Introduction

The 3DEXPERIENCE platform provides design teams with an in-built 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 primary reasons that a company chooses adopt the 3DEXPERIENCE platform. Therefore, it’s important that your 3DEXPERIENCE platform environment is configured in the right way before any production work starts, in order to meet your company's needs.

Understanding Revisions in the 3DEXPERIENCE Platform

Many factors require a company to revise its products, including 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 helps 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.

For those customers who have simple data management requirements, primary revisions offer a simple out-of-the-box solution for capturing and managing different stages of a SOLIDWORKS design as it evolves.

In addition to each release, many customers will have a need to manage different stages of a design in between each major revision. In this scenario, a secondary revision value can be used capture the intermediate stages between each major release.

When using both primary and secondary revisions, the secondary values represent subsequent revisions that are used before the object is ready for a major release. 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.

In summary, primary revisions are used for a new major release of an object, whereas secondary revisions should be used for minor updates and new iterations of an object.

When to use primary and secondary

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 of 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 be considered.

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

• Set the revision naming rule to be alphabetical or numeric

• Set the permission rule to only allow the creation of a new revision from the released maturity state. This prevents a situation occurring where multiple old revisions are still In Work

Recommended Platform Settings for Working with Primary and Secondary Revisions

If a customer is adopting the use of both primary and secondary revisions, it’s recommended that the following settings be considered.

• Set the revision format to Primary and Secondary

• Set the Permission Rules to determine at which maturity state a user can create a new revision of an item. In Work and Released are the recommended states

• Add a transition rule on the maturity graph to ensure that an older revision cannot be released by mistake

Lifecycle and Maturity

In the 3DEXPERIENCE platform, the lifecycle of SOLIDWORKS Design components and documents is tracked via a series of maturity states. Each maturity state determines who can have access to the object and what type of actions they can perform on that object.

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

Starting at the In Work state, SOLIDWORKS Design users have the ability to move the lifecycle of each part, assembly, and drawing by promoting it through the series of maturity states. The Frozen state acts as a design freeze stage, pending a review before release.  From this state, the design can either be promoted to Released or demoted back to In Work. The ability for each user to promote or demote an object at each maturity state is determined by their Collaborative Space role.

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

Contributor

Author

Leader

The out-of-the-box configuration of the engineering definition maturity graph will meet the majority of companies' design lifecycle requirements. However, there is scope for additional configuration. New transitions between workflow states can be added, and existing ones deleted. Control rules can also be assigned to each transition state and can trigger an automated action. One example of a control rule is “Reject Attribute Not Valuated.

This rule is used to block a component or drawing from being promoted, for example, from Frozen to Released, if a specific attribute value has not been populated. This rule will ensure that important attributes have been populated with a value before an item can be released to production.

Implementing a design release process

Utilizing the apps available within the SOLIDWORKS Design 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 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 Design. 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 from 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 in the SOLIDWORKS MySession task pane. It is an optional step, and if the ownership is not transferred, the manager can still promote the content to the released state.
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 SOLIDWORKS Design role, 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 your company's drawing templates to display lifecycle-related information, such as Maturity, Revision, Released Date, etc., will need to be considered as part of your implementation of the 3DEXPERIENCE platform. 

Using SOLIDWORKS properties, PLM Attributes from the 3DEXPERIENCE platform can be added to a note on a drawing sheet or sheet format. These PLM attributes are automatically available in SOLIDWORKS properties when SOLIDWORKS is connected to the 3DEXPERIENCE platform; no additional setup or attribute mapping is required.

Since each PLM attribute is driven from the 3DEXPERIENCE platform, when the information driving the attribute is modified in any way, its value will automatically update wherever the drawing is displayed, for example, in SOLIDWORKS Design, 3DPlay and 3DMarkup apps, and an associated PDF-derived output file.

Note: 

• To display the name of the user who promoted the drawing to the Released maturity state and the date on which it was released, PLM attributes “Approver (1)” and “Approved on (1)” must be used.
• If the drawing release process involves several approvers, the list of approvers, the associated route task name, and the date of approval are also visible through the PLM Attributes.

  • The \\\$PLMPRP properties are suffixed with an index "1", "2", or "3" corresponding to the approval task order in the Route. 

    

  • 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

• If a derived format conversion rule has been added to generate a PDF on maturity state change, the “Force Update” option must be checked. This will ensure that a pre-existing PDF-derived output file already associated with the drawing is regenerated with the updated attribute information during the state change.

  

Summary

Starting on the right track to understanding how revision control and maturity can be used to manage your 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 SOLIDWORKS Design Standard, Professional, and Premium roles mean that design teams 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 companies 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.

To learn more about Revision and Lifecycle, please refer to the SolidPractices guide titled Lifecycle and Revision Control of SOLIDWORKS Data on the 3DEXPERIENCE Platform.

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