DRYCAD Suite | User Documentation | v1.0.0
Table of Contents
1. Overview
Rename a part’s part number in CATIA and nothing else follows along, every instance of it keeps whatever name it was given the moment it was first inserted, part number changes or not. Over the life of an assembly this drifts further and further from reality, and by the time someone notices, the tree tells a different story than the parts list. DRY0059 runs a single pass over the active Product and renames every direct instance to match the part number it actually references, resolving duplicates along the way with a clean, ordered suffix.
What it does:
- Renames every direct sub-product (instance) of the active Product to match its own part number
- Handles duplicate part numbers by appending a sequential numeric suffix, in the order the instances appear in the tree
- Skips any instance that has no valid, readable part number, leaving its name untouched
- Runs immediately on launch, there is no panel to configure, confirm, or cancel
Supported CAD platforms: CATIA V5
Workspace requirement: An active Product document must be open in CATIA.
2. Getting Started
Prerequisites
- CATIA V5 must be running
- You must be logged into the DRYCAD Suite
- An active Product document must be open in CATIA
Launching the Tool
DRY0059 is launched from the DRYCAD Suite CommandBar inside CATIA V5. Click the corresponding button to run it.
DRY0059 has no interface, there is nothing to confirm or cancel. Clicking the button runs the renaming pass immediately against the active Product and closes on completion.
The tool checks the following conditions at startup, and will show an error and stop if any fail:
- A valid user session is found, if not: “User not found. Please login and try again.”
- CATIA V5 is running and accessible, if not: “CATIA is not open. Please open CATIA and try again.”
- The active document is a Product, if not, an “Invalid Workspace” error is shown and the tool does not run
Because DRY0059 has no interface to hold open, the tool exits on its own once the pass completes, it doesn’t wait in the background the way panel-based tools do.
3. How the Renaming Works
DRY0059 operates on the direct sub-products of the active Product only, it does not descend into nested assemblies below that first level. This is intentional: it aligns the instances of this product with the parts it directly assembles, not every instance anywhere in the specification tree.
3.1 Selecting which instances get renamed
The tool first walks every direct sub-product once, reading each one’s part number. An instance is only included in the renaming pass if that part number can be read successfully and is not empty. Instances that fail this check, for example, a broken link to the referenced document, are left exactly as they are; DRY0059 never guesses a name for something it can’t positively identify.
Why is an instance skipped?
- It has no part number, or the part number cannot be read from the referenced document
- Its part number is identical to another instance’s only in ways case-sensitivity would otherwise miss, this is not actually a skip condition, it’s merged (see below), but a genuinely unreadable part number is
3.2 Grouping duplicates
Once a valid part number list is built, DRY0059 groups direct sub-products by part number, comparing case-insensitively, Bracket-01 and BRACKET-01 are treated as the same part and numbered together, not as two separate groups.
3.3 Assigning the final name
Each group is renamed to <PartNumber>.<n>, where <n> starts at 1 and increases in the order the instances appear under the Product. This applies even when a part number appears only once, a single instance still ends up as <PartNumber>.1, not the bare part number, so naming stays consistent whether a part is used once or many times in this assembly.
The rename itself happens in two passes: every affected instance is first given a temporary name, then renamed a second time to its final <PartNumber>.<n> value. This avoids a rename collision when, for example, swapping two instances’ numbers would otherwise mean assigning a name that’s still in use by another instance in the same pass.
3.4 What doesn’t change
- The Product itself is never renamed, only its direct sub-products
- Instances nested more than one level down are untouched by this pass; run DRY0059 again from within the relevant sub-assembly if it also needs realigning
- Graphical properties, positioning, and every other attribute of each instance are left exactly as they were, only the name changes
4. Examples
Example 1, A single instance per part
A Product contains three direct sub-products, each referencing a different part: BRK-100, SHF-220, and PLT-045, each currently named something generic left over from insertion.
What it creates: Three renamed instances, BRK-100.1, SHF-220.1, and PLT-045.1. Even though none of these part numbers repeat, each still receives the .1 suffix for naming consistency across the assembly.
Key points:
- A part number used only once is not left bare, it still gets
.1 - Order in the tree determines nothing here, since there’s no duplicate to sequence
Example 2, A bolt used many times
A Product contains twelve direct instances of the same fastener, part number BOLT-M6X20, inserted at different points while building the assembly and currently named BOLT-M6X20 (BOLT-M6X20.1), Instance_14, and similar leftover names.
What it creates: All twelve instances renamed to BOLT-M6X20.1 through BOLT-M6X20.12, numbered in the order they appear as direct children of the Product.
Key points:
- Case differences in how the part number was originally typed (e.g.
bolt-m6x20vsBOLT-M6X20) don’t create a second group, they’re merged into one sequential run - Running the tool again afterward is safe: it renumbers from
.1again in the same order and produces the same result
Example 3, Mixed valid and unreadable references
A Product has ten direct sub-products; eight reference parts normally, one has a broken document link with no readable part number, and one is a Product-type instance (a nested assembly) rather than a Part.
What it creates: The eight normally-referenced instances are renamed following the same part-number-plus-suffix logic. The instance with the broken link is left with its original name untouched. The nested assembly instance is renamed too, provided it has a readable part number of its own, DRY0059 does not distinguish Part-type from Product-type sub-products, only whether a part number can be read.
Key points:
- A broken reference doesn’t stop the rest of the pass, it’s simply excluded
- Nested Products are renamed at this level like any other direct instance; their own children are not touched by this run
5. Troubleshooting
”User not found. Please login and try again.”
The tool could not identify the logged-in user at startup. Log out of the DRYCAD Suite, log back in, and relaunch.
”CATIA is not open. Please open CATIA and try again.”
The tool launched but could not find a running CATIA V5 process. Make sure CATIA is fully loaded before clicking the CommandBar button.
”Invalid Workspace”
The active document is not a Product. DRY0059 only operates on Product documents, it will not run against an open Part or Drawing. Switch to or open a Product in CATIA, then relaunch.
”ERROR: Something went wrong…”
An unexpected exception occurred while reading or renaming an instance. This most commonly points to a document reference CATIA itself can’t resolve. Save your work, verify the affected sub-products load correctly outside DRY0059, and try again.
Nothing seems to have changed after running the tool
Check the following:
- The active Product must actually contain direct sub-products, an empty Product has nothing to rename
- Every direct sub-product may already have a readable part number that matches its current name exactly, in that case the pass completes successfully but produces no visible change
- If the sub-products you expected to see renamed are actually nested one or more levels deeper than the active Product, they won’t be touched, reopen the tool from within that specific sub-assembly instead
One or more instances weren’t renamed
This is expected, not a failure, when:
- The instance’s part number can’t be read, typically a broken or unresolved document reference
- You’re looking at a nested instance more than one level below the Product you ran the tool against
6. Version History
| Version | Date | Changes |
|---|---|---|
| 1.0.0 | 2026-06 | Initial release |
DRY0059, Align Instances Naming | DRYCAD Solutions | v1.0.0