About Exploring Fasteners Dependencies in Relations

Relations is a tool that displays the ecosystem of related objects by navigating on relationships and paths. For Fastening users, it provides an efficient view of fastener relations and helps them manage potential impacts on bundles and fasteners.

This page discusses:

Accessing the Relations Tool

You can access Relations from the Tools section of the action bar by using the Relations command. You can also open Relations from a search result context menu, and from the search bar menu of a web-in-win component.

For more information, see the 3DEXPERIENCE Platform Dashboard Apps User’s Guide.

Exploring Stacking and Skeletons

In Relations, to view dependencies between the different Fastening objects, you can explore the stacking relation and the skeleton relation.

There are two ways of navigating the stacking:

  • Direct navigation: from a root to fasteners
  • Inverse navigation: from a fastened part to fasteners

It is also possible to know the localization of fasteners points for a specific bundle by navigating the skeleton relation:

  • Direct navigation: from fasteners to a representation
  • Inverse navigation: from a representation to fasteners
Important: if a bundle instance is deleted, the bundle reference is not deleted automatically. As a consequence, Relations retrieves some bundles that have no instances. You should ignore them.

Stacking: from a root assembly to fasteners

The direct navigation allows you to open an assembly and its children.

Important: By default, bundles are excluded from the father/children navigation.

If a fastened part is pointed by a fasten relation, the corresponding bundle can be retrieved and opened. Then, from a bundle, it is also possible to open the other fastened parts in order to explore the full stacking.

Expanded assembly

Initially, the bundles are not visible as “Children” relations. The P2_Pump_Bracket_Right part includes three children. A fasten relation “Fastened by” is retrieved on P2_Pump_Bracket_Right.



Opened bundle

The bundle corresponding to P2_Pump_Bracket_Right is opened as “Fastens” relation with its fasteners.



Stacking: from a fastened part to fasteners

The inverse navigation allows you to open a fastened part and directly retrieve the pointed bundle with its fasteners.

“Fastened by” relation retrieved on a part

The bundle corresponding to the P2_Pump_Bracket_Right part is opened as “Fastens” relation with its fasteners as “Children” relations.



Skeleton: from fasteners to a representation

From a bundle, Relations indicates the representation that contains all the points used to instantiate fastener instances.

“Positioned” relation shown on a bundle

Bundle_Fastener_P1P3 shows the relation “Positioned”.



“Positioned” relation shown on a bundle

The user can open the S1_Pump_Brack_Skeleton_Rep representation.



Skeleton: from a representation to fasteners

From a representation, Relations indicates the bundle that uses all points used to instantiate fastener instances.

Bundle content

The S1_Pump_Brack_Skeleton_Rep representation “positions” some fasteners in a bundle.



Opening the relation

Opening the relation shows that the fasteners in Bundle_Fastener_P1P3 are “Positioned” thanks to this representation.



Managing Impacts

Relations helps you manage the potential impacts on bundles and fasteners using the change management.

The following methodology can be applied:

  • User A modifies a fastened part in a change action CA1. By using Relations, he can identify the impacted bundles.
  • User A can add the bundles in the section “Proposed changes” to the change action CA1 to give the information to user B.
  • User B is then aware of a potential impact and can adjust his fasteners.