Enhancements to Revise Part and CAD Documents - 1. Revise Part Only

All.

I am looking at how to better handle relationships between Part and CAD Documents when you Revise.

In this discussion, I would like to propose an enhancement to this use case:

Set Up:

• You have your CAD Documents related to a Part using some kind of build rule: Owner, Contributing Image, Image or Contributing Content.
• You have a use case to Revise the Part and 0 to (N-1) of the build associated CAD Documents
  • e.g.
    • You have multiple CAD Documents describing the Part (e.g. model, drawing, manufacturing); but you only want to revise one of the deliverables (e.g. manufacturing model)
    • You have made a change to info on the Part not communicated to CAD (e.g. Option choices, Attributes like Cost/material).  These types of changes may require the Part to be Revised before check out/in; but since the information is not set in the CAD Document, you do not revise it.
    • You add/remove/change other related documents (e.g. specification, marketing info) and these changes may require the Part to be Revised before iterating it with new content.

• In all of these circumstances, you end up having a single CAD Document version that has a build type of association to two Part Revisions:
  • e.g.
    • USE CASE 1 - Revise Part and Drawing
      • You revise the Part and its drawing:
        • BOLT A.10 (Design)
          • bolt.prt A.10        Owner
          • bolt.drw A.15       Content
        • Revise
          • BOLT A (Design) --> B (Design)
          • bolt.drw A  --> B
      • RESULT
      • BOLT A.10 (Design)
        • bolt.prt A.10        Owner
        • bolt.drw A.15       Content
      • BOLT B.1 (Design)
      • bolt.prt A.10        Owner
      • bolt.drw B.1         Content
      • If this is still early enough such that you can check out/in bolt.prt without revising, then the system will try to iterate and build BOTH BOLT A.10 and BOLT B.1
        
        
        
    • USE CASE 2 - Multiple CAD Files:
      • You have a flexible component, spring.prt with different CAD representations: spring_ext.prt and spring_collapsed.prt
      • All are related to same WTpart:
        SPRING A.1 (Design)
        • spring.prt A.1      Owner
        • spring_ext.prt A.1 Image
        • spring_colllapsed.prt A.1 Image
      • You now decide you need to revise the spring; but your process does not require the flexible components to be revised as well:
        • Revise 
          • SPRING A (Design) --> B (Design)
          • spring.prt  A  --> B
        • RESULT:

        • SPRING A.1 (Design) 

          • spring.prt A.1      Owner
          • spring_ext.prt A.1 Image
          • spring_colllapsed.prt A.1 Image
        • SPRING B.1 (Design)
          • spring.prt B.1      Owner
          • spring_ext.prt A.1 Image
          • spring_colllapsed.prt A.1 Image
      • Now a user opens spring_ext.prt in Creo, which has inheritance feature.  If s/he checks it out/in, then the system will try to build both SPRING A.1 and SPRING B.1
    • USE CASE 3 - Multiple Files CAD and Not CAD
      • In the system, the user has:
      • (Part) WIDGET A.10 (Design)
        • (CAD Doc) widget.prt A.10     Owner
        • (CAD Doc) widget.drw A.8      Content
        • (Doc) Widget Spec A.6            Describes
      • Now a PDM user needs to:
        • Revise WIDGET
        • Revise the Mfg Spec with new plan and price
      • Add a test plan
      • User revises:
        • WIDGET A (Design)  --> B (Design)
        • (doc) Widget Spec A --> B
      • User then checks out B.1 (Design) and adds new doc, widget test plan A.1
    • RESULT:
    • (Part) WIDGET A.10 (Design)
      • (CAD Doc) widget.prt A.10     Owner
      • (CAD Doc) widget.drw A.8      Content
      • (Doc) Widget Spec A.6            Describes
    • (Part) WIDGET B.1 (Design)
      • (CAD Doc) widget.prt A.10     Owner
      • (CAD Doc) widget.drw A.8      Content
      • (Doc) Widget Spec B.1            Describes
      • (Doc) widget test plan A.1        Describes
    • If widget.prt is checked out/in it will try to build WIDGET A (Design) as well as B(Design)

PROPOSAL:

Change the system to only build the LATEST Part revision.

Any thoughts?

Anyone have a use case where building ONLY latest Part revision would NOT be good?

Thanks

Jennifer