Windchill Tips

LiveWorx and PTC/User are now offering an entire day focused on Creo and Windchill content with the addition of CAD & PLM Technical Day on Monday, June 10. This is an additional 25 breakout sessions with all of the Creo and Windchill tips, tricks and insights necessary to get the most out of your PTC Products. Here’s what you need to know:   You can take a look at what to expect for sessions here CAD & PLM Technical Day is included with your purchase of an All Access or DeluX Pass Explorer Pass holders can add it on for an additional cost of $250 until March 27 and $350 through June 13 If you are already registered it is not too late to add this to your registration: Log In to your account Enter username and password Select “Registration” Scroll down and click “Purchase Additional Event Offerings” and add the CAD & PLM Technical Day to your account   Seats are filling fast for this dedicated content, don’t miss out on learning from some of our Creo and Windchill super users (and fellow Community members) on best practices and how other organizations are utilizing these solutions.   Please email concierge@liveworx.com if you have any questions.      

From Windchill 11.0 M030 onward, 32-bit Windchill Workgroup Manager client is not supported.   It means that installing the Windchill Workgroup Manager on 32-bit Windows OS is not supported and/or it may not be possible. Installing the 32-bit Windchill Workgroup Manager on 64-bit Windows OS is not possible For the detail, please refer to CS265512 - "Discontinuation of support of 32-bit Windows with Windchill Workgroup Manager 11.0 M030.

In this example Change Associations are used to define that a Prototype CN (Soft typed) will have a single Change Task - Prototype Change Task that is defined as the default change task for this type of Change Notice.   With Windchill 11.0 M010 and onwards you can define which Change Task types are allowed and created for a type of Change Notice.  This is allow followed with Change Task templates.  Together this helps to error proof your process and reduce clicks for the user.

With Windchill 11.0 one can use Query Builder queries to further refine search results.  For example refine the search to look at results based upon related objects.   This zip file contains two queries from 11.0 M020   Search with Parts - additional query to find parts that are on a Change Notice at a given state Reference Designator - Find parts on a BOM with a given reference designator.  For example - find a part (eg Name Capacitor*) that has a reference designator C16

Example of using Part Compare with and showing how Show Only Differences works   (view in My Videos)

An example of uploading multiple representations to one CreoView session rather then having to start new sessions for each one.   I was adding as a comment on a Product Idea but it was not letting embed it so I added this a separate video and linked it.  The idea is the following:     (view in My Videos)    

When there are a large number of objects in a Windchill workspace, it is difficult to identify the object representing the top-level object of a large assembly without any clue of its identity information.With the same or similar intent, the featured object live has been provided

Good day Everyone, I have added content from the event in Stuttgart - PTC Forum Europe 2016 In addition to the presentations, you may also watch keynotes and session recordings from your computer. I hope you find the content valuable. Best, Toby

  Have you had a chance to learn about PTC Navigate yet? Did you know that PTC Navigate provides universal data access? Any stakeholder in the product’s lifecycle can access the latest, most accurate product information to drive better product decisions – with a user experience that is as simple and straightforward as the average smartphone app.   Join us on Tuesday, October 25th, at 1:00pm EST for the live webcast, “PTC Navigate: Easy Access to Enterprise Product Data”, to see a demonstration of how intuitive and easy to use PTC Navigate role-based apps are to: View documents. View drawings. View requirements. View part properties. View parts lists. View part structures. View design files. View and measure in 3D.   Don’t miss this opportunity for a live Q&A with PTC Experts, Chris Bergquist, Senior Solutions Director, PLM, and Steve Partridge, Director Solutions Management. REGISTER NOW   Are you already a customer using Windchill 10.2 or higher? If so, you can take advantage of PTC Navigate apps immediately. There's no need to upgrade your existing Windchill deployment. Dramatically expand the value of PLM information across the roles in your company TODAY! Contact us to learn more

Recently a customer asked if it were possible to disable Owner association, and instead have the system default to using Contributing Image association between WTParts and CAD Documents.  I figured there might be others interested so I thought I would post the solution, as the steps to achieve this desired behavior might not be entirely obvious. Before doing so, however, I have to give credit to my colleague, Jennifer Pierron, for providing me with these steps. Here we go… In this case, the goal is disable Owner association for CAD assemblies and parts and display Contributing Image as the default association type in the Edit/Auto Associate UI.  You configure a set of Site preferences to accomplish this task.  I repeat - Site preferences.  These preferences cannot be set on a per-user or organization level basis. They apply across your entire installation. First, you need to establish which attributes you want to pass from CAD Documents to WTPart via the Contributing Image association.  This can be done by setting the Site preference EPM Service Preferences > Build Service Preferences > Contributing Image Attributes to * for all attributes, or you may specify individually using a list of attribute names.  If you do not specify any attributes, then the system defaults to using an Image association instead of a Contributing Image association. In effect, the preference settings in the following figure enable Contributing Image associations in your system. Next, configure the CAD Document types for which you do not want to build structure (disallow Owner associations).  In this example we disallow the building of structure for Creo Parts and Assemblies.  To accomplish this, we add CADCOMPONENT and CADASSEMBLY to the list of types for which building structure is excluded.  This is done by editing the preference Operations > Auto Associate > Disallow Structure CAD Document Types > Creo as shown in the following figure. As a final step, If you want to allow Auto-Associate to create parts, you need to set the value of the preference Operations > Auto Associate > Create New Part to Owner and Contributing Image as shown in the following figure. The default is to allow this for Owner association types only. Once these preferences have been set, when you perform an Edit Association, you should be presented something similar to the following. I hope you found this useful.

