Removing children from parent in a Product Structure through "Import from Spreadsheet" functionality.

[Prabhu]

All,

Am not getting successful in removing the link between parent and child parts in a Product Structure / BOM through "Import from Spreadsheet" functionality (Product - Details - Action - Import from Spreadsheet). The validation of the excel file is getting succeeded, but on hitting Finish, the structure of the assembly is unchanged. "Delete" is the option that is used in the column Action.

For adding children under a parent assembly, the functionality works all OK (Action is "Add").

We are on 9.1 M060.

A related case 10574758 and PTC article CS38362 details that the functionality of creating a new View version of a part through "Import from Spreadsheet" has got a bug with 9.1 M060 and had been fixed at 9.1 M070. Is there similar issue for importing Product Structure / BOM (especially for Delete/Remove link operation) at 9.1 M060?

Has anybody ever got succeeded in importing / altering Product structure through this functionality?

Thanks in Advance for your help,
Prabhakaran V.

[JennDCortez]

Yes. However, the answers are only from using version 9.0. I am willing to share some information/troubleshooting information that might help you:

1. Are you importing the data in the correct location? If your product structure lives in the Library and you are importing from the Library/Details, then you are in the correct location to update your product structure. The converse is true... if your product structure lives in the Product, then you must import from Product/Details.

2. Are you selecting the correct import action? Select Add and Update to apply delete actions in the import spreadsheet

3. Are you viewing the latest revision of the data? When viewing your results... you must update the product structure view to latest. Either look at the History/Iteration to view the revision you just created with the import or go through the functionality to "view latest." (my team has clocked many annoying minutes working to view the latest iteration of the product structure). Another tip would be to navigate to the Home Overview / Recent Updates table view and select your latest revision.

[Prabhu]

Thanks for the response Jennifer.

Wierd is that when we do the Validate report in the import wizard, we do not get any exception right away. The exception thrown at this stage of validation does not address all the cases of discrepancy of the data in the excel spreadsheet against the data in windchill system. Certain parameters like Life Cycle State, View, etc., are validated for the given Part type, but discrepany in data like improper Product Structure in the spreadsheet is not addressed at this stage. Validate report action would simply not throw any exception and would look like as if the import has passed through.

Though validating report passes successfully, as I said, no changes had happened to the Product Structure (I did investigate all iterations and the operation had indeed failed). There was a valid exception regarding the parts in windchill system, but this is thrown only in the log file in the server. Had to do some data correction in the system and in the spreadsheet to get the import successful for the case of "Delete".

Thanks again anyway for your response and inputs.

[mdrum]

Here I am - almost 12 years later, and I'm having the same issue.  I have a product structure that looks like this:

• 4843244 - TOP LEVEL ASM
  • 4843245 - SUB ASSEMBLY 1 (Qty 1)
    • 4843248 - COMPONENT 2 (Qty 1)
    • 4843249 - COMPONENT 3 (Qty 1)
    • 4843250 - COMPONENT 4 (Qty 1)
  • 4843247 - COMPONENT 1 (Qty 1)

I want to change this using an "Import from Spreadsheet" option so that the updated structure looks like the following:

• 4843244 - TOP LEVEL ASM
  • 4843245 - SUB ASSEMBLY 1 (Qty 1)
    • 4843248 - COMPONENT 2 (Qty 1)
    • 4843249 - COMPONENT 3 (Qty 1)
  • 4843246 - SUB ASSEMBLY 2 (Qty 1)
    • 4843250 - COMPONENT 4 (Qty 1)
    • 4843251 - COMPONENT 5 (Qty 4)
  • 4843247 - COMPONENT 1 (Qty 1)

So I am adding Sub-Assembly 2 (4843246), which is being structured from the import with its two components (shown above).  I want to remove Component 4 (4843250) from Sub-Assembly 1 (4843245), leaving Component 2 and 3 alone.

When I create my spreadsheet, I recognize that my "Action" values can be "Add", "Delete" or "Ignore".  If I try to do this in one spreadsheet, I structured it like the following:

Type	Action	Level	Number	View	Quantity	Unit of Measure
		0	4843244
WCTYPE|wt.part.WTPartUsageLink	Add	1	4843246	Design	1	ea
WCTYPE|wt.part.WTPartUsageLink	Add	2	4843250	Design	1	ea
WCTYPE|wt.part.WTPartUsageLink	Add	2	4843251	Design	4	ea
		0	4843245
WCTYPE|wt.part.WTPartUsageLink	Delete	1	4843250	Design	1	ea

When I try to validate this, I get an error that says "No link exists to delete the specified parent part "4843245", row is ignored".  So I created a separate spreadsheet that only contained the last two rows above - to just modify 4843245, but I get the same error.

Can anyone show me what the spreadsheet needs to look like in order to do what I'm trying to do - preferably all in one import action.

Thank you.

[avillanueva]

I too have not cracked this. I know that they added export importable spreadsheet with contains a bunch of extra columns containing wtpartusagelink ID information. Perhaps that is what its looking for.  My users practice delete and add practice. Check out the part, remove everything, import a BOM with only add that adds items back in. This might mess up CAD build links but we typically do not use import for Creo driven BOMs.  Seemed like a more error proof way of shoving it in.  Not sure if this messes up comparisons however. 

[HelesicPetr]

Hi @mdrum 

My first question is 

Have you changed an order of the columns? this can be the reason why the import does not work as you expected. 

I have tested the behavior in wch 12.0.3.0 and every delete works as I expect. 

PetrH

[mdrum]

@HelesicPetr - I figured out (through very obscure documentation that I probably can't find again) that you need to include the component ID for deletes.  So when you have a BOM that you want to change - first export it into an importable format so you get the component ID information, and then leave that information in place when you perform the updates.

[HelesicPetr]

True true.

componentID is important.

PetrH