Aras Innovator CMII Affected Items Wizard with Bulk Change

As you may know, Aras offers standard Project Management, Quality Planning, and Configuration Management solutions for their Innovator product.  What you might not know is that there is also a whole community of other open source solutions and projects that are available to download and add to your Innovator environment.  These solutions range from integrations to CATIA, Microsoft Office and Microsoft Dynamics to examples of workflow automation.  You can find the complete list of solutions by selecting the Projects tab at the top of practically any page on the Aras website.  This article will discuss one solution in particular, the CMII Affected Items Wizard with Bulk Change. 

The CMII Affected Items Wizard was originally authored by Aras to address a need to provide visibility into, and define actions for, items related to a change.  Razorleaf has recently made an addition to the community in the form of a modification to this project to enhance and further develop the functionality. 

The wizard presents a form to the user by way of a menu click from the Affected Items grid of an ECN, ECR and Simple ECO.  When run, the wizard provides a means to interrogate product structure to help make decisions about what should be included on the engineering change.  For example, say that you have a component (a plate) that is part of an assembly and you need to make a revision to the plate.  The outcome will be a new revision of the assembly structure showing the new revision of the plate.  The wizard provides a very easy interface showing “where used” information.  For example, you can see all “where used” information for the plate as well as the complete structure of the assembly.  The wizard also allows for the identification of parts that are not affected or that still need to be reviewed.

Razorleaf worked with a client to define some additional functionality and made the following enhancements to the solution:

• Provide a way to perform Bulk Change (or replacement of one part for another) on an ECN
• Increase the performance of the Direct Where-Used tab so that it is more responsive when there are a large number of relationships
• Disallow a part to be added as an Affected Item if it already appears on an incomplete ECN

The main enhancement is the Bulk Change component.  The idea behind this enhancement is to provide a way to switch part 123 in an assembly with part 456.  In this scenario, neither part would be revised, but the assembly revision would increment.  Like the original wizard, the user interface is used to setup the Bulk Change.  Then the Bulk Change is implemented automatically during the ECN lifecycle on the transition to In Work.

Here is a screen shot of the revised Affected Items Wizard in Bulk Change mode.

The changes to the user interface include a drop down to choose the mode (Revise or Bulk Change) the wizard will run in.  Revise mode represents the original execution method of the solution.  Bulk Change mode allows the user to setup the replacement capability.  The replacement definition is defined in the From and To fields.  When in Bulk Change mode, and the user searches for a part using the lookup field, the result of the search is inserted into the From box and the main grid (left hand side) is populated with the relationship data of the search result.  The user then specifies the To value by performing a search for the desired replacement.  Once the From and To have been defined, the user can select the assemblies for which the components should be switched by selecting them and clicking the arrow button next to the Affected Items grid.  This will add the assemblies to the Affected Items list.  When the wizard is closed using the Save Changes button, the assemblies will be shown in the Affected Items grid of the ECN back in the main Innovator screen.  They will also be identified as Interchangeable.

Here is a quick step-by-step process for trying out the wizard.

1. Download the CMII Affected Items Wizard with Bulk Change solution from the Aras Projects website
2. Import the project into your Innovator environment
3. Create a part with the classification Assembly.  Give the Assembly a part number of A1
4. Create a part with the classification Component.  Give the Component a part number of P1
5. Make P1 a child of A1
6. Create a part with the classification Component.  Give the Component a part number of P2
7. Promote A1, P1, and P2 to the Released state
8. Create a new ECN and add a blank Affected Item to the grid
9. Right click on the blank Affected Item and select CMII Wizard
10. Change the Mode drop down from Revise to Bulk Change
11. In the Lookup field, type “P1” and select the New Search button.  The Direct Where-Used tab shows the A1 – P1 structure, the From box is filled with P1, and the To/From dropdown is set to To.
12. In the field next to the To/From dropdown, type “P2” and run the search.  The To box will be filled with P2.
13. Select A1 from the main grid and select the >>> button next to the Affected Items list
14. Select the Save Changes and Exit button on the wizard toolbar
15. An Affected Item will have been added to the ECN where the Old Number is A1, the action is Change and the Interchangeable option will be checked
16. Run the ECN through its lifecycle.  When the ECN is in the In Work state, A1 will have a new revision and it will have P2 as a child.  Complete the ECN resulting in A1 in the Released state with child P2.

If you have questions about this project or any other Aras development, please let us know, we’d be happy to help.

Tags: Aras, Aras Innovator, CMII, Configuration Management, ECOs, ECx, engineering change orders, Open Source