Windchill is Offline Until September

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PTC is in the process of updating firstrobotics.ptc.com/Windchill to Windchill 10.2. As part of the process, we need to take the active server offline until the hardware configuration and data migration is complete. The server is moving from Europe to the US and getting a substantial upgrade. The new server should be much easier to use, much more reliable and fully support Windows 8.1

If you have critical files you need access to, PM me and I'll see what I can do to help you out.

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Everything is going great with the Windchill upgrade. We are in the final round of acceptance testing and should have no problems meeting the go-live date of September 1, 2014. The new server is running the latest version of Winchill and I think you'll be pleasantly suprised at the performance usability of it compared to the previous system.

[robwood]

When will Windchill be back online?

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I have a few final updates to address today and then we'll be making the system available to all. I should have looked at the calendar to realize our go-live date was a holiday 😉

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My fingers are crossed for tomorrow. Final system side changes are being implemented today...

[JoshH]

Doesn't look like it's going to be completed today. Any updates?

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The backend DBA work took a bit longer than expected and will wrap up tomorrow. Its gotta be live on Saturday for the FTC Kickoff and the team has guaranteed it will be ready.

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Okay, folks. We are back in business.

The FIRST Windchill server is back online and running the latest version of Windchill - 10.2_M020. The new URL is https://academic.ptc.com/Windchill, but you can keep using https://firstrobotics.ptc.com/Windchill if you'd like.

PTC is excited to get the new server online. Its been a big project and a lot of thanks goes to all the behind the scenes folks here at PTC who made it happen.

[JoshH]

Excited or releived?

Thanks for all the hard work guys!

[robwood]

I have a Problem with the new Windchill-Server. I can't find my old folders, projects and workspaces. What do I wrong?

I also have no access to the Windchill help-center.

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Robert, I am able to pick Quick Links, Help, WIndchill Help Center to load the Help Center. This is not working for you?

There are three Robert Holzmann's registered on ptc.com, so I am not sure which one is you. Can you open a case with academic support and give us the name of the program your are participating in, your Windchill user name, project name, etc so we can look into this?

[robwood]

I have made a new case. I hope you can help me.

[JoshH]

Scott, we have a problem. Students were not instructed to do anything with their workspaces. I know in theory, workspaces should not be impacted with a simple upgrade. However, since there was a server link changed, I'm guessing it broke the link to the workspaces. What I'm hearing now, is that data from old workspaces is not showing up at all.

Thoughts/Solutions?

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Josh, can you open up a case with academic support? We'll need specifics; users, projects, workspaces, etc. The old URL, firstrobotics.ptc.com/Windchill is now a redirect to academic.ptc.com/Windchill, so I would not expect to find any connectivity issues.

[wwerst]

I love the speed of the new server! CAD this year is going to be so much faster for at least my team in particular and I'm sure countless others. A big thanks goes out to you, Scott, and all the folks at PTC who made this happen.

I added these lines in the config.pro to enhance performance for me (load ~90 MB of files in 50 seconds, the entirety of last year's CAD model. Last year, took ~5 minutes to load):

dm_network_threads 4000

dm_http_compression_level 0

dm_cache_limit 0

dm_network_request_size 100000000

Probably went too far with number of threads and network request size, but for me with a 30 Mbps at home and 60 Mbps at shop it is fine. If anyone has found particularly good settings that improve performance more, please post.