enovia collaborative design for catia v4

ENOVIA Collaborative Design for CATIA V4 V6R2013x

User Guide for Enovia Collaborative Design for CATIA V4

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Table of Contents

Introduction ................................................................................................. 5

Prerequisites ............................................................................................... 6

Features ...................................................................................................... 7

CATIA V4-centric features: ........................................................................................................... 7

ENOVIA-centric features: .............................................................................................................. 7

CAD-centric features .................................................................................. 8

Connect .......................................................................................................................................... 9

Checking a design into ENOVIA .................................................................................................. 10

Checking out the design to CATIA V4 ......................................................................................... 13

Checkout->Load .......................................................................................................................... 13

Checkout -> Insert ....................................................................................................................... 17

Lock/Unlock ................................................................................................................................. 17

Attribute Sync to ENOVIA & Attribute Sync to Cad .................................................................... 19

Version ......................................................................................................................................... 20

Check For Updates -> All & Check For Updates -> Current .................................................... 21

Start Design ................................................................................................................................. 22

Manage Workspace ...................................................................................................................... 23

Disconnect.................................................................................................................................... 24

Preferences .................................................................................................................................. 25

Help .............................................................................................................................................. 26

About ............................................................................................................................................ 27

ENOVIA-centric features .......................................................................... 28

Lateral Navigation (Virtual Assembly) ........................................................................................ 28

“Related Views” in checkout ....................................................................................................... 29

Latest Version .............................................................................................................................. 29

EBOM Synchronization ............................................................................................................... 30

Rename ......................................................................................................................................... 30

Save As ......................................................................................................................................... 30

Generate Structure ....................................................................................................................... 30

Localized User Messages ........................................................................ 32

Appendix A: Working set (activity file): The Heart of the ENOVIA Collaborative Design for CATIA V4 ......................................................... 33

Appendix B: Versions and Revisions ..................................................... 34

Appendix C: Using The Applet Log ......................................................... 35

Appendix D: System Defined Attributes ................................................. 36

Appendix E: ENOVIA Collaborative Design for CATIA V4 License ....... 37

Appendix F: Assembly Modeler Procedures .......................................... 38

Assembly Build Scenario A ..................................................................... 39

Assembly Build Scenario B ..................................................................... 46

ENOVIA Collaborative Design for CATIA V4 - User Guide 5

Introduction

The ENOVIA Collaborative Design for CATIA V4 under the new JSP based architecture is one among a suite of MCAD integrations provided by ENOVIA with its MCAD partners. This ENOVIA Collaborative Design for CATIA V4 uses the web browser as the ENOVIA Collaborative Design for CATIA V4 agent. Like other MCAD integrations, the ENOVIA Collaborative Design for CATIA V4 must run with ENOVIA Designer Central. Hence, to install and run the ENOVIA Collaborative Design for CATIA V4, the user needs to install ENOVIA Designer Central from ENOVIA. The ENOVIA Collaborative Design for CATIA V4 has two components: A server component that enhances ENOVIA Designer Central and a client component that connects CATIA V4 to the central application. This document provides information on the ENOVIA Collaborative Design for CATIA V4 under this new architecture. It mainly focuses on the use of the ENOVIA Collaborative Design for CATIA V4 from the CAD user perspective. The client side (CATIA V4 side) component of the ENOVIA Collaborative Design for CATIA V4 is referred as “CSE (Client Side Extension)” henceforth in this document. The CSE can be installed on the CATIA V4 client or server machine. Before installing the CSE, it is important to install the server side harness for the CSE to work successfully. This ENOVIA Collaborative Design for CATIA V4, by default, works with the web. It can interact with ENOVIA either in an intranet or internet environment. The client and server can also be located on the same machine. All file upload/download is handled by the ENOVIA Collaborative Design for CATIA V4 in a secured manner. Once the client is installed, any upgrades of the client can be done automatically through the web.


Prerequisites

ENOVIA:

ENOVIA Designer Central V6R2013x

ENOVIA Collaborative Design for CATIA V4 License

Platforms:

Sun Solaris 10

AIX 6.1 TL2 64 Bit

Client:

1. CATIA Version 4.2.5 2. CATIA Assembly Modeling Product License (5626-ASS) is optional 3. Browsers: Mozilla (a java plugin is required)


Features

The features can be classified into CATIA V4-centric features, ENOVIA-centric features.

CATIA V4-centric features: After successful installation of CATIA V4 CSE, the CATIA V4 function key will have a function “ENOVIA”. Invoking this function will display a menu as shown in the figure below. The “ENOVIA” menu will have sub menus for all ENOVIA related operations as:

Connect

CheckIn

Checkout for Load

Checkout for Insert

LockUnlock

Attribute Sync to Cad for the Active Model

Attribute Sync to Cad for the Active Structure

Attribute Sync to ENOVIA for the Active Model

Attribute Sync to ENOVIA for the Active Structure

Version

Check for Updates All

Check for Updates Current

Start Design

Manage Workspace

Disconnect

Preferences

Help

About

ENOVIA-centric features: These features are ENOVIA specific. The CAD tool is not involved in executing these features.

