topic Better variant management in Fusion Electronics Forum

Better variant management

qubecl — Fri, 28 Apr 2023 11:11:38 GMT

Hi everyone,

I'd like to point out a pair of features of the variant management which seems a little overcomplicated to me.

First of all: the fact that changing the variant modifies the PCB. I would like the PCB to be unaltered, or at least the possibility to chose to not alter it. The variant is useful to me to select which components have to be mounted by another company and I don't want the PCB to be different.

Currently I have to generate the gerber files with the default variant, then change to the desired variant and generate BOM and P&P files.

There is a workaround maybe?

Second: is there a way to select variants other than text commands? This is slow and requires to remember the name of each variant. If I do not remember the name, I have to open the variant tab, look at the names and type the correct one. Just opening the variant tab and clicking on the desired one would be easier.

Moreover, the fact that some operations can only be done in the default variant, and that variant default is not a valid command, sound crazy to me. Why use variant '' to select the default variant and not just variant default forcing me to search for the correct but conterintuitive command on the forum?

Am I missing something?

Thank you for your time and help.

Lorenzo

Re: Better variant management

jorge_garcia — Fri, 28 Apr 2023 22:06:31 GMT

Hey Lorenzo,

I hope you're doing well. Thank you for this feedback, I'll report them as an enhancement request.

Your second issue can be mostly resolved by going to the design manager. In the Design Manager you can switch variants. The default variant is a blank field for now so we'll look to make it say Default variant or something like that.

We want to do some improvements on the variants functionality, especially on the workflows and interface so it's nice that your feedback is inline with that.

Let me know if there's anything else I can do for you.

Best Regards,

Re: Better variant management

qubecl — Tue, 02 May 2023 11:59:48 GMT

Hi @jorge_garcia ,

Thank you for your help. I should have digged into the documentation, I did not search for another way to manage variants other than the assembly variant command into the design tab. It still could be helpful to have full control from the assembly variant command too, or something like that.

Best regards,
Lorenzo