Maintaining the Families of Parts Library

The Family of Parts Catalog

The search engines use a text file to find the names of all of the part families. Thus, families do not have to be in any specific directory for the search engines to find them. However, it makes it easier to keep track of them if they are all under the same directory. Related families may be placed in subdirectories under the /usr2/std/fpts directory to help reduce the number of files in that directory, and to make it easier to find them. For example, the five extrusion profiles created as a test case for this process were placed under the /usr2/std/fpts/profiles/ directory. Similarly, the terminal strips, which were also a test case, were placed in the /usr2/std/fpts/t55164/ directory. Future profiles or t55164 series parts would be placed in these directories as well.

Important note: All directory names use only lowercase letters. If any capital letters are used in the directory name, CADDS will be unable to find the parts.

Each entry in the file consists of four colon-seperated fields:

1. The path to the master part: /usr2/std/fpts/handle-round
2. The CADDS part name for the master part: fpts.handle-round
3. A description of the family: Amatom Handles, Round-Internal Thread
4. The path to a picture of the part: /usr2/std/fpts/handle-round/handle-round.gif

The picture is optional, but the colon after the description of the family should still be included. To make the file easier to read, the entries may be split across multiple lines by putting a \ as the last character of each line except for the last one. Note that there is a space between the word Handles and the \ following it. Otherwise, Handles and Round would run together when the line was reassembled by the search program.

/usr2/std/fpts/handle-round:fpts.handle-round:Amatom Handles \
Round-Internal Thread:/usr2/std/fpts/handle-round/handle-round.gif

What Makes a Master Part?

Each master part needs the following files in its directory: _fd, _pd, and _tbl. The _tbl file contains all the necessary information to create the member parts. Without it, CADDS will be unable to make any of the member parts.

There is a restriction of 20 characters per component (period-separated segments) of CADDS part names. To allow room for ``-family'' to be appended to the last component of the name of the master part, it can contain no more than 13 character. fpts.channel-profile is an invalid master part name, because channel-profile is more than 13 characters long.

The Family Table

The format of the family table is very important, and any deviation may cause either the search engine, CADDS, or both, to fail.

• Any line that begins with a # is a comment and is ignored by CADDS.
• The first line that doesn't begin with a # is the list of variable names. Variable names are seperated by spaces.
• The first variable name is Member_name.
• The next non-comment line contains the entry for the master part.
• All of the following non-comment lines contain entries for member parts. The values for each of the variables are underneath the name of the variable, and are also seperated by spaces. The values may not contain any spaces or tabs, and only one line is allowed per entry.
• The Member_name value for each entry must be a valid CADDS partname component. It may not contain any periods, and must be 20 characters or less in length.
• Tab characters in the file may cause unexpected behavior in either the search engines or in CADDS. The expand command can be used to replace these tab characters with spaces.
  expand inputfile > outputfile

Deleting Family Members or Entire Families