CAD Drawing Lifecycle

The CAD drawing is processed by moving it through the states in its lifecycle. For example, in the first state, a new CAD drawing is created and connected to the appropriate ECO and part objects. The Design Engineer then performs whatever CAD work is necessary to generate the new file(s) and checks them into the CAD drawing object. The owner of the CAD drawing then promotes it to the Review state. Only the owner of a CAD Drawing can change its state.

If the CAD drawing is in a route, the route may be set up to prevent the CAD drawing from being promoted until the route is complete.

The CAD Drawing lifecycle includes these states:

Preliminary

New CAD drawings are created in the Preliminary state. A CAD drawing's name can be automatically generated or calculated by the owner. In either case the Create New CAD drawing page is used to generate the CAD drawing and connect it to the appropriate ECO and part objects.

The owner performs whatever CAD work is necessary to generate the new file(s), then checks them into the object and promotes it to the Review state.

As the CAD drawing leaves the Preliminary state, the following checks are fired:


  • The CAD drawing must be connected to an ECO via the ECO New Drawing Revision relationship.
  • All earlier revisions of this CAD drawing must be at the Release state.

If these checks pass, the CAD drawing will be promoted to the next state.

Review

The CAD drawing is reviewed and approved from the Review state by the Responsible Manufacturing Engineer. The review should include viewing its file(s). The permissions in this state do not allow any new files to be checked into the CAD drawing. Once the Responsible Manufacturing Engineer is satisfied that the CAD drawing correctly defines the part(s) it is intended to specify, s/he promotes it to the Release state.

If the CAD drawing is connected to a part with the "Part Specification" relationship, then there must be an ECO connected to the CAD drawing before it can be promoted to the Release state. No associated ECO is necessary if the CAD drawing is not connected to a part, or if it is connected to a part with the "Reference Document" relationship only.

Approved

After the CAD Drawing enters the Approved state, all affected items connected to the CAD Drawing's ECO are checked to see if they are also in the Approved state. If all affected items are in the Approved state, the ECO is automatically promoted to the Review state. If any single affected item connected to the ECO is in a state prior to Approved, the ECO is not promoted to the Review state.

A trigger is available (but is inactive, by default) to block ECO affected items from being promoted to the Release state unless the connected ECO is already in the Release state.

Release

As a CAD drawing enters the Release state, an Action fires that disconnects all Part Specification relationships between the previous revision of this CAD drawing and its parts then connects identical Drawing Specification relationships between those same parts and this CAD drawing. This process has the same effect as if float were defined on the TO end of the Part Specification relationship.

Another Action also fires as the CAD drawing enters the Release state that automatically changes the owner of the CAD drawing to be a special user in the system, "Corporate." This locks down the CAD drawing so no additional changes can be made and it removes the CAD drawing from the engineer's desk.

In the Release state no disconnections of any relationships are allowed. Connections are however permitted to ECR objects that want to revise the CAD drawing.