References in Highstage

Background

This article introduces you to the concept of creating and using references between objects in Highstage.

About references

What is a reference?

A reference is when there is a dependency, between two objects. A reference may be created between various types of objects which could be documents, actions and parts:

By default, there are no restrictions to where a reference can be to and from. However, special rules can be in place to ensure company-specific rules and dis-allow certain references:

Who should use references?

Everyone may use references, where they make sense. A reference can make an organization work as one-to-one, one-to-many, many-to-one and many-to-many references between objects.

Instead of adding information to a single object a reference can be created to that object. This allows users from the other object to see there is some relation between these objects. This comes in handy in product design, documentation, projects and similar where information can be reused:

References are all about information management, instead of maintaining the same information on many objects, a reference to the information can be created instead. This allows for a single place to maintain the information which saves time and minimizes possible errors.

Why should I use references?

Many versions For every version of an action, document or part, there exists a folder, on the server, and If one item, consists of many files, but only a few are modified to fit each revision, then it’s advisable to detach the “not so often modified” items and place them in their own “box”. References enable this.

Many persons are responsible If e.g. a document consists of several sections, and the expertise of a few persons is needed for some of the sections, then they could be placed in documents that are referenced by the master document.

Overview It is possible to use the reference structure, in Highstage, to see a complete list/tree structure that shows every item in e.g. a specific product. Notice that the “product” would contain, specifications, test reports, datasheets, internal documentation, user manuals, individual components, their cost, and many other cases if they are placed in this hierarchy as references. This can be a very powerful feature.

Reference examples

A common example of references in PDM/PLM is reference type "Consist of" This type of reference allows various parts to reuse information of other parts. An example of this is illustrated in the following figure. Here two designs share a part, with the use of references we can reuse the part in common and only have a single place of maintenance:

References in Highstage

The reference section

References to other objects (Reference) and references from other objects to the current object (Referenced by) can be accessed from any Action, Document and Part object.

In the following example, we show the panes for references related to the document object COMP11294:

These two panes allow the user to see which items refer the shown item (Referenced by) and which items that are referred to by the shown item (Reference).

The number describes the total number of references to, and from, other objects in Highstage:

By clicking on Page, you will be navigated to a new page showing the full list of references related to that object:

Adding references to an object

There are a number of ways to add references to an object:

1. Single references Add a single reference.
2. List of references Add more references at once.
3. References from file Add any number of references from an external file.

Add single reference to an object

On an object, you can copy a reference by clicking Copy reference:

This creates a reference to the selected object that we can Paste as a reference onto another object:

Clicking on Paste prompts a dialogue to verify the paste of the reference. Clicking Execute pastes the reference to the object.

The copied object are now pasted as a reference to the current object:

From the referenced object, the Referenced by pane will now specify that another object has this object as a reference:

Add groups of references to an object

You can add more than one reference to an object at once by taking advantage of a Search grid page:

On a search grid page, select the item(s) that should be referenced. You do this by clicking on the number associated with each item:

Once all appropriate objects are selected, you can right click on any object to prompt a dialogue from where you can copy references to all the selected items by clicking Copy:

Now the links are placed in the personal clipboard, and you are ready to paste the refences to an object.

To do so, navigate to an object and click Paste:

This prompts a dialogue where all the copied references are listed:

Clicking Execute pastes all the listed references to the current object:

References from external file

Highstage also supports the import of references from external files through Reference Import.

Reference Import has the following capabilities in Highstage:

• Import references to the current item from new or existing items in Highstage.
• Import references with attributes that are created and associated with the reference.
• Import a subset of references by defining base- and/or subtype(s) of the references that should be imported.
• Import references from any of the supported file-formats (XLSX, XLS, CSV and plain-text file formats).
• Ignore any number of rows in your reference file to account for headers.
• Import from aggregated files by enabling aggregate to import any number of references to the same item.

You can read more about the configuration and use of Reference Import on [DOCU12167].

Reference locks

Reference locks in Highstage allows for you to control which version of an object that are referenced:

By default, the locks are enabled. The reference refers to the specific version of an object that was initially copied. This means that the reference will always refer to that specific version of an object even when new versions of the referenced object are created.

If the lock attribute is deselected, then the reference always refers to the latest approved version of that object. This means that the reference is not bound to the specific version of a referenced object. Instead, the reference is continuously updated, if the referenced object has more recent approved versions.

This is also shown in the illustration underneath. If Lock is set to 0 or false, the reference will always point to the newest revision of the item, in this example v.2. If the property lock were set to 1, the reference is locked for revision 1:

Update existing references

You can manually remove, make changes, or update any number of existing references. Even if the referenced are Locked.

To do so, select any number of references and right-click on a referenced object to prompt a Reference operations dialogue option window:

The Reference operations dialogue enables the following options associated with the selected reference(s):

• Clone and Replace Clone and existing object and copy the existing references to this new object. Then, replace the selected reference with the newly created clone.

• Latest Update the reference to the latest version.

• Latest approved

  Updates the reference to the latest approved version.

• Remove Removes the reference.

When can I update or change references?

It is only possible to change references, if the action, document or part is editable (in 'Working' state).

If the parent is approved or closed, then any changes to references are prohibited.

Circular references

Circular references, are references where an object (A) refers to another object (B) that in turns refers to the first object (A). This is a circular reference, which is prohibited reference behavior in Highstage:

This is because we choose the see reference as a “Consist of” relationship. A circular reference will make it impossible to create a finite tree structure, and many questions will arise in relation to export access rights etc.

Therefore, it is also impossible to create a reference from A to B.r1 because if the lock were about to be removed, we would impose a circular reference. We call such a reference a logical circular reference: