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Revision control of master parts & family members?

Revision control of master parts & family members?

Revision control of master parts & family members?

(OP)
Part families are not widely used at our facility, and I think that there's a productivity opportunity to that feature.  However, revision control and scope of application are open questions, and I'd like to hear how other users are applying this tool, esp. in a design control environment.  

(NOTE: we are not yet using SE Insight & Sharepoint. Our doc control system is home-grown, and does not manage links between documents.)

Should master parts be revision controlled, or just the family members?  

Suppose I assign a phantom part number and a revision to a master part, and populate a family (e.g. ball bearings).  I release the parts and drawings into the system, and they get used in a variety of assemblies.  Later, I want to add a new family member, so I check out the master part model and revise it to add the new family member.  Now, do I have to revise all of the original family members as well?  They're linked to the old revision of the master part model.  If I revise all of them, then the revisions cascade upwards into all of the assemblies which use them.  This seems rather unwieldy and unnecessary, just to add a new family member.  (The analog to this in our current system is the tabulated drawing, which keeps all part numbers on the drawing at the same revision level.)

Because of this issue, I'm not sure if part families should be used to model stock vendor parts.  Perhaps it should be limited to new, custom designs of in-house parts.  These are less likely to have frequent additions to the family, and more likely to be kept at the same revision level.

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