Lateral Navigation (Virtual assembly creation)

Related Views in checkout

EBOM Synchronize

Rename

Save As


CAD-centric features Once the CATIA V4 CSE is installed, the user must add the “ENOVIA” function into the programmable function keys to allow the option “ENOVIA” to appear on the function palette at the right of the screen. When the user selects the ENOVIA function, CATIA will display the ENOVIA menu. Depending on the context, some ENOVIA options may be unavailable. The ENOVIA menu options available for user selections are displayed in white.


Connect

The first menu option is “Connect”. Selecting the “Connect” operation will result in the workstation process joining the existing active ENOVIA Designer Central session. If there is no active session, the workstation process will spawn a new browser window to load and display the page contained at the URL of the ENOVIA Collaborative Design for CATIA V4. After “Connect” is selected the available options (displayed in white) contained in the CATIA ENOVIA menu will change. As previously mentioned, a web browser (Mozilla) must be installed on the client machine to successfully run the ENOVIA Collaborative Design for CATIA V4. After the user selects “Connect”, ENOVIA Collaborative Design for CATIA V4 starts a workstation browser window.

On the login page, the user has to specify a valid username and password in order to connect to ENOVIA successfully. On a successful login, the ENOVIA homepage will be displayed. When this page loads the security certificate for the applet (signed by ENOVIA) will be displayed. The user needs to accept the applet install or the ENOVIA Collaborative Design for CATIA V4 will not function. This applet performs the interaction with ENOVIA. On a successful connection with ENOVIA the other menus will become active. Note: The check box for “Always trust content from ENOVIA, Inc.” may be selected if desired. If the user has already logged into ENOVIA Designer Central, the Connect menu will join up with the existing session.


Checking a design into ENOVIA To check in an assembly into ENOVIA, a user must select the “Checkin” option from the CATIA V4 ENOVIA menu. NOTE: Before the checkin the user must save the CATIA models.

Use the ‘Save references only’ option when saving the session.

After the CATIA V4 models are saved to disk, selecting the “Checkin” menu option will bring up the checkin page in the browser as shown below for the CAD objects in the current session of CATIA V4.

On ENOVIA Designer Central, this will appear like:

The Tree-Table control: The checkin page has a tree table for the CAD objects. The tree table for the objects selected has various columns displaying the information specific to the object in each row.

Selection checkbox


The column after the name is a checkbox column which allows the user to select the objects for checkin.

Assigned Folder

Assigned Folder allows the user to assign a folder to a design at checkin. The ‘…’ button allows the user to select from a list of folders.

Status

The forth column is a status column that will display the status of the object as:

“New”: if the object does not exist in ENOVIA

“Exists”: if the object exists in ENOVIA but is not different from what is checked into ENOVIA

“Modified”: if the object exists in ENOVIA but is different from what is checked into ENOVIA

LockedBy

LockedBy shows the user who has a lock on the object if it is locked.

Target Revision A user can start with whatever target revision is desired by entering the target revision on a new CAD object checkin. If the policy has the revision sequence of A, B, C, the user can start by choosing revision B.

Type and Policy columns If the object is new, the ENOVIA Collaborative Design for CATIA V4 shows the possible types for the particular CAD object. For example, if the user is checking in an assembly, the possible assembly types are listed in the combo-box. If the user is checking in a part (component), the ENOVIA Collaborative Design for CATIA V4 will show the possible types for parts. The system administrator creates these administrative objects. The policy combo-box will list the possible policies for the given types. If you change the type it is possible that the policy list will also get updated. If the object you are checking in is not new, the “Type” and “Policy” columns will disappear and show the exact type and policy of the object being checked in.

Other information columns The other columns include "CurrentRev”, “Ver”, and “VerPolicy”. These are for convenience.

Selection helpers in Check in:

The bottom panel of the checkin page includes the button “Select Modified” If “Select Modified” is clicked, only objects modified in CATIA are selected.

Checkin:

If the user selects the Checkin button, the selected CAD objects are checked into ENOVIA. If a selected object has been modified in the CAD session and not saved to disk the ENOVIA Collaborative Design for CATIA V4 will save the object prior to checking it in. Objects that haven’t been modified will not be saved.

Cancel: If the user cancels the operation, the browser returns to last ENOVIA page viewed in the main browser window, and terminates the checkin operation.


Options during checkin:

Check in comment

A user can enter any comment before checking the file into ENOVIA. The comment is stored in an attribute on the CAD object in ENOVIA. The user can later search for CAD objects based on the comments.

Delete Local files Select this check box to delete the local upon a successful checkin. This prevents the unnecessary storage of files on the local disk.