Last time, I showed you how security labels can be added to your table displays for CAD workgroup managers (here).  In addition, a new capability for setting security label values for newly created CAD data has been introduced.  The implementation is quite different from how it is done for Documents and Parts (wizard based approach).  It is also not enabled by default even when security labels are configured, so I thought I would show you.   It is often the case where new CAD documents in Windchill are created directly from the CAD tool itself (using File > New) and then saving these files to the workspace. At this point, access to these objects is only available to the user that owns the workspace.  Other users do not become aware or have access until these new CAD documents are checked-in.  So, this is where we introduced the ability for setting security labels on newly created CAD documents.  You do this by adding your security labels to the table view of the workspace Check In window. Hmmm… The security label "Training Required" is listed and shows its default value, but I don’t see a way to set its value.  This is where additional system configuration is required.  We have introduced a property setting that enables you to set the security label value during this step, similar to how you change its location.  To configure this behavior you will need to add the following property to your wt.properties file:   com.ptc.windchill.uwgm.cadx.checkin.SecurityLabelEditing=true   This of course should be done by following the standard procedure of adding this property to your site.xconf file and then propagating it via the xconfmanager command from a Windchill shell.  Here’s the syntax of how this should be added:   <Property name="com.ptc.windchill.uwgm.cadx.checkin.SecurityLabelEditing" overridable="true" targetFile="codebase/wt.properties" value="true"/>   Now that the property has been set and the method server has been restarted, let’s take a look at the Check In window again. As you can see in the previous figure, the cell value in the security label column consists of a drop-down allowing you to select from the available security label values.  Once you select the appropriate value and check-in the new CAD document, its security label is set accordingly.  Note that this is only available when objects are initially created/checked-in.  To change the value of an existing object (one that has previously been checked in) you need to use the Edit Security Labels action.  

Starting in Windchill 10.2 M020, security labels and their values can be displayed in your workspace views.  If you have security labels configured, you are now able to add security labels to your workspace table views, just like any other attribute.   You do this by creating a new table view in your workspace.  In the New View wizard, add your security labels as part of the Set Column Display (step 4).  This can be done by either adding the “All Security Labels” from the "Available Columns" list on the left over to the “Selected Columns” list on the right. This, as the name suggests, adds all of your defined security labels into your table view in one step.  Alternatively, you can select individual security labels by name from the Available Columns list as shown in the following figure with the security label “Training Required” moved over to the Selected Columns list. Now that your workspace table view is saved to include your security labels, you are able to view them directly from your workspace listing. This eliminates the need to navigate to individual information pages to find out specific values. In addition to the workspace itself, this is applicable to all workspace related UIs such as the model structure report on the CAD document information page and the Check In UI (more on that in my next post).

Prior to Windchill 11.0: Required using the same Windchill Workgroup Manager CPS on both the server and client machines.   Windchill 11.0 M010 Onwards: You can use different CPS levels on the Windchill server and client machines within the same maintenance release. Workgroup Manager will now check version compatibility at the Windchill maintenance version level; not at the CPS level. Windchill Workgroup Manager is no longer installed from the Windchill server. A company now has the flexibility to have their end users at desired CPS levels and still connect to a single Windchill server.   For example, the following scenario is supported. A company has Windchill 11.0 M010 CPS05 server and user ‘A’ can connect to the Windchill server with Windchill Workgroup Manager 11.0 M010 CPS03 and user ‘B’ can connect to the same server with Windchill Workgroup Manager 11.0 M010 CPS07.   Illustrated below is the supported configuration.              

