Thing Templates and Shapes using Manufacturing Apps

[bjagadesh]

If I have 10 lines and each line has many different equipment, how can I create thing templates for each equipment using the UI of manufacturing apps? I understand these things created via the UI already have a thing template. Is the only option I have a thing shape?

[CRArko]

Hello, Bala.

I'm not super familiar with the Manufacturing Apps; hope someone more so will help us out.

I think a good place to start might be the ThingWorx Apps Customization Guide.

https://support.ptc.com/WCMS/files/173135/en/ThingWorxManufacturingAppsCustomizationGuide_8-0-0.pdf

-- Craig A.

[stmarchessault]

Greetings Bala,

If I understand your question correctly, you would like to duplicate the Lines, which inherit from the 'PTC.ISA95.ProductionLineThingTemplate'. This is not possible withing the Manufacturing Apps UI itself. However, for Premium licensed users, it is possible to use ThingWorx Composer to duplicate a Line, which would also duplicate all of its inherited templates and Dependencies.

Please let us know whether this answers your question.

Best regards,

Steven M

[bjagadesh]

Thanks all for your answers.

Let's say I have 3 sets of properties (temperature properties, electricity properties, pressure properties) etc. Each machine in my line has a different set. Usually I would create either a thing template or use a thing shape to define these properties so they become reusable.

In Manufacturing apps, it seems that I will need to reconfigure all of the properties for each machine that I add. Is that the only way in Manufacturing apps?

Since I have 10 line, I would need to reconfigure everything 10 times. Duplicating the line as you suggested does not work because it does NOT duplicate all of the assets on the line as well. Just tried it using composer and then checking the result on manufacturing apps. The line I duplicated displays with an error in the manage resources view of the config and admin tile.

Line I duplicated:

Line originally created using manufacturing apps:

View of the line properties in manufacturing apps after duplicating line 2:

[vranganathan · Accepted solution]

Bala,

Currently, that is the limitation from modeling perspective. Having said that, I am not sure why you need different template for different lines. Can you throw some light on your use case? This limitation do have some workarounds as below..

For example, if you want to add new properties to all your line, you can implement additional Thing Shape which should make it available to all your line. Same thing with services. On the UI, you may have to expose these properties depending on your case.

If you want to add different properties to different lines, it can be done from the UI as shown below.   These properties are at Thing Level.

[stmarchessault]

For additional information about this, please see the response from Pai Chung to a similar request in this thread:

Anyway to duplicate properties in Manufacturing Apps?