I need support of Derived parts

[shastu]

I am being told by support, (CaseNo:18648358) that derived parts are not supported.  If I have a derived assembly or a derived part and click on the refresh button in Upchain, it only brings in the top level ipt, but does not bring in the assembly or part that it was derived from.  I am a little surprised by this as derived parts have been a part of Inventor from the beginning of when I started using it which was way back in Inventor 5.3.  That was 20 years ago.  I need someone to first off tell me if these will be supported, and if so approximately how long it will be for that to happen.

[helge.mjovikM64ME]

First I must say that used to use Inventor back in the day, and Inventors derived interpart link reference functionality is by far the best and the least buggy one among the different CAD programs.
(Solidworks has "equal" functionality, but it is completely unreliable, so should be avoided if you like to keep your models sane.)

As far as this is an extremely powerful tool in Inventor, I must ask you if you have really thought through, what implications, using interpart links will have to files stored a PDM/PLM system?
This will create possible relations across several parts and assemblies, which potentially will create a nightmare when revising any of the parts involved. 

Unfortunately PLM and interpart links does not go very well together, and given the immaturity and number of bugs in Upchain, you should be very careful what you wish for from a PLM system which struggles to deliver even basic PLM functionality.

 

[shastu]

Thanks for your feedback.  We have been using this functionality since 5.3 which was released 20 years ago and have loved the functionality that it provides.  Back in 2002 when we started using Inventor, there was no such thing as the weldment option that is there today.  So it gave us a way to make an assembly, derive it, which represented our weldment, and then the derived part allowed us to "machine" our weldment while allowing us to document both the weldment and the machined weldment in separate idw files.  The weldment drawing would look just like it would in the real world without any machining done to it and the machined drawing would show all the machining that needed to be done to the weldment.  Then they added the capability of starting with the weldment template where you could show welds and "machine" the weldment all in one assembly file.  This was a nice idea, but it was lacking one thing.  By doing things the way we started off doing them, it  gave us the flexibility to use a weldment multiple times with different machining options.  It has not created a nightmare for us and I don't see it any different than changing a part that is used in multiple assemblies.  If users are going to make that change, they have to make sure that the changes are backwards compatible with all assemblies that they are used in, or instead of making the changes to that part, they need to create a new item and make the changes to the new item for their assembly.  That is what PLM makes possible and currently we have an Infor Product of PLM that does just that and does it very well.  We are currently just using Upchain in a test environment to evaluate its functionality and so far it has been disappointing due to shortfalls like this.

[helge.mjovikM64ME]

Maybe the term nightmare is an exaggeration. As long as the derived parts follow along the lines of an machined or welded assembly it is manageable.
I agree that functionality like this should be fully implemented and manageable in a good PLM system. Maybe some systems can do it better, but in my experience not many companies maintain any interpart links in their PLM outside the assembly- parent-child relation due to the added complexity and lack of good ways of managing them in the various PLM systems.

Wish you good luck with testing. Upchain still lacks fundamental PLM functionality and is full of bugs. It has potential to become a good system, but as you've probably noticed, the Autodesk team isn't exactly very responsive to requests, so don't expect that to happen anytime soon.

[shastu]

Would you mind sharing some of the bugs that you have found? I have found plenty myself, but if you don't mind sharing, it may help me save myself some time.

[helge.mjovikM64ME]

It is a mix of bugs and just lacking functionality, which one would expect that would be part of any PDM/PLM system.
Workflows and translations generation in particular is very buggy. Sometimes several instances of same translation is created, but only one of them is working.
In particular the combination of the two are problematic, where pdf's are created, based on the released drawing.
Several of the GD&T annotations are not displayed correctly on the released pdf's.
In addition to all the bugs, there are several fundamental PDM/PLM functionalities which are simply just not present in Upchain. Among them: replacing specification file(such as CAD) in an Item. e.g. any third party pruchased parts, or even parts internal to our company, such as step for the PCB's.
The same issue also makes it hard to roll-back or as Upchain works, revert to a previous revision of a part. It is not possible to save an older version of the CAD file, to a new version, as the CAD file cannot be replaced.
Other than that the CBOM view is pretty much useless for any bigger assemblies, especially with part patterns, as every instance will be displayed, but only one instance at the time can be selected in operations such as clone, copy or kust check out.

The most concerning issue however, is the lack of accountability from Autodesk. With some of these bugs and kinks sorted out, Upchain has a potential to become a grat PDM/PLM system, but we have been testing the system for months now, but pretty much none of our concerns or any of these issues, have been addressed.

So in short, there seems to be no accountability from Autodesk. No one in the position to make a difference seem to be interested in actually helping us, ore dealing with the core issues, so we struggle to see that there will be any improvements in the near future, and have therefore decided that we can not risk moving forward with Upchain.

[shastu]

Thanks for taking the time to explain. I really appreciate it.

[helge.mjovikM64ME]

👍

[andreja.schneider]

Hi @shastu.

Thank you for your idea!

This is just to notify you that we have accepted the idea and our development team has it on it's roadmap. We will keep you informed on further progress.

Best regards,

Andreja Schneider

[mladen_vuk_autodesk]

The implementation is complete. For more information, please visit the released notes under fixed issues section here.