Administering structure cloning

Defining cloning rules

To clone structures from templates or other structures, you must define cloning rules that allow Manufacturing Process Management to determine how to map objects between the structures. These cloning rules are defined by preferences and the defined rules are available to users when creating an actual structure. The location of the cloning rule preferences for a specific user is determined by a preference.

You can define three cloning rule preferences, one each for process templates, product templates, and plant templates. You can associate multiple action rules with each preference.

When Manufacturing Process Management encounters an object that is mapped between the template and the actual structure, it determines if a substitution is necessary and takes one of four actions, according to the mapping of the object type:

Clone Copies the object referenced by the template to a new object in the structure.
Reference The structure references the same object as the template.
Ignore The new structure does not reference the object.
Map The system maps the template to a replacement structure. For example, this allows you to create a process structure from an existing process or from a process template. Optionally, this rule may be allowed by a second (default) action: Reference or Ignore.

You can also define a cloning rule to ignore the cloning of an MBOM recipe.

Example

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*:*:Relation.Mfg0MEAssignmentRecipeRel:Ignore

Note

You cannot apply a Reference action to an MBOM recipe. A Reference action will log an error and ignore the cloning.

Manufacturing Process Management only takes the specified action if an absolute occurrence or its ID is the same in the template and the structure. If the same absolute occurrence appears more than once, only the first matched instance is mapped.

You can specify a second action after the Map action. The second action is the default action and is taken if the mapping fails. For example:

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*:*:OccType.MEConsumed:Map.Ignore
*:*:OccType.MEWorkArea:Map.Reference

In this example, the MEConsumed occurrence type is mapped to the occurrence in the new structure. Manufacturing Process Management uses the absolute occurrence referenced from the template and finds the corresponding occurrence in the new product. It links the consumed items for that operation to the occurrence in the new product. When there is no mapping for the Consumed item, Manufacturing Process Management ignores it. When there is no mapping for the WorkArea item, Manufacturing Process Management creates a reference to the item from the cloned element.

Note

By default, the MEConsumed occurrence type maps consumed items to the corresponding occurrences. The site administrator can change the controllingOccsForProcessConfiguration preference to map another occurrence type. Alternatively, this preference may be left unassigned, in which case the configuration of consumed items does not affect the configuration of operations.

Each site can define a set of cloning rules from which users may select. In addition, individual users may change the cloning action rules by editing their preference file.

Note

These rules determine if objects are cloned, referenced or ignored. You cannot change this behavior with the Business Modeler IDE application.

The general format of the cloning rule preferences is as follows:

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Process.Template=
Action_Rule_Name1
Action_Rule_Name2
.
.
Product.Template=
Action_Rule_Name3
Action_Rule_Name4
.
.
Plant.Template=
Action_Rule_Name5
Action_Rule_Name6

For each set of action rules, you must define a new variable. The following example shows a typical Action_Rule_Name1 variable for the Process.Template variable:

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Process.Template.Action_Rule_Name1=
*:*:Attribute.items_tag:Clone
*:*:Attribute.structure_revisions:Clone
*:*:Attribute.bom_view:Clone
*:*:Attribute.parent_item:Clone

The following example shows two cloning rules (Mapping_Consumes and Ignore_Consumes) for process templates:

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Process.Template= 
Mapping_Consumes
Ignoring_Consumes
Process.Template.Mapping_Consumes=
*:*:Attribute.items_tag:Clone
*:*:Attribute.structure_revisions:Clone
*:*:Attribute.bom_view:Clone
*:*:Attribute.parent_item:Clone
*:*:Attribute.variant_expression_block:Clone
*:*:OccType.Null:Clone
*:*:OccType.MEConsumed:Map.Ignore
*:*:OccType.MEWorkpiece:Ignore
*:*:OccType.*:Reference
*:*:Relation.TC_Rendering:Clone
*:*:Relation.TC_specification:Clone
*:class.MEActivity:Relation.TC_MEFolder:Clone
class.MEActivity:*:Attribute.contents:Clone
class.Folder:*:Attribute.contents:Reference
Process.Template.Ignoring_Consumes=
*:*:Attribute.items_tag:Clone
*:*:Attribute.structure_revisions:Clone
*:*:Attribute.bom_view:Clone
*:*:Attribute.parent_item:Clone
*:*:Attribute.variant_expression_block:Clone
*:*:OccType.Null:Clone
*:*:OccType.MEConsumed:Ignore
*:*:OccType.MEWorkpiece:Ignore
*:*:OccType.*:Reference
*:*:Relation.TC_Rendering:Clone
*:*:Relation.TC_specification:Clone
*:class.MEActivity:Relation.TC_MEFolder:Clone
class.MEActivity:*:Attribute.contents:Clone
class.Folder:*:Attribute.contents:Reference

The syntax for adding an entry to a cloning rule is as follows:

parent-object:object:relation:action

For example:

:type.MEPSDRevision:Occtype.:Reference

In this example, the system searches through any parent (), and when it finds a child of type MEPSDRevision (type.MEPSDRevision), with any occurrence relation (Occtype.), it creates a new reference to that MEPSD element (Reference).