In my last blog post Productivity Enhancements on Windows Explorer Integration for Windchill Desktop Integration 10.2, Part I I discussed the possibilities and enhancements around the Windchill Documents system folder in the Windows Explorer. This blog will show you how easy it is to display Windchill Meta data information in the Windows Explorer Integration. I will also discuss the integrated Windchill search and how leverage the Windchill Index Search functionality.   View Windchill Information   Windchill metadata information of your documents can be displayed in the Windows Explorer without opening a browser to access the Windchill web application. Even applying filters is possible. To do so, you have to navigate from the Windchill Documents node to the context that you are interested. On the right hand pane you will see the stored documents. You may add or remove attributes by right-clicking a Windows Explorer column heading to see a drop down menu of additional columns available.     Is the attribute still not available in the out of the box list? No problem, since Windchill 10.2 F000 you can select Windchill folder views to add columns that appear in the list. With Windchill 10.2 M010 even the filters on these views will affect the data displayed in the object list.   This allows you to configure which documents will be show in the folder. E.g. if you only want to display the latest document version, then apply filter settings on the Windchill table view (in the Set Filter step select Revision and Version attributes and set them to Latest).   Folder Search for Windows Explorer   All the features that I showed until now required that you exactly know where the documents are located in your Windchill system but this unfortunately is not always the case. While manual navigating through the folder structure is cumbersome and annoying to find a document, there is a simpler way to find your documents. Starting in Windchill PDM Link 10.2 F000 you can search for any Windchill document using the Windchill Search action. This is a quick and easy way to search for your documents inside of the Windows Explorer Integration without the need to open the Windchill web application. The search can be initiated from context, container or folder level within the Windchill Documents node. This will allow you to search by Name or Number on this context level and all sub-contexts.     Please note that the search is case-insensitive and wildcards are allowed. Add asterisk (*) as a wildcard character to indicate that one or more characters can appear in that position.     For Windchill systems with Index Search enabled, even document content will be taken into account when calculating the results if the option “Include search within content (only if index search is enabled)” is selected. The native Windows Explorer search field (in the top right corner of the Windows Explorer) can also be used to perform a search but this will yield slightly different results. The search will only be performed on the current folder / context and not on any sub-context. In case you are also interested in the location of document in the folder structure, you can use the right mouse button menu to select “Open File Location”. This will open the Windchill context or folder in which the object is stored.   Conclusion   This was the last part of my post about productivity enhancements on Windows Explorer Integration. I hope that you liked this brief tour on the Windows Explorer Integration if you are interested in more details, you’ll find further information in the Windchill Help Center. Thank you also for your many comments on part I. As always let me and the community here about your thoughts and questions:   What do you like about the Windows Explorer Integration and what do you think is missing? In which scenarios you are using the Windchill Explorer Integration? …

In my last blog post Productivity Enhancements on Windows Explorer Integration for Windchill Desktop Integration 10.2, Part I I discussed the possibilities and enhancements around the Windchill Documents system folder in the Windows Explorer. This blog will show you how easy it is to display Windchill Meta data information in the Windows Explorer Integration. I will also discuss the integrated Windchill search and how leverage the Windchill Index Search functionality.   View Windchill Information   Windchill metadata information of your documents can be displayed in the Windows Explorer without opening a browser to access the Windchill web application. Even applying filters is possible. To do so, you have to navigate from the Windchill Documents node to the context that you are interested. On the right hand pane you will see the stored documents. You may add or remove attributes by right-clicking a Windows Explorer column heading to see a drop down menu of additional columns available.     Is the attribute still not available in the out of the box list? No problem, since Windchill 10.2 F000 you can select Windchill folder views to add columns that appear in the list. With Windchill 10.2 M010 even the filters on these views will affect the data displayed in the object list.   This allows you to configure which documents will be show in the folder. E.g. if you only want to display the latest document version, then apply filter settings on the Windchill table view (in the Set Filter step select Revision and Version attributes and set them to Latest).   Folder Search for Windows Explorer   All the features that I showed until now required that you exactly know where the documents are located in your Windchill system but this unfortunately is not always the case. While manual navigating through the folder structure is cumbersome and annoying to find a document, there is a simpler way to find your documents. Starting in Windchill PDM Link 10.2 F000 you can search for any Windchill document using the Windchill Search action. This is a quick and easy way to search for your documents inside of the Windows Explorer Integration without the need to open the Windchill web application. The search can be initiated from context, container or folder level within the Windchill Documents node. This will allow you to search by Name or Number on this context level and all sub-contexts.     Please note that the search is case-insensitive and wildcards are allowed. Add asterisk (*) as a wildcard character to indicate that one or more characters can appear in that position.     For Windchill systems with Index Search enabled, even document content will be taken into account when calculating the results if the option “Include search within content (only if index search is enabled)” is selected. The native Windows Explorer search field (in the top right corner of the Windows Explorer) can also be used to perform a search but this will yield slightly different results. The search will only be performed on the current folder / context and not on any sub-context. In case you are also interested in the location of document in the folder structure, you can use the right mouse button menu to select “Open File Location”. This will open the Windchill context or folder in which the object is stored.   Conclusion   This was the last part of my post about productivity enhancements on Windows Explorer Integration. I hope that you liked this brief tour on the Windows Explorer Integration if you are interested in more details, you’ll find further information in the Windchill Help Center. Thank you also for your many comments on part I. As always let me and the community here about your thoughts and questions:   What do you like about the Windows Explorer Integration and what do you think is missing? In which scenarios you are using the Windchill Explorer Integration? …

In Windchill 10.2 a lot of effort has been made to enhance and simplify the user experience when working with WTDocuments from your Microsoft Windows Desktop. In this blog I will show you some of the enhancements and how they can significantly simplify your interaction with documents stored in your company’s Windchill system.   Windows Explorer Integration   The PTC Windchill Desktop Integration plugin adds the Windchill Documents system folder to your local environment. You can you use that Windows Explorer Integration to find, open, access and download Windchill documents without the need to open the Windchill web application in a browser.   This will give you a variety of ways to easily access and interact with documents just like they had been stored on your local system:   by double clicking on a file in the Windows Explorer by using the context (right mouse button) menu on the Windchill node, any context folder or document in the Windows Explorer by the File > Open dialog of any local application (like Microsoft Word, Adobe Acrobat…) ...   But I do not want to miss the (in my opinion) most natural way of interacting with documents in Windows – Drag and Drop. As working with the Explorer Integration should just feel natural, Drag and Drop capabilities have been integrated and with Windchill 10.2 M010 these have even been enhanced. Dragging a document file from your local system to a context folder under the Windchill Documents node will trigger one of the following actions (depending on the area where you drop the document):   New Document / New Multiple Documents Check In Replace Content   The other direction is supported as well: Grabbing a document from a Windchill context folder and dragging it to your local system or another Windchill context will trigger corresponding actions depending if modifier keys (Shift and / or Ctrl) are applying and the target the document is dropped (possible actions are copy, move, create shortcut…).   Access to Windchill Functionality   Starting with Windchill 10.2 F000, the right-click menu in Windows Explorer includes a wider range of Windchill actions. While in previous releases only actions such as Open and View Information were available, this expanded to the most commonly used actions on the Windchill web application (even multiselect for Check in, Set State… have been implemented in 10.2 M030). The right mouse button menu is context sensitive and the actions availability will change depending on the object you open it on. Additional restrictions like access permissions, preferences and so on can have impact on the availability of actions. My personal highlight is the introduction of the Compare Document functionality in the Windows Explorer integration with Windchill 10.2 F000.   Compare Documents   Starting Windchill 10.2 F000 (and enhanced in 10.2 M010) the Desktop integration added compare capabilities. But different to the compare functionality available in the Windchill web application this will concentrate less on comparing metadata but more on comparing the content of the documents. Out of the box Windchill supports Microsoft Word 2007 and 2010 files and had been extended to Microsoft Excel and Microsoft PowerPoint in Windchill 10.2 M010 (dedicated support matrix below).   Office Version Microsoft Excel Microsoft Word Microsoft PowerPoint 2007 No Yes No 2010 No Yes Yes 2013 Yes Yes Yes   Additional file compare tools can be registered based on the file extension in the Windchill Desktop Integration Configuration menu.   There are two different compare actions available:   Compare Document Versions This will allow you to compare the file content of two different versions of the same document (see screenshot) Compare Documents This will allow you to compare the content of two different objects, which need to be of the same file type.     Going forward   This was the first part of my post about productivity enhancements on Windows Explorer Integration. In the second part I will show you how easy it is to access Windchill Meta data in the Windows Explorer, how this can be adjusted to your needs and how simple it is to find any document with the integrated Windchill search.   If you are in the meantime interested in additional details on the Windchill Explorer Integration, you’ll find further information in the Windchill Help Center.   And as always any questions and comments are appreciated but I definitely would be very interested in your ideas:   What do you think about the enhanced functionality? Which functionality you like best? For which things do you use the Windows Explorer integration? …   Please let me and the community know about it.

