Updating Drawings Including the Bills of Materials Using the Batch Monitor

You can update a list of drawing representations and also bills of materials using the batch monitor. The batch monitor lets you create as many batch configurations as required, and follow the progress of an update. Updating drawings via the batch monitor will be particularly helpful in the following cases:

  • If you need to update a large number of drawings (but do not need to visualize them while doing so).
  • If you need to update drawings which require large CPU resources.
  • When the Disable automatic updates when view is modified check box is selected (from Me > Preferences > App Preferences > 3D Modeling > Mechanical Systems > Drafting > Generation section).

You can run the batch from your computer or from a remote platform. For more information on using the batch monitor, see Running a Batch from its Interface or from the Batch Monitor.

This task shows you how to:

Before you begin:
  • From Me > Preferences > App Preferences > 3D Modeling > Mechanical Systems > Drafting > Generation section, select the Disable automatic updates when view is modified check box.
  • Also, when creating a drawing that will be updated via the batch, make sure that in Me > Preferences > App Preferences > 3D Modeling > Mechanical Systems > Drafting > View tab, the 3D extracted representation check box is not set to As session (as the batch needs to load the 3D data before updating a view).
  • From the Tools section of the action bar, click Utility and log on. The batch monitor appears, listing available batches.
  • Before running the batch, especially on a remote platform, check that CATIA can access the graphic card and Open GL resources, and then tune the process accordingly.
Note: The batch only updates drawings including the bills of materials, not the associated 3D specifications. Therefore, you may want to make sure that your 3D area is up-to-date by checking its status in the Assembly Designapp through the PLM Update command. For more information, see Assembly Design User's Guide: PLM Update.
See Also
Updating Specific Views Using the Batch Monitor

Define the Drawing Batch Parameters

When you are using the batch monitor for the first time, it is necessary to define the drawing batch parameters that will be used to launch the drawing update. This consists of:

  • Selecting the impacted files, optionally the impacted views in these files.
  • Defining the action to run: update, force update, isolate or update status.
  • Indicating the directory where the update report will be saved.
  • Optionally entering a host name if the batch is not processed from your computer.
  • Optionally indicating the CATIA settings directory.

  1. From the Tools section of the action bar, go to the secondary area, and click Utility .
  2. In the Batch Monitor panel, double-click Drawing Batch.

    Note: You can also right-click Drawing Batch and select New parameter file.

  3. In the Drawing Batch dialog box, under Selected Operation, select an action from the Select action for drawing representations list:
    • Update
    • Force update
    • Isolate
    • Update status
  4. From the Select a subset of views list, select the impacted views:
    • Views from whole drawing
    • Views from active sheet
    • Active view
    • View whose name matches regular expression

    For this scenario, select Force update as action and Active view as the impacted view.

    Note: To update the bills of material object, you must select Views from whole drawing or Views from active sheet.
    Important: These parameters are applied to every drawing selected in steps 3 and 4. However, you can customize these parameters afterwards for one or several drawings. To do this, select (or multi-select) a drawing in the list, then change its parameters in the Selected Operation section.

  5. Under Object Selection, click to select the drawing representations to update or isolate by batch.
    The [Name_of_the_provider_you_are_connected_to] Object Management dialog box appears. For more information about this dialog box, see Searching for Objects.
  6. Define your search criteria, click Apply, and then OK.
    The selected files are now listed in the Object Selection table, along with the impacted views and action to execute.
  7. Optional: Repeat steps 3 and 4 to include files from another location.

    Note: You can remove files from the list of the files to update. To do so, select the unwanted file and click .

  8. Optional: In the Report directory box, modify the path of the directory in which the reports will be stored.
  9. Optional: Modify the name that will be used for the report in the Report name box. By default, the global report dealing with all the documents that have been processed is named GlobalResults.htm.
  10. For this scenario, select Run local.

    Your update batch parameters are now defined. You can save these parameters to reuse them later on, or run them immediately. For this scenario, you will save them.

  11. Click Save.
  12. Browse to the directory in which you want to save the batch parameters file, specify a file name in the appropriate box, and click Save.
    Your parameters are saved in an xml file.
  13. You can now either click Run to run the batch immediately or click Cancel to close the Update Batch dialog box and run the batch later. For this scenario, click Cancel.

    You can now exit the batch monitor. However, for the next task Run the Drawing Batch, you will need to reopen the batch monitor.

Run the Drawing Batch

After defining the batch parameters in an xml file, you can run the batch.

  1. From the list of available batches, right-click Drawing Update PLM and select Associate a parameter file.
  2. In the Associate dialog box, browse to the directory where you previously saved the xml batch parameters file, and select this file.
  3. Click Open.
  4. Click the Start tab which now displays the name and location of the file you just associated to the batch.
  5. Right-click the batch and select Run.
    The batch execution starts.
  6. Optional: During or after the batch execution, you can get more information on the process in the Processes tab, such as the batch name, the batch identification number, name on the host computer (if you run the batch on a remote computer), the status (in progress or ended) and the start and end times.
  7. To display the report of the batch execution, double-click the desired batch in the list.
    The Results panel appears.
  8. Optional: Open the GlobalResults.htm file for details.
  9. When the batch execution is over, you can exit the Batch Monitor.
    In the drawing representation, the bills of material is updated according to the changes done in the 3D.