Part Number & Description - How do you do it?

[leeave96]

Part Number & Description - How do you do it?

Back in the old days, it seemed we were limited to about 8 charactors for a file of any kind, be it a CAD file or a text document. Most places I worked used the 8 charactor file for the drawing number and on the drawing was the longer name of the part. Upside was that if you had the drawing in hand, you could search for the drawing file on CAD, since it was the same as the drawing number. The downside - the drawing/file number contained almost no description of the part for searching or browsing the directories. Due to a unique number, there were never (almost never) any duplication of parts.

Then I have worked for folks who could have cared less about file conventions and just gave names to part files as Windows software allowed it. Problem was - it became easy to create duplicate files in separate directories or drives.

Sooooo, where are you folks at today with your drawing/file number and description/file names?

Here's a technique I used for one client I had, I used for the file name BOTH a drawing number and description. For example, a file might be called DN0001 - BRACKET, SUPPORT. Rather than have a drawing format with separate drawing number and description location, I combined both. So the above file name- description would be used in that block. The BOM contained the same too.

This approach had two benefits: It prevented duplication via a unique part number within the file name and allowed the part's description to be viewed or searched in a directory.

Worked great. Just like in the old days, I'd have a block of part numbers and my client had a block of part numbers. We could make the description what ever we wanted, but due to the unique part number, there could be no duplication.

How do you handle part/file/descriptions in your applications?

Just courious!

Thanks!
Bill

 

[indesign]

Close to that way here. We are a job shop and our drawing database has been organized by customer name. Then inside that however is based on the customer part number and part discription. If there is no customer number then we use a serial number based on the company initials and unique serial number. With assemblies then there would be a dash -001, -002 and so on.

Not as neat as having all your own serial numbers but when the customer calls from XYZ company wanting T-54618932-1 part (their part number) then we have to find that part.

 

[swertel]

Two different systems - one for product design and one for tooling.

For product design, we follow the one part = one print method. Therefore, our file names include just the part number. We leave the description off because we put that information in the file properties and is therefore just as searchable in Windows. Also in Windows, we add the revision to the filename because we keep the archive of all previous revisions.

For tool design, we have one tool number for the final tool. This means that there are several components to the tool that make up its BOM that don't have their own unique identifier. Because of this, the filename starts with the tool number and then a description of the component that matches the title in the BOM.

Both methods have pluses and minuses. For product, we can't tell what part is unique to a system and what can be reused (although we are redifining our configuration management to allow for this). Therefore, we can't make interdependecies between parts because what is used in the context of one assembly may change for another and we can't risk it "automatically" making the change. With tooling, we can use in-context design (top-down), but we then can't reuse any parts on other similar tools.

--Scott

 

[p_hanson]

We use the p/n and revision in the file name because we also archive all out of date revisions. But in our ECR/ECN process we also maintain a master list of all parts in our file system. This list is accessible through our intranet and allows anyone in the company to locate parts searching via title, p/n, product line, or any combination of the three. We even have a usable database for the prototype and in-process project parts. It is very useful and being in an ISO registered company it's one of the few benefits that doesn't take tons of paperwork or time.

 

[Gaspar]

We do it as follows:

XXX YYY A NN

XXX ---> Client's initials
YYY ---> Consecutive project number for that client
A ---> One letter for the subassembly
NN -->Two numbers for the particular part in the AA subassembly

So, if we are doing the 5th proyect for Walker Automotive:

WAL005ens ---> General assembly file (ens = assy in Spanish)
C00 Sujecion ---> 3rd subassembly file (sujecion = fixing mechanism in Spanish)
C07 Flecha---> 7th part file for the C subbassembly (Flecha = Shaft in Spanish)
WAL005C07 ---> Drawing file for the 7th part on the C subassembly