Comparing two products with the same part number

[happystamps]

Morning all... In my line, we deal with a lot of upissued parts from auto manufacturers, and we have to overlay the old and new revisions in order to ascertain the changes. Normally the part number won't change- just the revision.

Now, when I do this, I normally do new product, then insert new component(s). Problem is, with Catia (V5R18) I can only ever have one model with the same part number open at once. If I add them one at a time the first one opens, then I add the second and "oops, you don't want to look at that... Let me open the first file, again. Then you don't have to worry about re-quoting anything, since you won't see any changes- you're welcome,user" Frustrating!

I normally get around it by saving one or both as a STP or IGS file on my desktop, then doing an overlay- but surely there's a better way than that?

Thanks in advance.... Whether you lot know how to do it properly, or just agree with me that it's a right old faff

 

[MarkAF]

What I typically do with that is temporarily edit the Part Number (frequently the filename also) so I can insert both into a product.

 

[tbuelna]

There is a good reason for this, since it helps prevent accidentally overwriting one part file with another. Since you have this problem, I would assume you aren't using some form of PDM software to manage your CAD files. Since auto OEMs now take configuration management and quality assurance quite seriously, I'm a bit surprised that as a supplier you have a data management process that would permit this situation to exist.

 

[m1mason]

Do have access to DMU space analysis?

see this link for a quick video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kb_iyLEO18Y

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[toyayo]

I get around this in two ways.
When using Teamcenter, there is a Load for Compare in CATIA V5 option, so you can have 2 versions open at once.
If you are not using TCe, you can use the Tools | Generate a CATPart from Product command, which will create a dumb part.
Then you can create a Product to compare them.

 

[happystamps]

tbuelna- Yes, it's a pretty poor state of affairs and I'd love to change it- but I'm not in charge of the money. It drives me mad to be honest.
toyayo- I think this is probably the way to go at the moment, thank you very much!

Cheers all

Si

 

[ferdo]

Hi,

I've done something like this for few hundreds of harnesses in batch mode....without DMU licenses you can save each product as a 3dxml file, each one with their separate colors, then insert those files in a product to be compared.

Regards
Fernando

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