The VPE Manager provides the ability to export an entire VPE, or just certain portions such as processes, site variables, lookup tables, materials, machine data, etc.

Export a complete VPE when you want to:

You can export VPEs either one at a time, or several all at once.

Export just certain portions of a VPE (such as processes, lookup tables. data, etc.) for development or maintenance of a VPE. For example, you might develop or modify a process in one VPE (or in one process group) that would be useful in another VPE (or within the same VPE but in a different process group). Or you might regularly export, update, and re-import some of your data on a quarterly, semi-annual, or annual basis.

aPriori also provides additional options for editing smaller amounts of VPE data. See Editing VPE data for more information.

This is particularly useful when creating local backups of configuration work done in aPriori.

See To export site variables from a deployment on page 1.

See Exporting, modifying, and importing processes on page 1 for information about when and how to use aPriori's process import/export capabilities.

The VPE Toolset provides the ability to export VPE data such as machines, materials, tool shops, and plant variables to Excel spreadsheets. You can optionally edit the exported data in these Excel spreadsheets, and then import the data into either the original VPE or a different VPE where the imported data will be visible and used in subsequent costings in that VPE. This provides an efficient way to export/import just data of interest without including all the other elements of the VPE.

The export process creates an index spreadsheet for the VPE, and separate spreadsheets for each of the process groups within the VPE. The index spreadsheet contains a cross-reference to all of the related process group spreadsheets and a sheet named "VPE_data" containing all of the plant information for the VPE.

The index spreadsheet (the only one that does not have a process group appended to its name) contains the top-level information about the VPE, as well as a cross-reference to all of the other process group-related spreadsheets created by the export. The "top-level" info is what you see in the VPE Manager when you click the VPE name at the top of the navigation page.

The screenshots below show how the info in the spreadsheets map to the displays in the VPE manager. Note that the Import Behavior column in the index spreadsheet simply flags those fields which cannot be edited and then re-imported. Also, the strings in the Description column are populated from the "tooltip" text when you hover over and item in the VPE Manager. These strings also cannot be edited and then re-imported.

The spreadsheet for each process group contains sheets for materials, each machine, and (if applicable) tool shops. You can see the mapping between the VPE Manager display and the exported spreadsheet below, using the Casting process group as an example:

 

VPE lookup tables provide tabular data, either for a cost model in general, or for a specific process or operation. (Lookup tables are described in detail in the section "Working with Lookup Tables" in the Cost Model Workbench User Guide.) The VPE Manager provides the ability to export all lookup tables in a VPE to an Excel spreadsheet where the information can be imported into a different VPE or modified and then re-imported into the original VPE.

For a practical example of how this can work, you can review aPriori's separately licensed Wire Harness VPE, which uses this functionality to load and maintain a "Component Library" lookup table of approved parts. See "Updating the Component Library" starting on page 1 for more information.

You can now modify the Excel files with updated lookup table info and then re-import into the current VPE, or just import the exported Excel files into another VPE.

If you are modifying a sheet with data from a .csv file or another spreadsheet, it is critical that you ensure that the columns in the import file match the columns in the lookup table spreadsheet exactly.

Then you must copy the cells from the import spreadsheet and paste them into the corresponding cells in the Assembly componentLibrary sheet. If you are replacing all the information in your Component Library, make sure that no old data remains in the target spreadsheet after the Paste. If you are adding new information, make sure that you do not overwrite data that you wish to keep. Save the modified spreadsheet when done.

The screenshots below show how the data in the lookup table spreadsheets map to the displays in the VPE Manager. (The index spreadsheet is the same as described in the previous section for exporting VPE data.)

The spreadsheet for each process group has a tab for each lookup table in that process group:

aPriori provides the ability to export VPE data (and optionally. lookup tables) to Excel spreadsheets from the command line. This requires some configuration as explained below.