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Update Functionality not working with Unite Technology?????

dplachinski
6-Contributor

Update Functionality not working with Unite Technology?????

Has anyone tried the “update” functionality when assembling non-Creo parts into a Creo assembly?


Many of you have seen the Web-Casts, attended Creo 3.0 Hands on Workshops, or even read the PTC literature stating how you can assemble multi-cad models into your Creo Assembly. If those models change in their native Software, you can "update" them in your Creo assembly, right?


Well, somewhere along the line PTC has determined this to be a “bug” and it is not intended or supported.


I was unable to get the update function to work, so I opened a call to tech support and they opened a spr.


The response from R&D shocked me:







The SPR# 2254637 filed for this issue has been closed by PTC R&D as Works to product specification for Creo Parametric 3.0 M020 mentioning that the ability to update foreign models opened with Unite is not intended and not supported.


For more details, please refer article "Solidworks part assembled in an assembly does not update properly in Creo Parametric 3.0 M020" at:https://support.ptc.com/appserver/cs/view/solution.jsp?n=CS196854



When I asked Customer Support about the Web-Cast, training manuals, and PTC documentation, he said they will be changed!


I have attached the Unite data sheet and the training manual pages I received at a Creo 3.0 Hands on Workshop.



This thread is inactive and closed by the PTC Community Management Team. If you would like to provide a reply and re-open this thread, please notify the moderator and reference the thread. You may also use "Start a topic" button to ask a new question. Please be sure to include what version of the PTC product you are using so another community member knowledgeable about your version may be able to assist.
12 REPLIES 12

If someone bought / upgraded their software install based on this 'feature', I'd say that they we're in line for a refund, but if you read the EULA, even if the software doesn't do anything at all, you have no recourse.


Christopher F. Gosnell

FPD Company
124 Hidden Valley Road
McMurray, PA 15317
PH:724.941-5540
FX:724.941.8322
www.fpdcompany.com
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mschuetz
6-Contributor
(To:dplachinski)

Dan, Christopher,


the Unite Technology and it's Collaboration Extensions of course support the update workflow. That's exactly what they are build for. One end-user complain we always had in the past was, that it is too cumbersome to do the manual update by ATB/Check status and then ATB/update. And it is error-prone, becaue you can easily miss a newer version. But there might be situations where you want to use it and that's why the ATB workflow is still supported next to the new fully automated Unite update workflow.


With the Unite Technology we fully automated it. So if you work in a linked environment with Windchill you will get out of date information at the model tree and the Notification Center in case someone else checked in a newer version to Windchill. You can update multi-cad assemblies in the same way you are used to update Creo components with Creo 3.0.


If you manage your files on your local harddisc non-PTC Creo files behave exactly like PTC Creo files. If you open Creo it opens the latest version of the Creo files on your harddisc. If you - under the hood - replace the Creo files on your local harddisc with a different version their is no way to retrieve these in session without reloading the assembly.I hope this explains how Unite Technology works. If you have any additional questions, let me know.


Interesting that non-Windchill customers aren't able to manually trigger a process that is available to Windchill customers.


There is a lot of software that responds to 'Open file' commands for data that is already in memory by asking if the current contents of memory should be replaced by the files on disk - I even have a text editor that notices during editing when a disk file is changed and prompts me if I want to replace the in-memory version with the later one. It is inconsistent that Creo doesn't do this, even though it fails for both native and imported files, only for non-Windchill customers.


One presumes that most Creo users understand this and that the negative responses may have been to a poorly laid out process, not an indication they didn't want the ability. Given the OPs understanding of the response from TS, it seems like explanation of the process needs more work.


So what you are saying is: PTC changed the workflow of Update In the Unite Technology based on ONE end user's feedback, right?


Thanks

mschuetz
6-Contributor
(To:dplachinski)

David, Dan,


Thanks for your additional feedback and giving me the opportunity to further clarify a few points.