Copy attributes If this is checked, the attributes are copied from the CAD file and checked into ENOVIA. Relationship attributes will be copied only if copy relationship attributes on checkin is selected in the user’s preferences.

Create version If this flag is on, the ENOVIA Collaborative Design for CATIA V4 will create a new version of the object when the checkin occurs. If it is not checked, the CAD file will be checked into the same business object from where the file was checked out (the user will lose the earlier copy of the file).

Retain Lock The default behavior of the ENOVIA Collaborative Design for CATIA V4 is to remove the lock on the business object once the user checks the file into ENOVIA. It retains the lock if this check box is on. This effectively means that a user does not need to checkout and lock the file the next time he wants to work on it.

Background Checkin If this is selected the checkin operation will run in the background and control will be immediately returned to the CAD tool.

Select all children When this flag is on, if the parent is selected all the children will get selected recursively.

Note: The ENOVIA Collaborative Design for CATIA V4 identifies the file for “checkin”. Refer to Appendix A on the working set (activity file) for details. In case it can’t identify the file being checked in (e.g. file is copied or renamed but ENOVIA already has an object with the same name), the checkin command will fail with a message saying which file it could not identify. If this happens, the user needs to use the “Versions” dialog and identify the version using the preview facility there. The “Versions” dialog will become editable for un-recognized files.


Checking out the design to CATIA V4

ENOVIA Centric: Use ENOVIA Designer Central and search for a CAD object, select Attachments and select the check out link. Once the check out options is chosen, the user must use the “Checkout for Load” or “Checkout for Insert” menus from CATIA V4.

Checkout->Load

This menu can be used if a ENOVIA search was used to locate the object(s) to be checked out.

To initiate the checkout in the ENOVIA Collaborative Design for CATIA V4, the user must select the items from the Checkout interface menu and then select the Checkout button or link. A message window as shown below will be displayed asking the user to select Checkout from the CATIA V4 ENOVIA menu.


Click the OK button to remove the pop-up, then click the Checkout for Load… item on the CATIA V4 ENOVIA menu to initiate the Checkout process.

When the user selects Checkout for Load… from the ENOVIA menu in CATIA V4, the files for the selected objects will be checked out to the user’s workspace. The user can permanently change the destination directory for checkout by using Preferences.

The Tree-Table control:

Similar to the checkin tree table control, the checkout tree table has several advanced features. Selection checkbox

The second column is a checkbox column, which allows the user to select the objects for checkout.


LockedBy LockedBy shows the user who has a lock on the object if it is locked.

Lock checkbox

This checkbox allows the user to lock the business object during checkout. Local Checkout

This checkbox allows the user to get a local copy of the file on checkout if Rapid File Access (RFA) is in use.

Other information columns

The other columns include "Type", "DesignType", "Revision", “Version”, “Document Version”, and “Access Status”. These help the user to identify the CAD object.

Checkout:

This button will initiate the checkout.

Cancel: This will cancel the checkout operation

Selection helpers in Checkout: Lock All

“Lock All” will check the lock checkbox on all items. Select Required

“Select Must” will select objects that have to be checked out with the already selected items.

Options during checkout:

Checkout directory This shows the default checkout directory. If the user wants to checkout to different directory, click on “Choose”. It will spawn a directory chooser in which the user can choose another directory.


Once the user clicks “OK”, the directory chooser will set the directory as specified. If the user wants to permanently change the checkout directory. “Preferences” should be used.

Copy attributes

If this is checked, the ENOVIA Collaborative Design for CATIA V4 will copy the attributes from ENOVIA to the CATIA file. These attributes will be set during opening of the CAD model. Please note that if the user does not load the CAD model the attributes will not be set. The attributes are mapped in ENOVIA. These mappings are done as a part of ENOVIA Collaborative Design for CATIA V4 installation. Relationship attributes will be copied only if copy relationship attributes on checkout is selected in the user’s preferences.

Load files If this check box is checked, the CAD objects will be loaded after checkout.

Select all children If this checkbox is checked and the user selects an assembly (or root node), all of the relevant children are selected. This is not a toggle. (If the user selects an assembly and checks or un-checks this checkbox, it will not do anything)

The user cannot checkout objects if some other person has already locked them. This information can be gathered from the “Lock” column in the table.

There are few important features associated with checkout.

Lateral navigation

Related views (Related Vertical View/Related Lateral View)

These will be discussed at length later in this document.


Checkout -> Insert

This menu can be used if ENOVIA Designer Central Search was used to locate the object(s) to be inserted into the current active part.

Lock/Unlock

The LockUnlock… command on the CATIA V4 ENOVIA menu allows helps a user to lock or unlock a CAD object from within CATIA V4. Note that the ENOVIA Collaborative Design for CATIA V4 will not let the user checkin the CAD object unless it is locked. This command is especially helpful if the user has checked out an object without a lock, made changes and finds, during checkin, that he doesn’t have it locked. The user can select Lock/Unlock and lock the object and then subsequently checkin the CAD object.

