Ensuring substitutes are captured in ESI Export

[avillanueva]

I came across this while doing some testing with ESI:

https://www.ptc.com/en/support/article/CS289128?&language=en&posno=10&q=ESI%20substitutes&source=search  Unchanged Alternates/Substitute Parts and Reference Designators are not published to Windchill Enterprise System Integration after BOM Modification

I saw this and pinned it for later but knew it might be a problem. I think I found a work around. In the distribution target setup there is a setting call "Publish only Incremental changes for a modified assembly when publishing a BOM". Changing this to "no" shifts the components to added only but had the effect of displaying all the substitutes.  You have to give up the incremental but in my case, we were deleting the BOM lines and re-adding each time. Do you think there are downsides to using this setting I might not be seeing?

[avillanueva]

I opened up a case on this with PTC. Our integration depends upon setting incremental changes to yes so I am forced to choose to lose subs in the process of a changed BOM. I've asked PTC to re-examine issue since it results in a loss of BOM information in transit and there is no good reason for it. Short of that, if I find a way to alter PTC default code, I will post a patch to fix this here.

[KlausHellweger]

I am strugling with the same problem for Alternates. Were you able to find a workaround ? Thanks 

[avillanueva · Accepted solution]

I opened case 15992318 on this topic. I received the standard not part of functionality and to submit product ideas. Since then I've concluded its likely easier to deal with this on the SAP side when reading in the ESI output. The easiest solution is to turn off publishing incremental changes. What SAP needs to do is just clear entire BOM and load the new one without regard for looking at differences. End result in SAP is the same. So long as the sub/alts are in the file, you should be able to carry them across.

[GAINSREENI]

Hi

This is known as the issue from ESI 10.x..  PTC didn't help us to solve this issue. We did our own customization only.

Regards

GAIN Sreeni

[avillanueva]

any chance you would detail or share your customization/approach?

[KlausHellweger]

I came across this article which solves my problem with alternate parts. Not sure whether this has any affect on substitutes or whether there exists a equivalent property. Article - CS2795 - 'AddedAlternateLinks' information is not included in the response xml if already publish part is added as an alternate in Windchill Enterprise Systems Integration (ptc.com)