EPDM automatically maintains part history through the version/revision system.  We, however, are under a mandate to never use revisioning.  Each and every part must have a new part number, no matter how insignificant the change from the previous version.

Given this limitation, is there any way to maintain a part history such that it is possible (easy? convenient?) to find out the full history of a part?  When a new part number is used for a 'revised' part, that file begins its own history, separate from the previous version... my users are very unhappy with this.

I can't think of a reasonable way to handle this...  creating 'ancestor/descendant' variables and manually populating them for each part would be one way, but it's not very convenient and would be error-prone.  I could create references between the earlier version and the later version that would show up in Contains and Where Used, but they would be easily confused with the references that normally exist between assemblies and their constituent part, and would clog up the BOM features with irrelevant data.

I anyone has any suggestions on how a comprehensive history of a part can be maintained even when later versions must have their own individual part numbers, I would be very happy to hear it.

Thanks.