Teamcenter Options and Variants
Teamcenter Options and Variants
Teamcenter Options and Variants
In simple terms O&V’s are a way to control what Items are displayed in an assembly based upon
some values. They are not to be confused with Revision Rules. Revision Rules control what
ItemRevisions are displayed in the PSE.
The following is a very simple example of a Pen. Pens come in all shapes and sizes and in this case
Colours. Now, if you wanted to create a Blue pen you would need to create an assembly complete
with all the Blue components. Later on you decide that you also need a Red pen. So, do you create a
new assembly with only Red components OR do you somehow utilise the Blue assembly, after all, it’s
almost exactly the same?
Need-less-to-say you can utilise the Blue assembly. Rather than create two separate assemblies you
need only create one. This common assembly includes ALL components, both Red & Blue.
At this point this common assembly is pretty overcrowded, confusing and in this state not very
useful...this is where O&V’s come in.
We can now apply ‘Options’ to the Top Level of the pen assembly, for instance: This pen can be
either ‘Blue’ or ‘Red’
Then we can apply ‘Variants’ to each of the Components, for instance, Component A is ‘Blue’, and
Component B is ‘Red’
Once you’ve created your O&V’s you can then configure your assembly to only display the
components that meet your criteria along with all components that has not been configured by O&V’s.
Here’s how....
Notice in the Variants Pane your option is now defined with two values.
o You now need to define your components as Variants.
Select the first ‘Blue’ component in Structure Manager.
Your component in the PSE is now defined as a Variant. It now includes a new Icon:
o For more information you can also enable the PSE column: bl_variant_condition.
Create Variants for all components in your assemble.
o Note: Body is NOT a variant. It does not have a colour and therefore remains un-
configured.