3DEXPERIENCE - Release Assembly and All Related Files

3DEXPERIENCE users often ask, “How can I release an assembly and all of its parts, sub-assemblies, and related files (especially drawings)?”

Releasing all the sub-assemblies and parts (either manually or from a Change Action) is fairly easy, but also including all of the drawings is a bit more challenging. This blog explains an easy way to accomplish this.

Start by using the Product Explorer app in the web browser interface.

Search for the top-level assembly name that you want to release, and then drag and drop it into Product Explorer.

Ensure the Show Relations option is turned on. To access this option, right-click at the top of the header bar on Title.

This will enable expanded nodes under each assembly, sub-assembly, and part file if there are drawings or attachments.

You can control which relations you see under the Relations nodes by right-clicking on the column headers and setting the following:

Make sure the column of checkboxes on the far left is visible. If not, click on your image/avatar in the blue bar on the upper right and go into your user Preferences to add it.

Select Product Structure Explorer, and turn on the checkboxes column by enabling the Object Selection Checkbox option.

Save your preferences.

You could manually expand each node for each sub-assembly and part, see if drawings exist (or other related files), and then select them from the checkboxes - but that would take a lot of time and effort.

Instead, right-click on the top-level assembly and select Expand All with Relations.

Note: This command may be under the flyout menu Collapse All or one of the others. It remembers which command you used last, and shows that on the first right-click menu.

Now you can just click the uppermost checkbox on the far left column to select all.

If you want to deselect anything (that you don’t want to release), use the checkboxes next to each item.

Grab any one of the selected files and drag & drop it into the Collaborative Lifecycle app to manually release the files.

It should add all of the files to the app.

Then, you can use the Maturity icon on the bottom toolbar to release them all in one shot!

To add them all to the Proposed Changes tab of a Change Action, make sure you have the change action open in the Change Execution app and are on the Proposed Changes tab.

Drag & drop all the files from Product Explorer onto the Proposed Changes tab. It may take a moment, but all files should be added (including drawings and attachments).

Of course this method of using Expand All with Relations and then selecting all (or selecting what you want) could be used for many things like changing the owner of a bunch of files and its references, or adding to a bookmark, or many other things by either using the toolbar commands inside of the Product Explorer app or by dragging and dropping all the files into another app as we did above!

This should be a huge timesaver whenever you need to perform an action on a large number of files and their related drawings, specification documents, and attachments.

Want to learn more? Check out more tips and tutorials listed below or on our 3DEXPERIENCE YouTube Channel. 

Additionally, check out the GoEngineer Community, where you can create forum posts, join design contests, and answer questions from other 3DEXPERIENCE platform users.

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