Our team has a requirement to pass information from Creo to a custom software tool we are developing. (e.g. the location and orientation of particular pieces of equipment.) It is important that this output be formatted in a consistent manner, and always kept up to date as the design evolves. Saving dimensions and parameters to a *.CSV file (with the "External Analysis" function) or a *.XLS (with the "Excel Analysis" function) does just the trick. The problem is its currently difficult to keep the resulting file updated. It would be so simple if the file was saved in the PDMLink repository with all the other files. This seems like it ought to work, but it doesn't.
In the "Excel Analysis" function, when you click to "Load file", you actually CAN navigate to a location in PDMLink, but no Excel files that are saved there actually come up in the list, only CAD files. If you save the Excel file to your local computer, and save the analysis pointing to that file within your model, updating the analysis later is only possible if you still have the original Excel file in the same location. If you had moved or deleted it, are working on a different computer, or another user is trying to make the update... You're out of luck. All you get is an error that it can't open the specified Excel file. (You're not even prompted for the filename and path so you could put a blank file there!) So, all the setup of what was to be exported is lost. If the file had been saved in PDMLink, this wouldn't be an issue, as the file would be in the database, so any user could retrieve it.
Things are only slightly better with the "External Analysis" function. Although you CAN save the *.CSV file directly to your PDMLink workspace and retrieve it later... you can't update it. The revised file gets a "file name conflict" and can't be uploaded into the PDMLink again. (i.e. PDMLink thinks it's a new file that has the same name, not an update of the original file.)
Fortunately, with Creo 2 at least (not WF 4, our current tool, although we'll be upgrading soon) you can save the file locally, without losing all the settings if another user tries to update it, as the field where the output file is specified is visible, and editable. So, we'll be able to manage the updates by saving the *.CSV locally, and using the "replace content" function of PDMLink in a web browser to keep the database version updated. Not nearly as convenient as it should be though!
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