Reusing catparts in new designs and relinking the drawings.

[dtwo]

I know this is a common question based off my searches in theese forums but I could not find exact situation. To me it seems it is a basic function with other CAD systems but not CATIA.

A typical senerio:

I have a catproduct (call it catproduct 1) made up of several catparts. The catparts have associated views that were generated from the catparts in context of the assembly (catproduct 1).

Now I have a new design (unique catproduct 2) and I want to use one of the catparts from catproduct 1. So I copy the catpart from catproduct 1 to catproduct 2 and save them to the new catproduct 2 folder. I do not change the file name. Now I copy the views (from drawing 1) of this catpart into a new drawing (call it drawing 2). With all four files open in CATIA I now try to re-link the view under the catproduct 2 folder and the result is the dreaded "link refused the document" message. The unique identfier for each file did not change only the path.

It is quite frustrating as I do not won't to spend time recreating drawings! That is the purpose of using a modern day CAD system- to save time.

 

[MarkAF]

Quick fix:
The simple change to make in your process is, I think, to not copy the views from Drawing1 into Drawing2. Instead, through Save Management, save both the Drawing1 file and its associated Catpart1 file into your catproduct2 folder at the same time.

More information, and a better way forward:
It's a common problem that we make enough changes to the Catpart and only consider the Drawing much later...then Catia often cannot repair the drawing links automatically. There are ways to update the links, but if enough change has been made, the dimensions are often no longer valid anyway.

The best solution is to use Catia's File > New From function. Plan ahead which parts will be changed from Product1 to Product2. Go to File > New From. In the file selection box, pick Product1, any specific parts (catpart1), and their associated drawing files (drawing1). Then Catia presents a selection box with all the files you selected, plus all associated linked children files. Make sure all the files you want to update are in the "New from will be performed" area. You can assign new filenames at this point also (catpart1>catpart2; drawing1>drawing2).

Catia does have the tools to do this...but the main point is your life will be much easier if you plan ahead.


Cheers
Mark