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jwagh17-Peridot
17-Peridot
August 20, 2021
Question

How do you manage your Cadworker settings and ME processes for checkin, revise?

  • August 20, 2021
  • 6 replies
  • 17518 views

Let me preface this by saying that we are beginning our digital journey, so we appreciate any help and patience you can offer.

 

Currently, out cadworker is setup to generate visualizations "As Stored", so that it captures the snapshot in time when the data was generated. However, we are seeing some issues:

  1. Engineers are making some small changes to the geometry. They are promoting just the part, and no higher level assemblies; since the assy BOM are not being affected. Does your company enforce the user to revise ALL higher level assemblies so that the step file gets updated? How does that impact downstream teams when the top-level  assemblies could be getting revised multiple times a day without any 'real' change. That could end up having a lot of wasted work where most items on an ECN are 'no changes'. In addition, we used to tell our team to check-in their work every day. Now we need to have them change this to check-in all of their work at once so that it updates properly the 'as stored'? Sometimes, the simple files are the higher level assemblies that don't get updates as often as the lower level more complex parts.
  2. Let's take this a step further. What about NO geometry changes? Let's say a title mistake in a drawing needs to be fixed. So the part title parameter is updated. Now, the Creo VIEW attributes for the higher level assemblies are wrong. Those higher level Creo View files are calling out the wrong rev for the part, and the attributes are still showing the wrong title.

We would like to solve the step file issue and the Creo View issue.

ALL help is appreciated!

 

Thanks!

6 replies

M
22-Sapphire I
MikeLockwood22-Sapphire I
22-Sapphire I
August 20, 2021

Welcome to the digital journey. It's taken up pretty much every one of my limited brain cells for 25+ years 🙂

 

Publishing As Stored (rather than latest) is essential to the integrity of data - don't change the default.

 

"Parent" items (e.g. an assembly or drawing) display information in "child" objects. In general:

- All development is done using latest

- All "doing business" on the data has to be done using As Stored

 

The classic case is:

- CAD user checks in parent item (e.g. drawing).  All system-generated output (e.g. publishing) uses the model(s) that were current when the drawing was checked in (the As-Stored relationships)

- Then CAD user modifies a model; the drawing shows updated on their system but the system-generated output does not match that.

- Users have to refresh (regenerate / rebuild) all parent items after modifying child items.

 

///

Also, take full advantage of Windchill generating STEP and other nuetral files (and embedding the version in the STEP filename), instead of having users generate those files and check in.

    J
    jwagh17-PeridotAuthor
    17-Peridot
    August 20, 2021

    @MikeLockwood 

    Thanks for your response. What do you mean by "Users have to refresh (regenerate / rebuild) all parent items after modifying child items." Do you mean manually in Windchill with the representation?

    T
    23-Emerald IV
    TomU23-Emerald IV
    23-Emerald IV
    August 20, 2021

    I'm not sure there is a perfect solution.  Each approach has its pros and cons.

    • Creo will automatically open everything 'latest' unless you manually add the 'as stored' versions (or whatever versions you want) to the workspace first.  Normally the designers want to work on the latest versions anyway so this behavior is fine (for us).
    • We choose to publish 'as stored' but all assemblies are published as 'extended positioning assemblies'.  This keeps us from embedding the lower level component geometry into the assembly representations.  It makes the assembly publishing process much, much faster yet still allows STEP files of the entire assembly to be automatically generated.
    • It is possible to configure Windchill to automatically mark 'latest' representations as 'out of date' anytime one of the lower level dependents changes.  This can then be used to trigger automatic republishing of everything up the tree.  ('rev rolling')  Of course the challenge here is that the representations now look different than they did when those assemblies were actually created, and the CAD assemblies themselves may actually go into failure depending on what changed.
    • There was a new option added to Windchill 12 that will allow drawings to be published 'as stored' while assemblies are published as 'latest'.  Of course that means the assembly drawing you are looking at in Creo View may potentially look very different from the same assembly open in Creo Parametric. 
    • Since Creo Parametric normally shows 'latest', we actually like that Creo View shows 'as stored'.  It makes it easy to compare how the assembly was last saved to what may exist now (due to lower level changes.)

     

    publish.configspec.default.drawing.useasstoredifavailable

     

      J
      jwagh17-PeridotAuthor
      17-Peridot
      August 20, 2021

      @TomU 

      Thank you for your response. In your organization, how do you handle the use-case where a subpart title &/or attribute was edited and therefore the part was revised? The higher level positioning assembly (which is still set to As-Stored) should point to the earlier one? Correct? Don't you want to see the latest one? Does your ME team need to revise all the way up each time these changes occur?

