Replacing corrupt assembly with another assembly

[nan battaglia]

I have an assembly of a screw and a washer that was saved into Model Manager as version one by one of my engineers. When I tried to load it I got a structure error 337 and couldn't load it. I recreated the assembly of screw and washer and saved it into Model Manager as version 2, both versions have the save model name and structure name. I'm able to load the version 2 assembly with no problem. My question is: Can the version 1 assemblies that the engineer has loaded in his session be replaced with the version 2 assembly? Even though the two versions are unrelated because version 1 is corrupt.

[May Kung]

Is version 1 currently a child assembly in a parent assembly in the engineer's active session? If so, Reloading should work just fine. If I recall correctly, the available versions for Reloading following what you named them in Model Manager, not the unique sysid.

[Steve]

Are you sure about that May?

For example, if I open up version 1 of model X, copy it (thus generating a new sysid), and file it back into Model Manager with the same name (X) but as version 2, Model Manager does not see the second model as a version of the first. Even though it has the same model name it does not see it as a version of the old part. This is my understanding.

This bugs me because when you go into the Masterdata even if you have the option set to only show the latest version there will be a "step" where the item was re-modeled or re-drawn, because the system doesn't see the new(er) versions as versions of the old one.

Steve

[May Kung]

Hmm. I just tried it and it doesn't seem to work as I expected. I'm quite sure Work Manager allowed this, but MM is quite a different beast. I seem to remember an option to reassign a pre-existing SYSID to a new model, which should solve the problem. I'll do a bit more digging to see where I saw it; it might have been a setting in the MM config files.

One workaround (which I've had to use on occasion):

1. Copy the part.
2. On the original part, add a stub piece, maybe a small extruded tab or something.
3. Cut away everything in the original part except this stub piece.
4. Unite this stub to the copied part, making sure the stub is the Blank and the copied part is the Tool. This will assign the original SYSID to the copied part.
5. Cut away the tab and you have a "copy" of your original part, but still have the SYSID you need.

[dszostak]

FYI - You cannot do a "Version Replace" on a part or an assembly in either Model Manager (Load or Reload Menu) or OSDM (Part & Assy Menu) if the SysId (on a part or an assembly) is different than the original.

In Nan's situation, if she recreated the assembly with new geometry (or even kept the original geometry) but made a new assembly name (Part & Assy Menu > New Assy), that action created a new SysId for the assembly.

So, when saving to Model Manager... if the version was manually changed to be different than the original and the model name and structure name were kept the same, Model Manager will notice that and save the new SysID assembly under the original Masterdata - this action is correct because Model Manager allows you to save any type of product design data (models, drawings, PPT's, PDF's, FEA results) under Masterdata for your engineering organization. As an example of when this works great is when a model make a round trip from inside, to a non-CoCreate supplier and back – the new model, after importing, won’t have the same SysID but can still be tracked with the original Masterdata.

Therefore, if want true OSDM and Model Manager versioning capabilities, like Version Replace and Reload (functionality not in DDM), you should not copy the model. But if you have... the workaround that May Kung suggested is correct if you want to reassign a pre-existing SysId to a newly created or copied model and have Model Manager recognize it as a automatic version.

Hope this information helped everyone...

[PM Arnaiz]

I´ve used this workaround many times with new versions of imported PCBs that need to have the same SYSID.

The only thing I want to notice is that you don´t need to create a stub piece. If you cut the complete geometry, you get a part with zero geometry which can be united to the copied part, so you can avoid the second step indicated before.


Pedro

[May Kung]

Really? I'll have to note that down for the next time I need to "transfer" a SYSID. Thanks for the tip. :)