Windchill supports asynchronous product structure development by letting you to specify that a product structure not be automatically built when checking in a CAD structure. This ability provides more flexibility with CAD-driven design methodology by allowing the CAD structure and the Windchill part structure to be temporarily out-of-sync.

Historically, you would create the initial product structure by associating Windchill parts to CAD documents and check the CAD structure into Windchill. From that point, the product structure would be available to other users for initial downstream processing (for example, procurement planning). Using this approach, the product structure would be built each time the CAD assembly was modified and checked in.

However, using a Windchill preference, you can specify that the product structure “not be built” upon checkin. This enables you to continue experimenting with designs in your authoring application and even check them in without affecting the initial product structure. Later in the development cycle, when the checked-in CAD modifications are determined to be valid and worthy of a product structure update, you can execute the build process directly from the structure compare user interface in Windchill without having to perform another checkin of the CAD data.

To specify whether or not to build product structure upon check-in: