Creating variant items

A variant item is a specific variant of a completely configured module. For example, it could be a door assembly with: height of 500 mm, width of 600 mm, application of refrigerator and color of white. Variant items are physical parts with no variability, and can be allocated an actual manufacturing part number. Conversely, modules cannot be manufactured. Modules with a large number of options and numeric options (with an infinite range unless allowed values are specified) have a correspondingly large number of permutations; not all of these permutations are manufactured. It is useful to be able to reuse permutations that have previously been sold, as significant engineering work may have been invested in creating technical documentation, drawings, and manufacturing data that is attached to the variant items. The modular variants functionality allows you to create new variant items when they are required. You can also search for existing variant items to reuse in new products. Variant items are built up into a complete structure for a specific configuration corresponding to a product or customer order; in this structure all modules are replaced by specific variant items. If you are using NX, you can use the option values on variant items to determine the expression values on an NX CAD part.

Caution If a module has variant items linked to it, you cannot change any of the variant data without revising the module. Such changes may invalidate existing variant items linked to the module revision. Disallowed changes include: Removing or adding an allowed option value. Removing or adding an option. Setting or editing a variant condition on a BOM line. Changing variant logic such as module constraints, defaults, and rule checks. To make any of these changes, you must first revise the module. Even after revising, you can only add a new value to an existing option. You cannot add a new option because that invalidates any variant item linked to an earlier generic item or item revision. You may not want to update existing variant items that are linked to previous module revisions. As an alternative, you could create a new variant item, but Teamcenter then contains two different IDs for variant items that have the same configuration and share the same stored option set (SOS) values; this arrangement does not adequately enforce modularity. The new variant item may also contain additional components and, if so, it would not be appropriate to update the existing variant item.

Caution Teamcenter does not support the creation of variant items in products that have both modular variants and classic variants, that is, hybrid mode products.