In terms of practice, the use of Family-Table or “Option and Variants” looks very similar, but in this case I would like to post my plant situation.
As you can see below, I show a Typical example of A-Sample development, in which we are use to create variants (-001; -002; eccecc) of the “Original Part Number”, we also did the same for some sub-Assy involved in this assy.
Myquestioasfollow :
1.I can usedashof the samePart.N°, (In case of Family table) but are bound by the use and manage complex task, ie. Managing -Simp Reps- and design table, in this case, I will have also in the "catia" than in "pro-e“ a very complex master rep, but:one Cad-3D one Cad Drawing with some generic and some specific view.
2.But, in all scenario (No very Complex assembly as 30/50 parts), I see the variant managementi, more related in the early stages of prototyping, where we need to produce a lot of variation of similar assemblies.
From this point of view I see more practice for example:
Create file-named (Parts or Assy) like 4XXXXXXX.000; -001 Manually, Same if are parts or assembly,
Create all the needed "3D-Cads" and single reference "2D-Cad", create all needed "assembly variants" manually from a 3D-CAD Autoring Application.
Later “when needed" load document in "WINDCHILL“ only a DIR for each Document with different Versions of the DIR.(no D-Matnrassigned at the moment) (Note: Not all iterations are released to SAP).".
At the end, only needed Part-Numbers, (of Assy or parts) can be relased to SAP and linked to an A2Cxxxxx number (Wtparts), and it’s single drawing.
The main question is, can I link different A2Cxxxx (SAP/Wtparts) or diferent 3d CAD Parts to the same single drawing ?
Linking One reference documents to multiple wtparts, and for reference documents In this case I speaking of "drawing" that normaly in "Windchill" are linked automaticlay to parts, but I suppose that this depends from some "Windchill" parameters.
In this way we should have more operational freedom, and we should do not need the family tables for assembly that I see as very coplicated. ??????