Hot to mark drawing representation as ou of date

[BalazsToth]

Hello Community,
I am redesigning our WVS and I need your help.
Business case:
1. I have a Creo part. It embedded in more assemblies. The assemblies have assembly drawing.
2. I revise my part, change the geometry and put it in Released state.
3. Windchill automatically replaces the old CAD part for new one in all parent assemblies.
4. The representation of latest part version is generated and the job marks all parent assemblies as out of date.
5. The 3D representation of assemblies are generated. 
6. How can I republish atomically the assembly drawings? The part job does not mark these object as out of date. If WVS generates new assembly 3D representation the it has to republish the assembly drawing? How can I connect these two things.
I attached a flow chart about the process.

[BalazsToth]

<Property name="publish.markoutofdaterepublishmethod" overridable="true"
targetFile="codebase/WEB-INF/conf/wvs.properties"
value="com.ptc.wvs.server.publish.PublishHelper/markRepublishAll"/>
<Property name="publish.configspec.default.useasstoredifavailable" overridable="true"
targetFile="codebase/WEB-INF/conf/wvs.properties"
value="false"/>
<Property name="webpage.flagrepoutofdate" overridable="true"
targetFile="codebase/WEB-INF/conf/wvs.properties"
value="true"/>

[TomU · Accepted solution]

From what I can tell the 'mark out of date' function does not seem to apply to drawings.  If you intend to publish everything as 'latest', and you want to automatically republish assembly drawings anytime the assembly changes, you will probably need to develop your own custom class and method(s) to determine what to republish anytime something is marked out of date.  (See CS55591 for more info.)

I think it may be a good idea to back up and re-evaluate why you want to publish everything as 'latest'.  Do you ever need the representations to show what something looked like at a particular point in time?  Do you really want the parent assembly and it's related drawing to automatically be republished knowing there is a chance the changes made to the lower level component may break something in the assembly and/or drawing?  (placement, assembly feature, missing references, etc.)  There is a reason why Windchill is configured to publish everything 'as stored' by default.  I would be very concerned about switching everything to 'latest'.  You might want to read through this discussion from last August.  Lots of good information.

[BalazsToth]

Hello, 

we have used Windchill for 10+ years and now we are reviewing the behaviors of system. Yes, my conclusion is that at first it is not visualization problem, it is change management question. There was a decision that the BOM/CAD structures always must show the latest version of parts. If I revise and release a part then the Windchill will update the all parent assemblies without revise them. Engineers collect the parent assemblies of part in change notice but it is an optional step in CN creation. It is possible you open your old correct released assembly and gets some error messages because WC replaced some parts on server side or assembly drawing is not up to date. On the other hand the parts embedded in lot of different products and assemblies so it takes very long time to revise all of them. 

Since the cad assembly always gets the latest state of parts so the "latest" or "as stored" configs should give same result. 

It would be better if all where used assemblies and drawings must be added to the CN.  

Thanks

Balazs

[jlecoz]

There are always two approaches:

• Customize the visualization services, which can be complex, and costly..
• Think from a process perspective. If a CAD model has its geometry changed all drawings showing that component must be checked. Some drawing views or annotations may need an update. So a manual check would be required, if some update is needed in the drawing a check-out check-in process will update the visualization.  Consider also implementing model-based-design initiative using CAD model annotation in place of drawings. This could reduce the need for drawings and all the overhead maintenance work related to them.

[BalazsToth]

Thanks. 

[d_graham]

Interesting. Detect when an assembly is republished and when that happens republish the assembly’s drawing.

That’s essentially what you’re looking to do. Correct?

This can certainly be automated but would require some custom code to pull it off.