Managing Part Interdependencies
Associativity allows you to modify design intent to cause automatic updating of the appropriate objects in your assembly. Associativity is accomplished through external relationships, also known as dependencies or references.
Part interdependencies allow for communication of design criteria from components on one level of the design to components on lower levels. Associativity and part dependencies provide a means for controlled changing or updating of an entire assembly design. Reference control manages part interdependencies by limiting undesirable ones or allowing desirable ones.
External references are dependencies between a Creo Parametric object (part or subassembly) and information from another object not owned by either the referencing object or its submodels. References to “out-of-model” information are external references. Design Manager handles these references with external reference control functions.
Scope is the range of objects to which a specified object can refer. Scope control functions allow you to define objects to which other objects under development can refer. You can establish global scope settings for all objects or specific settings for individual objects.
Design Manager handles scope issues with external reference control functions. The enumerated type ProExtRefScope defines possible scope settings as:
• None—Allows no external references.
• Subassembly—Allows external references only to components of the same subassembly
• Skeleton Model—Allows external references to higher-level skeleton models only
• All—Allows external references to any other object anywhere in the assembly
The enumerated type ProInvalidRefBehavior defines two methods of handling out-of-scope references. They are as follows:
• Prohibit Out-of-Scope references—Creo TOOLKIT reports the external reference as out of scope. You must select another reference.
• Copy Out-of-Scope Reference—Creo TOOLKIT warns that the reference is out of scope. You must do one of the following:
◦ Cancel the selection and choose a different reference
◦ Confirm that you do want to use the selected reference. Creo TOOLKIT then creates a “local backup” of the reference. The local backup reference automatically updates (only while the parent is in the current session).