Help me better understand references between designs, and how to escape them?

[drew]

Been working on a project that has grown really complex. Made tons of mistakes along the way, but hobbled on to a 'finished' design.

Last minute, we found out a part is a different size from what we were told it was.

That part-size change caused a cascade of other changes - many of which were impossible for me (a novice user) to execute within the original design.

So - I was back to nearly square 1.

I copied Bodies and Components I could re-use into a new design.

Mainly just bodies, using the select priority for them. Converted back to Components after the paste operation. The ones I copies as components were "Paste New"'d into the new design.

It worked. I have another design, that uses the right size part, and I've pulled my cutlist and materials order - sent off both and we'll start cutting next week..

But then I went to tidy up the project folder. Twelve or so designs wer cluttered in the Project window, some dead-ended early and some went all the way to final design before that awful size change of a critical part. Tried to delete the old rubbish...

It seems that a bunch of designs in the Project area cannot be deleted, because they are being referenced by other designs.

I'm flabbergasted. And I have no blinking way to tell anymore what might be tied to what else, or how it's tied to that other thing...

Two questions:

1) How can a user be made aware of what references are in place between designs?

    (Is there a way to get a **** LIST of them displayed, maybe?)

2) Is it possible to force the release of ALL dependencies/references external to any specific design?

    (Can I "detach" my new and correct design from all other designs? Make it a standalone design?)

I searched a good couple of hours, read a lot of stuff NOT about disassociating designs fom each other...

Just can't find this info.

I suck at search terms, so probably just me, but I need your help here folks!

[zdenek.slavik]

Hi Drew,

In order to view what references are between files, just click on the version info in design's bottom right corner (reads "V1" for example). It opens item details view and there, you can see "Uses" and "Used In" tabs. If you do so on your assembly, you'll get there the assembly's first-level children. If your structure is deeper, you have to follow this with every sub-assembly though.

As for the release of dependecies / references, there's not much you can do about it currently. This is a known limitation and it's being worked on. If your project contains only the one assembly you are about to clean of older version, one way (not an easy one) would be to move or copy all final designs into a new project, make sure your assembly / assemblies work well there, and then "Archive" the old project to get rid of unused designs.

Regards, 

Zdenek

[drew]

Hi-

OK, it's been a year. 

Has any progress been made regarding dependencies as described in my original post?

The method you gave was just too time consuming with so many versions present, so the entire mess of it remained a mess and I walked away form it.

So please post an update?

[HughesTooling · Accepted solution]

The only reliable way to clean a project up like you described is to download the top level assembly then upload to a new project and delete the old project completely.

Even if you had some way to quickly see dependencies in designs you can't remove saves from a designs history. So if design A used design B for version 5 then you delete design B from version 6 you can not delete version 5 from design A's history so you can not delete design B without deleting design A first.

If you download the top level assembly design you get a FZ3 file with all subassembly designs, when uploaded to a new project folder all files will be at version 1.

Also from your description of the mess you got into with the original design, copying bodies out is not a good idea and I wonder if you used Rule#1 while designing. If you create components correctly you'll find managing designs a lot easier so you should find replacing\modifying a component a lot easier to fix. Saving out\copying self contained components will be more reliable as well.

Mark