Structure Management on Active Workspace ─ Usage

Imprecise assemblies allow you to see the product structure (bill of materials) configured with the relevant item revisions, according to the revision rule you choose for the window. For example, you may want to configure the product structure with revisions that are released for production or, alternatively, with the latest working revision of components. All users look at the same underlying product structure, but view different configurations in different circumstances according to the revision rule to suit particular needs. Teamcenter automatically reconfigures an imprecise structure when new parts are released or created, or other changes are made. Consequently, it is not necessary to make a copy of the structure and manually update it if you make changes.

Precise assemblies are fixed structures of specific item revisions. A precise assembly has links (occurrences) to item revisions of its components. When you modify a component to a new revision, you must manually update the assembly by removing the old revision of the component and adding the new revision.

You configure the precise references with a revision rule containing a precise rule entry. However, you can dynamically configure a precise assembly (treated it as imprecise) by applying a revision rule that does not contain the precise rule entry, or has the entry at a lower precedence. Precise assemblies are useful in situations where you must control the configuration very carefully, for example, in aerospace environments.

When the parent assemblies are released and can no longer be modified, any change may result in significant revision ripple. If you incorporate new revisions of piece parts, every parent assembly to the top of the structure must also be revised. However, you can group changes into batches to minimize this effect.

Item revision configuration

You can change a BOM view revision from precise to imprecise if you have write access to the BOM view revision. This operation causes all the occurrences of that BOM view revision (for example, all of the components for that assembly, everywhere it occurs) to be changed. When you toggle an assembly from imprecise to precise, the precise occurrences reference the item revision that was configured. When you change precise BOM view revisions to imprecise, the Structure Manager window's revision rule is applied to determine the revision of the item for each component in the BOM view revision that should display.