How Revision is Calculated for Engineering Change Orders

Here's how the next higher item revision number in an engineering change order is calculated.

In releases prior to 20D, only the past, current effective, or future effective (change order is scheduled) revisions were considered.

From release 20D onward, all revisions (past, current effective, future effective, and pending) are considered when searching for the highest existing revision number. Instead of retrieving the item revision with the furthest future effectivity date, the application retrieves the item revision that was created most recently.

Here's how this impacts application behavior (from release 20D onward):

• The item revision identified as the base revision for new revision calculation changes because the application evaluates the creation date of the item revision instead of the effective date. In case the calculated item revision is already used, the application doesn't blank out the item revision number, but continues to increment the new item revision number until it finds an unused number, so the user doesn't have to enter a number manually.

• The algorithm to calculate the next higher revision number supports up to 18 characters.

Note: When you add an item as an affected object to a change order, its revision is automatically bumped up. But revision field remains blank when the bump-up mechanism fails to calculate the next higher revision in the following actions: Assign to Change Order on an item, and Save As on a change order for creating an engineering change order.When you access the Attachments tab on the change order, a message informs you to specify the new revision before you can view attachments. If you don't specify the revision, you're prompted to specify it when you promote the change order for approval.