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, CATIA V5, and Creo Elements/Direct Modeling 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• Rarely go out of date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.