Define Reference Documents by attribute or setting

[Pekholm]

Hi

When defining large number of document types, it saves lot of work to group common types in groups to inherit common attributes etc. This is limited by the current way of defining reference document. The reference documents has to be defined as a subtype of reference document type. 

A more flexible solution shall be to define reference/describe link as a attribute or setting for each document type in type manager. In this way, describing and reference documents can be grouped in a logical way, and not depending of link type.

[JeffZemsky]

Per,

Per the preference Part to Document Association Logic there are two behaviors to map documents to describe or reference links.  In the PDMLink mode any document that is a child of the Reference Document type is a Reference document automagically.  All other documents are Describes.  With Windchill mode the user picks the relationship type.  However this can be confusing for users.  The Best Practice here is to use Relationship constraints between Part and Document to determine with link type to use per type so its automatically set.

This will let you group your documents to take advantage of attribute inheritance while defining the relationship types via Relationship constraints.

[Pekholm]

Hi Jeff

Yes, Im aware of the preference to bring back the old Windchill behaviour. I also agree that is confusing for the enduser to select link type upon document creation. Therefore I suggest that this should be set in the object configuration (type manager), but as a setting at the document subtype rather than what parent subtype the document belongs to. 

Best Regards

Per

[JeffZemsky]

Correct- if you use the Windchill behavior and Relationship constraints the type does not control which relationship to use the Constraint does.  This will support what you had asked above.

[Pekholm]

Yes, but it put the responsibility to select the correct link at the end user, whish is not what I asking for. I asking for another way to define describe/reference link without be dependent of the parent type. It should still be part of the business configuration, not a end user selection.

BR

Per

[JeffZemsky]

@Pekholm that is the point of using Relationship Constraints.  When you define Relationship Constraints the relationship type is decided by the constraint so there is no need for user selection.

[BjoernRueegg]

Just as information, in Windchill 11M030 this logic with the relationship constraints is not working until Windchill 11.0M030 CPS05. 

wt.part.WTPartDescribeLinkwt.part.WTPartReferenceLink

For this solution you need to set the Preference "Part to Document Association Logic" to Yes.