About structure effectivity

A product structure goes through many changes during the evolution of its product definition. Using structure effectivity, you can capture how the product structure has evolved over a period. You can use element and release effectivity to capture the evolution of product structures over time, manage product variability, and configure different revisions or elements based on date or unit ranges.

An effectivity can be of the following types:

Element effectivity

It denotes from which date or for which unit (and end item) an element is effective.

Release effectivity

It denotes from which date or for which unit (and end item) an element revision is effective. It is necessary to have a release status associated with an element to author release effectivity on it.

Release effectivity helps in configuring different revisions of the same element, wherein with the help of element effectivity you can decide if to show the element itself or not inside the structure.

For example, in an engine cooling block, revision A has 5 cooling fins and in revision B it is changed to 6, now to decide which revision to use, release effectivity is used. Now suppose we decide to use another engine block itself which is liquid-cooled, to decide between the air-cooled or liquid-cooled engine block element effectivity is used.

An effectivity can be expressed as a date range or a range of units or both. When you edit the effectivity range for one occurrence, the change is applied to all occurrences.

If an element does not have an associated effectivity object, it is assumed to be always effective. It is not constrained by any effectivity.

Effectivity can be used for the following purposes:

• To reflect changes to the structure over time when new parts replace old ones.
• To state the content of a unit or range of units to manage the product’s variability.

You can use group effectivity to combine multiple end items and range of units for each end item or multiple date ranges to configure multiple occurrences at the same time which have different effectivities on them.

The following video explains element effectivity in detail.