Create Drawing From Part Creo

[Mellissa Sprock]

Iam working with Creo Parametric 2.0 to create drawings of revised sheet metal parts. These are large parts and assemblies with multiple sheet drawings. What is the quickest/easiest way to create a new revision of a part and its drawing? For example, I added some basic holes to one to create a rev B part, but now I am faced with how to easily make the drawing for the rev B with out having to redo all the dimensions, views, etc.

I used to use Inventor, and there you could change the referenced part in the model tree. I tried to do the same thing here by highlighting the part, clicking the drawing models button, then clicking "add model" to insert my revB part. This changes the name in the model tree, but doesn't show the changes to the part. I tried to delete the old revA part by clicking "del model", but no luck. Also, if I save this drawing then reopen it, the part in the model tree reverts back to the revA.

I also tried seeing if I could do some magic with save as, where I saved the revA drawing as a backup to a different directory. Then changed the part that came with it to the rev B, but if I do a save as, it just duplicates the part. Then there are both a revA and a revB, and the drawing is still referencing the revA. If the revA is deleted, the drawing, when opened, freaks out that its original part is gone.

Have you tried opening both the part rev A and drawing rev A, and tried to do a rename on both? So while both are open, rename part rev A to part Rev B, this should also rename it in the drawing rev A if it is open or in memory, then rename drawing rev A to rev B.

Do you use Windchill? If so you can do a "save as" in Windchill for both the part and the drawing. If you are not using Windchill then having your parts family tabled would work. If the parts are part of a family table you can simply save a copy of the drawing then replace the model in the drawing with a memeber of the family table.

Since I don't know how familiar you are with family tables, here is a helpful link about creating and editing family tables. -autocad-reviews-tips/24487-how-to-create-and-use-family-tables-in-pro-engineer/

If you are not familiar with family tables this may not be the best option for you in this particular case, simply because learning family tables can take some time. If you do have the time I highly recommend learning about family tables as they can be very useful.

In your case it seams you already have one part completely modeled, so I would use that part as the Generic for your family table and create the second part as an istance. To do that you make all the modifications in the generic part and use parameters and programing to turn features on and off based on which part you want.

With these parts as family table members you can simply open the orginial drawing, select file>save a copy and save that drawing. Then open the newly created drawing, right click and select drawing models, then select "replace". Since these parts are part of a family table a box will open with the family table members. Select the member of the table you want the drawing to be of. The drawing should regenerate automatically, if it doesn't select regenerate. The new part should now be in the drawing and all dimensions and notes should update.

If not, I just have a parameter - Revision in my model. When the part is bumped a revision, I update the model parameter to the new level and it automatically updates the parameter in the drawing by the same name. I just that have to add a line to the revision block stating what the changes are.

With Creo, using different filenames for each revision is not standard practice. If that part is in an assembly, you will have to replace the "rev a" part with the "rev b" part. Easy for one assembly, but if it is used in 20 assemblies, you'll have to replace the part 20 times.

Obviously I am making some assumptions here, I don't know your situation or even the reason you are doing what you are doing. Years ago, we used to do this with CADkey (just like autocad). But that was before parametrics and reuse of data and single model definition. It was our way of keeping history.

If you are using CREO without file management, each time you save it will create a different "version" of the file .1, .2, .3, etc. Using this along with file dates, you can copy out the old revision and save it in a history folder. Or simply copy it out before you make changes so you can keep it. That way you can always keep your latest revision file name the same and all your history can be saved separately.

Halle, are you actually creating a part revision? I just took Rev A and Rev B as generic names, thinking you didnt want to give actually part names. If you are creating a part revision and not 2 seperate parts, I believe I have lead you in the wrong direction.

The larger the assemblies, the more files that are going to be created when you do a back up because you'll need all the subassemblies at the rev level they were at when you created the backup (I can see a big nightmare coming down the road in a couple of years with mixed up files).

Ok that is different funcionality then when connected to PDMLink. Also, is this an issue that happens often? If so you need to start building the case for some type of PDM system. This wouldnt even be an issue if you had one. I do like the backup method mentioned by Dale.

Save a backup: Open drawing.drw and go to File > Save As > Save a Backup. Save it to a different directory. (Note: The files will still be called drawing.drw and part.prt in the new directory.) Close the drawing in Creo and go into File > Manage Session > Erase Not Displayed

Rename the backed up files: Open the drawing.drw in the new directory, and then go to File > Manage File > Rename. Now rename drawing.drw to drawing_revb.drw (Note: In the rename dialog box, the radio button to rename in session and on disk should be selected). Open the backed up version of part.prt in the new directory and rename that as well, using File > Manage File > Rename.

The only twist I would suggest would be to rename the backup file to Rev A and leave the originals as Rev B. This will cause less issues if these parts are used in assemblies. The assemblies will not know the Rev B parts the way you are talking about doing that. They will not recognize the Rev A parts they way that I am talking about, but at least the assemblies will be updated with the current model changes.

In my opinion, you would be better off always keeping the latest revision without a revision letter in the filename and all the older revisions can be renamed to keep history. This method will keep you from having to re-assemble your parts in to your assemblies. All your users would know that if the didn't have a revision number in the filename, it would be the latest and greatest but if you had a file with a revision letter, it would be an outdated model.

Open the drawing and the part in Creo; make sure the part window is active. At this point, do file / save as / save a copy. In the message portion of your Creo window, you should see the rename of the part and drawing being complete. In case you miss it, you can check the message log and find it there.

If you are working on a folder structure (not pdmlink), I think the easiest way is to simply copy the drawing and the part to a new, empty folder. Open the drawing and the part, rename the part, rename the drawing. Save the drawing. If you need to, move something on the drawing to get it to save. Make sure you save the drawing after you've renamed the part, if you don't save it last, the drawing will still reference the old part.

I then open both the part and the drawing (the name without the zzzzz prefix) and do a rename of both the drawing and the part. Rename old_file_name.prt/drw to new_file_name.prt/drw. After saving both, I then go back into the folder and rename the zzzz files and remove the zzzzz.

If you have Windchill then another technique is to just open both in session and do a rename on both and save. That's it. Renaming both items through the Creo interface in a Windchill environment is the same as a save as.

and i have a windchill , i want to create a new prt and drw in the windchill in IE browse, i use the save as ,but i can not rename them,please see the piture for more details. please tell me what can i do to resolve the problem,thank you

How do you do this? We tend to make parts off of other parts that are similar so it would come in handy to be able to attach drawings to models. When I tried making a copy of a drawing it still kept it attached to the old model. I tried using add model under legacy migration but it did nothing. Thanks for any help.

If the model & drawing have the exact same name, this function is the default. when you copy the drawing to a new name it will make a copy of the model with the same name.

If the model and drawing have different names, it does not work

the save as copy works for parts/assems so long as both part/assem and drawing are open. what i can't figure out is if the part/assem has an instance (both my parts and assems have instances that need copied also) and the instance has its own drawing. to complicate it even further the instance drawing is for a second product and is in another folder. using the save as copy when you open the new part/assem the instance is no longer attached. also the save as copy doesn't copy the instances drawing.

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