Reconnection and Associativity

Access: The Reconnect File dialog can be accessed in the following ways:

It is launched automatically if disconnected files are encountered.
It can also be invoked manually from the Cimatron Explorer by right-clicking the appropriate client file and selecting the Reconnect Files option from the submenu.
Additional Cimatron Explorer submenu operations include Ignore and Break, which cause a disconnected link to be ignored or broken respectively.
Note that if the link status of the selected file is either Ignored or Broken, the available submenu options are either Un-ignore and Un-break respectively.

Associated or Dependent files are those where changes in one file (the parent file or server) leads to changes in another file (the child file or client).

Disassociated files are those where this link is suspended and, therefore, changes in the server part do not affect the client part. In this case, the client feature appears in the Feature Tree with the disassociated icon .

An associative relation is supported between the following files:

Part Import/Part; Drafting/Part or Assembly; NC/Part or Assembly
Assembly/Parts (sub-assemblies)
Catalog Part/Catalog template

The first file in the pair is called the client file; the second one - the server file. The Client file is automatically updated after changes in the Server file.

Associativity between files is supported by means of the relative path of the server file, which is stored in the client. For example:

The client file is in path C:\data\Cimatron_Documents\client.
If server file is located under C:\data\Cimatron_Documents\Test\server, the path written in the client will be Test\server.
If server file is located under C:\data\server, the path written in the client will be ..\server.

This means that if you move or rename a client file within the Cimatron Explorer, the path to the server files can be changed accordingly. So it is strongly recommended to perform such operations within the Cimatron Explorer and not the Windows File Explorer.

However, for a server file, all its clients and their locations are not known. Therefore, if a server file is moved or renamed, reconnection will be required. In these cases, when a client file is loaded, the Reconnect operation is invoked to reconnect the client file back to its server.

The reconnect dialog may be also invoked manually from the Cimatron Explorer by right-clicking the appropriate client file and choosing the option Reconnect from the submenu. Multiple selections are possible in this case.

Reconnect saves files automatically and marks reconnected links with a special symbol. This symbol is removed after saving the file.

Notes:

If a file relation is set to Disassociated, an Ignored link status attribute is attached. For example, if the relation between a client (child file) and a server (parent file) is Disassociated and the server file is missing, the reconnect link status is marked as Ignored link.
A Preference option enables you to skip the Reconnect dialog when opening files with missing connections (links).