I’m sure that many of you have come across slow-performing searches in Windchill, especially when using wildcards. It might be snappier if you have Index Search installed, but only when the Keyword: field is used; as soon as you enter something in the Criteria section of Advanced Search, the system falls back to basic database queries. Under the hood, the bulk of the time and resources spent during wildcard search is in database queries containing something like "..AND NAME LIKE ‘%mypart%’…", i.e. with filters that include leading and/or trailing wildcards. New functionality was introduced in Windchill 10.2 to deal with this. The basic idea is that, for a given business object type and attribute, a separate table is created in the database that holds indexed columns with substrings of the current values. Windchill can then do exact searches of these substrings without using wildcards, which speeds things up significantly. We’ll go through an example here to illustrate how to use it.   Configuring it I’ll be adding a substring index for the attribute ‘name’ in the business object class wt.part.WTPartMaster.  The actual creation and maintenance of the substring index tables is done with the SubStringIndexTool, but before running it, it needs to be configured. The tool reads the configuration file <Windchill>/conf/subStringIndex.xml. This file does not exist in OOTB Windchill, so I’ll have to create it manually. For this example, the content of the file looks like this: The parameters className and attributeName are set to the class and attribute on which the substring index is created. I want the index table name to be JLAPARTINDX; if this is not specified, it will default to <table>$<attribute>$SSI, which is a bit long for my taste. I don’t want it to be case sensitive (caseSensitive=”false”) and the index length is set to 6 (indexLength=”6”). I’ll cover that later when we look at the results. I’m also enabling pre-query, which is one of two available approaches for applying the substring index during searches. The one chosen here means that Windchill first queries the substring index table for matching object IDs; these are then used to query the actual business object table. There are more details on this in the JavaDoc of the wt.pds.subStringIndex package. With the configuration done, we can run the tool to create the substring index.   Running the tool The substring index is created with the following command:   windchill wt.pds.subStringIndex.SubStringIndexTool create <user> <password>   where <user> and <password> is the Windchill database schema username and password. The result is a new table that looks something like this:     The ID column holds the object ID of the related WTPartMaster; the VALUE column holds the full values of the selected ‘name’ attribute. The SS* columns hold the substrings of the given lengths that have been found in the attribute values. This is where the ‘indexLength’ parameter comes in; it was set to 6, so it will generate six SS* columns. SS1 holds all substrings of length 1, SS2 holds the ones with length 2, and so on. For example, one of the attribute values is '01-51284.prt'. The substrings for this value start in row 13 above: as the POS value increases, you see the various length substrings for that value in the different SS* columns. So how does it work? Say a user does a search for *5128*. The substring between the wildcards is four characters long, so a fast, indexed search is done in the SS4 column for the exact value 5128. The query returns the ID column values, which are then used to find the matching entries in the original WTDOCUMENTMASTER table.   Maintaining it A separate table is being used for the substring indexes, which means that a mechanism is needed to keep it in sync with the original business object table. There are three options: Event-driven – sync is triggered insert, update and/or remove events in Windchill Scheduled – sync takes place at scheduled, regular intervals, triggered from a background queue. Manual – sync is done manually with the SubStringIndexTool This is configured in the subStringIndex.xml file mentioned earlier. Details on these and how to configure them can be found here.   Going forward If this looks interesting and you wish to implement substring indexes, you’ll find further information in the Windchill Help Center. The purpose of this blog entry was to raise awareness of its existence, as we have seen very few queries on it in Tech Support. Thank you for your time; as always, comments and feedback are greatly appreciated.

