Need Parts to Not update in an Assembly

[Anonymous]

I am working on making layout assemblies of equipment for my company. I am making assemblies of our food holding equipment for 2014 and years going forward. That being said, we use the Vault for all of our parts and assemblies. Since I am making an assmbly of parts we used last year that may have since had a revision made to them, is there a way to assure an assembly does not update to the new versions of the parts? I know one way is when you open the assembly and it asks "Do you want to update the assembly's parts to the newer versions" Obviously just hit no, but the problem is everyone is so use to hitting Yes, that someone will most likely hit yes and it will throw the assembly off. I know how to place old revisions of parts into assemblies, that is not a problem, I just need to make sure that when a customer calls and has questions on their 2014 model, that the parts inside the assembly are in fact the parts that were used in 2014 and not the newer revisions of the parts we released in 2015. Thank You for any help anyone has!

[Daniel248]

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@Anonymous wrote:

I am working on making layout assemblies of equipment for my company. I am making assemblies of our food holding equipment for 2014 and years going forward. That being said, we use the Vault for all of our parts and assemblies. Since I am making an assmbly of parts we used last year that may have since had a revision made to them, is there a way to assure an assembly does not update to the new versions of the parts? I know one way is when you open the assembly and it asks "Do you want to update the assembly's parts to the newer versions" Obviously just hit no, but the problem is everyone is so use to hitting Yes, that someone will most likely hit yes and it will throw the assembly off. I know how to place old revisions of parts into assemblies, that is not a problem, I just need to make sure that when a customer calls and has questions on their 2014 model, that the parts inside the assembly are in fact the parts that were used in 2014 and not the newer revisions of the parts we released in 2015. Thank You for any help anyone has!

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Traceability can be achieved in several ways, by using a date and Product ID number, such as:
- “Build Number” or “Batch Number” and a reference to a detailed (unique) BOM containing data about every part, including revision number, supplier’s batch number (if outsourced), etc. All assemblies with the same Build Number will then have the same parts, from the same supplier’s batch, etc. When a component changes, the Build Number is incremented and a new (unique) BOM is created;
- “Serial Number” and a cross-reference to that detailed (unique) BOM; Similarly, assemblies with serial numbers between say xxxx and xyzw would be identical;

To be able to identify correctly the parts and their revision, batch or other characteristics when a customer calls, that customer should have been provided with such product ID, which can be cross-referenced internally to the design and assembly as it was at the time it was built.

I’ve only mentioned this because you’ll probably want to consider a consistent and documented way of maintaining traceability (if your company hasn’t done that already). Also, when working with assemblies that update instantly if some component changes, is good practice to never rely solely on everyone hitting the “correct” button when opening or saving an assembly. Vault goes a long way towards achieving traceability - you’re almost there.

Depending on what flavour of Vault you are using, you can lock the parts for editing (Vault Pro), or make a “static” copy of the design (and all its components) at the time it was released. You can then very easily add a prefix or suffix to all those file names – could be the “Build Number”, etc. Ask for more details in the Vault forum, if you wish.