Hello,

Is there a set of Best Practice guidelines for renaming an assembly, together with its associated parts and drawings?

Here is the scenario:

I design an assembly, made up of several new parts and their associated drawings. The design goes through several iterations before I am satisfied that, Yes, this is the way I want to have it made.

I name the assembly 'mouse1' for example, and the parts are 'Case1', Wheel3', Cable2', 123455 (that would be the company standard foot, an existing part) and 'red light block7'  (the red light block was tricky to get right). Each part has its own drawing, which has the same name as its part (Case1.drw for example)

At each iteration, I checked the assembly in to the Workgroup PDM Vault, in case the hard disc curled up its toes in the night.

Now I have settled on the final design, I need to give the assembly and each part and drawing a company part number. So mouse 1.asm becomes 123456.asm, Case1 becomes 123457.prt and 123457.drw, etc.

What is the best way to achieve this renaming?

I know I can Pack & Go the assembly, together with the parts and drawings, but doesn't this create a complete new set of files, without the links to the history of the development stuff? I want the same assembly, parts and drawings, with all the history in the vault, showing how I arrived at this final assembly, and with all the references intact, just with the new names. And what about the parts that are re-used from other projects, that already have part numbers, like the company standard foot, 123455? I don't want to rename that, or its drawing.

I have tried fiddling about with renaming in the vault and using SWExplorer and everything I can think of, but I end up effectively creating a whole new set of files, or tying myself up in knots.

SW2014, SP5

WPDM 16.1

Windows 7

I look forward to learning how it should be done.

John