Are you experiencing poor server performance managing Pro/E, Creo or Windchill Workgroup Manager (CAD) data in Windchill?   Are users complaining that when working with CAD data, interaction with Windchill or the Workspace is slow?   Do you wonder what you should do to setup or tune a Windchill server for interaction with clients working with CAD data?   Initial performance tuning of a Windchill server doesn't have to be overly complicated and time consuming process.  Time spent tuning the Windchill server will improve performance and ensure users have the best possible interaction with the Windchill.  Let's walk through the following:   Resources that are available to guide you during tuning Server properties and preferences to set Database tuning Other considerations   Resources Technical Support Article CS24192 [TS KP] Pro/ENGINEER Wildfire, Creo or Windchill Workgroup Manager Interaction with PDMLink - Recommended Initial Performance Server Settings contains all the suggestions we'll be walking through and more.  I'd suggest you review and bookmark it for use while tuning your server. Click Add a comment at the bottom of this blog post and I'll do my best to answer your question Ask PTC Community Perform a Technical Support Search‌ as the Knowledge base is full of useful information Open a Technical Support Case online or make a call to a Worldwide Support office   Server Properties and Preferences Some settings and preferences are general in nature while others are specific to a particular Windchill version.  Although the steps to tune a 9.1, 10.0, 10.1 and 10.2 server vary (typically more to do with older releases), I'll cover the typical steps you'll do with most installations (eg. 10.x releases).  Refer to CS24192 for full detail for each Windchill release from 9.1 to 10.2 and MOR releases in between.   Configure common Windchill properties using the Windchill Configuration Assistant (WCA) The WCA will inspect the server (identify available resources like CPUs, RAM, etc.) and suggest changes to wt.properties and other property files.  Note that WCA execution is done automatically when installing using the 10.0 and later PTC Solution Installer.  If you've upgraded/changed hardware since initial installation or it didn't run on initial installation, you'll want to run it again.  See CS40846 and CS153338‌ for additional detail.   Set optimal collection preferences for common operations via Preference Management Set defaults for operations like Add to Workspace, Check Out, Check In, Revise, Save As, etc. to collect minimal dependencies (None or Required): If users need different default values, they can make changes in personal preferences or in the Basic/Advanced collectors when performing the operation.   Create or edit the default Workspace table Views so that they display a minimal amount of information For releases prior to 10.2 M030, avoid default table displays with additional status columns (eg. Compare Status, Out of Date, etc.) as when those columns are included, the client must make additional and expensive requests to the server when refreshing the Workspace.  See CS150977 for additional information.   If Save As performance is poor, set preference save.as.trace.circular.dependents=false For some datasets, circular dependency processing when performing Save As can sometimes be an issue (take a long time).  Configure to not trace circular dependents if performance issues have been observed performing Save As.  See CS51570 and CS3348 for additional information.   Set wt.properties com.ptc.core.collectionsrv.engine.isIntralinkTracingEnabled=true if using later 10.x releases Out of the box, Windchill can in some case trace dependencies for objects not explicitly requested by the user (eg. perform full dependency tracing for drawing dependents when the drawing is included in collection via Include Drawings).  This can in some cases result in long time waiting for the server to process collection requests (eg. when performing an Add to Workspace).  Making this change will disable the additional dependency tracing and should improve performance .  See CS57721 & CS127319 for additional detail.   Consider custom values for wt.properties com.ptc.core.collectionsrv.engine.limitDependencyTracing and com.ptc.core.collectionsrv.engine.collected_result_limit if using later 10.x releases Dependency tracing for large or complex datasets can in some cases cause server performance issues.  If you observe performance issues with collection of dependents, see CS99609‌ and CS16012‌ for additional information.   Set wvs.properties publish.retrievallfiles=false, publish.retrieveallfiles.PROE=false or publish.retrieveallfiles.CATIAV5=false if publishing with filesync CAD workers The out of the box WVS dependency tracing publish.retrievallfiles=all setting is only needed for non-filesync CAD workers and can result in longer than necessary publishing times and put unnecessary load on the server and database.  If you're using filesync workers (most customers are or should be!), make this setting for improved performance.  See CS76293 and CS34783 for additional information.   Configure the webserver with a 60 second KeepAliveTimeout This setting keeps the network port between a client and server open longer than the 5 or 15 second default and allows the client to reuse an open network connection for up to 60 seconds.  As a result, response times for SSL and HTTP connections is improved.  As a side benifit, Internet Explorer doesn't work well with KeepAliveTimeout values ≠ 60.  Setting this value to 60 will reduce the number of offline client sessions as well.  See CS19706 and CS65884 for additional detail.   Review Windchill Configuration Settings Which Aid in Scaling to Production‌ and make changes to <Windchill>\db\db.properties or database settings to prevent runaway queries that can impact server performance The Methodserver and database will in most cases try to process all requests that are made regardless of whether or not the request may overload the Methodserver and database.  Making a couple changes to db.properties can improve performance as it prevents high load, long running transactions from consuming all resources.   Database Tuning The Windchill database is a primary component in any Windchill installation as requests made to the Windchill Methodserver invariably have to be processed by the database.  Having a properly sized (enough memory) and functioning database (proper database indexes) is key to good overall performance.   Create database indexes to improve database performance The database frequently is a performance bottleneck when Windchill is processing information for CAD objects.  Start with CS75632 and CS151400 for Windchill 9.1 installations and CS98135‌ for Windchill 10.0, 10.1 and 10.2 installations as they contain indexes that are known to improve database performance for not only CAD object processing but other operations.   Periodically review and monitorSite > Utilities > Server Status for high percentage of Method Context Time is spent in JDBC Calls or PTC System Monitor (PSM) to determine if a high percentage of time is reported as being spent in the database (if there is a suggestion that the database is performing poorly):   Here's an example of Server Status showing a large amount of time in JDBC (database) calls:   Here's an example of PSM showing a much smaller amount of time spent in the database for a user transaction:   Additional diagnosis, tuning and sizing of the database by all means can be done, but is outside of the scope of this blog post.  Refer to the following or collect Performance task detail from System Configuration Collector (Windchill System Configuration Collector (SCC) FAQ) along with test results and contact Technical Support if you're interested in taking a deeper look at the database: ​CS51777 - Tuning Oracle and Interpreting the Oracle Gather Info Script Output CS46060 - Where is the Oracle "gather_info_script.sql" located in Windchill CS123644 - Where to find SQLServer diagnostic script for Windchill CS139203 - SQL Statements taking too long in Oracle CS49024 - Are there some best practices around SQL server database and Windchill PDMLink ?   Other Considerations There are many other things that can be done to improve, diagnose and monitor performance.  Depending on your environment, some may have a large impact while others may not.  Take a look and let me know if you have any questions or comments:   Client tuning See the following blog post: Configuring Creo Parametric and Windchill Workgroup Manager Clients for CAD Data Management Performance   Vaulting and Replication to WAN File Servers ​Staging and maintaining File Servers can be a bit more involved from an administration perspective but for WAN users, being able to upload and download content from a local File Server is a big benefit.  See Windchill Vaulting and Replication Planning - Technical Brief for additional information.   Implement a clustered environment for high load installations Customers with many users can easily generate enough activity that a clustered Windchill environment ​​(configuring multiple machines with multiple Method servers) to service client requests is necessary.  ​See Windchill Architecture Overview for additional information.   ​​For WAN clients with high latency and low bandwidth, implement caching proxy and/or WAN accelerator Even if you have WAN File Servers that are local to WAN users, WAN clients still interact with the master Methodserver over the WAN for all information and requests other than content.  If you latency is high (eg. 250+ ms) and bandwidth low, consider implementing caching proxies and WAN accelerators to improve interaction with the Windchill server.  Refer to WAN Accelerators and Windchill Performance - Technical Brief for additional information.   Monitor and diagnose server performance with PTC System Monitor (PSM) PSM is free and powerful tool available that can be used to easily monitor activity and performance of Windchill servers.  Refer to the following for more detail: PSM resource page CS126670 - How to use the PTC System Monitor (PSM) in Workgroup Manager Transaction Performance Diagnosis   Benchmark the system before and after tuning and/or compare to PTC Performance QA results Last but not least, collecting a benchmark of system performance before and after tuning is important as it allows you to gauge the impact of your tuning activity.  Collect detail and/or test with a standard Creo dataset available from PTC and review posted results from PTC QA.  See the following for additional detail: Windchill Creo Data Management Performance Benchmark Test - Instructions Windchill Creo Data Management Performance Benchmark Test – Preliminary Dataset (82 KB) Windchill Creo Data Management Performance Benchmark Test - Data Sheet Windchill Creo Data Management Performance Benchmark Test – World Car Dataset (295 MB) If benchmark results with the Windchill Creo Data Management Performance Benchmark Test Dataset are not close to or better than PTC QA results reported in the Windchill Creo Data Management Performance Benchmark Test - Data Sheet or performance with other datasets does not meet expectations, collect Performance task detail from System Configuration Collector (Windchill System Configuration Collector (SCC) FAQ) along with test results and contact Technical Support.   That's it!  I hope you find this information interesting and of use.  As always, comments and feedback are very welcome.

