Hi Folks -
How are you managing COTS parts your users are downloading from vendors?
Specifically, do you have an item number internally for the vendor part and if you modifiy the vendor part, do you have another item for the modified part?
We are debating the user best practice:
Option 1:
- User downloads vendor file and pulls an item number and names the file with the item number.
- User creates new part, inserts vendor part, pulls new item number for modified part and names it accordingly.
Benefit: where used on vendor part
Option 2:
- User downloads vendor file, modifies, pulls item number and notes the rferenced vendor part on drawing.
Benefit: Only one item number pulled.
Thoughts?
Joy
Hey Joy,
For unmodified parts, we assign an internal number and name their model (if provided) with our number. We usually get PDFs of their prints, so we create our own slddrw file and insert the PDF into it so we stay consistent. Then we assign the COTS part number as the material so our procurement group knows what to buy.
For Modified parts, we create our own drawing as if it were a rework print. We put the COTS part number as the material and only indicate on the drawing what is to be modified (plus a few reference dimensions). In most cases we do not pull 2 separate part numbers, but if we used both the unmodified and the modified version of the COTS part, we would pull a number for both.