Objects used to manage designs

Product data for Next Generation Planning is managed using 4th Generation Design (4GD).

4GD allows designers to cooperate in real time during the design cycle of a product. It is particularly suitable for development teams working on large products that include millions of parts, for example, products in the shipbuilding and automotive industries. 4GD allows users to check out and modify the individual parts that comprise the overall design of the product, without locking the entire product or major assemblies.

4GD objects include:

Collaborative designs

A collaborative design is the container for all the design data in a product or program.

Partition schemes

A partition scheme contains attributes that specify the characteristics of a collection of partitions, for example, the type of child partitions or the number of top-level partitions the scheme may contain.

Partitions

A partition is used to logically organize sets of design components into a hierarchy that permits all users to easily find their necessary data. Partitions can be organized in multiple ways, for example, by function, by spatial location, or by physical description.

Partition templates

A partition template is a stable, reusable, blueprint of partition breakdowns and partitions that you could potentially reuse in multiple collaborative designs.

Design components

A design component is a design representation of a component of a product.  Design components typically maintain geometric data and are authored in CAD systems.

Design features

A design feature represents an element or characteristic in the collaborative design such as weld points and weld seams.

Subset definitions

A subset definition maintains a search recipe and configuration that can be used to create a subset.

Subsets

A subset contains a set of design components you want to use. A subset is created by the realization of a subset definition.

Subset recipes

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A subset recipe controls which objects from the referenced collaborative design are added to the subset. For example, you could a recipe could define a subset using the members of a partition, proximity to an object, a certain volume of the product assembly, or using object attributes.