I will provide simple troubleshooting techniques that will assist you in identifying potential access related issues in your Windchill system.  Have you ever wondered: Why am I facing a NotAuthorizedException? Why are some Windchill objects not findable or accessible for me even I think I am having appropriate access permissions? Let’s get started.   Understanding Domains and Access Control   Windchill system behavior is based on a context or container model. The site context represents the system as a whole, whereas an Organization is a component of the Site and Products, Libraries, Projects and Programs are part of the Organization. Each of these contexts uses a cabinet to store data and system objects. Cabinets are associated with Windchill objects called Domain which store policies and access rules.   The chart below illustrates the default Domain Architecture; for a more detailed description please view article CS212423 in our PTC Support Knowledge Base.     Domain structuring in conjunction with inheritance enables general policies to be applied at higher domains and more specific policies to be applied at a lower level.   When debugging Access Control you not only have to consider inherited policies from higher contexts, but also keep in mind how Windchill will evaluate Security Labels, Access Permissions on Groups and individuals as well as Ad-Hoc Permissions. The following algorithm is generally applied:   Security Labels: Windchill will always check first if a user gets cleared by Security Labels System Policy Rules apply in the following order: Group Grant is overridden by Group Deny is overridden by User Grant is overridden by User Deny is overridden by Group and User Absolute Deny Ad-Hoc Rules: Ad-Hoc access can only grant permissions Ad-Hoc overrides a deny rule that is set by domain policy but not an absolute deny.   If you are interested in more details, please check in the Windchill Help Center in chapter “How ACLs work:” there you will find additional examples for a better understanding.   Debugging Access Control Issues   Now that you have a clear understanding on how Windchill calculates access permissions, I will concentrate troubleshooting ACL related issue. In Technical Support, most cases that are opened by customers fall into three categories:   Users can’t open an object or perform a specific action which results in Access Permission related error messages Users can’t find object in their Windchill System by Search or they are not visible to them Dedicated actions are not visible in the Windchill User interface for some users   We will concentrate in this post on the first category.   Troubleshooting Access Permission related error messages   Access related error messages come in many flavors. See below the most common ones that show up in the Windchill user interface or in the Method Server logs:     If you see one of these error messages, it is the time when you have to answer the question: Is this intentional or should this user have access to the object? To help you answer this question PTC provides you help with 3 tools:   Manage Security functionality in the Actions menu: Refer to Windchill Help Center chapter Manage Security for an Existing Object for additional information Policy Administrator on Site > Utilities > Policy Administrator or [Context] >Utilities > Policy Administrator: For additional information please refer to article CS26785 - How to troubleshoot the message "You do not have access to this object or it does not exist" in Windchill‌ Various Access loggers that help to understand how Windchill calculated the Access Permission and why this particular user was denied access: Technical Support prepared a set of articles that explain the various loggers available and helps to understand their results: The Hub article CS78689 - How to investigate Policy Access Control issues in Windchill CS78878 - The differences between the various Access Control related Loggers in Windchill CS78846‌ - How to interpret verbose Policy Access related log entries in Windchill   Thanks for your attention and any questions or feedback is welcome.

