Separate CAD Document Types (e.g. CATDrawing, CATProduct, CATPart)

[tcurry]

Currently, all CAD Documents go into the system as EPM Documents and there is no real separation between CAD file types.  Windows handles this just fine, but Windchill does not.

The system needs to be able to accept a CATDrawing file and place it as a Cat Drawing type.   Then, accept a CATProduct file and place it as a Cat Product type, even if the Number is the same.

Example of desired result:

Filename	Number	Type
12345678.CATDrawing	12345678	Cat Drawing
12345678.CATProduct	12345678	Cat Product
12345678.CATPart	12345678	Cat Part

Currently, the only option we have is to configure it like this .....

Filename	Number	Type
12345678.CATDrawing	12345678.CATDRAWING	CAD Document
12345678.CATProduct	12345678.CATPRODUCT	CAD Document
12345678.CATPart	12345678.CATPART	CAD Document

The file extensions in the numbers are very annoying and unecessary.  Windchill already recognizes the different types as Parts, Assemblies, or Drawings.   Why can't the Types be separated so that they can coexist without file extensions?

[klozier]

Isn't this the purpose of Soft types?  Also what is CAT?

[TomU]

"CAT" = "Catia".  Can you have the same number used by multiple soft types?  I thought that uniqueness requirement was across all types.

[BrianToussaint]

You should be able to have the same number if you create a sequence just for that soft type.  I usually add a suffix to mine because of searching for my engineers, but I do not see why not since they are different tables that you are getting your numbers from.

[tcurry]

To date, the PTC contacts involved in our system blueprint say that the soft type is not a factor in the uniqueness.  All soft types of EPM Document use the same rules and would conflict with each other if the numbers matched.

So when we migrated from our old system which did give us the desired result shown in the first table,   we had to Concatenate the number and a file extension so that we could have unique numbers because the soft type was not enough to differentiate them.

At least, that's what we were told and forced to go forward with.   If this is not the case, and we can change it,  I'd love to hear a confirmation from PTC.

[olivierlp]

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