      M
      22-Sapphire I
      MikeLockwood22-Sapphire I
      22-Sapphire I
      August 20, 2021

      At Edwards, due to acquisitions, tremendous growth and other factors, things like this are unfortunately not uniformly handled.  They are well understood in general, but still a work in process to implement, train, enforce, etc. for all areas.

      In general, no higher assembly is Revised unless the child item changes are substantive enough that the appearance really changes or function changes.  Part number changes and swapping out is much more difficult than it otherwise would be due to regulatory submissions that include part numbers - so it's an ongoing challenge.

      M
      22-Sapphire I
      MikeLockwood22-Sapphire I
      22-Sapphire I
      August 20, 2021

      More on this as stated...

      If a child item is not interchangeable with the parent(s) - see rules of interchangeabilitiy - then it needs to be a new part number.  If it is interchangeable then the assembly display as published will not change, and the higher Revision of the child item in the published parent will not make any change.  Super easy to state but difficult to actually follow, but essential to really work on.

      If the child item really is different Rev B vs Rev A then it needs to be a new Part Number. Cutting in the new part number becomes a matter of swapping it in at the next assembly level.

      T
      23-Emerald IV
      TomU23-Emerald IV
      23-Emerald IV
      August 20, 2021

      Nice in theory, but pretty much impossible to implement in an organization where it hasn't been done that way for the last 50 years.  Around here part numbers are based on 'function' not what it looks like or how it mates to everything else.  Different revisions of the same part are definitely not interchangeable in different versions of the assembly.  One of the reasons we will probably always publish 'as stored' here.  🙄

      J
      jwagh17-PeridotAuthor
      17-Peridot
      August 20, 2021

      Agreed. We can have a hole too tight or too loose, and we need to tweak dimensions, GD&T, etc. Theoretically, that means it is not interchangeable. However, that is how we've been doing it forever. I'm also not sure if that solves the Creo View dilemma. Let's say one part gets swapped out. So one assembly level above gets revised with the updated BOM. However, maybe the higher level assembly above that doesn't get revised, since the BOM doesn't change. How does that get handled? 

      T
      23-Emerald IV
      TomU23-Emerald IV
      23-Emerald IV
      August 20, 2021

      I should also add that we've implemented some custom business rules as part of our release process.  Windchill will not allow a drawing or assembly to be released now unless all of the dependent objects are either already released or marked for release (on the same promotion request.)  The quality of our released data has gone up significantly since we added automatic checks like these.

      J
      jwagh17-PeridotAuthor
      17-Peridot
      August 20, 2021

      That sounds great! We could use some of those and to make sure all submodels are also released. (Car shouldn't be released if the engine is still in development).

      But it sounds like this check doesn't enforce higher level assemblies from being revised at the same time.

      T
      23-Emerald IV
      TomU23-Emerald IV
      23-Emerald IV
      August 20, 2021

      I'm sure it wouldn't be hard to write a business rule check that would force the designer to update all parent assemblies at the same time, I just don't know if it would be practical to actually enforce.  The designers might all quit!  🙂

        M
        22-Sapphire I
        MikeLockwood22-Sapphire I
        22-Sapphire I
        August 20, 2021

        See attached about system-generated STEP files

        J
        jwagh17-PeridotAuthor
        17-Peridot
        August 20, 2021

        That is what we currently do. However, since it is as-stored, it would appear we need to change our check-in process. We used to recommend we check-in every day (at least). However, if the simple assembly has last been checked in yesterday, and today we made a change to the geometry (but not shown in a view on the assy drawing), the step file of the assembly will now not show the correct geometry. What is your recommended check-in process?

        J
        jwagh17-PeridotAuthor
        17-Peridot
        August 20, 2021

        And we also have to ask ourselves, "how do enforce these process changes". If the step file and creo view data accuracy is critical with this 'new' process, how can we check for it?

        J
        jwagh17-PeridotAuthor
        17-Peridot
        August 20, 2021

        Some thoughts:

        Would we be able to generate step files 'as stored' but Creo View data using latest with positioning assemblies? I've heard positioning assemblies don't work great with flexible components, which we use a lot of for our shades group.

         

        T
        23-Emerald IV
        TomU23-Emerald IV
        23-Emerald IV
        August 20, 2021

        You would have to generate double publishes for each object - one 'as stored' and one 'latest'.  Only one of them can be created 'out of the box', so you would probably need to write some extra code to generate the second publish event.  (See 'do publish'.)  We don't use WT Parts here, but I wonder if it's possible for a linked WT Part to use one publish spec. while the CAD doc uses a different one.  (No idea...)

         

        Positioning Assemblies will not show flexible components, but Extended Positioning Assemblies will!  Essentially anything that is flexed is embedded into the assembly representation like a traditional publish and everything else is just referenced (like a positioning assembly.)

        J
        jwagh17-PeridotAuthor
        17-Peridot
        August 20, 2021

        Thanks for the info.

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