Automating Collaborative Design

 

Auto Share and Auto Merge

These options provide an alternative usage model for Collaborative Design, one where you are not directly involved in sharing and merging individual briefcases but rather adopt a set-and-forget approach and let the application disseminate all the changes you make to a part used in a collaborative workspace. This mode is preferred in scenarios where the propagation of changes is intrinsically mono-directional and makes Collaborative Design interesting as a productivity tool when you would not otherwise benefit from the ability to concurrently modify copies of the same feature and exchange the changes back and forth among members of the workspace in an organized way.

Sharing a briefcase typically requires the following interactive steps: (see also Preparing a Briefcase)

  1. Identify the feature changes to capture.

  2. Start the Share command.

  3. Add specific features to briefcase.

  4. Select recipients.

  5. Dispatch the briefcase.

The Auto Share functionality simplifies this process.  It is intended to be a helper tool that can be turned on or off.  When turned on, changes to the model are automatically identified thanks to Collaborative Design internal feature change tracker. At a predetermined time interval the modified, new and deleted features are automatically added to a new briefcase and shared to the workspace.

 

Similarly, the Auto Merge functionality simplifies the manual process of selecting and merging briefcases. It is also intended to be a helper tool that can be turned on or off.  When turned on, incoming briefcases are automatically merged into the model.  At a predetermined time interval, the software will check to see if any new briefcases are in the briefcases To Merge list. If any exist, they are automatically selected and merged in the order they were received.

 

Auto Share can be turned on individually or be both on at the same time.

Turning on Auto Share

  1. To turn on Auto Share, go to the Collaborative Design Settings panel.

  2. Check the option Auto Share in the Share Briefcase section.

  3. Enter the time interval that determines how often the internal feature tracker should check for modifications. In the example, the interval is set to 1 minute.

Turning on Auto Merge

  1. To turn on Auto Merge, go to the Collaborative Design Settings panel.

  2. Check the option Auto Merge in the Briefcase Merge section.

  3. Enter the time interval that determines how often the application should check for yet-to-be-merged briefcases.  In the example the interval is set to 1 minute.

If you have more than one open document in your CATIA session, they use the active document.

 

Auto Share and Auto Merge are not executed if at the time scheduled you are using an interactive command, to avoid capturing or modifying data being edited by you.

Auto Merge applies to all kind of briefcases, not only to those generated by Auto Merge.

 

The content of briefcases generated by Auto Share is similar to the content of those generated by the Quick Share command.

For more ways of tracking and searching changes, see the Share Recent Changes command.