Is it possible to find out where a part is used?

[waltermcleod]

Good day all, I know I can right click and get constituents of an assembly, but is it possible to find out where a part is used?
I do a lot of one off designs and trials and I want to remove all the parts I did not use as most will never be of any use in another design.
Just really for tidying up.
Cheers,

 

[DavidJ]

This is only easily possible with Vault.

 

[Lew_Merrick]

Walter,

1) You can RMB select the part in the assembly and choose Show part in Explorer as one potential solution.

2) You can select the part in the Design Explorer and it will "highlight" in your design.

3) You can perform a Save As on the assembly and see where (and change if you wish) each part in the assembly is located.

Do any of these help?

 

[JST]

About the only way to do it without some library maintenance product, is a list of all parts, and then going through each design and marking the parts off the list as they are found. Obviously whatever is left is redundant.

Unlike a threaded database, the parts do not contain any links to their uses. Only the assemblies carry those links.

I have wanted that facility many times. And not just for parts, but also for assemblies, to find "orphan" subassemblies which never get linked to a final assembly ( I can do that because final assys have a specific file name convention).

Unfortunately, it doesn't exist, and cannot exist without a separate software package to do automatically what is described above.

 

[waltermcleod]

Thanks everyone, kind of thought it was a long process. Would it not be possible for Geomagic to maintain a database of all assemblies so when you ask where a part is used it can just trawl through and report the instances. Pretty much like manufacturing systems do, I can interrogate Sage manufacturing to find, and replace if required, parts on BOMs.
Ah well, a couple of days work ahead for me. On the plus side, the sun is shining this morning.
Thanks again,

 

[DavidJ]

If you store your designs in Vault, it does exactly that. However, Geomagic seem to be quietly dropping M-Files....

 

[waltermcleod]

David, maybe 3DS are going to incorporate it into Geomagic?
I used to use Solidedge which had a good vault-type product built into the software. But that was many moons ago.
No point in me installing vault only to see it disappear.
I'll wait a while.

Cheers,

 

[bigseb]

Building on what Lew said:

You could also open your assembly (which would most likely contain the latest revision of your parts) and do a save as to save the assembly and all its constituents in a new folder. Then go and delete the contents of the old folder.

 

[NateLiquidGravity]

If you store your designs in Vault, it is supposed to do exactly that. However, Geomagic seem to be quietly dropping M-Files....

There I fixed that for you. Mine does not always update the relationships. Unless this was fixed in a newer version than I have.

 

[ajayre]

Here is a script to find all parts and assemblies in a folder, and all sub-folders:

http://www.wizotools.com/node/40

For each assembly found you can then open in WizoScript and "walk" through all the parts and sub-assemblies in it looking for the desired part. For example:

http://www.wizotools.com/node/41

This means all parts on an entire drive could be found along with the assembly hierarchy of each use. The output could be to a spreadsheet for sorting, searching and cataloging.

Andy

 

[waltermcleod]

Good morning and thanks again all, Andy, I'll try Wizoscript, didn't know this would involve reading though

Cheers,

 

[jhiker]

If you store your designs in Vault, it does exactly that. However, Geomagic seem to be quietly dropping M-Files....

What makes you say that Nate? :shock:

 

[DavidJ]

Jeff, assuming your question was to me not Nate....

Latest brochure for Geomagic Design only mentions TeamPlatform, not Vault. TeamPlatform has a separate ongoing fee, it doesn't really do the same thing as Vault, though does have some good points.

No Vault licences with new purchases - you can buy M-Files separately (from M-Files) and it should be possible to make it work (if someone provides the Vault structure that GD needs).

Vault licences for current customers no longer being renewed with GD maintenance - version of M-Files will not be updated. If you want to keep M-Files up to date, Vault support would have to be transferred to M-Files and subscription paid.

Long term - will GD continue to be M-Files compatible ? I hope so, but I'm concerned. As time moves on, I don't see what the incentive would be for Geomagic to fix any Vault issues.

 

[MikeHenry]

Long term - will GD continue to be M-Files compatible ? I hope so, but I'm concerned. As time moves on, I don't see what the incentive would be for Geomagic to fix any Vault issues.

In my experience GD didn't really support Vault in the past. My AV software interfered with the way Vault worked and GD (Alibre at the time) told me to contact M-Files and washed their hands of the issue. There was also that issue of "Checked Out" files not being checked in when Alibre/GMD was closed, even when that option had been checked off. Did that ever get fixed?

 

[jhiker]

Jeff, assuming your question was to me not Nate....

Latest brochure for Geomagic Design only mentions TeamPlatform, not Vault. TeamPlatform has a separate ongoing fee, it doesn't really do the same thing as Vault, though does have some good points.

No Vault licences with new purchases - you can buy M-Files separately (from M-Files) and it should be possible to make it work (if someone provides the Vault structure that GD needs).

Vault licences for current customers no longer being renewed with GD maintenance - version of M-Files will not be updated. If you want to keep M-Files up to date, Vault support would have to be transferred to M-Files and subscription paid.

Long term - will GD continue to be M-Files compatible ? I hope so, but I'm concerned. As time moves on, I don't see what the incentive would be for Geomagic to fix any Vault issues.

Thanks for the carification, David. It certainly seems as if it might be dropped in the near future.
Teamplatform seems to be all about file sharing via the 'cloud' - I wonder what the implications will be for local file mangement - will we revert back to the windows file system rather than the vault maybe?