The following topic in the Windchill Help Center describes Windchill capabilities for deriving multiple part structures while reusing the same CAD structure:
Multiple Windchill Part Structures Sharing the Same CAD Structure
This is exactly what we were looking for, to deal with e.g. identical parts but in a different colour, or with a different material (e.g. standard inox 304 but on customer request inox 316).
However it seems rather immature and preliminary.
Anyone can share his or her experience with this in an Industrial setting?
And also: we put article number and name on our 2D drawings. A pdf is generated for each drawing by the worker and is exported to the ERP system upon release. However from the docs it doesn't seem there is support to change attributes on the drawing according to the part properties of the specific part which is released.
E.g. consider one CAD prt file with one drw file, linked to two Windchill parts (one painted blue and one painted red).
Upon release of the blue Windchill part, the pdf to the ERP should mention the blue part nr and name, and upon release of the red part, the pdf (originating from the same 2D drawing) should mention the red part nr and name.
So this would involve generating the pdf upon release and changing some attributes according to the article released.
