I’ve received a few direct responses on this, so I would like to clarify further.
We are a design consultancy, each product contains data which quite frequently is not our own intellectual property and we are in fact legally forbidden from reusing. When we do own the IP we often don’t make or buy the hardware or have direct responsibility for the finished product. The data is therefore archived in the product “as supplied” to client for ongoing support and legal data retention requirements.
When we do not make/buy it, but do own the IP and want to reuse, then we are only really interested in saving the effort of redesigning and care not for reusing the part number. Frequently the number is client specific anyway. In such cases, reuse amounts to making a copy of the data in a new product with a new number.
When reuse of number is important and appropriate then we use Libraries. Standard fasteners etc being obvious examples.
- We could potentially restrict download to designers who are working on each specific product via ACL, but that amounts to many products per designer, hence would not really work for us.
- Product specific logins would also be unmanageable too.
RegardsDarren
