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Duplicating drawings of family table objects. Family table objects and their drawings can present difficulties when duplicating or copying. Workarounds are defined for situations where the typical Workspace operation Object, Duplicate Objects or the Pro/ENGINEER operation File, Save A Copy does not bring the required results.

Duplicating a drawing and its related instance to a separate model. Duplicating a drawing that contains an instance requires the entire table be duplicated or a new instance be added to the existing family table. The error message “You may not partially copy Family Tables. The generic and all of its instances must be present in the same Workspace and be selected for duplication. Please perform Retrieve Instances…” is displayed when a drawing and a family table object are being duplicated in the Workspace and the entire family table is not copied or selected to be copied.

Figure 13.

Example: Company standards state that any parts made from another part must be in the same Pro/ENGINEER family table. Since PinA drawing needs to be copied to create PinB drawing. PinA drawing referenced PinA part, a family table instance. PinB drawing will reference PinB part. PinB part will not be a member of a family table.

1. Open Pro/ENGINEER linked to Workspace (Intralink, Launch Pro/Engineer) and select the Workspace name from the list.

2. Open the drawing to be copied (File, Open) and select the drawing.

3. Save the file outside of the Workspace (File, Backup) and select the directory to save the file to (OK).

4. Exit Pro/ENGINEER.

5. Start Pro/ENGINEER, No Workspace (Intralink, Launch Pro/Engineer) and select No Workspace from the list.

6. Open the drawing to be copied (File, Open) and select the drawing.

7. Open the object that is used in the drawing (File, Open) and select the associated part/assembly. Note: The config.pro option rename_drawings_with_object must be set to both.

8. Save the part or assembly file to the new file name (File, Save A Copy) and enter the new file name (OK). The message will indicate the drawing copied as well.

9. Exit Pro/ENGINEER.

10. Open Pro/ENGINEER linked to Workspace (Intralink, Launch Pro/Engineer) and select the Workspace name from the list.

11. Bring the new objects into Pro/INTRALINK (File, Open), navigate to the directory that contains the new objects, and select the drawing (Open, File, Save). Alternatively, Open the Workspace and select Object, Import; navigate to the directory that contains the new objects; select the drawing (OK). The new objects will now appear in the Workspace.

Generally, I discourage the practice of exporting objects out of the Pro/INTRALINK environment to do Pro/ENGINEER work. In the case of family tables, however, it may sometimes be necessary to do so to accomplish the required task. As a last resort, I follow the process defined above when I cannot successfully duplicate objects within the Pro/INTRALINK
environment.

Karen Dougherty is a senior design technician in MCAD & MCAD PDM Support at Honeywell. She can be reached by e-mail at karen.dougherty@honeywell.com.