Replacing drawing reference through the API

MBartlett21

Is there a documented way to update drawing references through the API?

I've tried both of the below:

• POST /appelements/d/{did}/w/{wid}/e/{eid}/references/{refid}
  • The result was either "error generating query for deterministicId" or "An internal error has occurred; support code xxxx" or sometimes a message object about "must not be blank", depending on which parameters I tried to pass
• POST/elements/d/{did}/w/{eid}/e/{eid}/updatereferences (seems like it should be the more correct way)
  • The result was always nothing, and it appeared to update the reference in the drawing, but the new reference always failed to resolve.

Caden_Armstrong

Actually, I played around with this a bit more and you can update references in some scenarios.
I've only been able to get drawing references that reference the current document/workspace to go, but you can do a body like:

POST /appelements/d/{did}/w/{wid}/e/{eid}/references/{refid}

{
"targetElementId": "3e1aaa9584e18f3f590b71d9"
}
Where only the targetElementId is modified.

And the view/sheet reference will update to the new element, assuming everything is valid without changing the microversion of the document.
I think a word of caution is appropriate here, I may have put the drawing into a broken state a few times messing around with this stuff.

Caden_Armstrong

My Renaissance app has a function that duplicates drawings and modifies the configurations to generate "configured" drawings.
I'm using the endpoint:

POST /appelements/d/{did}/w/{wid}/e/{eid}/references/{refid}

and my body is:
referenceId
targetConfiguration

From playing around with drawing references, most fields aren't supported.
What in the reference are you trying to update?

Caden_Armstrong

Actually, I played around with this a bit more and you can update references in some scenarios.
I've only been able to get drawing references that reference the current document/workspace to go, but you can do a body like:

POST /appelements/d/{did}/w/{wid}/e/{eid}/references/{refid}

{
"targetElementId": "3e1aaa9584e18f3f590b71d9"
}
Where only the targetElementId is modified.

And the view/sheet reference will update to the new element, assuming everything is valid without changing the microversion of the document.
I think a word of caution is appropriate here, I may have put the drawing into a broken state a few times messing around with this stuff.

MBartlett21

My idea was trying to duplicate drawings and then replace references, so that I could create a drawing with a particular view layout (rather than the default four views). I'll try trimming the reference updates down and see what that does for me.

Caden_Armstrong

I'm attempting the same thing. The difficulty is that if you duplicate your "template" drawing and transfer it to another document, the reference becomes a version reference…and I'm having trouble updating them.
My workflow is:

- Duplicate template drawing AND part studio tabs
- Update the duplicated drawing references to the duplicated part studio
- Do a "move tab to other document" including the referenced tab (this ensures that when it gets transferred into the destination document it becomes a microversion reference instead of a version reference)
- Update the drawing to your desired final part references (should only require an elementId as before)
- delete the extra part studio tab

Its a lot of steps, but it works….

eric_pesty

When I do it manually, I do a "part out" of the drawing and reference, and then restore but I'm not sure you can do this through the API…

MBartlett21

So far the reference updates are happy to include the targetConfiguration, targetElementId and idTag keys in order to change to another part, so I'm happy with that so far. Next step is to work out duplicating nicely…

EDIT: Just the targetConfiguration, targetElementId and idTag seem to work fine to update from a version reference to a workspace reference. It seems I can't include a targetDocumentId, otherwise it also asks me for a targetVersionId. (this does appear to work for changing to a version reference as well)

And it also appears to be happy to update to assembly references as well.

And this is one of the nice errors that I got while testing (which seems to list out the fields that work)

Spoiler Warning

Target reference is not valid com.belmonttech.modeling.app.BTAppElementReferenceEntry@2582b125
[configuration_=default
,deterministicIdConfiguration_=default
,deterministicIdMicroversionId_=a9487400185bec6f474366fd
,deterministicId_=JHD
,documentId_=f529c46a3baa04721a44e65f
,documentMicroversionId_=<null>
,elementId_=376501fe80aaa1e5c1b8c2b8
,isFlattenedPart_=false
,isLocked_=false
,isSketchOnly_=true
,isSurface_=false
,microversionId_=<null>
,occurenceId_=<null>
,partIdentity_=<null>
,partNumber_=<null>
,queryBelScriptVersion_=2506.0
,referenceId_=fc7d0d7c19679d7d504bf267
,referenceType_=PART
,revision_=<null>
,sketchIds_=<null>
,trackNewVersions_=true
,versionId_=7584b029e6af3b41a1e65003
]

MBartlett21

Ok. Results.

Updating assemblies seem to cause problems with the drawing. It all appears well, but stops working properly if you try to change configuration through the UI. (eventually results in not being able to use the sheets panel and getting 'Prior configuration failed to load. Not found.' when changing the configuration of the BOM.)

This seems to happen whether you update the BOM references to the correct tab and configuration (retrieved with the bomelement API) or just leave them alone.

Part drawings appear to be fine though.