The relationships between a part and a document, two parts, or two documents vary depending upon how the two objects are linked. This section briefly describes the different types of links that form these relationships and then describes the configuration options that are available.

The association between a part and a document is created from the part information page, document information page, or Part Structure Browser. Associations can be viewed from the Related Objects tab on the part information page. These same relationships can be viewed from the Related Objects tab of the document information page.

There are two types of links that can be established:

You can create part to document relationships in the following ways:

Relationship constraints can be created for the Part Reference Link and Part Describe Link types, to specify which document types can be related to which part types for those relationships. Once relationship constraints have been created, only documents of the types specified in the relationship constraint appear when adding an existing document or creating a new document and adding it to a part as a described by or references document. For more information, see Relationship Constraints Tab.

For more information on using the Preference Management utility, see About the Preference Management Utility.

Additional configuration options are described in the following sections.

When a user revises a part using the Revise action or saves the part using the Save As action, the new version of the part carries forward the link to the document by default. While the Revise action always carries the link forward, you can choose to prevent the link from being carried forward during a Save As action by removing the Relationship copy rules related to this operation from wt.properties.

For example, assume the following properties are set in wt.properties:

The first property sets the delimiter for the copy rules to the comma (,).

The wt.enterprise.copyRulesN property is the Relationship copy rule for wt.part.WTPart. This rule copies the references forward when the type of link is WTPartReferenceLink.

If you remove the wt.enterprise.copyRulesN property, then reference links are not carried forward.

Use the xconfmanager utility when modifying the wt.properties file. For more information on using this utility, see the section “Using the xconfmanager Utility” in the Windchill Help Center. For more information about the properties used for copy rules, see the description of wt.enterprise.copyRules in the properties.html file.

As described earlier, Part Reference Link links (WTPartReferenceLink) link to a document master, but display a document version of the master based on the life cycle state rules for the document.

The default behavior is that Windchill searches for the latest released version of the document to display. If no version of the document has been released, it displays the latest working version of the document.

To change the default behavior, change the value set for the List of comma separated life cycle states of documents used to display associated Reference documents to part. in the Preference Management utility.

For example, to change the search to include the Released, Approved, and then Completed states of a document, set the preference value to:

After this preference is set, Windchill searches for the latest Released version first. If none is found, it searches for the latest Approved version. If none is found, it searches for the latest Completed version. So, if a part is linked to Reference Document 4 which has three versions (A, B, and C), where A = Released, B = Approved, and C = In Work, based on the state settings in wt.properties, Windchill displays the latest iteration of version A which was released and ignores the rest.

A user associates one part with another by using the Structure tab on a part information page. When a user makes the association, a Part Usage link (WTPartUsageLink) is created, forming a "uses part" relationship between a part and a part master.

The only configuration option for part to part relationships is described in the next section.

When a user revises a parent part using the Revise action or saves the part using the Save As action, the new version of the part carries forward the usage link.

To prevent a link from being copied forward on a Revise or Save As action, you must remove copy rules from wt.properties. For example, assume the following properties are set in wt.properties:

The first property sets the delimiter for the copy rules to the comma (,).

The wt.enterprise.copyRulesN property is the Relationship copy rule for wt.part.WTPart. This rule copies the references forward when the type of link is WTPartUsageLink.

If you remove the wt.enterprise.copyRulesN property, then the usage links are not carried forward.

Use the xconfmanager utility when modifying the wt.properties file. For more information on using this utility, see the section “Using the xconfmanager Utility” in the Windchill Help Center. For more information about the properties used for copy rules, see the description of wt.enterprise.copyRules in the properties.html file.

There are several different types of document to document relationships in your Windchill solution:

There are no configuration options available for document to document relationships.

About Part to Document Association Logic preference:

The preference Part to Document Association Logic controls the logic for how documents are related to and displayed for a part or a part instance. A value of 'No' uses the PDMLink logic and a value of 'Yes' uses the Windchill PDM logic. The PDMLink logic enforces that a document of type Reference document can only be associated to a part or a part instance as a References document and all other document types can only be associated to a part or a part instance as a Described By document. The Windchill PDM logic allows References and Described By relationships to be created from part or part instance to document regardless of the document type. See the References and Described By tables on the part information page or part instance information page for a description of the behavior of References documents and Described By documents. In addition, the PDMLink logic enforces that a part or a part instance be related only to one version of a document; whereas the Windchill PDM logic allows a part or a part instance to be associated to versions of the same document.

About com.ptc.core.meta.type.mgmt.server.impl.association.useImpliedAssociationConstraintItemList property:

The base association constraints between WTPart and WTDocument are displayed because WTPartDescribeLink is listed as a type that supports “implied” constraints in the system. You can override this behavior by setting a property. By default, this property is set to include: WTPartUsageLink, WTDocumentUsageLink, WTPartDescribeLink, and WTPartReferenceLink. You can set this property in site.xconf as per your requirements. For example, to omit WTPartDescribeLink from this “implied” constraints list, you can set the property as:

The image provided below displays the hierarchy structure of a Part and a Document: