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Creo M070 no longer opens SW IMPORTED files...

DarrinHiebert
1-Newbie

Creo M070 no longer opens SW IMPORTED files...

I just ran onto something today, that I thought was worth sharing with the user community.

We work with a LOT of vendors, who use a LOT of different CAD systems. One of those CAD systems is SolidWorks. We know that in the past SW has had the "ability" to write Pro/E files directly, and often times, we would have asked vendors for those files, since they would appear to be Pro/E files on our end. But often times, we get files from vendors, and we do NOT know that they do this with SW. We ask for a Pro/E file, and they send us a Pro/E file, BUT they have used the SW converter on it to create the Pro/E files. We didn't ask them to do that, they just did. It has always worked for us (others mileage may vary), and it hasn't been that big of a deal.

Now today, I tried calling up such a model and I can't call up the assembly, because the parts under it are failing. It doesn't tell me why, it just says that the models aren't available, BUT I know that they are, because they are in the directory that I'm currently in, and I can see them there. I log a call with PTC. They call me back quickly, which I'm very impressed by, and they tell me that I cannot open these files because they are SW files saved as Pro/E files. OK. I'll take their word for it. I have no idea one way or the other, except I know that they are vendor files. The ONLY solution that they really have for me is that I'm supposed to get the original data from the vendor as either an IGES or STEP file, and then reimport the data into a Pro/E model. Well, that's a great plan, except I have other geometry built on this part, that will all fail now if I can't get this model to come up. Doesn't matter.

As it turns out, the tech person tells me that they have had so much problems with this, that they have DISABLED this functionality in later cuts of WF 5, starting above M040 (I believe. Tech wasn't for sure). What that means is that you may have models that you could successfully call up in M040, that you will NOT be able to call up in M070. BE AWARE THAT THESE WILL FAIL IN LATER BUILDS!

The tech sent me the following links:









If you look at the second one, there is a work around IF you have SW, or the SW Explorer. Fair enough, but I currently don't have those things on my machine. What this TPI does NOT indicate, is that they have turned it completely OFF in later datecodes, and models WILL fail without this resolution. ...























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7 REPLIES 7

Creo 2.0 plans at the Creo launch event:



John Prentice

Retrieval in an older build of Wildfire and saving it out of it should
make the models retrievable in WF5 M070 due to PTCs backwards
compatibility.
/Bjarne



John Prentice <->
26-01-2011 21:57
Please respond to
John Prentice <->


To
Darrin Hiebert <->
proecad <->
cc

Subject
[proecad] - RE: Creo M070 no longer opens SW IMPORTED files...






Creo 2.0 plans at the Creo launch event:


M070 "enhancement" be a move towards this??

John Prentice


Confirmed with Tech Support. Models saved with older builds will still open regardless of original source. That being said, I would just as well get rid of them if you have the chance.

Antonio Villanueva
Sr. Software Engineer
Goodrich - ISR Systems

After posting this, I received an email from corporate PTC about this issue . The email was very forthright about how this situation came to be, and also that they had this same thing occur in a prior revision of WF 4 M160. The issue was subsequently fixed in WF 4 M180. (We bypassed WF4, so I never knew this happened). I conveyed some of my frustrations with the current situation to the PTC contact, and the contact responded to me letting me know that they have indeed added an additional check to their QC process that will now check for this occurrence in subsequent releases of Creo. Also, the contact informed me that this has been again corrected in M080 of Creo, for anyone moving forward.

I would personally like to thank PTC for taking the time to help me with this situation, and to add some steps into their QC process that will hopefully eliminate this in the future. While nothing is a 100%, just the fact that they are willing to change the process speaks volumes, to me, about their willingness to try and make things as right as possible. I know that sometimes we all feel like little fish in a big pond, and that corporate is not paying attention to us little fish. I've gained a new appreciation for their listening ear.

Another thing that the contact told me, and others from the exploder suggested as a solution as well, is to call up the offending file in a PRIOR release of the version of WF/Creo that you're on, and then save the file. This will then create a compatible file that you can use in the newer release.

But, as many users also told me, the best policy is to probably avoid this situation if at all possible, and for us as a company moving forward, that will definitely be our policy. In this particular case, however, it was geometry that we received from a vendor, and we never questioned where the data came from, it just came to us as Pro/E files and we used them. I guess the moral of this story is mostly, " caveat emptor "...

Hi Darren,

Thanks for the elaborate update.

I just now realized that this was the same issue that I reported for WF4 M160 and where SPR 2014609 was eventually assigned to.
We could not open some files with imported neutral geometry. Reported it on the exploder as well.

As opposed to you I had a hard time getting my call through the first line of the PTC Helpdesk. Probably because the first line of defense by PTC is located in Marocco for the European users.Seems to me that PTC has a language problem there. It was not the first time where I had to escalte a call, because it was closed with a completely unsatisfactory solution. In this case they at first said it was an intended tightening of a check for potential corruption. After my escalation accompanied with some strong wording finally the SPR was filed.

Nice to know it is now fixed in WF4 M180. I just verified it and indeed, WF4 M180 now only displays a warning:
The file syj3143-5lou_syj3000valvebodysy.prt was created by a non-PTC application. It may fail to retrieve or regenerate properly.

Kind regards,

Olaf Corten



Olaf Corten
CAD/PLM Manager
Fico B.V.
Ratio 6, Duiven
Phone: +31 26 3196215
Mobile: +31 644548554
www.besi.com

*** nov. 10th - PTC/USER Benelux Event 2010 -

I encountered an issue with this today that I thought I'd pass along.


We're running Wildfire 5.0 M080 (I know, Creo, but it's still just Pro/E to me). Almost five years ago,someone had some files that were exported from SolidWorks, saved as "Pro/E" files. He opened them in Pro/E, saved them, and they've sat inWindchill since then.


Today, an engineer tried working with these old files. The parts open fine in WF5 M080 with no warnings of any kind. They just look like any other importedpart, with a coordinate system and an imported (neutral) feature.


The problems start when that import feature is regenerated. Reordering, suppressing/resuming, etc.... anything that causes the feature to regenerate will instantly crash Pro/E.


I didn't know these parts came from SolidWorks (and wouldn't have thought anything of it). I opened a call with PTC and got the scoop on thelegal way to open SolidWorks files in Pro/E, as noted in this thread that Darrin started a while back. I'll remember that for the future, but it doesn't help with these old files.


This is the part that chaps my hide: I was told by PTC tech support that Pro/E crashing is (more or less) intended functionality. "That's just the way it works", he said. Unbelievable. In all my years working with Pro/E, I don't think I've ever been told that an outright crash, especially a reproducible one,is not a bug.


So, be careful with those files. I found that I can clean up the files by opening them, exporting an IGES or STEP, then deleting the import feature and importing the exported file. At least that doesn't crash Pro/E and it behaves itself afterward.


Dan



In Reply to Darrin Hiebert:


After posting this, I received an email from corporate PTC about this issue . The email was very forthright about how this situation came to be, and also that they had this same thing occur in a prior revision of WF 4 M160. The issue was subsequently fixed in WF 4 M180. (We bypassed WF4, so I never knew this happened). I conveyed some of my frustrations with the current situation to the PTC contact, and the contact responded to me letting me know that they have indeed added an additional check to their QC process that will now check for this occurrence in subsequent releases of Creo. Also, the contact informed me that this has been again corrected in M080 of Creo, for anyone moving forward.

I would personally like to thank PTC for taking the time to help me with this situation, and to add some steps into their QC process that will hopefully eliminate this in the future. While nothing is a 100%, just the fact that they are willing to change the process speaks volumes, to me, about their willingness to try and make things as right as possible. I know that sometimes we all feel like little fish in a big pond, and that corporate is not paying attention to us little fish. I've gained a new appreciation for their listening ear.

Another thing that the contact told me, and others from the exploder suggested as a solution as well, is to call up the offending file in a PRIOR release of the version of WF/Creo that you're on, and then save the file. This will then create a compatible file that you can use in the newer release.

But, as many users also told me, the best policy is to probably avoid this situation if at all possible, and for us as a company moving forward, that will definitely be our policy. In this particular case, however, it was geometry that we received from a vendor, and we never questioned where the data came from, it just came to us as Pro/E files and we used them. I guess the moral of this story is mostly, " caveat emptor "...

