Automate re-creating workspace

[HighTechHick]

Hello,

Not a savy Windchill/Creo user here, just an IT guy trying to support it lol.

we have a desktop setup in one of our shop areas with a full install of Creo 3 tied to our Windchill 10.2 PDM - this is to allow these guys (welders) to pull up a full model before welding to check for any changes. 

We keep running into an issue of them not emptying their workspace and not having the latest data to work with.

Has anyone figured out a good way to do this automatically? pretty much just want to delete and recreate their workspace without any human interaction lol.

if worse comes to worse I'll use something like autohotkeys and use mouse clicks, but I'm thinking a script or maybe something builtin would be nicer.. 

thanks!

[BrianToussaint]

If they are not making any changes to the models or needing the actual model for anything, I would look into using CREO View for them to interrogate the models.  Then there is no need for workspaces and you do not need the CREO license for them as you access the information straight from Windchill.  You also do not need a CREO compatible machine as you view lightweight files of the model.

[HighTechHick]

We actually have that setup for the rest of the weld and shop areas.

Now here is where my inexperience is going to shine a little bit.

we have a "worker" publishing the visualizations for that. I guess I'm not confident that it actually keeps up with engineering.

when we migrated to 10.2 from 9.1, I believe there were over 90k jobs lined up and it took a good 8 months to chew through those!

I might need to sit down with Engineering and compare what is currently generated to what they have modeled. I do think this is a much better way to go.. I just opened a top level assembly on my laptop and it is nice a smooth rotating around and such. hmm.

Just checked on said worker, and it's status is "Fails to Start".

[TomU]

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When we migrated to 10.2 from 9.1, I believe there were over 90k jobs lined up and it took a good 8 months to chew through those!

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You might want to take another look at how your CAD workers are setup.  We run a single virtual machine configured for 16 concurrent Creo workers (plus a few other workers - STEP, thumbnail, etc.)  We also have all assemblies configured to publish as "extended positioning assemblies".  With all the workers running, our average processing time is one job per second (86,000/day.)  Granted, most days we only publish a few hundred files, but the capacity is really nice and it doesn't cost anymore than a single worker (as long as you have the server resources to support it and use a node locked license.) 

[HighTechHick]

that is some nice capacity!

I'm using a Dell Precision T1650 for licensing and the Creo Worker.

I checked out the task manager and there were 3 entries for xstop.exe using quite a bit of CPU and RAM. 

I stopped those, restarted the worker from Worker Agent Admin, and now it shows that it's Status: On, Job: Available, but Number: 0.

I didn't realize you could run multiple workers on the same machine. 

pretty sure all of our licensing is floating as well, at least for now. talking about moving to the subscription setup next year. (although I guess that can still be node-locked).

[BenLoosli]

We have publishing set for all files that are checked into Windchill and also when they are submitted as a promotion request. A single CAD worker keeps up with the 5 designers with no problems. All files are always up to date for CreoView.

[HighTechHick]

I really only have 4 active design engineers so I think my 1 worker should do the trick. I'll do some testing and make sure, I think that would really simplify things for us.

I think the main reason the shop guys like using Creo is we have a lot of hotkeys. (typing "ar" from anywhere in the software open a search for an assembly, or "pr" searches for a part).

maybe a little user training and all this will be behind us!

[HighTechHick]

One question about the worker. Does it actually need a good graphics card? I think ours has a Quadro 2000 in it, nothing crazy good, just wasn't sure if these are generated all with CPU or if a dedicated GFX card actually helps?

[TomU]

Nope.  Not needed for a  CAD worker.