Introduction
The 3DEXPERIENCE platform enables you to create objects in the following ways:
- ‘New’ from scratch
- ‘Duplicate’ from an existing object
The lifecycle of these newly created objects is managed through revisions and branches:
What | Purpose |
Revision | To describe the object evolution in a specific “branch”. This evolution is described through the lifecycle of the revision. Example: New revisions are created from a production revision B: Revision B (of Product 1) à for Production Revision C (of Product 1) à for production Revision D (of Product 1) à for production … |
Branch | To capture a certain intent, such as study of different alternatives, or a fix of an issue (of a specific revision). Example: A new branch is created from a production revision B: Branch_B_001 (new object) à for Study Branch_B_002 (new object) à for Study Branch_B_002 (new object) à for fix ... |
In this blog, we shall focus on the branching topic.
As mentioned earlier, branches are useful in the case you need to manage a study of an alternative design. For example, where you want to keep a traceability between the objects. A new branch can be used to represent a change in the FFF (Form / Fit / Function) of the object, but not necessarily.
At the end of the process, you decide on which branch you want to capture its content and generate a new revision that contains this content (this is what we call “content merge”.)
Revision and Branching – Example
Let’s look at this example to better understand the process of branching:
A problem has been raised on a production housing-gear part. The design project manager is asking different designers to provide new studies and to select one that is best for production.
Two revisions of this part exist: A, B (both are in the ‘production’ phase).
As decided by the project manager, the designers need to work on a study based on revision B:
Three different designers will do a study in parallel, without affecting each other. At the end of the study process, the best revision that fits the requirements will be selected to be merged in a new production revision C.
The project manager prepares the work for the designers by creating three branches from revision B:
Br_701_housing-gears
Br_501_housing-gears
Br_201_housing-gears
(All these branches are linked to the revision B of the 01_housing-gears).
The branch Br_501_housing-gears has been studied and selected as the best one to achieve the target.
In order to apply the content of this branch to a new revision (C) of the Production branch (revision B), we can “merge” this branch into a new revision. This is done in a single command “New Revision From”:
When you select the option “New Revision From”, the following dialog box is displayed showing the current “Source Structure”:
Upon selection of the Br_501_housing-gears branch, the dialog box is expanded with more information (“Reference Structure” and “Result Preview”):
- Reference Structure:
The original revision that is being revised (01_housing-gears Revision B)
- Source Structure:
The revision (branch) that its content (Br_501_housing-gears Revision A) will be merged into the newly created revision (C).
- Result Preview:
The newly created revision C (which is a revise of 01_housing-gears revision B)
The revision Explorer will show all these relations:
- 01_housing-gears Revision C:
- is created from Revision B (blue line).
- Its content is copied from the branch Br_501_housing-gears (Revision A).
Note:
You can also use the “Revisions” option to view all these relations between the revisions and their branches:
Summary
Branching enables you to study alternatives, while components in production are not impacted by these studies.
The content of a chosen branch can be merged into a new revision that will contain the same content.
Here is a summary of the example above:
