About Collaboration Between Physical Product and Engineering BOM

During the collaboration process, the mapped attributes are copied from the controlling environment to the controlled environment.

During the attribute collaboration, the following rules are followed:

• An empty string is a valid value for attributes. This is true even for attributes with default value or mandatory settings.

• During collaboration process, the attribute value is copied, regardless of the default value or mandatory settings. If it fails to update any mapped attributes, the collaboration process fails.

  Notes:

  • The collaboration process fails with an appropriate notification, when a user without the administrator privileges updates the tree order number of the released product structure and through the collaboration process.
  • Only single-value attributes can be mapped. Multi-valuated attributes are not supported. If you try to map multi-valuated attributes, the collaboration fails.
• The collaboration fails, if the TreeOder attribute is empty for any EBOM relationship in a BOM structure.
• When you collaborate from the Engineering BOM Management app, the Product Finder product structure gets updated in the similar order as that of the EBOM order and vice versa.
• When you collaborate and publish from the Engineering BOM Management app, the Instance Title and the description are updated and vice versa. During collaboration, the Instance Title and description values are updated only if differences are found in the values.
• When you increase the quantity in the Engineering BOM Management app, the new instances are clubbed together in the Product Finder app after the collaboration.
• The order for the existing product structure gets updated as and when you perform any re-order operation in the Engineering BOM Management app and perform collaboration.

• When you publish a part from the Product Finder app to the Engineering BOM Management app, the Weight attribute in Engineering BOM Management app takes the value defined in declared weight on the Product Finder product.

  Notes:

  • The Weight attribute collaboration is only supported from the Product Finder app to the Engineering BOM Management app.

  • The equivalent weight of a Product Finder product is reflected in Engineering BOM Management attribute value.

  • After collaboration from Product Finder to Engineering BOM Management, the weight attribute on Product Finder is locked and non editable.
  • By default, in Product Finder, the Weight attribute is always considered in Kilograms as the measurement unit.
  • After transferring control from the Product Finder app to the Engineering BOM Management app, you can edit the value of the Weight attribute on the Engineering BOM Managementapp. Only the value (not the equivalent value in Kilograms) of the Weight attribute is updated on the Product Finder app without performing the collaboration process.
• The copied value (can be an empty string) can override any previously present default value.

When you publish a product structure from the Engineering BOM Management app to Product Finder app with transfer control, the instances owned by Engineering BOM Management app of the parts owned by the Product Finder are published as a separate reference and are not attached to the product structure.

To attach these Engineering BOM Management app instances to the product structure, you must do the following:

1. Collaborate and transfer control, from the physical-owned parent to the Engineering BOM Management app.
2. Collaborate and transfer control, from the parent back to the Product Finder app.

This applies to the reverse case as well. When you publish from the Product Finder app to the Engineering BOM Management with transfer control, instances owned by physical of the parts owned by the Engineering BOM Management app are published as a separate reference and are not attached to the EBOM. To attach these native app instances to Engineering BOM, you must do the following:

1. Collaborate and transfer control, from the EBOM owned parent to the Product Finder.
2. Collaborate and transfer control, from the parent back to theEngineering BOM Management.

The collaboration command is executed to the specified depth of the selected object, regardless of the user interface from where the command is launched and the control status of the object.

Collaboration also processes the instances or structure navigation relationships owned by the parts and products and collaborates them. However, for any instances owned by the parts or products at the selected depth of collaboration, only the following are collaborated:

• Mapped attributes
• Control transfer
• Reordering of child parts or products

The following are not collaborated for any instances owned by the parts or products at the selected depth of collaboration:

• Change in quantity of child parts or products
• Any addition or deletion of child parts or products

In the Product Finder app, you can edit the mapped attributes of an object owned by the other environment. But, they are considered local modifications and are over-written during the next collaboration process.

For example, if you modify a mapped attribute of a part owned by the Engineering BOM Management app in the Product Finder app, that attribute is over-written by the value from the Engineering BOM Management app during the next collaboration. Therefore, it is recommended to avoid modifying the mapped attributes. You should not modify the attribute of an existing Engineering BOM Management app controlled product, and create a new product with the same name as the previous one. This could lead to a collaboration failure because the part with the same name already exists, and it is linked with another product. The instance owned by the other environment cannot be deleted.

