Showing Derived From Information on Drawings

[TomU]

Curious if anyone is putting derived from (saved from) information on their drawings.  It would help our manufacturing department to know where a model was copied from since often times they already have the machining programs written for the original models.  Windchill can provide "saved from" information, but this is only available when the save-as event took place inside Windchill.  Frequently we do the save-a-copy from Creo itself so the table in Windchill is empty.  Creo files do have an internal history log, but I don't know of any way to expose this information on a drawing.  I imagine we could use a parameter and just type in dumb text, but I'm concerned about this being done correctly and consistently, not to mention that a rename in Windchill would create a complete disconnect between this dumb text and the actual model names.  Any suggestions?  Does anyone else provide this type of historical information to their downstream users?  Thanks.

[dschenken]

It's the sort of problem best solved with shape matching software. This way even if the models don't come from Creo the CAM programmers can still find a match. Other than that, some complicated program could look at the model history as presented by Creo and the Save-As history in Windchill and then update the drawing.

I'm not writing it, so how difficult can it be?

[TomU]

It's interesting you mentioned shape matching.  We had a demo of iSeek several years back.  It was cool but pretty expensive.  Maybe it's time to revisit it again.

[rpassolt]

Tom,  Fishbowl has done "model genealogy" Windchill reports for customers.  I'm not sure if it is exactly what you are describing, but there could be some similarities. I'll talk with the team and let you know.  Best regards, Rick

[TomU]

The problem here is that the majority of the save-as events didn't occur in Windchill, so there's not a lot to mine there.  Going forward I could probably require everyone to only duplicate models in Windchill, but that takes a lot longer than just doing a save-a-copy from Creo, especially for stand alone parts.

[dsimmons]

We use a parameter and also have the luxury of an engineering checker. The parameter is a mandatory field to fill in if a 'similar-to' exists. That is one of the drawing review checklist questions.

[cmilligan]

I did a bit of testing just to know when it comes up for my users. The save as from the CREO file menu does not save the history, but a save as from the workspace (embedded browser in CREO) does. You might get users to stop using the file menu via an internal policy. Though there would be no way to enforce it. Maybe the menu can be customized to remove it as a more extreme option.

Some of my users keep a design file for each order/project that usually contains the referenced drawings and that order/project number is referenced on the drawing. I have also seen the practice that Dale mentioned. Both are not 100% reliable for me as the practices have fallen in and out of use over time.

I would ask PTC to fix it and turn this into an enhancement request. If the CAD is connected to Windchill, it should use Windchill save as and new functions on the menu. Looking at other CAD, like SolidWorks they have a dedicated Windchill menu that CREO does not have. That menu somewhat replaces the CAD systems normal file menu. Oddly though, Save As is missing from the menu there as well(10.2).