Changing reference model without loosing dimensions

[HAndreasen]

Hi all!

I work in a major global construction plant and we have 50/50 of our production in automotive/industry. As of now, industry works in inventor and automotive works with Catia, but we would like to make the switch complete over to Inventor.

In automotive we receive files from the car manufacturers (bmw, audi etc.) in Catia V5 or STEP format. Catia V5 can replace one STEP with another STEP, the drawings then updates and only a few dimensions will have to get corrected. We have tried so many different approaches to solve this problem in Inventor but it deletes every dimensions on the drawing once we replace the model and we will have to do the entire drawing from scratch.

The new revisions of Catia files or STEP files dont vary very much and are 98% similar and the 0,0 coordinates are always placed at the same spot as the former revision, as this is important to automotive companies,

Is there any solution to this or is Inventor not capable of dealing with this?

[johnsonshiue]

Hi! Inventor's Replace Model Reference workflows work the best when the new model source (copy of the files) has the same document ID as the old model source.

It seems that in your case, though the geometry look similar, the files are completely unrelated. As a result, the annotations will not survive after the source is changed.

Many thanks!

[HAndreasen]

Thank you for the clarification. Is there any workaround to deal with this? use derive part option? begin with another workflow? or is it possible to give the files the ID they need so as Inventor is able to see its the same part?

[James_Willo]

Johnson would know this better than me, but I think that if you used the Catia file and reference it instead of converting it, you will have the best chance of this working. If you use a STEP, it gets translated each time they make a change in catia and export so it's now a different file.

Like I say, Johnson knows more about what goes on in the background, but I THINK this is what happens. 

[johnsonshiue]

Hi! Regarding the persistent document ID, as long as the files are copied or saved as, the ID persists. A file from scratch from a template file gets a new ID. There isn't a workaround to override the ID.

What James mentioned in AnyCAD workflow, it is indeed an interesting idea. I think using Reference option will give you the best chance of keeping persistent ID (STEP, Catia, NX, PTC, SWX, and SE). Convert option will generate new files so the doc IDs will be different.

Many thanks!