Analyzing the Impacts of a Change

The Impact Analysis function displays all the documents pointing onto a selected object. This tool allows you to evaluate the impacts brought by the modifications made to the current object and therefore helps you choose the solution to implement with the least modification cost.

We recommend you use this tool prior to checking out and modifying documents.
This scenario assumes your CATIA session contains a CATProduct document that comprises a CATProduct document including a CATPart document. A CATDrawing document was created from the assembly, it is thus also linked to that CATProduct document.

  1. Select Product2 as the document which related documents you want to see.

  2. Click .
    Impact Analysis is also available from the SmarTeam menu, contextual menus and in the Desk window.
    The Impact Analysis dialog box that appears displays all documents related to the selected product.

    Note that you can resize it to improve the view.
    Three options let you choose the way in which the information is displayed.

    Whatever option you select, the way objects are displayed in the Impact Analysis dialog box depends on the way the SmarTeam tree properties has been customized. For more information, see Customizing SmarTeam Document Display Information.

Latest Revisions only

  1. From the drop-down menu in the lower part of the dialog box, set Latest Revisions only.
    This option displays only the latest revisions of the documents that will be impacted by the current revision of the selected object.

  2. Click the + sign in front of the Downstream Application Link (Reverse) category.
    This category lists the latest revisions of the drawing documents pointing onto the assembly you have selected.
    The Parent category is empty since CATPRD-0058 a.0 Product1_1408 CATIA Product is referenced by no document.

    By applying Impact Analysis onto the sub-assembly, you could see in the Parent category that CATPRD-0058 a.0 Product1_1408 CATIA Product is its parent. You would obtain this view:

Grouped Cross Revisions

  1. Still using Product2 as the selected document you are analyzing, from the drop-down menu, set Grouped Cross Revisions.

  2. Click the + sign in front of the Downstream Application Link (Reverse) category.
    Grouped Cross Revisions     displays also the impacted documents as well as all their revisions.
    You obtain this view:

    By applying Impact Analysis onto the sub-assembly, you could see in the Downstream Application Link (Reverse) category that an earlier version exists for its parent CATPRD-0058 a.0 Product1_1408 CATIA Product. You would obtain this view:

Cross Revisions

  1. Still using Product2 as the selected document you are analyzing, set Cross Revisions.
    This option displays the same contents as when using Grouped Cross Revisions, but the presentation of impacted documents is slightly different. There is no sub-category within each category. In our example, the display shows that the latest revision of the drawing as well as the previous one would be affected by changes to the assembly.

  2. Click Close when done.

Locate Active Document

In case you want to know more information about a document displayed in the Impact Analysis tree, you can:

  • right-click the document and select Locate Active Document

Or

  • directly double-click the document

This opens a SmarTeam dialog box with detailed information on the document.