ISO 29845:2011 establishes and defines the types of documents required to be in the documentation for the specification of products, equipment and plants at all levels of complexity. It deals with the range of document types used from the conceptual phase to finished product, in all engineering fields.

The purpose of ISO 29845:2011 is to facilitate a structure for (data modelling) product data management systems, to facilitate searching and retrieval of documents, to establish document types for the purpose of better communication and understanding between parties involved in document interchange, and to fulfil the requirement in ISO 7200:2004 regarding document type fields.