Saving a copy with family table instances

[barnam]

Hey, is there any way to save a copy of files with family table instances, and have the instances reflect the newly copied part? For instance, I have this sheet metal part, it's got a few family table instances, a drawing that ahs a couple of the instances on it, and there's an assembly where I make a mirrored part (left and rights). I now need to make a modification and don't want to mess up the original file, it's for a prototype and it may not fly, so I don't want to have to do much work to revert back to the way I originally had it. Can I do a wholesale copy of everything, and make duplicates of the drawing, assemlby, original part and family table instances, and the mirrored part?


Thanks. BM

 

[dcrow]

BM


Yes you can do a wholesale copy of everything. Copy all of the files that you want to make your prototype into, to a new directory; ie: parts, assemblies, drawings. Set your working directory to the new directory and thenmodify the newly copied parts, drawings and assemblies. You can then rename things as long as all of the related parts and drawings areeither opened or in active memory.


dcrow

 

[barnam]

Ok, is that in windchill? do I need to "backup" the files to get them out of whindchill, and do it off line, and bring them back in when I'm done?


BM

 

[dcrow]

barnam


No, That is in Wildfire 3 without any data management software.


drow

 

[barnam]

thanks for the prompt reply, I'm going to go for it now.


BM

 

[ABB_pajo]

Why don't you just make a save a copy in Windchill !?

 

[barnam]

Why don't you just make a save a copy in Windchill !?

I've had bad luck doint that wiht parts that had family table instances. They'd get un-linked on me. To tell you the truth, I've yet to understand the logic behind the reasons why Pro E does the things that it does. I'm assuming it's due to it's unix roots?


Even wiht doing what I did I had to remake my draiwng, which wasn't abig deal. Not a very complicated part...


BM

 

[ABB_pajo]

Hi Barnman !

What version of Windchill are you using. We are using PDMLink8. And for us we have had no problems, atleast since we upgraded. But never any problems with unlinked objects..

Regards
Patrik

 

[jfixsen]

We just recently went to PDMLink 8.0 and WF3.0 and I'm getting an error while trying to do a "save as" on family table parts. I've got a generic with a drawing, and several instances with drawings, and want to copy all of them to new parts but retain the drawings and family table. We've had luck so far, working with them "offline", doing the neccesary changes, renaming, and then bringing them back into PDMLink. Maybe give it a try.

 

[ABB_pajo]

The tricky thing, though is that the icon for "include instance" is vice verse. The default value is that the instances are included. You have to scroll really faar to the right to see this.

 

[barnam]

I think the failure in Pro E is not having the ability to re-link a model to a drawing. I had an instance where I renamed a model & family table instance(in windchill)but the drawing was still looking for the old file name. All it said was that if failed to open the file, part was not in the directory. With Solidworks, if you renamed a model, when you opened the drawing it would very politely tell you that your model could not be found, would you like to browse for it, at which point I'd gladly do it, and all would still be well in the world. Why can't the guys at PTC get Pro E to do that? If you did a "save as" of a part, all open references to that part would be re-directed to the new part. If you did a "save as copy" then it just made a copy of your original part. If you made a copy of a part and later wanted to redirect the drawing to the new part, we'd just temporarily rename the old model (in windows explorer), open the drawing and when it failed to find the model (due to the new file name) we'd point it to the correct model. It was a real time saver since we made lots of similar parts.


BM