well this is actually really awesome. we now have the gerber and BOM uploaded, normally the supported file formats would run automated scripts and everything would be auto-generated, however this time because using PADS we had to extract some info manually.
that having been done i can now edit the BOM online, see the PCB layers online (and upload replacements), including zoom - it's really impressive. and hasn't taken very long to get set up.
we also found a VB script to generate the pick/place robot instructions, making their job easier as well.
l.