Restore Drawings after bad numbering

Restore Drawings after a wrong numbering

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This article will go over restoring drawings that are showing a Quantity Decreased Status message under the Changes column after running a numbering. Many times, when you are numbering the model and then open the drawing list, you'll realize that some drawings are obsolete (fixing to be deleted) due to your numbering process altering the numbers for parts that have already been issued or their drawings have already been created. We will go over two different methods depending on how far you are regarding updating these drawings. Please note the example below is forced to just show how to fix a numbering issue and restore drawings. 

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Drawings say "Quantity Decreased" after numbering

Open the Drawing list or Document Manager and review the drawing's status message under Changes. If you see some that say Quantity decreased like below, then we will use this method. 

 

When you see this in your drawing list/ document manager, the first thing you need to do is find out what part number the drawing that was decreased changed to. To do this, you need to go to Tools > Display Log File > Numbering History in versions up to 21.1 or, in versions after that, go to Menu (File drop-down)> Logs> Numbering history log. There, you can see what has happened with your parts. As you can see below, I can tell that B1 changed to B5, so I must find B5 as that was my B1 and change it back to B1. 

To do this, I will highlight the line in the Numbering History report that shows the GUID number and then change from B1 to B5; this will select B5 in the model.

 


From here, I will go to Drawings & Reports > Numbering > Change Number > Assembly Number in versions up to 21.1 or, in versions after that, go to Drawings & Reports> click on Change Number> and select Change assembly number; a dialog will open for the Assign Assembly Number changing properties. See below. In this dialog, I will change the Position Number to 1 and then hit Assign. In the bottom left-hand corner of your screen, you should get a prompt that says "Number Changed Successfully."
 

Before we move to the next step, let's say that you got the error message below "Cannot assign number. Group Contains Different Object:"

 

The message means that a part in the B1 position is different. If this happens, it usually means your old B1 changed to B5, and a new part you modeled became B1 to fill the gap (when using re-use old numbers). So now, what you must do to fix the drawing is change the new B1 to B6 (5 is currently the highest number, so there is no part in B6; this means that I can move it to that position). To do so, go back to Drawings & Reports > Numbering > Change Number > Assembly Number (or Drawings & Reports>  Change Number>  Change assembly number in versions after 21.1), and in the popup dialog, in the Position number field, change the number to 6; while selecting the new B1 hit Assign. That will change the B1 to B6 and now you can move B5 to B1. 

Now that you have your old B1 back in its rightful place, we can number the model and open the drawing. The drawing will simply come back to life and will open normally with all your previous changes intact. 
 

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Drawings say "All Parts Deleted"

Now you open the drawing list, and your drawings say "All Parts Deleted." This means that their status message under the Changes column said Quantity decreased, and someone opened the drawings, which updated them to the point that all parts are now deleted on the drawing. This one is not as easy to get back, and the workaround does not work 100% of the time but it could also be a lifesaver on occasion. 

 

There is no restoring this drawing, but we can change an advanced option and try to clone from the drawing. The first step is to go to Tools > Options > Advanced Options in versions up to 21.1 or, in versions after that, go to Menu (File drop-down)> Settings> Advanced Options and then find the Drawing Properties section on the left column. There, you will be looking for a variable called XS_DRAWING_CLONING_IGNORE_CHECK. We want to change it to a TRUE value. This variable controls whether or not you can clone an existing drawing that has the status of All Parts Deleted.

 

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Now that you have changed the advanced option, we can move on to the next step. You will do the same process as the last method and open the Numbering History log to find the part number that your old part (in my example B4) changed to. 

After finding the old part, I will open the drawing list or document manager, highlight the drawing that says All Parts Deleted and hit Clone. A new dialog will pop up. Back in the model, highlight B6, and then back in the Clone Drawing dialog hit Clone Selected. See below:
 

After that, your drawing list/ document manager should have a new drawing for B6 which was cloned from the old B4 drawing. 
 

Those are the two methods. Remember that none of these workflows are 100% guaranteed to always work, but the methods are the best current options to achieve a good, consistent result. 

Related Articles

Document manager
Changes
Update Drawing status flags and related status messages
Drawing list