You can also make structural modifications that are local to an environment. For example, in Product Finder app, you can add a new instance to a structure that is owned by the Engineering BOM Management app. However, these Instances are not automatically collaborated back to the Engineering BOM Management app. They are treated as locally owned data. The reverse scenario is also possible. In the Engineering BOM Management app, you can add new EBOMs to a product structure owned by the Product Finder app. These locally added relationships exist only in their active environment, and are ignored by the collaboration.

The Product Finder product structure and the Engineering BOM Management app objects have separate lifecycles; therefore, the maturity is not updated during collaboration.

However, there are links between the maturity status because there are lifecycle event triggers on the Engineering BOM Management app policies that validate the status of any related specification data.

For more information for best practices in defining customized lifecycles, see Working with Customized Objects.

In Product Finder app, the string attribute must be assigned a maximum length. However, in the Engineering BOM Management app the string attribute of the objects do not have such a limitation. To have a robust attribute collaboration of the Engineering BOM Management app objects to theProduct Finder app, strings longer than the limit allowed by the Product Finder app is truncated.

For example:

If the limit specified in the Product Finder is 30, and the Engineering BOM Management string attribute value is:

QEJNFNMFKFI*(#(#)@YJFM>DK@28394lf,v03kglr9rkrKMVKRlfmf

in the Product Finder, the string is truncated to

QEJNFNMFKFI*(#(#)@YJFM>DK@28394

While copying or collaborating the mapped attributes to the Product Finder app, the truncated string is used.

You can use any character when naming a part in the Product Finder app. However, in the Engineering BOM Management app certain characters are not supported. For example, characters such as @,*?[ ] # $ { } \ "<>¦ % ; &.

An error message is displayed if you use any of the non-supported characters.

You can create your own naming convention for creating parts using the General Size series. The same naming convention is used for creating part objects in the Engineering BOM Management app after Collaborate with EBOM... is performed. For more information, see Engineering BOM Management User's Guide: Part Families | About Part Families.

When you run the policy migration script, it changes the policy of parts from Development Part policy to EC Part policy.

If you do not run the migration script on the legacy data and try to collaborate the data, the following behavior is expected:

• If the root object (to be collaborated) is a Development Part policy object, Collaborate with Physical option is not available in Actions menu.
• If EC Part policy object has Development Part policy object as a child, the collaboration using Collaborate with Physical fails with an error message.

A BOM structure in the EBOM tab can be viewed in two modes: Instance mode and Quantity mode. The two modes affect:

• How parts with the unit of measure EA (each) appear in the BOM (parts with other units of measure are not affected).
• How the BOM structure and product structure are updated when a part is added or removed.

For more information, see Engineering BOM Management User's Guide: Part Definition | EBOM modes.

By default, the Quantity mode is turned on and only an Administrator can switch to the Instance mode. For more information, see Engineering BOM Management Administrator's Guide: Setting Up the App | Enabling Instance Mode.

The collaboration of released structures, results in no modifications in the native app product structure.

The following behaviors are observed while working with Collaborate to EBOM or Collaborate with Physical and the Change Management app.

• You cannot attach the same Change Action (CA) to both a physical product and its respective EBOM part created due to Collaborate to EBOM command for the For Revise operation.
• To attach an object to a change, you must have control of the object.
• An Engineering change process may not be used on both structures (physical structure and engineering BOM). Some collaboration processes may fail.
• On a structure (physical structure or engineering BOM) created due to the Collaborate to EBOM or Collaborate with Physical commands, it is not recommended to modify information controlled by the change on the other environment. The transfer control is not recommended.
• For an unconfigured structure, it is not possible to work simultaneously on multiple actions.
• For a configured structure, it is recommended to work with a BOM centric process. In this case both the Proposed Effectivity and the Current Effectivity are collaborated.
• For a physical product created due to Collaborate with Physical on a Hardware product and Logical Feature structure, it is not recommended to modify information controlled by the change on the other environment. It is recommended to work with a BOM centric process. The transfer control is not recommended.
• For a Hardware product and Logical Feature structure using Collaborate with Physical command to create a physical product structure. The Change Management process should be used only on Hardware Product and Logical Feature structure (not on published physical product structure). If you use the Change Management process on such published physical product structure, some collaboration processes may fail.
• When you collaborate a change action (for example, CA2) that has a dependency on another change action (for example, CA1), CA2 is not collaborated if any of the following operations done by CA1 and is not yet reported.

