Branching is a fantastic tool that allows you to easily explore design ideas without creating a mess in your project. It's also great for creating new products based on an existing one.
What is it?
If you are familiar with revisions, you may wonder what revision branches are. Let's make it simple: it's a duplicate of your original file, as if you had "saved as new" the file. But it offer more possibilities than a mere copied file.
Usage 1: Design exploration
The best use for Revision branches is design exploration - let's imagine you need to design a wheel. You have a first design, but you need to ideate through different versions of the design.
Stop using "save as new" or saving a copy under a new name! Use Branches instead - it creates a new file, with a new name, and allows you to close the branch afterwards. Changes done to this new branch will not impact the original design.
Step 1: create a new branch
You can create a new branch from SOLIDWORKS or your bookmarks. Let's try different designs of a wheel used in an assembly:
Best practice: a branch is a duplicate. It needs a different name than the original file!
To find the branch you just created, use "replace by revision" or search for it:
You can modify the geometry of this branch without impacting the original design. When exploring new designs, you may need to create several branches:
Step 2: Merge the branch
Eventually one of the iterations is chosen as the design to move forward with. New Revision From can be used to merge the chosen branch or revision back into the original design as a new revision!
Let's say we want this to be the new design of our wheel:
We need to go back to the original part and choose "new revision from" to create a new revision of it. Then we select the branch with the right design:
Note: the file will keep the original file title ("rear wheel") but a new revision is created.
Step 3: replace in the assembly
Now, every assembly using the original part detects that a new version exists:
You can easily replace by the new geometry:
Note: you can also use branches for assemblies or sub-assemblies! But merging the branch may become more tricky.
Usage 2: Product Family
Sometimes, the evolution of product design is not linear. We often think of the progression of a design in the same manner that a tree grows. The original idea is the trunk of a tree, and as the design evolves each iteration becomes a unique branch. These branches could each be ideations of the original design, or each branch could represent a “similar but different” design that fits into a collection of products. For instance, let’s look at the design of a hammer and how this product can be used to create a collection of other hand tools.
The first design may be a simple claw hammer: the most ubiquitous and multi-purpose hammer in your toolbox.
But there are dozens of types of specialized hammers and other hand tools like hatchets and axes that may have been seeded from the first hammer design.
All of these products have similar elements that carry from one design to the next. This is where the New Branch command comes in. Creating a branch is easy, simply click the New Branch button in the Action Bar and you’re presented with a simple window to name the new branch, and add a comment:
This idea of creating a branch to a product (think “Save As’ or ‘Copy Tree’ for example) is nothing new to the field of design, but the addition of a graphical overview of the history is an amazing way to visualize the entire origin and history of a product. This graphical map comes in two view options, both showing the origin of each design and where it ‘branched’ into a new or different design.
View1: simple line and point graphic view with product details
View2: Graphic view showing the thumbnail of the product:
Each of these branches exist as unique products on the 3DEXPERIENCE Platform (i.e. any changes to the seed product will not roll up to an associated branch), yet they will always be connected to the original seed product when viewing the product structure.
Conclusion
The New Branch and New Revision From tools are super cool, and add a ton of power for concept ideation and creating new products based on other products. I'd love to hear what you think about these new capabilities. Please send any comment or question to your dedicated Customer Success Engineer!