Multiple Drawings for Single Assembly - Best Practice?

[bmcwilliam]

Hi,

I wanted to check with other users how other companies may handle their own versions of our currently workflow, as well as ask for input on possible issues on our current workflow or best alternatives.

A common scenario we have is that we are designing some component, which results in a number of parts and assemblies. For each assembly we will have a drawing including the BOM, assembly/welding details as required, and possibly some parts detailed on other sheets. Our drawings are numbered the same as whatever assembly they are detailing. These numbers are Vault generated based on a numbering scheme.

We will then often have some sort of drawing that will go to the customer, the variants are usually a sign-off drawing or a proposal drawing. This drawing is usually done of the top level assembly, but of course this assembly also needs its own manufacturing drawing.

A few workflows I have seen to address this;

1. Store sign off drawing in a different Vault folder (but using the same drawing number as the assembly drawing)
2. Manually modify the drawing number of the sign off drawing, eg. 12345.idw has a sign off of 12345-1.idw
3. Insert the top level assembly into an even higher assembly level to create a "Sign off assembly" which can now have a unique assembly and drawing number.

I have personally preferred the use of the third one as it avoids having multiple drawing sharing the same drawing number, and avoids having single assemblies having multiple parent drawing files which creates issues during Copy Design.

The main downside with option 3 is that customers (and internal stakeholders) are usually confused why the drawing number changes/has changed between the sign off and assembly (eg. if they order a part, the part number would be the assembly drawing, not the sign off drawing). It also creates extra files to manage.

Anyone have any thoughts on the best way to tackle this, or have any suggestions on alternative workflows?

[Gabriel_Watson]

If your sign-off drawing is a released version, your manufacturing drawing could be later revision with as-built changes, if that's all that differs between them. What else makes those unique in your case? Why not handle those variants with different revisions or "released type" states?
Proposal drawings could be a first release tagged as "0" or " - ". If manufacturing drawings are a different breed than sign-off or proposal, then your numbering scheme is too simple to account for those. Some alternatives could simply be manual fields on the drawing number, such as suffixes "-A" or "-B". Manual modification would only make sense if the sign-off drawing is kept as a mere PDF documentation for signature, and maybe less than 100 of those would need to be made each year.

[bmcwilliam]

Apparently the company tried implementing separate revision numbering for proposal drawings before I started but never got it functioning correctly so they abandoned the idea.

I think you are right that the proposal drawings do need to be released on sending to the customer. This does mean that all parts and subassemblies will also need to be "released" when many are in a conceptual stage only - but this may just be a mindset change that we need to work through.

Would the different revision schemes be implemented by changing file category, or some other method? I'm not sure how this would be set up to achieve the eg. 1, 2, 3 for proposal, then A, B, C for manufacturing. We would strongly prefer the revision control to be done automatically via Vault which controls our revision tables.

[Frederick_Law]

You can add Lifecycle: Customer Review.

For me, a revision is something we will not go back.

Once we went Rev 01, Rev 00 is history.

So during quoting it may not be revision.

We might have concept 01, 02, 03 for customer review at the same time.

So they're different part numbers, not revision.

They might have their own revisions and it'll be released with that revision.

So it will be Concept02 Rev11.

Vault only keep track of Rev.  Some Lifecycle can be set to increase Rev.  User can still bypass it.

Once it's rev up in Vault, you can't go back without some real pain.  So be careful when to rev.

Set some rules, do a few trial.  See how it works and how everyone handle it.