When dealing with WTParts and ProE family tables, causes some issues after the entire package is released in PLM with an ECN or just manually promoted to release. With this "lock down", most cases of family tables will force you to checkout instances or generics when trying to validate or add new instanaces to the family table. This will then result in a huge ECN or constantly changing the baseline of documentation that released the ECN. One method of resolving this issue, is to:
- perform save as for CAD documents and use the generic as your templates
- use PartsLink to classify your components and products
With ECNs, you must have the ability to perform a "Top Down Release" activity. Because some timelines are cut short, there must be an executive decision to release non-approved items to let the product go "As Is", then create another ECN to fix the issues or the missed items in advanced. Everyone would love to see "bottom-up release" but that's not always reality.
Regarding the baselines, for every ECN I would create a top-down baseline of items that were changed and not changed so I could extract/download the items in a zipped up package. But, that's another discussion.
