Associating CAD Documents to Parts
A recommended practice is to associate Windchill parts with CAD documents at the time of creation. However, there are at least two reasons why that practice might not be followed:
• The CAD documents were created in the workspace by the Save and Upload command in Creo Parametric, not using the New CAD Document window invoked from the workspace.
In this case, the workspace provides the Auto Associate command that allows you to select multiple CAD documents, and then create and associate enterprise parts for those documents with a single click. You can also associate CAD documents to existing parts.
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The preference > > , when set to Yes, specifies that the storage location of new part created during Auto Associate be the same as its associated CAD document. By default, the preference is set to No.
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• Enterprise parts intended to correspond to the CAD documents have already been created in Windchill.
In this case, the Edit Association command allows you to select a CAD document and then search or browse for the appropriate enterprise part to which to associate it. The Edit Association command also allows you to start with a part and find an appropriate CAD document. The use of both commands is detailed in the following topics.
Automatically Associating Parts
The Auto Associate command allows you to automatically find and associate an existing part to a CAD document or, if no matching part currently exists, create a new part and associate it to the CAD document. This functionality operates according to several conditions, and is accomplished using the Auto Associate page.
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The exact manner in which the part is searched for, created, named, and numbered depends on preferences set by a site administrator. For more information, see Customizing Auto Associate .
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Auto Associate Conditions
The auto associate parts functionality works in accordance with the following conditions:
• For a successful association, the matching part must be checked out. Auto Associate automatically checks out the found or created part and associated parts remain checked out after association.
• While searching parts, if more than one part per document is returned, then the Auto Associate command ignores the document and an error message is shown in the Event Management utility.
• Using a multi-selection, if you select parts and checked in documents along with qualified CAD documents, the parts are ignored by the Auto Associate action. If none of the selected objects are valid candidates for the command, a status message appears to inform you.
• If you select a newly created drawing document, the system searches the database for the model associated with the drawing. If the model is found, the system creates a Described By link between the part and the drawing, and an owner association between the part and the model. If the model is not found, a message stating this is reported in the Event Management utility.
For more information, see Automatically Associating Parts and CAD Documents