When the user selects LockUnlock…, a menu shows the current status of the active CAD object in ENOVIA. The user can change the lock status by changing the state of the checkbox in Lock/Unlock dialog shown below. If the checkbox is selected the file will be locked. If the checkbox is not selected the file will be unlocked.


If the ENOVIA Collaborative Design for CATIA V4 can’t detect the exact

version of the file it will display an error message. The user can go to the

“Versions” dialog to identify the version.


Attribute Sync to ENOVIA & Attribute Sync to Cad Attribute Sync to Cad… will bring attributes from ENOVIA to the CAD object that is currently open in CATIA V4. The opposite is true for Attribute Sync to ENOVIA…. The attributes need to be mapped in the ENOVIA Collaborative Design for CATIA V4 Global Configuration Object. Your system administrator can modify attribute mappings in the Global Configuration Object.

Note: Attributes can be synchronized in checkin /checkout process if the user selects the appropriate check box.

In CATIA V4, Attribute Sync will work only on the user-defined Parameters (Set Up->Parameters->Info). The title block within the CATIA V4 drawing is a good example of where a user would want to manage the attributes. The user needs to associate the drawing title block notes to an object attribute. If the object attributes are mapped in ENOVIA the command “Attribute Sync to Cad” will update the attribute values from ENOVIA to the CATIA V4 part file.


Version

The Versions… menu option will display the search results page listing all the revisions of the CAD objects in the current window of CATIA V4. If the user has a CATIA V4 session named “V4TOY” open in CATIA V4 and the user selects Versions… from the CATIA V4 ENOVIA menu, the page shown below listing all the versions in the ENOVIA database is displayed in the browser. If there is no object with that name in the database, the browser will display the home page after displaying an appropriate message.

If a user opens a file whose version could not be detected by the ENOVIA Collaborative Design for CATIA V4 (multiple versions of the current model is existing in ENOVIA, but the ENOVIA Collaborative Design for CATIA V4 can’t recognize the version the user is working on) the user can use “Versions” dialog to select the version. Suppose a user is working on the file /usr/tmp/testVersions.prt. If the user copies this file to /usr/tmp2, the ENOVIA Collaborative Design for CATIA V4 will not be able to recognize the version in the /usr/tmp2 directory. In that case, all the commands like “Attribute Synch”, “Checkin”, “Lock/Unlock” will fail with the message asking the user to select the version using the versions command. Once the version is selected and the user selects “Done”, the file is now registered by the activity file.


Check For Updates -> All & Check For Updates -> Current

Please refer to ENOVIA Designer Central User Guide -> Working with IEF Based Integration -> Design Change Report section for more information. When you are using Check For updates -> All, it will overwrite the files on disk.


Start Design

Please refer to ENOVIA Designer Central User Guide -> Working with IEF Based Integration -> Starting the CAD Object Design Process section for more information


Manage Workspace

The “Manage Workspace” menu allows the user to manage your workspaces on disk. This command will block CATIA until the workspace manager window is closed.


Disconnect

The “Disconnect” menu allows the user to disconnect from ENOVIA. This command will disconnect the CATIA V4 session from the browser. The browser session will continue to exist.


Preferences

These are the server side preferences. When the user selects Preferences… from the CATIA V4 ENOVIA menu, the following dialog is displayed.

This dialog controls preferences for checkin, checkout, Miscellaneous, Derived Outputs, Default Type Policy Settings, and Selected Default Tables.

Related View Registry: The user can select a choice from the related views registry here. Views in

the particular related view registry will be displayed.


Help The Help command displays online help if it has been installed. The setting helpURL in settings.ini defines the location of the online help. If helpURL is not set a message will be displayed saying the online help is not available.


About

The About… CATIA V4 ENOVIA menu command prints the version of the ENOVIA Collaborative

Design for CATIA V4 in the same console window where the other CATIA text output is displayed.


ENOVIA-centric features

Lateral Navigation (Virtual Assembly)

Lateral Navigation is a way of creating a virtual assembly. Suppose a user has created an assembly with two components in it. The assembly is A1; the components are C1 and C2. The user checks them in for the first time to create A1 A.0, C1 A.0 and C2 A.0. He checks out component C1 and C2 couple of times and creates their version A.2. Assembly A1 is still pointing to components C1 and C2 of Version A.0.

In the checkout page of the Assembly A1, he sees the tree with components at version A.0. If he wants to change the Component versions to C1 A.1 and C2 A.2, he can select the combo box of the “Versions” in checkout dialog and change them. Now he is checking out Assembly A1 with A.0 version, Component C1 with A.1 version, Component C2 with A.2 version. This structure doesn’t actually exist in ENOVIA and is a virtual assembly.

The following dialog shows a similar situation:

Here the bike assembly is pointing to WHEEL with version A.0. When the user clicks on the version combo box, the user will see that it has two versions, A.0 and A.1. The user selects A.1. This structure does not actually exist in ENOVIA (virtual assembly). The user can go ahead and checkout this virtual assembly. After verifying, he can checkin the entire structure again to build the new toy assembly, which will point to WHEEL A.1. Note that when used with “Create Version on Checkin” switched off the virtual assembly is removed.


With the help of the virtual assembly feature, the user can re-use almost all the component/assemblies checked in into ENOVIA. He can create many combinations.

“Related Views” in checkout

There are two combo boxes appearing on the top of the checkout page. The right hand side will have combo box for “Related Lateral View”. The left hand side will have a combo box for “Related Vertical View”. Vertical View will have one program for showing the related drawing. When a user selects one node and a particular view on it, the ENOVIA Collaborative Design for CATIA V4 will display the related view for its children. (Not to the selected node, but its children). If the user doesn’t select anything, it will apply the view to all the nodes in selection. The user will not be able to multi-select. The behavior is same for both of Lateral/Vertical View. This is to make sure that the structure being checked out will get loaded in CATIA V4. There is a type, “MCADInteg-CheckoutViewProgramRegistry”, created by the harness installer and an object of this type called “DefaultViewRegistry”. This has an attribute, MCADInteg-ProgramNameMapping, which has the mappings for the programs available. The system administrator can create any number of such registry objects. When a different view is selected, the browser will recreate the checkout dialog with the values returned from the program concerned. Two sample programs are installed: LatestRevision, LatestVersion.

Latest Version

When selected, it shows the latest version of the CAD objects in the tree table. Latest Revision: This view gives the latest finalized revision for the CAD objects in the tree table. This revision may or may not be in the final state. If no such object is present, it will show the same CAD object. Depending upon the user’s requirement, the system administrator can create new programs and register them. At any time the user can select “Default” and go back to the view that was selected by him for checkout.


EBOM Synchronization

This shows up as an action in the details page of major rev objects of ENOVIA Designer Central. EBOM synchronization will appear after finalization of the stream. A default implementation for creating an EBOM for an assembly has been provided. “Part” objects are created corresponding to an assembly and all its first level children. These Part objects are then connected using an EBOM relationship.

Rename

This is an action in the details page of ENOVIA Designer Central that appears only for minor version objects. Rename allows the user to rename the object a new name. This also renames the major rev object and all objects in the version stream. Only the business objects are renamed; the files checked into the business object retain their old names until they’ve been checked out and checked back in by the ENOVIA Collaborative Design for CATIA V4. When checking out a structure that contains a renamed component the directory must not already contain a file by the previous name or the ENOVIA Collaborative Design for CATIA V4 will not function properly. The CATIA V4 references for renamed components in the context of their higher-level parent(s) are resolved by the ENOVIA Collaborative Design for CATIA V4 on a subsequent checkout of the structure.

Save As

This is an action in the details page of ENOVIA Designer Central that appears for all minor version objects and for finalized major revisions. Save As allows the user to create a copy of an entire structure while giving new names to any or all of the objects in the structure. Only the business objects are copied; the files checked into the business objects retain their old names until they’ve been checked out and checked back in by the ENOVIA Collaborative Design for CATIA V4. When checking out a structure that contains a copied component the directory must not already contain a file by the previous name or the ENOVIA Collaborative Design for CATIA V4 will not function properly. The CATIA V4 references for copied components that have been given new names in the context of higher-level parents are resolved by the ENOVIA Collaborative Design for CATIA V4 on the first checkout operation of the copied structure following the Save As operation.

Generate Structure

The "New Structure Generation" allows a third party product Configurator/Viewer to generate new structure in ENOVIA and set attribute values on that CAD structure and relationships, according to the ENOVIA Designer Central guidelines. You can check out the CAD structures created and modified in ENOVIA to the CAD tool. When CAD structure are checked to the CAD tool, information about the attributes of the structures and modifications made to the structure is provided to the CSE. ENOVIA Collaborative Design for CATIA V4 applies these changes to the CAD assembly files in the structure or creates new CAD assembly files, if required. Thus, the design on the desktop of your CAD tool reflects the changes made in ENOVIA.


Please refer to ENOVIA Designer Central User Guide -> Working with IEF Based Integration -> Generating new structure section for more information.


Localized User Messages

The messages shown to the user in the CATIA V4 console by the ENOVIA Collaborative Design for CATIA V4 can be localized. All of the messages are contained in the file mcad_messages.txt found in the bin directory of the installation directory. Each message consists of three lines where the first line is the key, the second line is the message the user sees, and the third line is a blank line. The messages can be localized by modifying the second line but any ‘%s’ characters must not be removed. The first line must not be changed in any way otherwise the user will not see the localized message. If the messages are translated into another language and non-ASCII characters are inserted into this file it must be saved in UNICODE format. If not, the user the messages will not be properly decoded by the ENOVIA Collaborative Design for CATIA V4 and the user will see the default English messages. Once the mcad_messages.txt file has been localized, the settings.ini file in the bin directory must be modified for the ENOVIA Collaborative Design for CATIA V4 to use this file. Open the settings.ini file and set the messageFile parameter to the localized message file. The messageFile parameter is in the [GENERAL] section of the settings.ini file. For example, if the localized message file was saved as mcad_messages_jp.txt then settings.ini would be modified as shown below. messageFile = mcad_messages_jp.txt


