Aligning with allocations

You can use allocations to capture, locate, and manage dependencies between different representations of the product. They provide traceability of dependencies, unlike some other alignment methods such as part-CAD alignment. During the development process, a product may evolve through various representations. For example, during system analysis and engineering, you express the representation of the product in terms of a set of requirements the product must satisfy and a set of functions it is expected to perform. As the product design matures, you may identify other representations, including the logical structure, the assembly structure and the manufacturing structure. All these representations are related and a change to one representation may necessitate changes to other representations. If you align these representations with allocation maps, the dependencies between elements are identified and the impact of any changes are more obvious. Create and maintain allocations with Multi-Structure Manager.