Integration with Other Applications > Managing CAD and Part Relationships in Windchill > Association Actions for CAD-driven Design > Editing the Association of CAD Documents and Windchill Parts
  
Editing the Association of CAD Documents and Windchill Parts
Windchill allows you to create relationships, referred to as “association” between CAD documents and Windchill parts. An association enables the exchange and updating of structure, attribute, and visualization information between these objects, depending on the type of association that you have assigned.
For more information, see About Association.
The Edit Association action allows you to create, modify, or delete an association between selected CAD document and part objects.
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Dynamic documents and graphic dynamic documents can only be associated to parts by manually initiating the association action on a selected part object. Dynamic documents and graphics dynamic documents cannot form an owner, contributing image, or image link. Only contributing content or content links are available for dynamic documents and graphics dynamic documents.
The Edit Association command enables implicit checkout of Windchill part objects, if they are not already checked out. Any object checked out implicitly remains checked-out, even after you close the Edit Associations dialog box. To commit the changes, you need to check in the part.
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By default, after you associate Windchill parts to all CAD documents in an assembly, you can see the association. However, Usage links between the parts are not visible until after checkin of the CAD document, and when the Windchill build rule constructs the Usage links. This behavior is configurable based on the server-side preference; Operations > AutoAssociate > Build Part After Associate.
A CAD document is said to describe a Windchill part to be included in the bill of materials, and a Windchill part is described by a CAD document.
To edit or create an association between a CAD document with a part in the workspace or commonspace:
1. Select the objects you want to work with:
◦ Starting with objects in a workspace: Select the CAD documents in the workspace that you want to associate with parts, or whose existing association you would like to edit.
You may select more than one CAD document to associate - one part per CAD document. Or, you can associate several CAD documents with a single part. In this case, all the CAD documents describe the part. However, only one CAD document can have an owner link to the part. It is also possible to initially select multiple CAD documents and multiple parts that are in the workspace; but because of the complex relationships that may exist, the system may disallow your selection. In that case, a message displays in the Edit Associations window that only single selection is supported.
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Associate generally requires a single selection of either a part or CAD document. Exceptions are:
• if one part and multiple CAD documents are selected, the part is treated as the selected item; the CAD documents are regarded as targets for association.
• if one CAD document and multiple parts are selected, the CAD document is treated as the selected item; the parts are regarded as targets for association.
◦ Starting with a CAD Document in Commonspace: You can add the current CAD Document to a workspace and start Edit associations in one step using the CAD Document’s action menu.
◦ Starting with a Part in Commonspace: Go to the part’s information page and then to the Related Objects tab. On this tab, there is a report that shows the related CAD/Dynamic Documents.
If any CAD or dynamic documents are already associated to the Part, they will show here with their association type.
2. Select the Edit Association option.
◦ From workspace, select Edit > Edit Association.
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You can also initiate the associate action from other places in Windchill (for example, from an object's information page, or a folders page). Select the Edit Association action from an Actions menu or a right-click actions menu.
The Edit Associations window opens, displaying the selected objects in a table. If selected objects have existing associations, those associated objects are populated in the table. If you have selected a mixture of parts and CAD documents, the system tries to anticipate your intent to associate those objects. The following table describes the actions available for populating and modifying certain attributes of the objects in the Object List table.
Action
Description
Remove
Remove the association of the selected object.
Existing Part
Displays the Find Object window, allowing you to search for one or more existing part objects for association with a selected CAD document.
Create New Part for Association
Displays the New Part window, allowing you to specify the attributes of a newly created part.
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This action can be hidden or displayed using the ‘Create Part’ profile. This profile setting is used when the workspace used is related to a product or a library.
Move Association
Displays Move Association window (for valid selected objects only) to allow you to move an association from one version of a CAD Document to the latest version of the same CAD Document.
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Only a single, never associated document version is valid.
Include selected objects
Allows you to include the selected objects to the table.
Exclude selected objects
Allows you to exclude the selected objects to the table.
Location
Displays the Set Location window (for valid selected objects only) to allow you to specify a storage location for the object.
Set New Name
Displays the Set New Name window (for newly created selected parts only) to allow you to specify a new name.
Organization
Displays the Find Organization window (for newly created selected parts only) to allow you to specify their organization.
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Only available if organizations are exposed on the server.
Find in tree
Allows you to enter a text string to find in the tree listing. You can use the Next match and Previous match controls to move upward or downward through the Object List, highlighting instances of the string.
Reset Table
Resets the table to the default collection (removing any changes specified in the user interface).
◦ From Commonspace, in the part information page select Related Objects > CAD/Dynamic Documents > Edit Association.
The Commonspace Edit Associations window opens, displaying the WT part. If the part has existing associations, those associated objects are populated in the table. The following table describes the actions available in the Object List table.
Action
Description
Remove
Remove the association of the selected object.
Existing Document
Displays the Find Object window, allowing you to search for one or more existing documents for association with a selected part.
Move Association
Displays Move Association window (for valid selected objects only) to allow you to move an association from one version of a CAD Document to the latest version of the same CAD Document.
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Only a single, never associated document version is valid.
Include selected objects
Allows you to include the selected objects to the table.
Exclude selected objects
Allows you to exclude the selected objects to the table.
Reset Table
Resets the table to the default collection (removing any changes specified in the user interface).
3. By default, when the CAD Document is initially selected, the system tries to create an owner link between CAD documents and parts. If you do not want the CAD document to drive the part's structure and attributes, select a different association type from the drop-down menu in the Association Type field.
4. Click OK to create (or continue) the associations specified in the Object List.
5. If the CAD Document is checked out, perform a checkin on the objects to activate a build of the part structure.
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Where structure links are created, checking in the newly associated CAD document completes the association by allowing the Windchill build rule process to create Uses links between the components of a part structure.
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If the CAD Document is already checked in, the system can be configured to run the Windchill build process after creating the association by setting the server-side preference; Operations > AutoAssociate > Build Part After Associate.If the goal is to update the CAD document with the part’s attributes and structure, then you can initiate a Publish to CAD after checkin from the part’s check in User Interface.
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Viewables are not shared between the related parts and CAD Documents until the Windchill build process has been run to synchronize the two objects.