About cloning structures

When creating structures, it can be convenient to create a structure identical to another one. This may be because, over time, you may design standard products, processes, operations, and activities that act as templates that can be reused to manufacture typical products. Or, it may simply be the most convenient way to quickly generate another structure.

You can clone structures in one of two ways:

• Use the Paste Duplicate command to quickly clone a structure from another structure that is visible or easily available in the user interface.

• Use the File→New→From Template menu commands to create a structure that is based on another structure that is not currently open. You also use this method to clone structures when you want to select configuration options for the cloning process.

You can clone a process, product, or plant structure. Your administrator specifies cloning rules that determine the actions taken when you clone a structure, as follows:

• Clone The new structure includes a copy of the object that is referenced by the source structure.

• Reference The new structure references the same object that is included in the source structure.

• Ignore The new structure does not include or 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 use the cloning mechanism to create a new process structure that consumes the same parts as an existing structure. This action is based on in-context IDs.

Note

Cloning is a core capability and is used in various functions, such as, create alternate, create from template, process synchronize, and isolated study. It is very recursive and database I/O intensive. To help reduce the number of database commits to the minimum needed, your Teamcenter administrator can create a preference named ME_defer_save_in_clone and set it to true.

IMPORTANT: The value of this preference should be made true only after running cloning usecases in a test environment. This is required as cloning may fail in specific data conditions when the preference is set to true.