We are about to start creating WTParts and will be primarily generating them from Creo parts and assemblies. Our item/part numbering system is based on our ERP system, i.e. cad models and cad documents in Windchill use the 10 digit number from ERP as both the filename and number fields (with file extension... 1234.prt).
The question I have is how to Number our WTParts. Our consultant is recommending to leave the autonumber function in place and creat a new attribute field in the WTPart for the item/part number (which would then be manually populated with the corresponding ERP number). I can come up with several reasons I do not like this approach, and very few ideas on why this may be best (the consultant said flexibility was the main reason to go this way).
Reasons I think this may not work well:
- the WTPart Number attribute becomes useless information at this point and would be best to just be hidden from view, unfortunately all the default search and display screens use Number
- multiple WTParts could be created for the same Item since the WTPart Number field is automatically unique for every new one created, but the Item/Part Number attribute would not have that control
- doing a WTPart to CAD Compare is very odd since the WTPart side shows the autogenerated number while the CAD side shows the actual part numbers
I could list more, but those are some of the main ones.
So what am I missing? My consultant says every one of their customers does it the way they are recommending to us.