Tracking Part histroy

I wouldn't say it is conclusive as you can start with a file that has lots of history, deleting all of the features.  The start parts we are using have history back to1994.  The history can also be stripped from a file if you know how to do it in Creo.

The easiest method would be to supply them with a start part and start assy and require then to be used when creating new models.  You could also require them to make their own start files with their name name in the file name to identify it.  Work turned in would need to show the start file history.  You could also compare the save history of similar models to see if they are related.

In the end, the file is digital, and can be altered to erase and/or create tracks if one knows what they are doing.

The alternative is to generate different asignments to different users. But on the whole the history is a pretty good indicator of wether or not they did it themselves. Not perfect, but nothing is. But it also assumes they only did work on computers you control.

But you could go totally insane and encode a startpart with different hostnames, usernames and timestamps in each users startpart for each assignment and require it to be present. But personally i would invest that time in automated grading systems as rapid feedback is much much more important than having infinite integrity.