When importing a BOM from Windchill into WQS, there should be an option to import occurrence data such as reference designators without splitting the occurrences into multiple parts.

[ptc-2969804]

This refers to support case # 11482838.

We want to import BOM (Part Assembly) with reference designators from Windchill into WQS without splitting occurrences into multiple parts (same way as it shows on Windchill Part Structure Page). We are not able to do that. If we select to include reference designators in the import, then it splits part occurrences into multiple parts in WQS. This is not a desired behavior.

Splitting occurrences has issues, such as:

1) If we import a BOM which has, for example, 10,000 parts in Windchill, with split occurrences, its size in WQS becomes 100,000 parts or much more depending on the quantities and level. Loading and synchronizing such huge BOMs impacts the performance.

2) Users are confused working with split occurrences. For example, if a sub-assembly in the BOM has quantity 5, the whole sub-assembly and its components are repeated 5 times in the system structure. Think of a situation when the quantity is very large like 200.

3) Most of the reliability data is associated with part numbers and when one part is split in multiple rows, how (which row) do we record the FRACAS incidents and other WQS attributes? This also impacts FMEA.

In my opinion, splitting occurrences should be made optional. 

[ptc-2749313]

Hi Jay,

Thanks for the comment.  Note that the splitting of occurrences is done to permit common reliability activities.  Let's take a common example: your BOM has one resistor Part Number that has many Reference Designators (e.g. 72).  When performing a reliability prediction, your users may elect to split these out into all 72 instances in order to do what is called a "Parts Stress" calculation.  In a "Parts Stress" calculation, each of the 72 parts will likely have a different failure rate because their electrical stress is included in the calculation.  This same information is used in the FMEA, etc.  This piece-by-piece calculation is required by "Parts Stress" as well as "Pin-by-pin" analyses, and is well understood in reliability circles.

This is why we split the occurence data.

However, it sounds like there is a different requirement that you have.  You want to include Ref Des information, but don't want to split into multiple occurrences.  Ref Des is stored as Occurrence data in Windchill, which means that if you include it, we will need to split occurrences.  There is a different reason why we also need to split occurences in this case.  Lets say that your 72 resistors are Ref Des R1-R5, R7-R26, R28, R30, R40-R62, R67-R89, etc.  There is no out of the box way to combine all of the single occurrence Reference Designators into the text of a single attribute.

What I'd suggest is that you build logic on the Windchill side to combine the multiple Reference Designators into a single Windchill attribute, then map that attribute to the Ref Des field within WQS.  That custom mapping is available out of the box.  You just need to give us the appropriate field to map to.

I hope this helps.  If you'd like to discuss further, please let me know!