Of course PTC offers different functionality in different tools. PTC Windchill is intended to take care for the CAD data management aspect. So if you want to work with as-stored, latest or any other combination of configurations in a collaborative environment, a data management system is your best choice. Hence the combination of PTC Creo and PTC Windchill will offer you additional and unique capabilities, which you can’t have if you store your data on a file-system.


If you still intend to store all your data in different iterations on your local file-system, PTC Creo checks and retrieves for latest on retrieval. I have a hard time to compare a text editor with a single file checking on a date code – in case for whatever reason you didn’t open the latest version – and offer you the ability to erase your memory and reload the latest document to a complex assembly structure with all references and relations. I personally believe it is a poorly designed workflow and execution to let you work on an outdated text-file from the beginning.


PTC didn’t change any workflow in the Unite Technology after it was released. It was released in PTC Creo 3.0 M020 and designed for an automatic update from the beginning. That is what we released right from the beginning in the first release in M020. Every demo you might have seen before was based on non-released and incomplete functionality. If it would have been finalized before, we would have released the functionality in F000 and didn’t wait until M020. It wasn’t.


As you probably know from your own experience, PTC doesn’t change any software code or functionality based on a single users input. Saying one of the end-users complains is … basically means this is one area of improvement we always got from our customer base. Additional requests were not to install 3<sup>rd</sup> party software to work with 3<sup>rd</sup> party data, don’t get an import dialog and decide what information to import every time, support additional formats… We also implemented Unite Technology to faster adopt new releases of 3<sup>rd</sup> party software, which you can already see from PTC Creo 3.0 M010 to M030 were we constantly support newer versions of 3<sup>rd</sup> party software. Unite Technology addresses all of these challenges by make it work and behave like Creo components, giving you the easiest workflows to incorporate non-PTC Creo data into your designs.


You can find additional documentation on ptc.com in the data sheet, the collaboration extension page or the PTC Creo help center for Unite.


If you have any additional questions, need further explanation or help, please let me know.


Thanks


Marc


Thanks for clarifying.



If I understand this update functionality correctly, we need to purchase a Collaboration Extension license for each of the software packages we wish to use? That can be quite costly.



I have tested the update functionality with some simple models (with the collaboration extension) and it seems to work. However, with more complex models there are data exchange problems even opening them. Do you want examples of files that fail to open cleanly via support case numbers?



Dan


The function I mentioned works exactly fine - the file is updated by a separate program and the output is monitored by the text editor. Since the replacement of an externally generated file won't have any discriminator other than the date/timestamp and the old version would have been over-written by the new one, the only logical choice is to inform the user that the change has taken place, rather than letting them continue with out-of-date information.

Am sure I heard / read somewhere that full unite functionality would not be realised untill Creo 3 M030?



Also that the full functionality requires a collaboration extension for the relative 3rd part software?



We are also interested in getting unite working faultlessly as we are a consultancy and regularly receive data in multiple formats from clients.


Simon Lucas


Simon,


I am running Creo 3.0 M020 with a collaboration extension for SolidWorks and it is working on simple modelsas Marc described above. It has it's limitations in complex contoured models, much like you would bringing in a translated (step, iges, parasolid) model. If the revised model is corrupt for some reason Creo will not read or update it and the Creo user would not know the difference.


Dan

Marc,


Thanks for clarifying.


My company is a job shop so we see model files from many different software packages, so you can see how I would be passionate about this new functionality.


If I understand this update functionality correctly, we need to purchase a Collaboration Extension license for each of the software packages we wish to use? That can be quite costly.


Is there anything in the works to utilize this functionality with Creo Elements Direct Modeling files? (open/update .pkg files) Will this be another Collaboration Extension or will we have the functionality because it is Creo based?


I have tested the update functionality with some simple models (with the collaboration extension) and it seems to work. However, with more complex models there are data exchange problems even opening them. Do you want examples of files that fail to open cleanly via support case numbers?


Thanks again,


Dan

Licensing can be set up so multiple people can access the license. So you can buy 1 or a few of the licenses you need.

Look at An Admin’s Guide to License Managment

What Windchill supports the Unite Technology?

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