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ptc-43317561-Visitor
1-Visitor
December 16, 2011
Question

Removing Reference Designators for mechanical parts without breaking the association

  • December 16, 2011
  • 1 reply
  • 3510 views

When a BOM is generated from a ProE model how do you prevent the part ID from being assigned to the reference designator? We want to leave the ref. designator blank for mechanical parts. When you delete the ref. designator the association is broken and the quantity defaults to 1.


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1 reply

K
KshetrabasiMaha1-Visitor
1-Visitor
December 19, 2011

Hi

Please attach a screenshot for better understanding

Regards

K.Mahanta

P
ptc-43317561-VisitorAuthor
1-Visitor
December 19, 2011

To clarify...

We recently updated to PDMLink 10.0, and discovered a new "feature." When checking in a CAD assembly, it automatically populates the WTPart BOM's Reference Designator field with the Component ID from Creo/Pro if there is no Reference Designator defined in Creo/Pro.

This is a problem for us. Reference Designators are used to identify electronic part instances, and they are used in mechanical assemblies to identify CCAs, switches, cables, flex circuits, etc. So many of our assemblies have mixtures of Ref Designators and Find Numbers. This worked fine in v9.1, but v10 apparently doesn't allow the field to be blank.

PTC support calls this "intended functionality" and hasn't yet found a work-around. They say it was added to "support enterprise top down design"

B
BrianMartin13-Aquamarine
13-Aquamarine
December 24, 2011

Hi Sibylle...

Unless you can set your start part/assembly such that they have a default reference designator of " " (a blank), PTC is going to have to solve this issue. I completely understand mixing electrical components and mechanical ones. There should be a mechanism for handling hybrid models like this. Or, at the very least, you should be able to delete the reference designator and maintain the BOM associations.

The only suggestion that comes to mind is this... add a column for Ref Des to your model tree. You can add this column and any electrical parts will show their reference designator right in the model tree. If you don't know how to do this, ask and I'll give better instructions. While it's true that Ref Des will automatically report if the item is a designated electrical component (as required for cabling), you MAY also be able to assign non-mechanical objects a reference designator. Maybe you could assign the find number as the mechanical reference designator?

To do this... find a mechanical item in your model tree. Make sure you have a Ref Des column showing in the tree. Double-click the left mouse button in the Ref Des column right next to the mechanical item. You should be prompted to type in a new reference designator for the mechanical item. Try entering a find number... or try entering a blank space. See if this doesn't allow you to manually set the reference designator. If so, then you can probably prevent PDMLink from auto-assigning the component ID. This might resolve the problem.

I'd be surprised if PTC hasn't already thought of this... but it's worth a shot. Let me know if this works... or if I am being unclear and you need additional instruction.

Thanks and good luck!

-Brian

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