Changing Name of many models in relation

[chodson]

Is there an easy way to change the name of many models that are related without WindChill? We have several parts that similar but have slight variations. Each part has relations to assemblies, manufacturing and drawing files.

What I have been doing is creating the first part and the assemblies required to make the mold with manufacturing and drawings files. This usually requires about 70 different: part, assembly, manufacturing, drawing files to create one part. Once the first one is complete I copy the whole folder in windows explorer. Open every file in Creo 3.0 and start renaming them starting with assemblies and manufacturing files. This can take up to 2-3 hours as long as Creo does not crash.

So far I have not figured out a way to rename and keep relations with out opening each file. I also have tried to figure out a way to add them all to my work space so I could rename them a little faster, but still not the most efficient way. I have tried to create the parts using family table, but they are to complex with all the rounds and other geometry.

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[dgschaefer]

The Save As dialog allows you to rename everything when they are saved.  Still tedious, but perhaps less so.  Also, you can quickly apply a suffix or prefix to any or all parts.

[dschenken]

I have done this recently - I created an Excel VBA program that creates a mapkey that does all the renaming.

I did this in steps. The first step is to create a mapkey that opens a part, then one that opens an assembly. Then one that does a rename on the active part, then one on the active assembly (which will try to rename all the parts - just skip that and use OK).

The key item is to type the names of the part and assembly when creating the 'open' mapkeys. That way the Write statements have a place to put the names.

It took a couple hours to put the pieces together - the only rough patch was using a selected area of the spreadsheet instead of just starting at A1, which would make it trivial.

Backup to an external folder, run the Rename, then delete -all- the files that aren't getting names changed in them (though I suspect that's not a problem in your case as perhaps all files are getting renamed.) Set the Allow_PDM_to_Rename (i think that's the config option) and Rename in memory and on Disk. Make sure all the drawings are in memory, but not open, and save the drawings when done.

The best concept I had was having the program make 2 mapkeys - with one of the mapkeys set to open the Rename mapkey, so I could just run the Reload mapkey and get the latest version of itself and the Rename mapkey instead of having to go through the Options interface each time.

You could also do this using a trail file; I think one can tell it to knock off the graphics while the trail file is running to make it go faster, but since it can run overnight if required, there's no great benefit.

[chodson]

Thanks for the responses. Looks like the map keys options seems to be the fastest.

[psobejko]

Also, you should have a look at this thread: Possibility for renaming using template box tool

I've learned from it that there is a way to export the assembly "structure" to a file and then manipulate the component names in an external program (e.g. Excel), then save it and import it back during the assembly save-as operation.