Appendix A: Working set (activity file): The Heart of the ENOVIA Collaborative Design for CATIA V4

The ENOVIA Collaborative Design for CATIA V4 keeps track of the files a user is working with. This helps the ENOVIA Collaborative Design for CATIA V4 to locate the exact business object in ENOVIA when a user selects different ENOVIA Collaborative Design for CATIA V4 operations (i.e. Lock/Unlock, AttrSynch and Versions). The ENOVIA Collaborative Design for CATIA V4 assumes that in one directory the user can keep only one version of the given component (part). For example, a user can keep any one version (A.0 or A.1 etc.) of part “center” in his C:\temp directory. He is allowed to keep other versions of the same component as long as he uses different directories. The ENOVIA Collaborative Design for CATIA V4 enforces the rule of one version at a time when he locks the version. If a user has checked out “Center” A.1 with a lock (lock means he wants to modify it) in C:\temp the ENOVIA Collaborative Design for CATIA V4 will NOT allow him to check out any other version of the same component to the directory until he checks in or unlocks the version that he is working with. In the same way, if a user has checked out an assembly “crank_assembly” with lock, checked out component “center” A.0 (which is a part of crank_assembly) without lock, the ENOVIA Collaborative Design for CATIA V4 will NOT allow user to checkout “center” A.1 to the same directory. This is because the version “A.0” of “center” is being referred in the assembly “crank_assembly” which is locked. When the ENOVIA Collaborative Design for CATIA V4 can’t identify the version of CAD object, it displays a message to that effect. The user can go to the “Versions” dialog and select the version being used in the current session. Here is an example of this case: Suppose the user checks in (or is working with) a part “center.prt” from C:\temp. Now if he copies this file to “C:\temp2” (a different directory) and tries to use Checkin, LockUnlock, AttribSynch, etc., the ENOVIA Collaborative Design for CATIA V4 will NOT recognize it. It will give the message to the user to use the Versions dialog to choose the version he is working with. The Versions dialog will become editable in this case.


Appendix B: Versions and Revisions By default, the ENOVIA Collaborative Design for CATIA V4 versions the CAD object when the user checks it in. The user can override this behavior by unselecting the checkbox “Create Version during Checkin”. In that case, it will checkin the object into the existing business object. If the CAD object is new, the ENOVIA Collaborative Design for CATIA V4 will ignore this directive. The “Checkin” operation will remove the lock on the object in either case (create version or not). All major objects (non-versioned) are called “Revisions” in the ENOVIA Collaborative Design for CATIA V4. All minor objects (versioned) objects are called versions. For example, A.0, A.1, A.2 etc. are minor versions of major revision A. Similarly, B.0 and B.1 are of revision B. During finalization, the files are moved from the minor version to the major revision. If any user has “locked” any one of the versions (say A.2) in one revision stream (A), no other user can lock any version (say, A.0, A.1, A.2) in that revision stream (A). Once the user checks in and unlocks the version he has, the lock on the stream gets released. The user can checkout A.2 from stream A and checkin to stream B to create B.1. The lock on A stream will be released.


Appendix C: Using The Applet Log

In Netscape or Mozilla select Tools->Web Development->Java Console. The Java Console will open. The settings.ini file in the CATIA V4 CSE installed directory has an option: appletloglevel. This is under [Server]. It will take values from 1 to 7. If 1 is set, all possible log entries display in the Java Console. If it is 4, only “Debug” messages are shown in the Java Console.


Appendix D: System Defined Attributes

All system attributes must be defined and mapped correctly in ENOVIA (see the admin install guide).


Appendix E: ENOVIA Collaborative Design for CATIA V4 License

ENOVIA Collaborative Design for CATIA V4 uses ENOVIA Collaborative Design for CATIA V4 license. All users who run ENOVIA Collaborative Design for CATIA V4 must have ENOVIA Collaborative Design for CATIA V4 license. The administrator must assign this license to every user of the ENOVIA Collaborative Design for CATIA V4; otherwise, the user will not be able to use the ENOVIA Collaborative Design for CATIA V4. Please refer to the ENOVIA Designer Central User Guide for more information.


Appendix F: Assembly Modeler Procedures CATIA v4 Assembly Modeler procedures to be used for creating assemblies.

The Assembly Modeling interface is divided into two window panes, the assembly + component tree and the

3D model geometry display. Although a user can select components and assemblies by picking their images

from the 3D model display window, these examples define the methods used where the user selects

assemblies to work with from the tree structure. The selected (active) assemblies and components will be

highlighted in orange.


Assembly Build Scenario A

Merge the 4 pre-existing sub-assemblies: LOLLYPOP1, LOLLYPOP2, LOLLYPOP3 and POPSTAND into

a new empty assembly named SAMPLE. The user must know the location of the UNIX directory that

contains the assembly that will be added. In this example each of the 4 sub-assemblies reside in a separate

directory.

Finished SAMPLE Assembly

1) Create an empty assembly. Select “File” + “New” from the drop down menu bar.

2) Rename the new assembly.

Right mouse click on the only tree entry to display assembly tree modification functions. Select “Properties…” to display the Part Properties input form.

Type SAMPLE into the “Part number” buffer then press OK to change the default name.


Assembly Component Function Menu Assembly Part Properties Menu

3) Add the POPSTAND sub-assembly to the SAMPLE assembly. Right mouse click on the SAMPLE entry to display the assembly build functions.

Select “Import component…” to display the Component Selection Box input form.

Although the dialog uses the nomenclature of component, in this example we will only be adding

items at the assembly level. The actual components in the assembly are logically attached to the

sub-assemblies and there is no need to select them explicitly. Select the UNIX directory that

contains the POPSTAND assembly from the list in the left pane on the form by navigating to the parent folder through clicking pathnames in the same pane. After the correct sub-assembly

directory is selected, the correct .asm file will appear for selection in the right side pane which

displays the files contained in the directory. In this example I used ~/asy4/POPSTAND.asm.


Double click on the POPSTAND.asm item in the “Files” pane to attach the POPSTAND sub-assembly to SAMPLE assembly. The Component Selection Box is removed.

SAMPLE assembly after addition of first sub-assembly (POPSTAND)

One level of undo is generally available to revert to the assembly state which existed previous to the last action performed on the assembly. The undo is activated by selecting from the drop

down menu bar, “Edit”+”Undo”.


4) Repeat the previous step to add LOLLYPOP1, LOLLYPOP2 and LOLLYPOP3 sub-assemblies to the SAMPLE assembly.

Right mouse click on the SAMPLE entry to display the assembly build functions. Select “Import component…” to display the Component Selection Box input form.

Navigate to the ../asy1 directory and double click on LOLLIPOP1.asm to add that model to the

assembly. Repeat this step, replacing the 1 with 2 then with 3 to attach the last two sub-

assemblies to the SAMPLE assembly. 5) Update ‘search order’ to new destination directory.

Search Order is the CATIA v4 Assembly Modeler term for the list of directory paths that the tool

uses to resolve undefined links between assemblies and components. Before this new SAMPLE

assembly can be written, the Assembly Modeler must be told to where to look to resolve the links

defined within the new assembly as it is written to disk. Since SAMPLE is a new assembly, the tool must resolve all links to the directory that the assembly is created in. After “File” + “Search Order…” is selected from the drop down menu bar, the Search Order input form is displayed.

Accessing Search Order Search Order Specification Menu (2 examples)

If there are any pre-existing paths defined in the list the user must first delete them by selecting

their names from the displayed list and then clicking the “Delete Directories” button at the top of the Search Order menu.

To add a new path to the list, either type in the path name into the input buffer under the “New

Directory:” prompt, or select the “…” button to access a standard pathname selector menu. In

this example I will save the new SAMPLE assembly into subdirectory named samdir located in

my home directory so the Search Order is set to that path.

6) Save the newly created assembly.

The recommended practice is to save a newly created assembly into a new directory. Doing so

will eliminate any chance of existing components being overwritten. Select “File” + “Save As…” from the drop down menu bar to access the Save As form.


Accessing Save As Save As Specification Menu

Each element in the assembly has a directory associated to it. If the assembly were to be saved without re-specifying the target directory, the original sub-assemblies used to build SAMPLE

would be altered, possibly damaging other assemblies. Before saving the new SAMPLE

assembly, the directories listed for all of the component assemblies must be remapped to the new

directory, ~/samdir in our example.

Select all assembly components and then click the “Change Directory” button.


Save As Specification Menu

The Directory Selection Box menu will be displayed with the contents of the Search Order list.

Directory Selection Box

Select from the list the new directory where the assembly is to be saved, then click the “OK” button to assign the new directory for assembly references during the save process.


Save As Specification Menu

Verify that all the referenced assembly directories point to the new target directory and then

press the “OK” button to save the new assembly to disk.

7) Verify that the assembly was correctly saved.

Clear the Search Order. Select “File” + “Search Order…”. Select the ~/samdir entry from the list displayed on the Search Order menu, then select the “Delete Directories” button then the “OK”

button.

Select “File” + “Close” to reset the Assembly Modeler to the initial condition. Select “File” + “Open” and from the File Selection Box double click select the SAMPLE.asm item from the ~/samdir directory. The complete finished SAMPLE assembly should be loaded into the Assembly Modeler and be displayed. The SAMPLE assembly can be now manipulated in the normal fashion and resaved.


