Revision of Windchill part vs. CAD document

[RocketMan]

Hi everyone,

I have a question regarding revisions which has caused a bit of a disagreement between some colleagues. We're finding some old drawings are incorrect in that the tolerances are not consistent across multiple parts, and there is a debate as to if we should ask the Org Admin to set the state of a released drawing to In Work so that the necessary changes can be made without a revision, or if the Windchill part (and associated CAD documents) should be revised, thus putting everything In Work and free to modify. This discussion arises from the fact that our Windchill part revision must match the revision notes in the CAD drawing (different iterations are okay).

Is there a standard or best practice out there? What do other companies do?

Thanks!

[GregoryPERASSO]

Hello

let an Org admin demotes a life cycle state for fixing issues on datas without revising can be acceptable for "minor mistakes"

But changing tolerances is a "major" Definition change for me, isn't it ? So a Revise is more adequat ?

after that, it depends on your change management process and the propagation to the downstream "users" :

- a part with the same number and different revision is inter changeable, stocked in the same place

- a revision level change can have impact with your sub contractors when you purchased a manufactured part ...

etc ....

regards

[RocketMan]

Hi Gregory,

Thanks for your reply. I would agree with you generally (and on paper that's an easy point to make) but in practice what happens is parts X, Y, and Z are simply different flavors of the same product (black picture frame instead of white picture frame, for example) and manufacturing knows this so they don't print off/access every drawing for inspection purposes. Months later engineering will find this drawing with the incorrect tolerance (remember, all other drawings have the appropriate tolerance) so it needs to be changed, but it would be confusing for manufacturing why they're getting a Change Notice when the drawing matches exactly what they've been building for that product.

Clearly one could argue that the drawing is still wrong and that manufacturing has simply been building them to the drawing of a different flavor so technically manufacturing was incorrect as well, however this seems like semantics and difficult to explain to one manufacturing floor, let alone several in other countries with langauge barriers.

I guess the crux of the question is: when a mistake is made on the drawing that manufacturing either misses or completely ignores, is this something that should be revised or demoted by the Org Admin? It sounds like a relatively simple issue but when several CAD guys have worked on the same set of drawings, it turns out that there are many instances of this type of thing.

Thanks again!

[GregoryPERASSO]

Hi Ben,

the revision level in the drawing Notes is the WTpart rev or the Drawing rev that you match to WTPart's one by always revising both object together ?

cause depending the type of link you use between your CADDrawing and WTPart (content, calculated ...) , and if it is the WTPart rev that is published (Product View used for printing in manufacturing plant ? ) on Drawing, you can only revise or iterate the drawing, update the link to WTPart without altering the Rev ...

regards

Gregory