About aligning design occurrences and part occurrences

You align design occurrences and part occurrences to visualize how different parts are assembled together to make up an assembly part. You also align a design occurrence and a part occurrence to visualize what a part looks like when mounted on to a product. This alignment is called the design occurrence-part occurrence alignment. A design occurrence has the absolute position information of a part.

For example, you align the different parts of a wheel, such as Tire, Rim, and Valve with their corresponding designs to see how they are assembled to form the wheel structure. You can also align all four wheels of a car with their corresponding design occurrences to visualize how they are placed in the car. The design occurrence of the wheel is aligned to a single part occurrence of the wheel in the car with the quantity of the part occurrence is set as 4.

For a design having multiple parts (in design-part alignment), only a single part occurrence is created in automation based upon date of its design-part alignment. Part which is aligned first in design-part alignment is given preference for occurrence alignment. Remaining part occurrences needs to be created and aligned manually.

While visualizing engineering BOM (Usage BOM or Assembly BOM) or validating alignments, if any issues are found, you can first remove the alignment between the part occurrence and the design occurrence and then align the part occurrence again correctly.

To understand how alignment is done for bought out parts and flexible parts, see Aligning design occurrences and part occurrences in a bought out part and Aligning design occurrences and part occurrences in a flexible part.

Aligning design occurrences and part occurrences in a bought out part

Sometimes, instead of manufacturing a part in-house, it is purchased as a single piece. Such parts are called as Bought Out parts. For example, consider that the Alternator used in the engine of CrossKart is a bought out part. The design structure of Alternator contains Brush, Alternator Shaft, and Rotor. However, the corresponding engineering BOM (Usage BOM or Assembly BOM) of Alternator will be a single part with no part occurrences.

Before aligning, the Alternator part and its design must be set as Supplier Part.

Aligning design occurrences and part occurrences in a flexible part

Some parts can be used in a product in various states. Examples include a spring, pipe, and wire harness. Such parts are called as flexible parts. A flexible part can be represented by different designs (pipe or wire harness) or by the same design (spring) with different shape overrides. In the case of a spring, shape overrides shows the compression state of a part when installed at different positions in a product.

Scenario 1: Different designs for a flexible part

Consider a Routing Assembly containing four different lengths of the part Pipe. The design structure of Routing Assembly consists of four different design occurrences of Pipe, one occurrence for each length. The engineering BOM of same Routing Assembly consists of four occurrences of the same part, Pipe.

To view Pipe in the context of Routing Assembly, you must align each design occurrence of Pipe in the design structure with the corresponding part occurrence in the engineering BOM.

To view what Pipe looks like in the floor position, add the four different design representations to the part, and mark one design as the primary representation.

Scenario 2: Same design for a flexible part

Consider a Block Spring assembly that contains a part, Spring. When Spring is installed in two different positions in Block Spring, it is compressed differently. It is relaxed in one position and tightly compressed in the other. The design structure of Block Spring contains two occurrences of the same design with different shape overrides. The engineering BOM of Block Spring contains two occurrences of the same part Spring.

To view Spring in the context of Block Spring, you must align each design occurrence of Spring in the design structure with the corresponding part occurrence in the engineering BOM.