How releases work
Releasing is called committing. It takes everything you have drafted in the Staging Area and turns it into a fixed record.
The cycle
- Draft. You work in the Staging Area. Items you change are marked Edited.
- Review. The Commit review tab shows exactly what a release would do, and lets you choose how each item is numbered.
- Commit. Everything in the plan is released together, deepest item first.
- Fresh drafts open. Each released item immediately gets a new draft, ready for the next round of changes.
You never have to create the next draft. It is waiting when the commit finishes.
What gets released
Not everything in the BOM, only what has changed. An item counts as changed if:
- you edited it directly, or
- something inside it was edited, at any depth.
The second rule is the one that catches people out, and there is no way to opt out of it.
Why an assembly you did not touch has to be released again
If a part three levels down changed, the assembly above it now contains something different. Its bill of materials is not what it was. Releasing it again is what keeps the record accurate. Without it you would have a released assembly whose contents no longer match the version stamped on it.
This chain runs all the way to the product. Change one part deep in a tree and you should expect every assembly above it in the plan.
Rows pulled in this way are marked Forced in commit review, and they cannot be left out.
Parts are not released here
Parts appear in the tree, and changing one means the assemblies above it need releasing again, but the parts themselves are not released by a BOM commit. Parts belong to inventory and are versioned there.
Order of release
Items are released deepest first, so a child always has its new identity before the parent that references it is written.
Two ways an item can be released
For each item you choose between:
- Revision keeps the part number and steps the letter forward.
- Version creates a new part number, moves the version up, and restarts the letter at A.
That choice is the subject of Revision or version.