Windchill Tips

We've had several questions around these topics so I am uploading the slides from the 2015 PTC Live session.  I will add the follow on videos.

A complete bill of materials is the cornerstone of your digital transformation. Learn how taking small steps can have a huge impact. Take a walk through our virtual conference to see how your organization can gain: Increased change management efficiency with repeatable processes and traceability Increased parts reuse and decreased data duplication Single, up-to-date source of truth for product data Faster, more accurate response to internal/market pressures Earlier, improved cross-discipline enterprise collaboration In this virtual conference, you can choose from multiple presentations. Spend as much time as you want learning how to improve your BOM through digital transformation: BOM Structure BOM Visualization Change Management Component and Supplier Management Enterprise Collaboration BOM Transformation BOM Reporting & Analytics Connected PLM Production Planning Quality Click here to get started. 

For Whirlpool Corporation, innovation is inspired by the impact it will have on their consumers. Products need to be easier, faster, and better – improving the customer’s home experience. Whirlpool Corporation is leveraging PTC products to achieve its vision by reducing overall system and product complexity, improving its lifecycle processes and efficiencies. In these demos, see how Whirlpool Corporation is exploring technology – such as digital twin, augmented reality, and data-driven design -- to extend PLM across the enterprise and bring innovation to its consumers. https://www.ptc.com/en/products/plm/everyday-innovation/innovator-spotlight-whirlpool/whirlpool-plm-demonstrations

This Expert Session will explain the type of changes that you can expect to affect your current processes around managing and securing your PLM application when moving to the Cloud.     For full-sized viewing, click on the YouTube link in the player controls.

This Expert Session will explain the steps PTC will take to move all of your data, application settings, configurations & customizations to PTC Cloud.       For full-sized viewing, click on the YouTube link in the player controls.

  The /Windchill/tmp/wrmfTransport directory get deleted randomly. Tried to exclude that folder from antivirus analysis but in vain. Can someone help on this please?    

Polaris strives to give a great end-to-end experience for its riders, from customized purchase options to enhanced safety features. To achieve this vision, Polaris is adopting a step-by-step approach to digital transformation through PLM. In this series of 10 technical demos, you'll see what Polaris has either currently implemented or is considering as a part of its PLM/digital transformation roadmap.    BOM Management and Global Platforms — Manage and link CAD data, bills of material, and visualization for a modular EBOM structure and generate options and variants for design verification and visualization Family Management — Plan product families and manage options, choices, and assignments in multi-year product structures Change Management — Manage change of a new option from EBOM to MBOM through process plans and work instructions Augmented Reality — Variant-specific AR design review and visualization and process plan visualization BOM Transformation — Associatively transform EBOM to MBOM and EBOM to SBOM with options and logic Manufacturing Process Planning — Concurrently develop mixed-model assembly process plans Role and Task-Based Access — Access digital product information based on the task and function within an organization BOM Costing Application — Create custom mashups of variant-specific cost tracking and roll-up Interference Detection — Develop variant-specific validations with DMU/interference analysis Visit: https://www.ptc.com/en/products/plm/everyday-innovation/innovator-spotlight-polaris/polaris-plm-demonstrations to check out this great demo series - we hope this gives you some inspiration in your own digital transformation initiatives.  

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? …