About Design Variants

Design variants are top-level configuration features used to define a product's options.The number of design variants and corresponding design conditions control the total number of possible product variations or combinations. Rules are used to evaluate design variant/design condition selections to determine the set of parts to include in the corresponding EBOM. Design variants represent market variability. Design conditions are selected when creating a product configuration. The subfeatures of a design variant can be organized into common groups.

When a design variant is added to a logical feature, it is inherited upward by the immediate parent logical features and the context product. When a design variant is removed or inactivated, it is removed or inactivated from all immediate parent logical features as long as no other lowest level logical feature refers to it.

Note: If you manually add a configuration feature to a product or product variant and then add it as a design variant to a logical feature, that configuration feature will be retained in the product or product variant context even if the design variant is removed.

Note: Master feature functionality has been removed in release V6R2012x. The Master Composition function under the model category no longer has the capability to create master features. Under Design Effectivity, only the model and product structures are shown while master features are not shown.

Related Topics
Logical Features Page
Working with Design Variants
Copying by Merge and Replace

You can determine the effectivity of a design variant for a logical feature in every level of the feature structure as either Active or Inactive:

  • The active or inactive status of a design variant is applied to all immediate parent logical features.
  • If the status of a design variant is changed to Inactive for a low level logical feature and the status of the same design variant for a higher level logical feature is changed back to Active, the design variant is added to the context product as a configuration feature.
  • The status of a design variant can be set manually or by the system through inheritance. Setting the status manually overrides any status set through inheritance or any status that could be set through future inheritance.
  • If two lowest level logical features refer to the same design variant, then the inactive status on one will not be inherited at any parent levels.
  • In the context of a product variant, you can make the design variants for logical features either Valid or Invalid. The valid or invalid status of a design variant functions the same as active or inactive status. You cannot add or remove design variants in the context of a product variant.
  • Design variants for children that are added under a leaf-level logical feature are not programmatically rolled down. Such design variants are considered user-defined conditions, and are therefore not altered in the Merge and Replace process.