Document Security

After I release a design to manufacturing my design goes to our CNC
programmers. Since they use CAMWorks they have read/write permissions
to the released design. In doing their work they make several changes
to the files that make it very difficult to revise the design. The
engineering department does not like the changes they make to the
files.

How do others handle this situation?

My thought is that the CNC programmer should only have read permissions
to released designs. But since their program is written on top of
SolidWorks I'm not sure this will work for them.

Any suggestions will be appreciated.

 

How about having the CNC changes made in a different configuration?

 

@e3g2000cwe.googlegroups.com>,
says...

Send them a Parasolid file and tell them if they need some
changes, the changes will be made by engineering. Then send
them another Parasolid.

This keeps manufacturing out of the design/documentation
loop, except for design reviews, when you probably want
their input.

 

Use layers & set (and enforce) some standards.
They should be able to use a set of layers of their own for geometry
that thay add or (think that they) need to copy & modify.
They should have absolutely no need to modify the original design
geometry in any way ... IF it's a good design.
They probably should be working with their own copies of the part
databases and you should have a mechanism to check the original
design geometry & resultant files against their work before accepting
the finished result as an official file. Nothng that was in the original
should have been modified .. just data added on other layers & to the
database.
Naturally, design must follow similar standards of their own.

It's a bit handy to add the layering and any other CAD or CAM
standards as notes/text to one otherwise blank layer for future
documentation needs.