I've had seen 3 companies go through this subject. The largest one with over 200,000 tools and part drawings, another just starting out with 3D CAD.
My experience is with intenal tooling numbers, (not customer numbers like air cylinder numbers which makes sence for extrenal customers to double check to know they are ordering the correct product.)
For internal tooling parts/assemblies and components- every file should have a unique serial number identifying that file that is not linked to a specific property. This number should never have the chance of being repeated or you have duplicate files.
Company One. Company that names its files with a 2 or 3 digit prefix signifying what the tool is.
DD-12345
SD-12345
The first tool is a draw die and the next is a set die.
the original intent was to never have a repeating number, so dozens of pressroom operators search the drawings by the number so they get two results and use the wrong tool.
15 years later- 60 prefies half of which even designers working 20 years has dislexified, dropped, changed, etc. The worst one was MP for manufactured part, and PP for purchased part. If you started buying the MP instead of making it, you had to generate a whole new number and update every department causing lots of non-value added work and confusion with the X reference. With the introduction of a new business MRP system which almost forced you to have a raw number they jurry rigged it with dashes prefixe and suffixes and every week saw instances where they were sorry they did.
Company Two: In ancient days parts named from paper sheets they were drawn on from drafting board, number continued into 3D CAD causing problems
A-12345 (any part/assembly drawn on A size sheet)
B-12345 (any part/assembly drawn on B size sheet)
With 3D CAD many of the drawings changed that they needed a different paper size. Some parts have A-12345,B-12345,and C-12345 as the part got more complex it was put on a larger paper size and the old one not deleted or renamed. With one seqential number you have no choice but to overwrite.
Company Three(least problems): Went with 6 digit sequential number generated using Access database. The job file is a 6 digit sequential PDMWorks Folder representing the specific job and all the job specific tooling goes in that folder. For example Job 125333 had tools 100000, 100001, 100005. Standard tool such as journals or bearing caps remain in the standard tooling project. Job 125333 is for customer acme and their PO is can be cross referenced to this internal project folder which generates all the tooling for that job. The customer print in PDF format is stored in there also.
With PDMWorks Workgroup or enterprise you can search by description, material, size, type, or whateer specific property you set up which makes makes tooling numbers consisting of codes for characteistics unecessary. Before the days of computers and multi-criteria searches this type of thing made sense to use.
By using a sequential number you can change any attribute of the part without changing the part number. The same is true for a project file. A huge customer can change its name and you don't have to update 600 prints to keep everything current.
Also, by using a sequential number you can ensure no duplicate numbers are created by using a very simple number generator like MS Access, a SW API VB Macro, or Excell which makes it very difficult to take out 2 of the same numbers.
Switching from AutoCAD to 3D CAd is a perfect time to institute the new numbering system because it also represents when you started the drawings in 3D CAD. For example I know my X-2-B34V2 was pencil or Autocad and my 122333 is Solidworks. I can even set up a xreference property in PDMWorks for the old number and search for that!
