Introduction to Positioning Assemblies
A WVS Positioning Assembly representation contains no geometry and in its simplest form, represents a single assembly or sub-assembly level and only contains references to a single sub-level of child sub-assemblies and parts. When viewing a Positioning Assembly representation from Windchill in Creo View, these sub-level references are represented by branch-links to the child CAD Document that a WVS servlet then resolves Creo View for at view-time.
Icon representation for a Positioning Assembly Representation viewed in the Creo View Tree Structure:
• 
—Indicates the node is a sub-assembly or part Positioning Assembly reference
• 
—Indicates a node that's defined in the current Representation's structure, that is, published as 'Full Geometry' and not, itself, a Positioning Assembly.
• 
—Indicates the Branch-link failed to expand - normally means the PVS reference was not resolved
When configured to publish an assembly as a positioning assembly, the worker does the following:
• Downloads the top level assembly file (ASM or CAT Product) only
• Publishes the Creo View structure file (PVS) only
• Creates Branch Links in the Creo View Structure (PVS) to the CAD sub-assembly or CAD part representation
For Creo Parametric or CATIA V5 CAD Document structures, positioning assemblies are primarily intended to be used for massive, static, or top level assemblies that have any of the following characteristics:
• Do not need publishing often
• Are too large to be loaded into a CAD application memory
• Rarely go out of date
• Fail to publish as ‘full geometry’ (non-positioning) assemblies due to worker resource or other limitations
The benefits of publishing a large assembly as a positioning assembly can be one or more of the following:
• Always viewing the latest information.
• Maximizes the initial structure to be loaded and provides branch link reloading to improve performance in Creo View with Windchill.
• Enables publishing of Representations of the largest assemblies.
• Massively decreases publishing time for large assemblies.
• Reduced background method server load.
Continue to the next section for a description of the general workflow.