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Hi Bryan, What you’re describing sounds like PLM to me (Product Lifecycle Management). We have used PTC Windchill for these use cases before as it allows very detailed and configurable modelling of product configurations. It is great for parts management:
options, variants, supersessions, alternates, etc. It does support assemblies based on EBOM (engineering) and has modules for MBOM (manufacturing) and SBOM (service). You can model anything from a vacuum cleaner to a battleship. I think it has a proprietary XML format for import/export, I’m not aware of any XML standards in the space but would love to be enlightened. // Gareth Oakes // Chief Architect, GPSL // www.gpsl.co From: bryan rasmussen <rasmussen.bryan@gmail.com> Hey, I've just started on a new project that has been going on for a year and a half and which one part of the project is just crying out for XML but instead is managed by an online 'editor' with lots of little forms that business specialists
need to go in and click and enter values in etc. As the functionalities expected of the project these forms are just going to get more and more difficult. I've been looking in XML coverpages but nothing has really been apparent.
The purpose of the project is basically to make generators for configurations/assemblage information for widely different hardware products.
Scenarios: 1. A business specialist will go into the editor, choose configuration possibilities for a Hardware widget - making a number of decisions - what model motors are available under this configuration, where they can be mounted at etc. etc.
and then publish it. In another application someone will go in and choose hardware widget and choose what of the possible configurations it can have. In this way a configuration is really How the product has been assembled.
2. A business specialist will go into the editor, etc. etc. and choose some built in behaviors of the allowed components, what range a pressure sensor should be sensitive to for example.
In the other application someone chooses this hardware widget with the particular sensitivity configuration.
The configuration data is used to support not just tools for building the correctly configured end product but also for doing such stuff as product comparison - if for example you have a product built with component X either from the company
of a competitor you can search for other components that are basically indistinguishable from component X and can replace it.
So - does anyone know of a format or formats designed with these use cases in mind? Similar projects?
Mvh, Bryan Rasmussen |