Assembly Build Scenario B Merge an existing multi-level assembly named BIKE into the previously completed assembly SAMPLE.

CATIA v4 Assembly Modeler (BIKE assembly)


Assembly File Selection Menu

1) Load the SAMPLE assembly into the modeler.

Select “File” + “Open...” from the drop down menu bar and use the File Selection Box to select

the SAMPLE.asm from the directory previously saved into. After the assembly has loaded into the modeler, the display should look like the first illustration named “Finished SAMPLE Assembly”

shown at the beginning of this document.

2) Link the BIKE assembly to the SAMPLE assembly. Right mouse click on the SAMPLE entry in the tree to display the assembly component build functions. Select “Import component…” to display the Component Selection Box input form.

Select the UNIX directory that contains the BIKE assembly from the list in the left pane on the

form by navigating to the parent folder through clicking pathnames in the same pane. After

the correct sub-assembly directory is selected, the BIKE.asm file will appear for selection in the right side pane that displays the files contained in the directory. Double click on the BIKE.asm

filename to perform the link.


SAMPLE Assembly after BIKE link

3) Save the modified assembly, *DO NOT SELECT File+Save* Before saving the modifications the user must add the directory that will be used to save the modified assembly into the Search Order list. In this example we will overwrite the existing

SAMPLE assembly, therefore the ~/samdir directory must be added to the Search Order using the Search Order menu accessed from the drop down menu “File” + “Search Order…”.

If “File” + ”Save” is used, the assembly modeler will modify elements of the BIKE assembly.

Therefore, always use “File” + “Save As” when saving assemblies after existing sub-assemblies are added.

Before resaving the modified SAMPLE assembly, the directories listed for all of the component

assemblies must be remapped to the destination directory, ~/samdir in this example. Select all

assembly components not mapped to ~/samdir (they should have previously been mapped to ~/bike directory) then click the “Change Directory” button. The Directory Selection Box menu

will be displayed with the contents of the Search Order list. Select from the list the ~/samdir


directory where the assembly is to be saved, then click the “OK” button to assign the new

directory for assembly references during the save process. Verify that all the referenced

assembly directories point to the ~/samdir target directory, and that all modified elements on the list are selected to be saved, and then press the “OK” button to save the modified assembly

to disk.

If the assembly was modified but no new pre-existing sub-assemblies are added, there is no

problem with using the “File” + “Save” function.

4) Verify that the assembly was correctly saved.

Clear the Search Order. Select “File” + “Search Order…”. Select the ~/samdir entry from the list displayed on the Search Order menu, then select the “Delete Directories” button then the

“OK” button.

Select “File” + “Close” to reset the Assembly Modeler to the initial condition. Select “File” + “Open” and from the File Selection Box double click select the SAMPLE.asm item from the ~/samdir directory. The complete finished SAMPLE assembly should be loaded into the Assembly Modeler and be displayed. If some of the graphics are not resolved due to the nature of the model links contained in the

newly attached assembly, the resultant assembly may show yellow nodes instead of the regular

red nodes shown for the properly linked and resolved components of the assembly. In addition

the associated graphics will not be displayed in the 3D graphics window.

If unresolved graphics result, there are two methods that can be used to fix the problem. Both methods require the user to know in which directory the mis-referenced models are contained.

The first method requires the user to add that directory to the Search Order and then either

reload the assembly or select “Reload” from the right mouse button menu that pops up when

one of the unresolved components is selected. After the reload the tree and graphics will be resolved. The downside to using this method is that the directory path would have to be

contained in the search order list anytime that assembly is loaded into the modeler.

The other method is preferred, but it requires the user to specify the location of the graphics for

each unique unresolved component. Select “Representation” + “Replace…” from the right

mouse button menu that pops up when one of the unresolved components is selected. The Component Selection Box is then displayed. From this menu, navigate to the directory that

contains the model and double click on the correct component model name in the pane on the

right part of the menu. All instances of that component will then be permanently resolved for

the assembly and the correct graphical link information will be saved with the assembly when

the assembly is saved.


Reload Graphics selection Replace Graphics Representation selection

The above pictures indicate there are unresolved graphics in the BIKE sub-asssembly. The user

must specify the graphics location and resave the assembly.

The information maintained about the graphics representation can be accessed from the right

mouse button menu that pops up when one of the components is selected. Select “Properties…” and then the “File Information” tab on the Part Properties menu to see the location information

about the components associated .asm and .model files.


Component Part Properties Menu

Note: Because there is no slider gadget available for the assembly/component tree pane, if the

component tree becomes too large, the user has three options to access the components at the bottom of the tree. One, the list can be resized using the rescale button applied to the tree pane.

Two, the user can directly select the graphics representation to specify an assembly or

component for manipulations. Three, the “View” + “Overview” option can be selected to activate a

third pane containing a draggable box that defines the viewport location for the component tree

pane.


Component Tree Overview Pane

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