Promote process, and splitting up drawings, for professional companies

nick_papageorge073

Are professional users mostly doing when the product is very mature and ready for tooling issue:

Document 1:
-Contains part studio 1 with multiple parts
-Contains Subassy 1 of parts in part studio 1
(repeat above for each subassy in its own document for a complete product)

Document 2:
-All the drawings of the parts from studio 1
-The subassy 1 drawing 

OR
Giving each part and subassy drawing its own document? This would require a lot of releases.

For promoting:
-One release for parts in the studio.
-After parts are released, change the subassy to reference released instead of versioned parts. Then promote the assy 3D.
-Then, go to the 2D of each part and each subassy, and change it to refernced released instead of versioned. Then promote each 2d.

Any other major strategies or suggestions I'm missing?

Thanks.

eric_pesty

Why not just release from the drawing? It will create releases for all the relevant parts and assemblies... Or am i missing something something?

shawn_crocker

I agree with @eric_pesty.  We usually complete a design and only make drawings that the customer specifically needs, usually just one of the top level assembly.  Usually, everything is in one doc(our top level assemblies are usually not huge) unless the assembly makes use of some library components(almost always).  Once the approver has received sufficient evidence from the sales department or the customer themselves that a green light to produce has been given, the drawing is released.  From there, our process is open to individual creativity and preference as long as additional info being created for MFG is referencing item releases.  We use a tool that pulls the required data from onshape regardless of where it is and coagulates it into a standardized format for the production floor.  Sometimes we will allow a rev be made of an assembly after initial customer supported approval if something was missing a required exploded view or something administrative.  Then we do a partial rev bump.  like A to A1 to signify previous data referencing A is still valid.

nick_papageorge073

eric_pesty said:

Why not just release from the drawing? It will create releases for all the relevant parts and assemblies... Or am i missing something something?

That’s what I’ve been doing the past couple months and it’s been a complete disaster. I’d end up with part versions not matching drawing versions. Also releasing the assy drawing (if done after the part drawing) would want to rev the parts as well. And some other issues I forgot now

I got this new to me method directly from an Onshape tech document about 20 pages long burried near the bottom. I tried it this week for the first time and it solved the other issues I had. Before I switch to it completely, I wanted to ping the group. 

nick_papageorge073

This is where I got the workflow:
https://learn.onshape.com/learn/article/understanding-release-management-in-onshape

Its long, I read the whole thing a few day ago after struggling with promotions for a few months. Here is what was the ah-ha moment for me.

eric_pesty

nick_papageorge073 said:

eric_pesty said:

Why not just release from the drawing? It will create releases for all the relevant parts and assemblies... Or am i missing something something?

That’s what I’ve been doing the past couple months and it’s been a complete disaster. I’d end up with part versions not matching drawing versions. Also releasing the assy drawing (if done after the part drawing) would want to rev the parts as well.

I guess it depends what you do afterwards. For us if you release the assembly and parts all at once all you need to do is go back to the release and what you are seeing is going to be what was there at the time of the release. What happens to "future" versions of the assembly doesn't really matter as it's "work in progress" until a new release is done.

We prefer to do the development work in a branch so that the assembly in "main" is not going to change until the next merge and release and this way we don't need to switch the assembly to specifically reference released parts.

I should note that I do like having a separate documents with all the drawings, this way when you can release the drawings all at once and the corresponding part and sub-assembly releases are all created at the same time.


Also note that if you are releasing the assembly and the parts are identical to the released ones it will give you the option to replace them with the released version instead of releasing new ones straight from the release dialogue. In fact that's a quick way to switch all your assembly reference to part revisions at once.

shawn_crocker

@nick_papageorge073
I feel the need to note, you don't always have to replace or update an item to reference the release to avoid a new rev bump.  As long of you are referencing the item from the version it was released from initially, the release candidate will still see it as a released item and will not rev bump it.  I spent some unneeded time in the beginning referencing revisions until the realization of this sank in.  Meaning, if you reference version 1 of something from an assembly, and then it gets released with the assembly, next time the assembly is run through a release process, the item will not rev bump as long as the assembly is still referencing version 1 of the item.

nick_papageorge073

shawn_crocker said:

@nick_papageorge073
I feel the need to note, you don't always have to replace or update an item to reference the release to avoid a new rev bump.  As long of you are referencing the item from the version it was released from initially, the release candidate will still see it as a released item and will not rev bump it.  I spent some unneeded time in the beginning referencing revisions until the realization of this sank in.  Meaning, if you reference version 1 of something from an assembly, and then it gets released with the assembly, next time the assembly is run through a release process, the item will not rev bump as long as the assembly is still referencing version 1 of the item.

I'm not sure I've had the same experience. I have for example a top level assy, then 5 other assy's, each in their own document. So lets say 6 documents total. That means the higher level assy's have alwyas been referencing a "Version" of a lower level assy (since separate docs). Yet, when I "update all" on the top level assy, it creates new "Versions" on the lower level assy's. Not all the time, and not on each of the 5 subs. But enough where sometimes I don't touch a part studio belonging to a lower level sub for a while, and when I go into it, it has 20 "Versions" in a row created by the system, not by me.

When I just started using the "Releases", it does not do this at all.

Lucas_Kuhns

I have started referencing revisions (black triangle) in my assemblies and drawings. This makes me more comfortable having a "full" document. Previously it made me nervous every time we go over say, 15 drawings. Now that the drawings are referencing a revision, it no longer prompts to update a whole bunch of drawings every time I version the document.

The only thing I don't like about this strategy is it's incompatible with Onshape's configurations. So I cannot reference revisions AND have my assembly configured with different part variants. I was just hoping that Onshape fixes this before it becomes too problematic. So for now, all my "universal" parts in the assembly get a black triangle and all the configured parts are just a version.

nick_papageorge073

Thanks for the feedback @Lucas_Kuhns. I did have a call with OS support, and they said the  way I was proposing to do it is good. They also said there are a couple of other ways. So, I stuck with this "bottom up" approach of first released 3d parts, then going to main workspace. Then re-referencing the assy to pull only the released parts. Then releasing the assembly, and using that in higher level assy's. Then going to the 2D and setting it to reference the released part/assy. Then releasing the 2d. It does seem like more releases. But, it feels right to me. Everything is really clean. I did about 30 parts/assemblies/drawings this way in the past week, and I've been happy.

tim_hess

@Lucas_Kuhns - I had the same issue as you, I think. We used configured assemblies which included configured parts. After we released each configuration of the configured parts we still wanted to be able to switch between configurations in the assembly.  

The solution we found was to have the assembly reference the "version" of the part studio that contains the released parts rather than the released part directly. Once you do this, you'll lose the black triangle in your parts list, but the release status properties (as shown in the BOM) will still be correct and will show the correct part revision and the assembly can still be configured. 

S1mon

@nick_papageorge073

This is a helpful reminder of how to do releases properly. I have to say that it would be nice if Onshape made it a little easier to do this bottom up updating in a more automatic way. If there was some check box or something that looked and saw that I'm releasing new revs of parts A, B and C, and those are used in assembly D which is used in assembly E - do you want to update the referenced revisions in D and E, make revs of D and E and release all of this together?

adrian_vlzkz

I think I've submitted an IR to have a prompt/dialog in a Release Candidate, so that the Active Workspace updates references to the Revision just Released.

In my experience this more common/desirable than having every single component in an assembly be a "New" Rev, typically with a new release you'll only be modifying the Assembly level, or drawing and one or two components, not everything.