WTParts: When to use Referenced By, when to described by

[Lohbauer]

Good Morning All,

This is another question regarding how best to employ WTParts:When is it appropriate to use Reference Documents and When to use Described by?

And a follow up; if I have a Document that I would like to usewith a Reference document association is it possible to convert it to a Reference document without losing history (Essentially recreating it). I think I know the answer to this one.

Happy Wednesday to all,

Bob Lohbauer

[avillanueva]

Reference By: Links to Master (essentially any rev of that document or
latest rev)



Describe By: Links to Specific Version (that version and only that
version)

[Lohbauer]

Thanks for responding Tony.

In regards to the Described by association to a Version; does that mean when I iterate a Part by revision (I revise the model so the Part associated to it is iterated) the association is not maintained with the next iteration?

I have been testing that notion on an end item that I revised (Actually the model it was associated to was revised) and the described by document retained its link to the Part. There is this sinking feeling I’m missing something important here.

Also, is there an inherent difference between the association behavior of End items and Parts?

Thanks again,

Bob

[ericstarkman]

Hi Bob,



When a WTPart “is described by” a WTDocument, the link is “owned” by the WTPart. So when you iterate or revise the WTPart, the link is copied along with it – but it points to the same WTDocument. By “the same” I mean the same revision, but always the latest iteration of that revision.



When navigating from the WTDocument back to the WTPart, you’ll see all WTPart revisions that it describes. (At the object/database level, it also knows about old WTPart iterations, but the UI considers latest WTPart iteration only when navigating from Document back to Part)



Since at least 9.1 (possibly slightly before), whether or not a Part is an end-item is simply an attribute on the WTPartMaster, so behavior here should be the same.



Re “if I have a Document that I would like to use with a Reference document association is it possible to convert it to a Reference document without losing history (Essentially recreating it).” –

If you’re using default behavior, where ReferenceDocuments use Reference links, and all other document types use Describe links, then I don’t know of any simple solution.



However, if you enable the preference “Part to Document Association Logic”, you can choose for any given Part-Document link, whether to create it as Describe or as Reference. This is more flexible but can be incredibly confusing to users – think carefully before using it. See

[JeffZemsky]

Robert – no there is no difference in behavior – here are a few slides the describe the behavior for you

[ptc-4079509]

Great information here. Thanks, Antonio and Jeff.

We are thinking about how to use documents related to Parts, however it seems there is a potential roadblock . . .

How does one get the documents (described by or reference) onto a bill of material or component list report?

In WC10.0, on the Information Page 'Structure' tab, you can 'Show/Hide' to see the related documents in the UI window, but I have found no way to export this information in a useful format. It is not apparent to me that the "Reports" BOM options have any accommodation to show/hide documents? Of course if we could get them there, then that 'report' could be exported to various formats and used for many enterprise purposes.

Joe Lee
ICON Aircraft