--- title: "About Cubes – Board’s Multidimensional Storage & Retrieval Engine" slug: "about-cubes" description: "Learn what a Cube is in Board: how it stores data via dimensions (Entities or Relationships), defines granularity, and supports slicing, drilling and aggregations." tags: ["Cube", "Developer", "Planner", "Data Model", "Relationship", "Power User"] updated: 2026-08-05T11:37:52Z published: 2026-08-05T11:37:52Z canonical: "help.board.com/about-cubes" --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://help.board.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # About Cubes To **access the Cubes section** of a Data Model, access the designer space of the desired Data Model and click on the Cubes tile. In the Cubes page, you can see all existing Cubes in the Data Model and their main information: the table is sortable and searchable using the interactive header fields. You can also show or hide columns to your liking, by clicking the Column chooser button in the upper right corner of the table. ## What is a Cube? A Cube is Board's primary data storage element. It stores data (such as sales, budgets, inventory, or forecasts) across multiple **dimensions** like Time, Product, Customer, or Region (usually [Entities,](/v15/docs/about-entities) but also entire [Relationships](/v15/docs/about-relationships)), providing different perspectives on data. These dimensions determine the data granularity and the ability of the Cube to show, drill, slice, and dice data. ### What does a cell of a Cube represent? A cell is the intersection of the Cube’s dimensions and is the smallest element within a Cube. ![An example visualizing a theoretical Cube with Sales data for various products across different months and customers.](https://cdn.document360.io/8d6f1ae8-0cac-4d0d-a208-6245b83df94a/Images/Documentation/Cubes-update.png) When a dimension of a Cube is part of a Relationship, the Cube can be viewed at any aggregation level of said Relationship. You can easily build views for every possible intersection of two or more Entities that belong to different Relationship trees. > [!TIP] > **For example**, a Sales Amount Cube which has the dimensions Month, Product, and Customer can be viewed based on any of its dimensions (axes), such as total sales by Product, total sales by Month, or by Customer, as well as based on any of the intersections of its dimensions, such as sales by Product in a given Month or for a given Customer. > > **You can view** total sales by: > > - **Quarter or Year**, as they are aggregations of the Month Entity. > - **City or State**, as they are aggregations of the Customer Entity. > - **Product Group or Product Type**, as they are aggregations of the Product Entity. ## What can I do in the Cubes page? The Cubes page in Board is a central hub for managing all the Cubes within your Data Model. It provides a range of features to help you organize, edit, and review every Cube in detail. Read more in [Create a Cube](/v15/docs/create-a-cube) and [Manage Cubes](/v15/docs/manage-cubes). ![](https://usercontent.us.prod.clueso.io/cf56a542-5bfb-4d6e-b5bb-d60cc17fe890/c1f4bab7-2115-4b17-87f9-02118b68ec52/9740c26c-5f65-4ae7-a268-ff789e6d79dd/images/714c19b1-0076-4586-9fbd-1f7fe6ca3f47.gif) The Cube section of each Data Model in Board allows you to: - [**Create Cubes**](/v15/docs/create-a-cube) - [**Edit Cubes**](/v15/docs/manage-cubes#editing-cubes) - [**Delete and clear Cubes**](/v15/docs/manage-cubes#common-cube-actions) - **Switch to USERVIEW mode**. The USERVIEW mode shows all Cubes by Group and allows you to reorder Cubes in a Group or move them to other Groups by dragging and dropping them anywhere in the list. The order you configure reflects the order in which the Cubes are presented to Planners in the Layout editor. > [!NOTE] > USERVIEW mode is only available when no Cubes are selected - [**Edit the primary structure**](/v15/docs/manage-cubes#changing-the-cube-structure) of Cubes. - [**Manage Cube versions**](/v15/docs/manage-cubes#adding-and-managing-new-versions-of-a-cube). Add, edit, and delete Cube versions. - [**Align versions**](/v15/docs/manage-cubes#verifying-and-aligning-cube-versions) of each Cube. - [**View Cube analysis**](/v15/docs/manage-cubes#the-analysis-page). See where each Cube is used in Board (Data Readers, Dataflows, Screens, Procedures), which Entities are in the Cube primary structure, and which [sparsities](/v15/docs/about-sparse-structures) are used by the Cube. > [!NOTE] > *Each time a Cube is created, Board creates a physical name for it. The physical name is then used to refer to the Cube across Board: reports, Procedures, Data Readers, and other Objects will all refer to a single Cube using its physical name. Changing the Cube name will not affect existing reports, Procedures, or other Data Model objects in any way.* You can perform **actions on multiple Cubes** by selecting them and using the different buttons above the Cube list, like edit, delete, and clear. When editing multiple Cubes, you can only edit limited details. Read more about how to [create a Cube](/v15/docs/create-a-cube) and [manage Cubes](/v15/docs/manage-cubes). > [!NOTE] > A Cube can have up to 256 versions. Generally most Cubes have only one version. You should add other versions only when you really need them: if that is the case, usually four or five versions are sufficient. Only very rarely are more than 12 versions needed. If you have more than 12 versions of a Cube, analyze if each version is really needed or not. A Cube in Board is the multidimensional data-storage Object in Board’s FP&A system. Its dimensions are usually Entities or Relationships whose intersections are cells that hold values, enabling drill, slice/dice, forecasting, spreading, workflow inputs, and auditable planning. The values can be numeric, text, date, or BLOB values (images and files). New or modified Cube values can be written back to the Engine's Data Models via the Data View and Flex Grid Objects. Numeric cells allow top-down allocation via "Split & Splat" and aggregate recomputation. Cubes can be computed with Dataflows/Algorithms, secured with Cube visibility, and created as MOLAP or RDB architectures. A Cube can have up to 256 versions, although generally most Cubes have only one version.