Creating a Manufacturing Assembly

Although a Manufacturing Assembly is not a part itself, it can be associated to a process as an input or output like any part/product in the PPR tree. Each Manufacturing Assembly may be assigned a unique part number.

The parts that constitute a given Manufacturing Assembly may be viewed in a read-only viewer which provides panning, rotating and zooming functionality.

A Black Box is a CATIA product which can contain as many as desired products (parts). Starting from release R18 you can use products of a Black Box in DPM for Manufacturing Assemblies and Manufacturing Kits.

Products of a Black Box which are used in a Manufacturing Assembly (MA) or Manufacturing Kit (MK), can be saved in Manufacturing Hub:

In order to save the use of these products in MA or MK in Manufacturing Hub, make sure that you have activated the Option Save Relation to Unexposed Part in Database under Tools > Options > Digital Process for Manufacturing > Manufacturing Hub.

Only if you have activated this option, the relations of these products to Manufacturing Assembly or Manufacturing Kit are saved in Manufacturing Hub. After saving the Manufacturing Assemblies and Manufacturing Kits are accordingly indicated in the project library.

This procedure describes the following functionalities:

• Creating a Manufacturing Assembly
• Removing Parts from a Manufacturing Assembly
• Editing a Manufacturing Assembly
• Manufacturing Assemblies and Position management
• Manufacturing Assemblies and the Manufacturing Hub

Creating a Manufacturing Assembly

1. Click Create Manufacturing Assembly .

   The Manufacturing Product dialog box appears.

2. Enter the name of the assembly in the Name box:

3. To enter a manual part number, click the Generate button.

   The Manual Part Number Generator dialog box appears.

4.  Enter the number in the Part Number box, and click OK.

   After the part number is entered, it is displayed in the non-editable Part Number box in the Manufacturing Product dialog box. If you want to edit the part number later, use the Generate button.

5. Add parts to the assembly by clicking each one to be included (either in the PPR tree or the 3D viewer).

   Each selected part is added to the Parts List of the Manufacturing Product dialog box:

6. To launch the preview window and see parts that have been selected, select the Preview checkbox.

   You can remove parts erroneously added to the assembly by selecting them in the Parts List (or, if you want to select all parts in the list, select the Select All check box), then clicking the Remove Parts button.

7. Click OK to create the Manufacturing Assembly.

   The resulting assembly appears under Applications > Manufacturing Products in the PPR tree:

Removing Parts from a Manufacturing Assembly

1. In the Manufacturing Product dialog box, select the part or parts in the Parts List (selecting the Select All check box selects all of the parts in the list).

2. Click the Remove Parts button; click OK.

Editing a Manufacturing Assembly

1. Select the Manufacturing Assembly in the PPR tree and click on it, or right-click and select Definition.

   The Manufacturing Product dialog  box appears.

2. Use the dialog box as described above to alter the Manufacturing Assembly, e.g., to remove parts or alter the part number.

3. Save the changes by clicking Apply or OK.

Manufacturing Assemblies and Position Management

Positions and states can be created for manufacturing assemblies in the same manner as they are created for other parts and resources.

Manufacturing Assemblies and the Manufacturing Hub

Manufacturing assemblies created during a Manufacturing Hub session in DPM are saved back to the Hub, along with their associated hierarchy of parts and/or child Manufacturing Assemblies. In addition, process relations to these manufacturing assemblies are also saved. In Process Engineer, manufacturing assemblies can be found in the ManufacturingAssembly folder of the Project Library:

When loading a process from the Manufacturing Hub, all manufacturing assemblies linked to the loaded process are loaded in DPM. Conversely, existing manufacturing assemblies not linked to the loaded process are not loaded in DPM, but may instead be loaded via the Search command in the PPR Hub toolbar.

Note

A Black Box is a CATIA product which can contain as many as desired products (parts). Unexposed parts can not be used within Manufacturing Assemblies and Manufacturing Kits

In Process Engineer, Manufacturing Assemblies will belong to a Product Plantype with the nameshort attribute set to "mbomnode". The standard plantypeset Default-PRO-DPM-IGRIP_V5RXX provided has a plantype named "Manufacturing Assembly" with this nameshort. If you are using a custom plantypeset, you must create your own plantype with this nameshort.

Warning

A Manufacturing Assembly represents a collection of assembled Parts/Products. However, this collection is not itself considered a Part or Product in DPM, but rather a different type of entity. Because it is not in the same class as a Part or Product, it is very important that a Manufacturing Assembly is never set as the authorized child of any Part or Product in a Process Engineer plan type set. This would result in erratic behavior when loading processes into DPM Process and Resource Definition.

Notes

• A Manufacturing Assembly can be edited (to add or remove parts, for example) by double-clicking it in the PPR tree. This will display the same Manufacturing Product dialog that was used to create the assembly.

• A Manufacturing Assembly may be deleted by selecting it in the PPR tree and pressing the Delete key on the keyboard, or via the Delete command on the right-click context menu.