Hi Brian...
Wow Evan really hit it right on the head. Windchill is a professional product and, therefore, has numerous features you'll probably never need for your FRC team. So much is going on behind the scenes of the software that it sometimes seems sluggish. To high schoolers, this means the product seems slow, overly complex, and difficult to learn.
These same traits even frustrate the pros so it's no wonder high schoolers are resistant to using it. At the risk of being subversive, maybe start by just using Windchill to manage your Creo models. Sure document sharing and project management are very valuable features of the tool... but they also cloud the waters when you're trying to get new users on board. By performing the relatively few simple transactions required to manage the models, students will become familiar with the interface. As they gain confidence with the tool, you can expand it's use.
One out-of-the-box suggestion I have... is to use Twitter or Facebook to help your team access Windchill. Try this... find any document you want your team to access. Click on it to bring up the information page for that document. In the upper right-hand corner of Windchill (version 9 is what I'm using) there's an Email Page button. By clicking this, a new pop-up window will open. Select the link to Use My Own Mail Application. A new email will pop up with a LINK to the current Windchill page already embedded in it. Try copy/pasting this link to Twitter or Facebook as a way to provide one-click access to your documents.
When a team member clicks the link, they will be asked to login to the Windchill server. Once they log in, they'll immediately be taken to the page you selected. You could, of course, also simply email them the link. You can't do much more than that... you've done all the work for them!
Let us know if you come up with a solution to your problem of motivation!
Thanks!
-Brian