Hi Dan,

I totally agree.

I urged PTC Help to come with a suitable solution back in WF4.
Because previously just opening these files would allready cause ProE to crash.

They sort of fixed it in WF4 M180 and a WF5 build (SPR does not say which one)
It now doesn't crash when opening and gives a warning:
The file syj3143-5lou_syj3000valvebodysy.prt was created by a non-PTC application. It may fail to retrieve or regenerate properly.

But forcing a regenerate still crashes ProE (e.g. Tools -> Model Player -> Beginning -> Regenerate features -> End).

You would have thought that they would have fixed it better. The software allready knows the geometry might be corrupt.
On the other hand, when we tell ProE to regenerate the feature it's good to know that it is still trying to regenerate it,
But perhaps it would have been better not to regenerate at all and give a more explicit pop-up warning; forcing us to fix the part.


Kind regards,

Olaf Corten




Olaf Corten
CAD/PLM Manager
Fico B.V.
Ratio 6, Duiven
Phone: +31 26 3196215
Mobile: +31 644548554
www.besi.com






From: Dan Wolf <->
To: -
Date: 19-04-2011 23:46
Subject: [proecad] - RE: SUMMARY: Creo M070 no longer opens SW IMPORTED files...



I encountered an issue with this today that I thought I'd pass along.
We're running Wildfire 5.0 M080 (I know, Creo, but it's still just Pro/E to me). Almost five years ago, someone had some files that were exported from SolidWorks, saved as "Pro/E" files. He opened them in Pro/E, saved them, and they've sat in Windchill since then.
Today, an engineer tried working with these old files. The parts open fine in WF5 M080 with no warnings of any kind. They just look like any other imported part, with a coordinate system and an imported (neutral) feature.
The problems start when that import feature is regenerated. Reordering, suppressing/resuming, etc.... anything that causes the feature to regenerate will instantly crash Pro/E.
I didn't know these parts came from SolidWorks (and wouldn't have thought anything of it). I opened a call with PTC and got the scoop on the legal way to open SolidWorks files in Pro/E, as noted in this thread that Darrin started a while back. I'll remember that for the future, but it doesn't help with these old files.
This is the part that chaps my hide: I was told by PTC tech support that Pro/E crashing is (more or less) intended functionality. "That's just the way it works", he said. Unbelievable. In all my years working with Pro/E, I don't think I've ever been told that an outright crash, especially a reproducible one, is not a bug.
So, be careful with those files. I found that I can clean up the files by opening them, exporting an IGES or STEP, then deleting the import feature and importing the exported file. At least that doesn't crash Pro/E and it behaves itself afterward.
Dan

In Reply to Darrin Hiebert:
After posting this, I received an email from corporate PTC about this issue . The email was very forthright about how this situation came to be, and also that they had this same thing occur in a prior revision of WF 4 M160. The issue was subsequently fixed in WF 4 M180. (We bypassed WF4, so I never knew this happened). I conveyed some of my frustrations with the current situation to the PTC contact, and the contact responded to me letting me know that they have indeed added an additional check to their QC process that will now check for this occurrence in subsequent releases of Creo. Also, the contact informed me that this has been again corrected in M080 of Creo, for anyone moving forward.

I would personally like to thank PTC for taking the time to help me with this situation, and to add some steps into their QC process that will hopefully eliminate this in the future. While nothing is a 100%, just the fact that they are willing to change the process speaks volumes, to me, about their willingness to try and make things as right as possible. I know that sometimes we all feel like little fish in a big pond, and that corporate is not paying attention to us little fish. I've gained a new appreciation for their listening ear.

Another thing that the contact told me, and others from the exploder suggested as a solution as well, is to call up the offending file in a PRIOR release of the version of WF/Creo that you're on, and then save the file. This will then create a compatible file that you can use in the newer release.

But, as many users also told me, the best policy is to probably avoid this situation if at all possible, and for us as a company moving forward, that will definitely be our policy. In this particular case, however, it was geometry that we received from a vendor, and we never questioned where the data came from, it just came to us as Pro/E files and we used them. I guess the moral of this story is mostly, " caveat emptor "...
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