Hierarchy of CAD Documents

If you have purchased a third-party integration to a CAD authoring application, you can import Part families that were created with this CAD application into Aras Innovator. The Product Engineering (PE) application’s capabilities enable you to manage the imported Part families as well as to create new ones.

A Part family is a multi-level hierarchy of CAD Documents that consist of single-level CAD Documents Relationships. The PE application supports the management of multi-level CAD Documents hierarchies through creating, replacing, and removing single-level CAD Documents Relationships. A single-level CAD Documents Relationship is a Parent-Child relationship between two CAD Documents. If a Parent has a Child that is also a Parent, it is a multi-level CAD Documents hierarchy.

If you add a CAD Document to another CAD Document, you create a Parent-Child relationship between them. If the Parent had no Children before, then a new hierarchy of CAD Documents is created and vice versa. If you remove a CAD Document from another CAD Document, you delete a Parent-Child relationship between them. If the removed Child was the last one, then the hierarchy of CAD Documents is deleted.

A multi-level hierarchy of CAD Documents can represent a proper BOM hierarchy.

There are two ways to set up a multi-level hierarchy of CAD Documents:

• Add existing Children to a Parent. This approach is used when building a new assembly using existing CAD Documents. For more details on this approach, refer to section Creating a CAD Document Relationship.
• Create new Children while adding them to a Parent. This approach is convenient for populating nested CAD Documents or creating hierarchies quickly without getting into the details of each Child. However, it is still necessary to complete each Child later. For more details on this approach, refer to section Creating a CAD Document from another CAD Document.

This approach is used for building a new assembly using existing CAD Documents.

To add an existing CAD Document to another CAD Document:

1. Open the Parent CAD Document.
2. On the Parent toolbar, click Edit.
3. Go to the Structure accordion tab.
4. On the Structure accordion toolbar, click Add CAD Documents.

5. Search for and select the necessary Children to be added.

   

   

   Figure 88.
   

6. Specify the Dependency type, if necessary, by selecting the ellipsis in the Dependency cell, or by typing in the dependency.
7. Click Save or Done to save your changes and create the Parent-Child relationship between the CAD Documents.

To create a new CAD Document and add it to another CAD Document:

1. Open the Parent CAD Document.
2. On the Parent toolbar, click Edit.
3. Go to the Structure accordion tab.

4. Click New CAD Document. A new row appears at the bottom of the CADDocuments grid.

   

   

   Figure 89.
   

5. Click the Document Number cell and enter a document number for the Child.

   Note

   The Document Number is required and should be provided by the user.

6. Enter any additional data by clicking on the corresponding cell or hyperlink in the CAD Documents grid. Refer to section Creating a CAD Document for a description of the CAD Document fields.
7. Click Save or Done. The new CAD Document is created and attached to the Parent CAD Document.

To replace a Child CAD Document in a CAD Document Relationship:

1. Open the Parent CAD Document.
2. On the Parent toolbar, click Edit.
3. Go to the Structure accordion tab.
4. Right-click the Child CAD Document to be replaced and then click Replace. The Search dialog appears.
5. Search for and select a replacement CAD Document. The selected CAD Document replaces the existing CAD Document.
6. Click Save or Done. The Children are replaced.

To remove a Child CAD Document from a Parent CAD Document:

1. Open the Parent CAD Document.
2. On the Parent toolbar, click Edit.
3. Go to the Structure accordion tab.
4. Click on the CAD Document(s) to be deleted and then click Delete CAD Document.
5. Click Save or Done. The selected Children are removed.