Component Family at a Glance
A component family enables you to generate and manage a set of physical parts or assemblies
references. All parts and references are derived from a generic parametric
definition and are altered for each element using a table of values.
- Family Management
- Two family types are provided:
- Standard: Ensures that items are all generated with the same
generic model iteration. Generic model maturity must be defined
to a customizable target state to ensure that the model is not
modifiable. A command is provided to automate the maturity
change. Family evolution cannot use the current revision of the
generic model. It must use a new revision of the generic model.
This mode is adapted for standard components and families that
rarely change.


- Design: Provides an easier way to manage family evolution. Use this
type if the generic model, including its table, is subject to
regular changes such as new item definition or a change in
geometry.

Note:
Modify your catalogs when deleting or adding items.
- On-demand generation
-
Component Family Definition provides a fully on-demand
generation mechanism. The family items can be exposed in a
classification tool before their geometry model has been generated. When
a user needs the family item model, it is automatically generated. This
allows not having to generate all models and to populate the database
with useless models.
- Models Ownership
- The generation mechanism ensures that the generated models are
owned by the family owner. The generated model maturity is optionally changed
automatically during the generation process
- Generic model changes impacts
- You can choose to generate new revisions of previously generated items or to overwrite them
after applying a new iteration or a new revision of the generic model on
the family. If only the table was modified, this impact is limited to
modified items.
- More
-
Component Family Definition provides item test capabilities
(without generating models), filtering capabilities to work on large
families, query capabilities where items are used, and where the items
are classified, as well as massive maturity change on generated
models.
Component Families Concepts
- Component Family Definition
- A list of models (virtual or not) defined by simple parametric
variations applied to a
generic model. The models
are said resolved when the generation operation (parametric modification and a
save-as like operation) has already been done, virtual if not.
- Family Item
- A virtual or concrete model of a component family.
- Family Definition
- A generic model and a matrix of values that define at least the
parametric variations of a component family and its variability in terms of BOM
(instances of part or assembly family items). Each row of this matrix
corresponds to a family item.
- Generic Model
- A part or an assembly used to generate a component family. It embeds all objects if required
to handle its variability, according to the family
definition.
- Resolved Model
- A part or on assembly derived from a generic model after the
application of parametric modifications defined in a table.