What is the best way for multiple engineers to work on the same assembly, see each other's concept designs, and not mess up the master model?

[iporras]

Are there any "sandbox" methods for multiple engineers to work on the same assembly so that they can see each others' work without messing up the master model or each others' models?

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[AmitDeshpande]

Hi Isaac,

Speaking strictly from a Creo Parametric perspective, you could do a Save A Copy of or Backup the assembly.  The different users could make changes to their respective assemblies without the original assembly being modified.

Thanks,

Amit

[iporras]

I'm wondering if this is more of a Windchill question instead?

[tbraxton]

I was in a team doing exactly this before Windchill even existed, you don't need PDM to do this. A PDM system deployed properly can reduce the chance of human error but it is not necessary. It did require a lot of planning and definition before work would start but it was effective at reducing design cycle times. We also did not have most of the top down design functionality that exists in Creo today either.

The most important things to making this possible are modeling standards in the CAD environment and a very disciplined team that communicates well. There were two motivators to do this back in the 90s when computers and licenses were in the $30k range each, cost and time to market. We had designs split between USA and Asia and would have the USA team work on models and then hand them off to Asia at the end of the day to take advantage of the 12 hour time difference using the same pool of licenses.

The second technique was to enable more than one engineer to work on the same model (part mode) simultaneously. Two or more versions of a part model were modified by multiple users simultaneously.  We did this by compartmentalizing the model and defining blocks of references that could be used by downstream features ti maintain a system of parent child relations that could be managed and exploited. There are also some feature creation techniques that are much more robust than others that were exploited (like up to next depth option for all core side features of molded parts). At the end of the shift the contributors would submit their model to a lead engineer and their work would be integrated into a master version of the part. The master version would be validated and archived this was then used as the starting point for the next round of modeling. This is more difficult to manage than doing it in assembly mode but it did enable a design time cycle reduction on some projects.

By planning your work and matching it to available resources you can use the top down tools in Creo to manage the assembly modeling among multiple users. You should have a system architect who is proficient in Creo to manage how this would work for your designs. He/She would control how things are driven in Creo and also watch over the work of the individual contributors. Using tools like model check and Windchill can certainly make managing this more automated and less prone to error if they are configured and deployed effectively.