Assembly Component Parameters in Start Parts

[MYR_Industries]

1. Describe your environment: What is your industry? What is your role in your organization? Describe your stakeholders.
Engineering Services - Owner/Engineer - Individual Users and Clients

2. What version of Creo Parametric are you currently running?
7.0.6.0

3. Describe the problem you are trying to solve. Please include detailed documentation such as screenshots, images or video.
I would like assembly component parameters to be able to be built into the start parts.

4. What is the use case for your organization?
We have different customers all with different ways of doing things.  Having component parameters built into start parts would ensure clients format is followed correctly and reduce time as the parameters wouldn't have to be created manually

5. What business value would your suggestion represent for your organization?
Increase accuracy and decrease time spent on prints/formatting

[KenFarley]

Creo already has the capability of using start parts, and those parts can have whatever parameters you want them to have. You define them, you put them in the start parts, then every new part you create based on one of your start parts will have all the parameters. That's what we do - all the parameters that are used in the drawing formats are defined.

Am I misunderstanding your question?

[TomU]

@KenFarley,

The request is related to component parameters.  These only exist when a component has been added to an assembly, they are stored at the assembly level (not in the part), and are unique or each occurrence of the component in the assembly.  I believe the requestor would like some way to pre-define these in the part model so every time this model is added to an assembly, these component parameters will automatically be created and populated.  To be clear, these are not accessible from the part (currently) because they don't exist in the part.

[MYR_Industries]

@TomU 

You are somewhat correct.  The parameter wouldn't be directly associated to a specific part but just to have the parameters created and formatted for every component I add so I don't have to create and format them for each one.  This would go with an assembly start part.  An easy way to modify/add information to the parameter would be a bonus.

[Patriot_1776]

I don't think it would even be possible to do this.  Think about it, at the part (or sub-assembly) level, the model would not know where it was going.

Now, you MIGHT set up a "WHERE_USED" parameter in your start part and start assembly models where you could MANUALLY add the information.  On a lot of the old Navy dwgs I did, there was a "Where Used" table on the dwg where the draftsman ("board" drafting - yes, I AM old enough to have started my career on one...) manually entered the N/A.  OR, it may be possible to USE a parameter generated in Windchill.  I looked for a "Referenced By" parameter since that's where you find things like that, but if there's an actual Parameter like that, it's buried in Oracle and a Windchill admin would have to help you with that.

See my reply to your original post.

Best of luck!

[TomU]

@MYR_Industries,

It does seems like it should be feasible to define a list of component parameters at the assembly level, and then every time a component is added to the assembly have these parameters automatically created at the component level.  By the way, you can add component parameters to the model tree today for easy editing, but you still have to manually create them one at a time.

[KenFarley]

Something I found out when I had an assembly with parts that lacked the proper parameters for our setup is: You can copy and paste a list of parameters from one part/assembly to another, all at once. Just select all of them in the parameter editor in the "source" component, then paste them into the parameter editor for the "receiver" component. Better than the mapkey I normally use because it copies the stuff that will be common to the components. I'm using Creo 4.0, by the way, so hopefully this behavior has not been obsoleted in later versions.

[StephenW]

This idea is associated to this post:

https://community.ptc.com/t5/3D-Part-Assembly-Design/Default-Assembly-Feature-Attributes/td-p/795979

[MYR_Industries]

@Patriot_1776 

correct the part / sub-assembly don't know where they are going, but I am not looking for a parameter associated to a specific part.  I just want a parameter created that I manually manipulate.  Currently I have to add a parameter to the model tree and then modify it accordingly.  You have to format it for every component it is used.  This is very time consuming and can be error proned if not careful.

It would be nice if there was an option to use same value for every component too.  Currently I have to create it for the same part if used more than 1x.

[Patriot_1776]

Well, if you add it to your start models (assemblies, parts), you can then call it up as a column in your model tree, and easily and quickly enter the data you want there.  The caveat being that this data will carry along WITH the assemblies/parts into whatever OTHER upper-level assemblies they go into.  Not what you want.

BUT, I think there is a cure for that and would work the way you want.  When creating or modifying the start models, create the parameter but leave value blank (probably best), or "XXX" or something in the value for the start models themselves and at the start model level, make that parameter "Flexible", so that at EACH INDIVIDUAL upper assembly into which it's inserted Creo will prompt you if you want to use the flexibility or not, and if you do, at that point you can add the data you want, or you could leave it blank, and then you "should" be able to modify them all one after another.  Might be easiest to simply change the value every time you add an assembly or part to the upper-level assembly.

[olivierlp]

Hello @MYR_Industries ,
Thank you for your idea and the information provided.