Thanks for your replies so far.
Some of our reasons to use a configurator are:
- We have regional licenses, we need to ensure the proper licenses are obtained based on location
- We have over 160 sites. We offer them a standard, tested configuration for general purposes. Some sites, however, require different settings / libraries according to their projects or special needs. I need to ensure they can switch between their local configurations and the standard one based on location and keep all of them under control.
- Some of the modules we use are customized, like our Spark Analysis option. When someone wants to work with it, I need to ensure the proper toolkit is initialized, variables created and settings added to the config.pro.
- We use different settings and libraries when you work with the metric system of units or when you work with the imperial system. I need to ensure the proper settings are applied and the right libraries are used.
- We often have different versions / datecodes of Creo, so it's better for us to have a single UI to select which version you are working on. The same holds true for Windchill, in which we have different servers. We also have different environments to manage. I may have a user in Production with Creo 2 without Windchill, switching to Creo 4 with our training Windchill 11 server during the day for some training, and in the afternoon he may be assisting in validating a toolkit in our pre-production environment while connected to one of our pre-production windchill servers, just to mention some.
- I use it to push updates of configuration or libraries to all users the next time they launch Creo for better and faster management of updates.
Plus many other use cases, but I probably have you bored reading already. But these are just some of the reasons why we use a configurator.
We have been working with INNEO for the last years, adding our input to the design of their current release of their product in hopes of having something that may fit our needs as an effective replacement of our configurator, which we call MCAD Launcher internally. I haven't found another option available for this kind of software so I was wondering if there are others doing something similar to us and how they do it, trying to get fresher / different ideas.
