Objective: Understand how to create revisions and why it is important to keep track of changes.
Difficulty: Intermediate
In this article:
- Revisions overview
- Revision value meaning
- How revisions are assigned
- Permissions
- Creating revisions using Change Orders
- Save button
- Save as revision button
- Blacklisted revision values
- Mid-state revision values
Learn how Duro's revisioning system works for products and components. All saved edits to products and components are tracked in their respective history tables, granting users the comfort of knowing that all changes to content in their library are revised. Next, we'll cover Lifecycle Validations and Updates.
Revision overview
Multiple revisions can exist within each lifecycle stage, each with its own managed snapshot. The corresponding revision value is used to identify these incremental versions.
While several standards are accepted in the manufacturing industry for a revision value format, Duro's default revision scheme follows a widely accepted revision value of integers (1..999) and single-character letters (A..ZZ).
Note: Custom revision schemes are possible. Contact info@durolabs.co to find out more.
Revision value meaning
While other popular revision management tools (e.g. git) have unique values for each revision, they don't have any significant meaning other than being guaranteed unique. Hardware manufacturing does impose meaning on the revision value, so it is important to understand the implication of a revision value.
Products and components still in the early or Prototype stage are identified by a numeric revision value (1..999), while products and components in Production are identified by a letter revision value (A..ZZ).
This allows a manufacturer to quickly determine what resources and procedures to apply to a design. Often, suppliers have different teams and workflows for Prototype and Production status. By only looking at the revision value, there's no ambiguity, and the task can be routed appropriately.
Further, teams look for a change in revision value to know they need to respond. Using incremental values helps to identify the chronology of a change.
How revision numbers are assigned
You may have noticed that a product's or component's revision value can be represented by both letters and numbers. This can be confusing if you don't know when and why each is used.
There are four default lifecycle stages for products and components in Duro. From first to last, the evolution is as follows: Design, Prototype, Production, and Obsolete. When any new product or component is created, if no status or revision values are specifically set, they will default to a status of Design and an empty revision value, indicated by a hyphen.
Design
The Design status allows for the most flexibility for making changes, with little to no validations or approval processes required. This is helpful for both early-stage rapid iterations of new designs and during the onboarding period of a new Duro customer.
Changes made in the first stage, Design, do not require Change Orders or specific revision values. Duro automatically captures all changes into nested minor revisions for traceability and a full history log of what changes were made and by which user. These revisions can be seen in the history table, accessed by clicking on the clock icon in the upper right corner of any product or component.
Only major revisions are shown when you open the history table; however, Minor revisions can easily be loaded directly in the history table by expanding the view of the Major revision. Simply click on the arrow directly to the left of the line item in question to load the Minor revisions as depicted below.
Duro doesn't require Change Orders or formal revision control when a product or component is still in the Design status since the user typically continually introduces incremental improvements and adjustments. Creating and submitting a Change Order for each new update would be unnecessarily complicated. However, users can manually set a revision value for products and components in Design status using the Save as revision option for their own record keeping, but this is not required. The permissible revision values in Design status supersede all values, including numerics (1 to 999) and letters (A to ZZ).
Once a design is ready to be fabricated, it is typically promoted to the Prototype or Production status, as appropriate. This is when Duro enables proper revision control, and more stringent validation rules are applied to identify any potential issues in a product or component that could lead to a manufacturing delay or mistake. It is also not until the Prototype or Production status that a formal Change Order review process is required to ratify any changes.
Once in the Prototype stage, revision values are restricted to numerical values of 1 to 999, while the Production stage only allows revision values of A to ZZ. Suppliers use this industry-standard to identify a product or component's status efficiently. In Prototype and Production status, Change Orders are required to increment the revision values of the product or component.
Obsolete
The Obsolete status is used when a product or component has been decommissioned, but the part number must be reserved for traceability. For more information regarding the lifecycle statuses, refer to our article on Lifecycle Status and Revision.
Permissions
When updating the revision value in Prototype or Production, a Change Order must be submitted to approve the proposed updates formally. The following table summarizes what actions can be performed on products and components for each status value:
VALUE | Edit | Add to Change Order | Delete |
---|---|---|---|
DESIGN | Yes | No | Yes |
PROTOTYPE | Yes - Marked Modified | Yes | No |
PRODUCTION | Yes - Marked Modified | Yes | No |
OBSOLETE | No | No | No |
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