Ability to disable a calculated link

[slapha]

There are times where a calculated link may not be desired and you should be able to disable or remote this association within WIndchill.

Parts displayed on drawings automatically get a calculated link.

One example we've had in the past is an ID tag. The ID tag has it's own drawing, but we've had cases where a person would put the ID tag itself on a drawing where the tag is being used. This means the ID tag gets an extra calculated link for everywhere it's shown. While this one case can be dealt with a best practice, another case is related to another product idea I posted allowing family table instances to be related to a drawing through a "family calculated link" which may want to be removed as well.

In general it is nice if anything automatically created can be reversed manually, especially when the UI already exists for it (10.1)

[GregoryPERASSO]

calculated links can be disabled by a properties in xconf files. (ie in all Context)

It would be great to be able to disable it by a preference, at least at Org level.

anyway, vote for my idea about this topic "disable calculated link from ProE or Windchill"

http://communities.ptc.com/ideas/2257

[GregoryPERASSO]

the properties is described in the Technical Support note

https://www.ptc.com/appserver/cs/view/case_solution.jsp?n=CS11410&lang=en

Site wide wt.properties property has been implemented in 9.0 M080 and 9.1 M070, that allows hiding calculated link type from the Windchill interfaces.

• New property is:

wt.epm.displayCalculatedLink
Values: False, True (default)
Description: configure whether Calculated Association Link type between Drawing and WTPart will be not be displayed.
- True - Calculated Association Link type will be displayed between Drawing and WTPart.
- False - Calculated Association Link type will NOT be displayed between Drawing and WTPart.

[DarrenStorey]

What is the difference between this property setting and the preference setting in UI "create content links for drawings"? WC10.1

[GregoryPERASSO]

the create content link pref is for automatically creating this link on a drawing checkin

the other one is to totally disable and  hide caclulated link in Windchill

[SteveShaw]

As noted by Gregory Perasso it is possible to disable the calculated link in your system.

[slapha]

The intent of this was to be able to disable individual cases. 99.9% of our drawings would need the cacluated link, but that 1% we would want to disconnect. I admit this is a valid work around and could be helpful, but it doesn't meet the initial request.

The suggested method would be in the add/remove association window to be able to remove this link the same as any other associations.

[SteveShaw]

My apologies.  I missed that nuance when reading the thread.  The challenge here is that the 'calculated link' is not a link at all.  it is something the server calculates at run time based on other existing relationship information and displays them in the related objects table displays on the fly.  What is the cause behind this 1% case that you are looking to make such a disconnect?

[slapha]

In most of these cases whens someone makes a drawing they detail a sub-component of the drawing by adding an additional model to the drawing. We try to discourage this, but once an item is released it's now permanently linked at that iteration. Even if they remove the model, the link persists for that older iteration.

This happens with models that were accidentally added as well as ones that were purposely added.

There could be valid reasons for showing that model but often the desire is to only have the controlling drawing related to the object.

[DavidCobb]

I agree with the desire to have an "opt-out" ability. Our most common case for where Calculated associations will be undesired is where a model has been added to a drawing for reference visualization - generally as placement or location context - but the drawing doesn't in any way define the component being added for visual reference. In such cases it would be nice to both a) avoid having the reference geometry become out of date by keeping it parametric instead of snapshotting it, and b) avoid having extra drawings that don't define the item show up as associated to the item's WTPart via the Calculated link. There are other cases where a component will be added to multiple defining drawings, for example a fully detailed drawing for internal use and a reduced content version for external distribution; there we definitely do want the WTPart to show association to both drawings. So for us also it would be very useful to have Calculated as the rule, but the ability to disable/opt-out case-by-case via an explicit action.

[GregoryPERASSO]

please vote for my idea 🙂

http://communities.ptc.com/ideas/2257

[slapha]

We found another unexpected side effect of these old drawing associations.

So a model was added to a drawing, at some later iteration the model was removed. Both model and drawing continue to be iterated and/or revised.

When someone goes to add the model to the workspace, and adds related drawings, they will get an outdated copy of the drawing that the model was removed from even though configuration is set to grab "Latest".  I get why it's doing it, but then the person ends up with outdated objects in a brand new workspace.

The only way to solve this is purge those older iterations, assuming you didn't release with that model added to that drawing. That, or add the ability to disable a calculated association.

[doakes]

Another case where it is needed to be able to disable a Calculated association for a drawing:   Part A has CAD A (Owner) & Drawing A (content).   Revise several times.  Now Engineers want to change the drawing for Part A/CADA to Drawing B as a common drawing amongst several Parts/CAD.   Can't get rid of the Calculated association even though you have a Content link from Drawing B to Part A.   I've tried iterating the last version of Drawing A to NOT have CAD A as a Drawing Model.   WC just shows the previous version of Drawing A as a Calculated association to Part A latest version/latest iteration.   If only an Admin could set the associations of a Part to NOT include Calculated associations on a Part by Part basis.