Obsolete files

[sheila.clair]

Does anyone have a "best practice" for obsoleting models that are used in upper-level assemblies on a network drive?  I have only worked in Vault and not on a network drive.  

[Gabriel_Watson · Accepted solution]

Some of the techniques from Vault can be applied to network projects as well.
What I would do is rename the models via Design Assistant (so all relationships are not broken while doing so), and add an "obsolete" or other prefix (void_filename, for example). You could also move those into specific "obsolete" folders if needed, but then you'll risk losing the relationships from the files above that consume those (which is not a big deal if you're replacing the obsoleted components with new ones anyways). The goal is to have a clear indication to anyone who searches for files that those are obsoleted and should not be used.

[sheila.clair]

I tested this out and I cannot rename an upper level .iam in Design Assistant.  This makes this option useless for my application.  Any suggestions?

[Gabriel_Watson]

If needed then, Save As the top assembly with a different name. If that's the only one that we need to do manually, it should be ok.
Make sure the assembly is not Read-Only (in Windows Explorer > Properties) to see if removing that allows you to rename it from Design Assistant.

[SBix26]

To add to what @Gabriel_Watson wrote: the top file in Design Assistant cannot be renamed in Design Assistant.  In this case, if you had opened Design Assistant from the assembly drawing file, you could have renamed the assembly, but not the drawing.  Easy to just rename it in Windows File Explorer (from which you probably started Design Assistant anyway).

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Sam B

Inventor Pro 2022.2.2 | Windows 10 Home 21H2