Company Part # Scheme and Fusion Versions - how do you manage?

[bpittman56BXW]

Hello All, 

I work at a company that has it's own part number scheme for mechanical and electrical drawings, and of course, it does not play well with how Fusion keeps track of versions.  

The company part number system is pretty straight forward: 

The first 4 digits are the drawing/ part number and the last 3 are the "revision" number. 

ex: 0018-001.  This would be drawing/part 0018 at revision 001. 

As we all know, if you change the name of your model to something else, (in my case this would be a revision of 0018-000 to 0018-001) all of the associated detailed drawings / assembly drawings that are REV 000 are then no longer linked to the new revision # 001 model.  If you save models/designs like this, then you're going to have to create the detailed drawings from scratch with each new revision, and obviously we don't want that to happen.  The same goes for any electronics designs - and my company does both.  

The only other option that I have come up with is giving the fusion design a "0018-xxx" part number, letting fusion handle the revision history, but putting the onus on my team to make sure to save a copy of this file with the correct company revision on the company server (this is a company mandated requirement).  As you can see, there's a bit of room in there for human error.  

My question is for those of you who may be in a similar situation: What are you doing to work around this type of requirement?  

Thanks in advance for any ideas! 

[jhackney1972 · Accepted solution]

You might what to create your naming/revision system around Component and Assembly Milestones.  The editing or changing a Milestone during an original save or edit will allow you to use your company naming and will not affect the related 2D Drawings.  A couple of other advantages is that Milestones cannot be changed so your revision history is safe.  They can only be saved forward to a new Milestone.  Files can be managed, open, and drawing created by Milestone as well using the History command.

[bpittman56BXW]

Thanks for that tip!  I'll give that a try and see how it goes.