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Part Number Collaboration (Export / External database)
At our company, there are times where part numbers will be generated by other departments than Design/Engineering, or, there will be non-CAD PNs generated. Is there a way to have the PN database generated by OS exported to a CSV (or csv like) file, where it will continually update this database, and allow for PN creation in it?
From what I've gathered, it sounds like we should just go back to non OS PN generation, at least for this category of parts. But I'd love an answer that says otherwise.
Comments
I'm not convinced there is a single "correct" way, as long as you have a single source of truth and a system that prevent duplicates.
Onshape has an API end point for "Get next part number". This could be used to (like you suggested), export a batch of numbers than can then be reserved by other departments as they need them. Likewise, you could also have an external application that lets users request single part numbers from Onshape as they need them. Benefit to either of these solutions are that Onshape is still the source of truth, but you can also use all of the built in Onshape part number functionality - such as setting missing part numbers in release candidates.
In the past I've also developed solutions that work the other way round. The ERP was the source of truth for the part number, and we created a tool in Onshape that could request and set part numbers for parts, reserving them in the ERP.
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