Hey guys!

Let me first give you a rundown on what we're doing here. My company just recently purchased Productstream with the main purpose being that we will be able to use it to populate our ERP system with our CAD data and avoid the manual input that our production department is currently doing. Essentially, this will shorten days, sometimes weeks, of work down to a matter of minutes once our connection is established.

For now, we are simply trying to work out a "middle ground" file format that I will export from Productstream (CSV, XML, something like that) and then the Production department can import it to their ERP.

All is working except one fairly major factor. We work with aluminum extrusions that we purchase and then modify (cut to length, mitre possibly, drill holes, etc). Therefore, it is critical that we always know what extrusion is being used for each part. This enables the guys on the floor to know where to pick stock from for cutting. It also allows the production department to be able to order, check stock, etc. on upcoming jobs.

So, to try and establish this type of relationship right from the beginning, we created all the extrusions as sketches and saved these as parts in our library. We then derived the appropriate sketche needed into each new part we created and then extruded the profile to the required length and performed the remaining operations.

This works great, until Productstream. When I upload a file to the Vault, it shows the derived component underneath it in the "Uses" tab as I would expect. However, when I assign an item to that part, the derived component is ignored. Therefore, when we export the items, there is no record of these derived components!

We got PS just a short while ago, otherwise I could've tested this "presumed" functionality before completing the entire job. Now, as it always is, we are in a rush to get this job into the Production department and I just now have found this issue. If there is a way to do this, please let me know! If it can be done differently from the start, let me know that too for next time I guess. Any information you can provide to me here will be GREATLY appreciated! Thanks.

Scott