Copy drawing with part/assembly when inserting

[dmbarbour]

I know that you can use "rename_drawings_with_object" to enable saving a drawing with its associated part, but what if you're just inserting a part into an assembly? If you do that, the associated part drawing does not save into your working directory. Any workaround for this?

 

[dross]

That is not intended.
Why would you want more than one copy of the drawing? If you have multiple copies in different directories, making changes will be hazardous.

 

[dmbarbour]

We have a library of modules that we insert into our assemblies. For instance, we have a CSTM1 module that we might copy and modify several times (CSTM2, 3, 4, etc). In order for drawings to copy, I have to copy the module to my working directory using windows file explorer, rather than using the insert component button. Then I do a Save Copy for CSTM2, etc, so there is a new associated drawing for each variation.

 

[moldman]

We have a similar problem when saving a copy of assemblies. We have a generic mold base assembly with a sub-assembly and 12 drawings associated with it that we start every job with. The problem is if you save a copy of the assembly renaming the appropriate parts to their desired new name the drawings don't come along for the ride. The solution is the same as yours - copy in windows and rename later. Pro should be smart enough to copy and rename any associated drawings in the working directory. This should be the case for renaming parts with drawings as well. Nothing more aggravating than renaming a part and forgetting to have the drawing in session and then trying to open the drawing to no avail. There should be some sort of indication in the part model for pro to know if a drawing for the part exists. Then when you rename the model, it could automatically bring the drawing into session and rename it as well. There could be an option to not rename the drawing and just leave it as is, but bare minimum the drawing should be saved after the part is renamed, otherwise it's useless. I don't even rename drawings in Pro anymore, I just rename them in Windows explorer and then rename the parts in Pro later. It's quicker and easier and since we don't use PDM it doesn't really matter.

I devised a method to automate this once. The naming format for the files is xxxx_part-name with xxxx being the shop order for the job - it's the same in all parts and the only thing that changes with the new name. In the generic start assembly and models xxxx is actually xxxx. I took a copy of the assembly and all related drawings and created a trail file renaming everything from xxxx.... to yyyy..... Now when a new job is started you just copy all files to a new directory, edit the trail file by search and replace yyyy to 1234 or whatever the new shop order is. Now you just play the trail file. It worked like a charm but strangely enough like a lot of trail file attempts it didn't work all the time. It wouldn't work for my co-workers on their computers. They even tried writing their own trail files thinking it was some quirk but to no avail. We have upgraded since and now the trail file doesn't work for me either. Renaming has just become a part of the initial setup before you begin a job.

 

[dmbarbour]

Seems like there is no good solution. Now I'm having a similar problem with suppressed parts. I want to have an assembly with a bunch of options that I can suppress via parameters, and those options should come in suppressed by default. But parts won't copy with an assembly if they are suppressed, and relations come in broken as well. Bummer.

 

[dross]

I have found that in Creo2, if you have a drawing in session and rename the part that is in the drawing, Creo automatically saves the drawing.