CAD Weight in Windchill - Editable in Windchill or Not Editable in Windchill?

[ScottMorris]

Curious how others are managing attribute values populated from CAD applications and whether or not you allow editing of the values outside the CAD application?

The engineering team would like to make the new WEIGHT attribute editable in Windchill. This means the value could be what was calculated by the CAD application or it could be a value updated in Windchill. This seems like a bad strategy because the values can easily get out of sync between engineering and someone entering a value in the associated wtpart and easily over written on the next CAD check in. 

I would rather provide another WEIGHT attribute on the WTPart and let them put whatever they want in it and let CAD derived values always remain as CAD derived values. 

[avillanueva]

I only have a few attributes pushed up from CAD to the WTPart level. Looks like you are striving to make WEIGHT part of the BOM where it can be summed up at the BOM level? Not sure I would create another WEIGHT attribute since that could lead to confusion unless it was clear which is which. With two, you are introducing a step to sync at every phase where modification could occur. 

Most of the time, I would think you want the CAD derived value to propogate through, to match. You also have to consider other cases:

• When there is no CAD model
• When the CAD model does not reflect exact geometry or the calculated weight is wrong
• Assembly overrides (ignoring what comes from below)
• Non-each use cases, linear weights or pure units of weight (wire or BOM quantity is a mass unit)

Its gets complicated real fast which is why we have not introduced it. 

[Martin_Hill]

It also depends on which CAD tool you are using.

Creo allows for a calculated mass value and an assigned mass value which can be passed to the associated Windchill Part.

From memory I think that you can configure which one is used by default.

Not all CAD applications have this ability and you sometimes have to play around with density values to get the correct result if your model is not representative of the real part geometry.

I would say it is best to have it all correct and only editable in one place, which for most companies would be CAD.

Exceptions would be for companies that don't always have CAD geometry linked to their Windchill Parts.

[HJ1]

We have CAD-centric approach and plenty of CAD (SolidWorks) attributes feed the WTPart attributes, including weight and dimensions. They're never edited - as far as I know - on the WTPart.

The WTPart attribute data is used for ERP items. Especially logistics requested weight.

If needed, changes are made in ERP, but these are not updated in Windchill.