Hello there,
i was wondering if there was an easy and reliable way to update the geometry of a self modeled cad component. So if you have already put in the links, behaviour scripts and so on and want to do slight updates to the geometry by editing the cad file outside of vc.
Also, is there a way to actively link a cad file to vc so it updates the cad model when it is updated in the cad editing program?
Thank you in advance
Best regards
Cedrik
VC isn’t really designed for this use case where you would update component geometry and want to see the change in all the layouts. If you change the component’s geometries and you open a layout which refers to that component you may see lost geometries assuming that layout is saved without including components.
The preferred workflow for updating components and their geometries is to always save new version as new component and new VCID. Old component version can be deprecated for example by right-clicking it on eCat, editing the metadata and checking “Is Deprecated”. Deprecated models are not shown on eCat by default but they are indexed so any layout referring to them finds still finds them. After component is updated then the layout needs to be updated manually to use that new version of the component. So delete old component on the layout and load new one. Also having VC model refer to a CAD and auto-update itself is not a feature currently and you must always manually import CAD again if it needs to be updated.
Note that if you only update component’s behaviors or properties then you don’t need to save it as new model. Layouts always store this non-geometry data into itself and never refers to components. So it’s safe to change them in the original component without it affecting to any layouts. It’s only geometries that you need to be careful with.
-k