Introduction

The 3DEXPERIENCE platform provides design teams with an inbuilt set of capabilities for managing both the revisions and the lifecycle of a design. The requirement to manage the lifecycle of a design in a controlled and efficient manner is typically one of the main reasons that a company chooses adopt 3DEXPERIENCE. Therefore, it’s important that the 3DEXPERIENCE environment is configured in the right way before any production work starts, in order to meet a client’s needs.

Understanding Revisions in 3DEXPERIENCE

There are many factors that require a company to revise their products, these include technological advancements, market demand, and competition to name a few. Revisions help companies track the changes to a product, along with its history.

For example, a company releases and manufactures revision A of a part and sells the part to a customer. Then, because of a recent technological breakthrough, the company modifies the part and releases revision B. However, the service department still needs access to revision A to support maintenance because this version is already in the market.

Capturing revisions also helps a company duplicate, modify, and build new products from existing designs. This can help reduce costs associated with the time required to build new prototypes. Revisions also provide valuable insight that help companies understand the design evolution process, aiding the future development of improved designs.

The 3DEXPERIENCE platform provides a robust mechanism to manage revisions that is easy to set up and maintain. Key features include the selection of alpha or numeric revisions, control of visibility based on the revision status and enhanced search.

Primary Revisions vs Secondary Revisions

The 3DEXPERIENCE platform provides for primary and secondary revision values. Each new customer 3DEXPERIENCE tenant is set to use primary revisions by default. The primary value is the main revision of the object that is used at release, and its schema can be set to be alphabetical or numeric.

When using both primary and secondary revisions, the secondary values represent subsequent iterations that are used before the object is ready. When an item is promoted to the released maturity state, both the primary and secondary values are displayed, and the primary value should be used to identify the revision.

For example, when a user creates and saves a new part, it is assigned the revision A.1. After an operation to modify and save the part, if the user selects the new revision option in the Save to 3DEXPERIENCE dialogue box, a new revision A.2 will be created. When the part is released, the revision value will still be displayed as A.2. The value A is the primary and the .2  is the secondary value. If a new revision of the released part is created, its primary revision will increment to B and the secondary will reset to .1.

When it comes to both the Primary and Secondary revision schemes, follow these best practices to obtain the best results.

• Use primary revisions when making a major change to an object. If the object is going through a major change of any sort, it is best to create a new primary revision to document those changes.
• Use secondary revisions for minor releases of an object such as a property change, document change, or other minor change to an object. Also use secondary revisions when going through an iterative process. If there are many different iterations to the object, it is best to have each iteration as a new secondary revision. After selecting one iteration as the best iteration, it can be released and the remaining revisions become obsolete.

Recommended Platform Settings for Working with Primary Revisions

Settings controlling the Revision schema and revision behavior are located in the Collaborative Spaces Configuration Center. If a client is adopting the use of primary revisions only, it’s recommended that the following settings are considered.

• Set the revision format to Primary (default setting for new tenants)

3DEXPERIENCE provides clients with a preconfigured lifecycle for SOLIDWORKS parts, assemblies and drawings, consisting of five states. This is called the Engineering Definition Maturity Graph.

The following images show each collaborative space role and their access level in context of the Engineering Definition maturity graph.

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Implementing a design release process

Utilizing the apps available within Collaborative Industry Innovator role it is possible to implement a number of different design release processes for a customer. These can range from a simple manual release process via the SOLIDWORKS MySession task pane, to more formalized processes that incorporate change actions and routes. Therefore its import to understand your customers’ requirements in order to choose the best approach to meet their expected outcomes.

Simple Manual Release Example

Company A has a design team consisting of 2 designers and a manager. The designers will create new and modify existing designs but only the manager is responsible for releasing the designs to production.

1. The designers are assigned the Author collaborative space role. This will allow the designers to promote their content to Frozen and back to In Work, but not to Released
2. The manager is assigned the Leader collaborative space role. This will allow the manager to promote content in the Frozen state to Released, or back to In Work
3. The designers create their design content in SOLIDWORKS. When it is ready to share with the manager for release they promote the parts, assemblies, and drawings to the Frozen state
4. While the content is being reviewed, to prevent any of the designers demoting the content back to In Work and making more changes, the designers can transfer the ownership of the content to the manager. This is done using the Change Owner command located on in the SOLIDWORKS MySession task pane. It is an optional step, and if the ownership is not transferred the manger can still promote the content to released.
5. The manager now reviews the design and decides whether to promote the content to Released, or demote it back to In Work. Note: If any of the content is demoted back to In Work, the ownership of that content will need to be transferred back to the respective designers.

The steps above outline a simple example of a manual release process. This workflow is scalable and can be enhanced by incorporating some of the additional capabilities available within the Collaborative Industry innovator, for example Collaborative Tasks, and Routes.

For detailed guidance on how to set up and use Routes please refer to the Route Management SolidPractices Guide.

For examples of how Change Actions and Routes can be used to build a more formalized release process please refer to the post titled The Basics of Release and Change in the WORKS | Onboarding and Adoption community.

For a complete overview of all of the available configuration options and implementation best practices please refer to the SolidPractices guide titled Getting Started with Lifecycle and Revision Control​​​​​​​.

Displaying 3DEXPERIENCE Revision and Lifecycle Information on a SOLIDWORKS Drawing

Its common practice to display important information related to the revision and lifecycle on a SOLIDWORKS drawing. Therefore, the setup of a customer’s drawing templates to display lifecycle related information such as Maturity, Revision, Released Date etc. will need to be considered as part of every implementation of the 3DEXPERIENCE platform. 

• The supported attributes are:

  • Approver (x) x represents the "x" (in time) approver of the drawing
  • Approved on (x) x represents the date when the "x" (in time) approval has been set on the drawing
  • Approval task (x) x represents the route task title used when the "x" (in time) approval has been set on the drawing

Getting a customer on the right track to understanding how revision control and maturity can be used to manage their design lifecycle will be key to successful adoption of the 3DEXPERIENCE platform. Keep revision control and lifecycle methodology as simple as possible from the outset, and avoid unnecessary complexity.

The breadth and depth of capabilities in the collaborative Industry Innovator role mean that clients with basic needs can start with a simple manual release process and progress into a more complex and formal process later if their business requires it.

For customers that do require a more complex formal release process from day one, it’s important that the users are fully trained and the working practices are documented as part of their implementation.

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