Allow to set effectivities on Dynamic Document

[jpadilla]

The possibility to set effectivities on Dynamic Document will :

• first simplify our Data Model.:
  Today, we have implement a kind of tandem link between dynamic documents and specific parts that own the effectivities.This implies also complex algorithm to make them evolving together.
• Secondly, simplify our tech pub process through Windchill:
  One simple example : We will have only one object to manage, and that will save  lots of mouse clics for users.
  
  

[plutsky]

You are correct that the SIM Information Element (Part List, Textual Content, Standalone Illustration, or General Content) has been implemented as two Windchill objects: the Content Holder which is a common object type that holds the applicability information, and the individual content object types (Part List, Dynamic Document, or Document).  This model of two objects for one logical object simplifies implementation of some features (such as access of structures from Arbortext Editor) but results in usability challenges.

We do not have plans to merge the two objects into one.  However, we are working to tailor the user experience so that as much as possible the user is not aware that there are two separate Windchill objects for a given Information Element.

We have already implemented some user experience improvements in SIM 10.2 M032 and SIM 11.0.  We constrain the content holder to be in a 1:1 relationship with the content, we keep the versions in synch, and we keep shared attributes in synch.  In future releases we hope to continue to improve the user experience.

[plutsky]

As described earlier, we do not have plans to allow for adding effectivity directly on the documents.  We have implemented usability improvements in SIM so the content holder and the document are more tightly coupled.

If we allowed for effectivity directly on the document, we would likely have a problem related to compound dynamic documents.  There might be a document that points to a child document but the child has been filtered out due to effectivity.  In that case it could make the entire document invalid.