Renaming Family Table

I am guessing that you are not using Windchill or other PDM to manage your CAD data.

Why do you have drawings of all of the instances? A single generic drawing would suffice with a table.

The assemblies may still find the instance as that name has not changed.

What reason do you have for renaming the generic? I never use simple names like 'washer' anyway as their may be more than 1 generic of washers, depending on how I separate them. I separate my generic files by material, so I have about 5 washer generics.

If you are not using a PDM, you need to have all files referencing the washer.prt file in session before renaming so that you can save them with the renamed reference. 

I would expect the assemblies will also be looking for washer.prt in order to find washer_M8 (washer_M8<washer>,prt

If you are not using Windchill, I have done this in batches where I open a bunch of the drawings.

Rename the generic (and instances if needed) .

Save (very important) and close the ones that are open.

Name the generic back to the old name.

Open the next batch of drawings.

Repeat as often as needed.

The other trick is where are these used.

You may need to have that open too otherwise the assembly above will not find them.

I have on occasion left the old instance in the new generic and the assembly sometimes finds it (especially if you open that instance into memory).

Then go in the assembly and change to the new instance name. 

Hi,

the very basic question is ... why do you need to rename washer.prt to washerV2.prt ?

Hi,

@BenLoosli @Dale_Rosema I'm not using Windchill or other PDM to manage my CAD data. 

I don't know how a single generic drawing with a table works for families, can you elaborate or is there some youtube videos explaining it ?

@MartinHanak The reason I'm changing this family is because there is the material in the name (for example : washer-steel.prt) and we changed this material, so I want a name without the material (for example renaming to washer.prt).

@Dale_Rosema Renaming in bunch is interesting, for my case and this family I think it's better to do everything directly.

@kdirth Is there a fast way to open all the drawing of a family ?

According to your responses, there is a high chance that I will need to "Find the missing component" when opening an assembly that wasn't opened when I did the renaming.

Renaming the generic model in a family of parts in Creo Parametric can indeed lead to issues like the ones you’re experiencing. When you rename the generic model (e.g., washer.prt to washerV2.prt), instances of that family (like washer_M8.prt) and associated drawings (like washer_M8.drw) might lose their references to the renamed generic model. This is because they are still looking for the old name (washer.prt).

To address this issue, here are some steps you can take:

1. Update Family Table: Before renaming the generic model, open the family table and ensure that all instances are up-to-date. This can help in maintaining the link between the generic and its instances.
2. Rename the Generic Model: Rename your generic model from washer.prt to washerV2.prt.
3. Update References in Drawings and Assemblies:
• For Drawings: You might need to manually update the model references in each drawing. Creo should prompt you to identify the new model (washerV2.prt) when you open the drawing of an instance. This can be time-consuming if you have many drawings.• For Assemblies: Assemblies containing the instances will likely show the components as missing. You will need to redefine or replace the missing components with the updated instances.

WAY back in the day (1996) when I first started using Creo (then Pro/ENGINEER - which I MUCH prefer, but I digress...) we had a vaulting system but it did not support renaming files.  So, if you had, say, an o-ring that was used in 100 different assemblies (very possible at Moen where I started), you needed to have ALL the assemblies in which it was used up in session when you renamed the file(s).  THIS, is the number one reason to have a vaulting system that remembers all the links and will update all the assemblies accordingly.  When I switched companies to NASA contractor that had PDMLink, that problem was solved.  So, if you don't have a vaulting system, my advice to you, is leave it the h3ll alone and consider it a lesson learned.