  On relationships: Create, delete, modify, replace, or generate a split (evolve instance).

  On objects: Create, modify, revise, or clone.

  The rules to collaborate a change action are same as the rules to promote a change action.

Automatic EBOM update ensures auto collaboration of a product structure without EBOM Control and with the Expand Depth as 1 to the respective EBOM in the Engineering BOM Management app when a product maturity reaches the Frozen or Released state. Automatic EBOM update occurs only if the product is already collaborated. When the mapped product reaches Frozen or Released state, you do not have access to modify the part in the Engineering BOM Management app. The automatic EBOM update will not be done for any of the following situations or conditions:

• The Engineering BOM Management app is not installed.
• The product is not visible in the Engineering BOM Management app.
• The product is connected to multiple parts.
• The product is not mapped.

You can collaborate configured products and parts from both the Collaborative Lifecycle app and the Configured BOM Management app .

• If the configured structure has both configured and unconfigured parts:
  • Configured parts are collaborated to configured products.
  • Unconfigured parts are collaborated to unconfigured products.
  • The effectivity information of the WIP(Work In Progress) BOM is collaborated.
• For a configured BOM whose unit of measure is not specified as EA (each), the collaboration creates only one instance in a native app irrespective of selected mode. For more information, see Engineering BOM Management User's Guide: Part Definition | EBOM modes.
• For a configured BOM whose the unit of measure is specified as EA, the quantity can only be 1.
• While publishing a configured part from the Configured BOM app if, a configured product with the same name exists in the Product Finder app, then the collaboration fails.
• In the BOM PowerView tab of a configured BOM structure, if for an EBOM Design Collaboration value is declared as FALSE its child parts are not processed and no references and instances are created in the Product Finder app.
• Unsynchronized configured part:
  • Unsynchronized configured parts can be collaborated manually.
  • A Collaborative Lifecycle app configured product created after collaboration will be in the In Work state.

Tip: While creating EBOM, it is advisable to create EBOM relationships with Quantity field values as 1 if we are collaborating and transferring it to the Product Finder app.

You can collaborate configured products and parts from both the Collaborative Lifecycle app and the Configured BOM Management app.

• The WIP BOM can be collaborated back and forth from Product Finder app to the Configured BOM app using transfer control options.
• The Current Effectivity on the EBOM relationship gets updated with the updated effectivity in the VPM instance.
• If the control is with the Engineering BOM Management app, the effectivity information can be directly edited in the Configured BOM app and collaborated back.
• While publishing a configured product from the Collaborative Lifecycle if, a configured part with same name exists in the Configured BOM app, the collaboration fails.
• When you create a revision of a configured product, the collaboration of the new revision fails.
• In configured product structures, if an instance is declared as Not Instantiated in EBOM, its child references are not processed and no references and instances are collaborated.
• The Product Structure Design app allows an unconfigured product to be converted to configured, by adding config context.
• A configured object is a Policy on a part, and cannot be changed during the life of the object.
• The notion of configured product is a dynamic notion based on a model connected to the product. It is not recommended to convert a configured product to an unconfigured (or unconfigured product to configured) if the product is already collaborated to the Configured BOM app. You cannot modify the policy of a part, because it leads to an inconsistency between the part and the product.

You can transfer authoring control of objects between web apps and native apps. The authoring control restricts to the controlling side, the ability to perform some type of operations which may otherwise cause conflict between the collaborated engineering BOM and product structure.

The rules for the Transfer Control behavior are outlined below. The purpose of the rules is to prevent any conflicting modifications that would require merging.

• Only an entity with the authoring control can give the control.

• Relationships cannot be transferred, without owning the object being transferred.

• The control transfer operation has no effect on objects that are marked as Not In Product Structure or Phantom Part.

• During Collaborate with EBOM, when we select the EBOM Control check box to perform a transfer control operation on any minor, all the minors (corresponding to that major) control gets transferred to Engineering BOM Management and vice versa.
• You cannot transfer the control of CATIA V5 references (or XCAD reference) of CATIA V5 components (or XCAD components) in a product structure. In addition, the control of the instances owned by the CATIA V5 components (or XCAD components) is not transferred.