New Association Between EPMDocuments and wtParts

[BrianToussaint]

A new association needs to be added for EPMDocuments and wtParts.  This one needs to allow for driving structure but allow for changes in quantity and to use the unit of measure associated with the wtPart or allow for it to be changed in the BOM.  Currently you are only allowed for each and whole numbers.  I need to be able to have items that are in feet with decimals.  Since to change them, you cannot have any association between the CAD and the PART, they do not line up on the BOM compare.

An example would be a piece of insulation.  It is in the CAD but drawn to length.  If the CAD is tied to the Part then the quantity is 1 each in the Windchill BOM.  What is needed, is for it to be in the Windchill BOM as the length, like 1.75 feet.

It needs to work like an Image association in that it needs to allow for multiple CAD to one Part.  In the example above, we will have a different length or shape of the insulation in different assemblies but the same part number.

[bradlawrence]

I vote YES........ our company has several types of cut to length items (unit inches) such as fuel hoses, edge guards, seal strips, etc.  This proposed new association would be perfect for those.  Also, liquids such as oil (unit gallons).

[kpritchard]

YES!

The issue seems to be on how Windchill relates to the CAD... and CAD can only have UoM of each.  But Creo has both Bulk Item and Flexible Part functionality, both of which should be able to drive the Part Structure from the CAD via Owner Association.  The workarounds resulting from this lack of true integration of Windchill and Creo are manual, clunky and error prone. 

[LewisLawrence]

Yes! This has been a topic of discussion at a number of Technical Committee Meetings over the years. Currently the Build rules only support "each" default UOM on the WTPart. So the workaround is to use an association like Content that doesn't directly drive the component into the BOM then edit it manually, with the associated risk that it is missed of the BOM. What is really needed is some kind of assembly relation that allows you to control quantity and UOM from CAD that is then used to drive the build rule in the structure.

This actually fits with a number of ideas I started around managing the association relationships. They are all linked from this one.

Combine Document Tables on WTPart Related Objects Tab

[JenniferPierron]

All,

I am reading about two issues in this thread:

1. The CAD tool didn't pass the quantity I need, so let me override on the Part structure.

2. The CAD tool should have passed the quantity correctly to Windchill.

For #1: In Windchill 10.0+, you can have an Owner association which creates a Part Usage link with a quantity of 1 each; but then over-ride the quantity to be something else (e.g. 1.75 ft).   To do this you must:

• Go to the Part structure and delete the Part Uses Occurrence on this usage link.
• When they system asks if you want to synchronize the change with CAD, choose "No".
• Then go back to the Uses Tab and modify the quantity and units to whatever you want (e.g. 1.75 feet)

Also, for this point you wrote:

It needs to work like an Image association in that it needs to allow for multiple CAD to one Part.  In the example above, we will have a different length or shape of the insulation in different assemblies but the same part number.

That is exactly what you would do!   The quantity is controlled by the ASSEMBLY, not the insulation Part.  You would create multiple insulation CAD Documents with different shapes.  They would all be associated to the same Insulation WTPart.   To override the CAD quantity, delete the occurrences for each of the components and then manually put the sum total on the Usage Link.

Now for #2:  The issue is that the quantity is always passed as 1 each for each time the insulation CAD parts are assembled.   Right now, you need to manually override and ideally, you would want a way to specify the quantity for a component with geometry assembled in a Creo assembly.   I think that is a good enhancement request, and I encourage you to vote for this idea, if you have not already:

Creating BOM out of Creo with other quantity unit than "each"

Thanks

Jennifer

[Sierra]

Hi All,

I was investigating this about a month ago and came to a similar conclusion (multiple CAD, image linked to one WTPart), however I want to expand further.

Often when you are doing the BOM for these parts, you want to specify both a discrete and continuous quantity; e.g. 4 lengths of 1.65m of RHS. Specifying 6.6m of RHS in this case does not give enough information.

In Windchill, when something is driven from CAD, it doesn't allow you to change the units from each. Note that there is actually two different quantity columns: Default Unit (which is specified on the WTPart), and Unit (which is unique for this WTPart in this particular BOM).

I think that BOMs should actually have both a discrete quantity (which can be driven from CAD in the normal way), and a continuous quantity.

This continuous quantity column can also be driven from CAD (so that both the drawing BOM and the Windchill BOM are pulling from the same source). We're using SolidWorks, so it may be a bit trickier for us, but in WC-11, you can link the SolidWorks Component Reference attribute (an attribute that is specific to each occurrence of a part used in an assembly) to the Line/Find Number, so we'll use that as our continous length input. This attribute can either be entered manually, or I've also found a way to link it directly to the specific CAD dimension (i.e use the 1.65m dimension length directly).

(Note, essentially this continuous length quantity can be thought of as equal to 1 for normal, non-continuous parts.)

The current problem with this approach happens in the Occurrences to Uses roll-up. As shown below, there are two separate occurrences coming from CAD, each with two different "Length" attributes, however the Uses tab roll-up has combined them together, making Length muti-valued.

I think what I want is a preference along the lines of "Prevent Occurrences to Uses roll-up based on specified attribute:", where I would specify "Length" (or "Line Number" once I'm doing this properly in WC-11). This would then keep these two lines separate, even though they are of the same part number.

For items like oil, these would have a discrete quantity of 1, and a continuous quanity of e.g. 63 Litres (and you'd have a blank CAD part for the oil inserted once).

Thanks,

Sam

[BrianToussaint]

PTC - do you have any updates on this?

It seems that with the new community there is no status information for ideas anymore. @Tmetcalf will this system be able to have a status like the old system?

Thank you,

Brian

[TomU]

@BrianToussaint, Toby is no longer with PTC.  @Jaime_Lee has taken his place.  She is aware of the issues with ideas.  What can and will be done with them has not been announced.

[BrianToussaint]

@TomU, thank you for that information.

Still would like an answer from PTC on this though.

[DavidCobb]

We have recently implemented Windchill 11.0 M030 using the out-of-the-box CAD to Part structure synchronization and when this issue surfaced I was surprised to find that it still requires a manual workaround from reading this idea and the other similar ones referenced in the comments. I have voted yes for this and the similar ideas and definitely agree with the earlier comments, the manual workarounds are clunky and highly undesirable.