What changed. The model, drawing and BOM revisions.
That a review happened, and what it found.
Who authorised the change.

A PDM workflow is good at holding the third and pointing to the first. It is often weak on the second, and it can be weak on the third too.

Why one Approve button is a weak record

The common setup is a state called something like Pending Approval, with one transition, Approve, that moves the file to Released. Permission to run it is given to a group, often Engineering.

Here is a version of it most engineers will recognise.

Worked example. A sheet-metal mounting bracket needs its hole pattern moved to clear a new harness clip. The designer edits the part and the drawing, checks both in and moves them to Pending Approval. It is late on a Friday and the prototype build is on Monday. The designer is in the Engineering group, so the designer runs Approve. The files go to Released.

Nothing in that sequence is malicious. The designer may well have walked the drawing over to a colleague first. But the vault now shows one name against one state change, and it is the name of the person who made the change. Eighteen months later the auditor asks who checked the new hole positions against the mating chassis. The vault cannot answer. The review, if it happened, left no record.

The weaknesses are structural:

Any group member can authorise. The record says someone with permission clicked, not that the right person did.
The author can approve their own work. Unless you deliberately prevent it.
A state change is not a review. It carries no findings, no markup and no evidence of what was checked.

Making approval deliberate in SOLIDWORKS PDM

In SOLIDWORKS PDM, a workflow transition is how a file moves from one state to another, each transition has a name, and one transition type requires a specific number of users to approve before the file changes state. That type is available only in PDM Professional, not PDM Standard.

The pieces worth knowing:

Parallel transitions. A parallel transition needs several users to run it before the file moves to the new state, and choosing Parallel as the transition type adds a Role tab. Use roles to map the transition to the reviewers your procedure actually names.
Electronic signatures. Specific transitions can be set to ask for an electronic signature when a user changes a file’s state. Apply it to the transitions that carry authorisation, not to every check-in.
Revocation. A user who has approved a parallel transition can revoke that approval, and the state change does not happen until the required approvals are complete.

Resellers describe the intent in the same terms: several users sign off before the file moves on, so more people check the work on its way to approval. Javelin has a walkthrough of parallel transition basics if you want to see the configuration screens.

The help pages I could reach are the 2016 to 2019 editions. Confirm the behaviour in the current help for your PDM version before you rebuild a production workflow.

Back to the bracket. Replace Approve with a parallel transition, Release Approval, that needs two approvers: a design reviewer who checks fit against the chassis, and a manufacturing engineer who checks the hole-to-bend distances. Require an electronic signature on it. The manufacturing engineer approves on Friday, then learns on Monday that the punch for the new hole size is not in stock and revokes. The files stay in Pending Approval. When both approvals are finally in place, the record carries two named sign-offs, each tied to a role that says what that person was there to check.

One policy decision remains: whether the author may fill an approver role. Decide it in writing, then test whether your configuration actually enforces it.

Match the workflow to the review that actually happens

More signatures do not make a better record. If the workflow demands three approvers and your real review involves two people, the third will sign without looking, and you will have built a record that misstates what happened. That is worse than a single honest click.

A reasonable split for most design workflows:

Work in progress, check-in, submit for review: single transitions, run by the author.
Release: parallel, with roles matching the reviewers in your procedure, and an electronic signature.
Obsolete or supersede: consider parallel, since it affects parts already in production.

Then close the gap on review evidence. A transition records authorisation. It does not hold findings. Put the review results somewhere the change record can reach: markup and minutes checked into the vault alongside the ECO, or findings written into the change order itself. The test is simple. Starting from the released drawing, can someone who was not in the room find what was checked, what was found and who signed?

What this means for CAD and engineering tooling

More changes now start outside a human hand: a design table driven from a spreadsheet, a macro that regenerates a family of parts, an AI copilot that proposes an edit. None of that changes who authorises. A tool can propose a change. Only a named engineer should approve it, and the PDM transition is where that approval should be recorded.

Two practical rules follow. Service accounts used by scripts and automation should never hold approver roles. And tooling should make it easier to attach review evidence to the change record, not offer a way round the transitions.

This is the line we are holding at Bluecoderhub. AI-CAD is a prototype under active development. Its target workflow carries a change through to change notice and PDM release, with an engineer approving every decision along the way. In that design, the named sign-off in PDM remains the record of who decided, not the agent that drafted the change.

Closing

The question “who approved this change?” should have a short answer that the vault gives without anyone’s memory. Audit your release transitions now: who can run them, whether the author can approve their own work, whether a signature is required, and where the review findings live. Fix the transitions that carry authorisation, leave the rest simple, and your next audit becomes a lookup rather than an investigation. If you are working through the same exercise, follow the journal or get in touch.