One of the most critical activities in constructing a configuration model is to design and construct the rules that govern what the end user can select to make a valid configuration. You need to define rules that express relations and compatibilities among the Components, Features, Options, BOM Option Classes, and BOM Standard Items in your Model. Configuration rules are essential in ensuring that a configured product can be ordered and manufactured successfully.
In a configuration model, rules identify Model elements that are:

• Used as general defaults
• Automatically selected when an end user selects another option
• Permitted when an end user selects another option
• Excluded when an end user selects another option

Types of Configuration Rules

 

Rule Folders
In the Rules area of the Workbench, each Model contains a default Configuration Rules Folder. Within this Folder, you can create as many sub-Folders as you need to organize a Model's rules.
Rule Folders that you create can contain any type of rule. You can copy rules and move them from one Folder to another. However, the same rule cannot reside in more than one Folder. Copying a rule to a different Folder creates a new, separate rule that can be modified independently of the original.

Rule Sequences
A Rule Sequence is a set of rules that are active according to their order in the sequence, which is determined by each rule's effectivity dates.

Enabling and Disabling Rules
Enabling and disabling rules can be a useful tool when unit testing and debugging a configuration model. Rules that are disabled are ignored when you generate logic and when you unit test a Model in a runtime Oracle Configurator or the Model Debugger.
You can enable or disable any type of rule.

The Disabled column in the Rules area of the Workbench shows whether a rule is currently active. When you enable or disable a rule, Configurator Developer updates this column only after you regenerate logic.