Hello I need your opinion based on your experience of how to manage the part and assembly file at work.
I work for a company where 3d is managed in a chaotic way I need your opinions
We have a main product that we manufacture (we are almost always the same product with some difference to each project requested by the customer but the product is constantly evolving) we do not have the pdm
we have example folder A in which we have our main assembly.
every time we have a contract we open a project folder in which we take the assembly of folder A and we integrate it into a new assembly in the name of the project (but inside everything is linked and refers to the file in file A, the problem I have is that if example I go back to a 2016 project when I open the assembly ex: project2016 inside I have the assemblies and the sub-assemblies which are always linked to the famous folder A, in which we have the assembly but given that the main assembly evolves over time I sometimes have components to add example in 2018 in my assembly of my project2016 because we agree that everything is linked. in short, it causes me a lot of problems when I try to find which part exactly was produced in 2016 since everything is still related to my assembly of the A file which evolves it. I try to find the best way to manage my new project by starting from the main assembly but that at some point I will be able to freeze in time once the project is delivered so that it does not evolve anymore, but sometimes we make changes during a project that will also be effective in the future for future projects, that's why my boss is telling me I say to let it always link to the famous A file and don't want me to simply make a pack and go in my project file and I make it evolve as the client wants it because some of this modification will also be useful for the future and should end up in the A file. I'm a little lost I don't know how to reform all this by making my products evolve main in the A folder but at the same time have a reliable reference (have the exact component delivered) when I go back to the 2016 project folder.
For us it is in Epdm but the principle is a bit the same, namely that any modifications made on parts or assemblies impact the original parts and assemblies, but all modifications must be made after analysis of the history of the parent elements and must be compatible otherwise it must be a new reference. Now if you want to keep an exact view of what you have delivered to a customer at a given time, you can make a "pack and go" in zip mode with the addition of a suffix or prefix of your machine at the time of delivery and keep this zip file as a traceability of your machine at a given time.
To see the other operating proposals that will not fail to be proposed to you...
- Our business-specific assemblies with a specific name.
In our cases, we sometimes point to a standard assembly. If we need to change the standard a bit, we make it a take-home composition by passing the name to the specific format of the case. -> the specific assembly may point to some standard parts and other specific parts.
If we change the standard then we make a copy of the standard by changing the name and then make the changes to that new standard. Thus the old cases point to the old standard, the new cases to the new.
If we have to take over an old case by integrating a new standard, then it is up to us to check that everything fits well. But this is a new case and not a simple copy of the old one.
Something that might work well in your case is to use as many subsets as possible. When you do a new project, you can then break up the subsets that don't interest you but keep the others.
The advantage is to have the useful documents up to date.
In addition, it is possible without PDM to recover old versions of file/folder in windows (right click --> previous versions).