Have you ever had an issue in Windchill for which you had to raise an Enterprise Down (EDOWN) case with PTC Technical Support? An EDOWN situation is the equivalent of an emergency room need: the Windchill server is down or unresponsive, productivity is crippled and the user community is impatiently waiting for updates on what’s going on and when the server is back up. It’s a pretty stressful environment. Having a support contract and the possibility of raising EDOWN cases is good to fall back on, but it’s similar to having doctors and dentists around: it’s comforting to know that they are there, but we’d rather prevent the need of their services in the first place. This is what this post is about.   General preventative measures We started doing analyses of Enterprise Down cases on a quarterly basis to get a better understanding of the underlying causes and see if we could work out some common practices that specifically targets these causes. Product improvements is one aspect that we are continuously working on (the Internet of Things opens up interesting possibilities), but there are actions that you can take right now to safeguard your server from some of the more common causes of EDOWN situations: Take regular backups – Daily incrementals is what you would normally strive for. We do occasionally get cases where production server backups are old or non-existent and a catastrophic hardware failure has led to data loss. Needless to say, this is beyond repair with possibly months or years of lost work as a consequence. Information on Windchill backup strategies can be found in the PTC Windchill Backup and Recovery Planning Technical Brief. Configure mail notifications – Windchill itself and some of its third-party components have built-in monitoring that can send out e-mail alerts when server performance indicators start drifting outside of their comfort zones. However, some configuration is needed for the alerts to be sent out. The configuration steps are described here. If you get a monitoring alert that you are unsure about, search in our Knowledge Base for information on the alert and what actions might be required in response to it. If no information is found, open a case with Technical Support. Set up a test server and use it – Any change to a Windchill server, no matter how small, can have unexpected side effects. There is a good chance that any adverse side effects will reveal themselves on the test server so that you know about them before applying them to the production system. It might not seem worth the extra cost and hassle to do this, but it makes troubleshooting so much easier for everyone involved so please reconsider if you don’t already have one. Other advantages include: Troubleshooting which requires verbose logging and/or frequent restarts does not disrupt the operation of the production server Reconfiguration for data capture does not disrupt production system. For example, profiling with the Windchill Profiler is greatly simplified with a single Method Server, which can be easily configured on a test server. Testing of potential fixes can be done without interfering with the production server. Monitor your server – use PSM if possible, or the out-of-the-box Site > Utilities > Server Status page. As a server administrator, keep the page (or an overview dashboard if using PSM) on a screen and check it regularly. This will make you familiar with the day-to-day load cycles on the server, including how user activity rises and falls on a daily basis and when background activities usually kick off. This makes it easier to spot unusual patterns that may indicate budding problems early. Server Status page: System Health dashboard in PSM: Going forward This was a brief overview of common measures that can be taken to avoid some EDOWNs. Some of this may seem basic and plain common sense to you; if so, excellent, hold on to that mindset. Nevertheless, we see a significant portion of EDOWN cases that may have been prevented with these measures, which is why they were covered here. On a final note, there is a new set of articles that outline the most common technical areas where EDOWNs occur and contain information including: Preventative actions Informative articles and resources Links to articles for the most common EDOWNs issues The main article is CS202168- How to avoid common Enterprise Down issues in Windchill, other related articles are linked from that one. These will be reviewed on a quarterly basis to ensure that they reflect the most recent EDOWN analysis results. Thank you for your time and as always, comments and feedback are greatly appreciated.

Prior to Windchill 11.0: Required using the same Windchill Workgroup Manager CPS on both the server and client machines.   Windchill 11.0 M010 Onwards: You can use different CPS levels on the Windchill server and client machines within the same maintenance release. Workgroup Manager will now check version compatibility at the Windchill maintenance version level; not at the CPS level. Windchill Workgroup Manager is no longer installed from the Windchill server. A company now has the flexibility to have their end users at desired CPS levels and still connect to a single Windchill server.   For example, the following scenario is supported. A company has Windchill 11.0 M010 CPS05 server and user ‘A’ can connect to the Windchill server with Windchill Workgroup Manager 11.0 M010 CPS03 and user ‘B’ can connect to the same server with Windchill Workgroup Manager 11.0 M010 CPS07.   Illustrated below is the supported configuration.