We are dealing with files provided to us from Creo Elements / Direct Modelling. These are provided in STEP format, but we cannot load them into other systems with the same assembly structure.
If an Assembly contains a number of parts that are the same, it creates different copies with different names e.g. Having Part "P" 4 times results in P, P.1, P.2, P.3. CE/DM then rolls this up in P (4).
In STEP, it creates one master copy of the part, and all instances are derived from that one.
It doesn't appear to ensure that the master part does not have the appended character. So we are seeing 4 instances of Part P in Creo Elements / Direct Modelling, but the files are loaded into other CAD systems as P.2, or with another suffix (anything from P, P.1, P.2 or P.3). We can't see any pattern for what suffix is applied.
Has anyone come across this, and is there a way to either load these step files, or export them in such a way that the naming conventions in Creo Elements / Direct Modelling are respected in other systems?
