Can a CAD Worker also create Thumbnails?

I just found my old notes on this topic from when we started testing in v9.0, so I am posting them here now as the answer that is marked right on this thread is, in my opinion, wrong  (since this all still works in v11.0)

Anywhere it says ProductView in these old notes should now be read as CreoView

For Windchill v9.0 and PV-Adaptors v12.0, the KEY information we needed to understand about where to install each of the components, and how they interact was given in the ProductView installation manual, but only in Chapter 111 “Advanced Thumbnail Generator Configuration”, on page 111-4 (p589 of the PDF), even though it should be in an introduction or over-view !!    What it says is shown here :

The equivalent text is shown in Chapter 99 “Advanced Thumbnail Generator Configuration” of the “CreoView MCAD Adapters 1.0 Installation and Configuration Guide”, on p426 in a section called “Configuring the Default Thumbnail Generator “.  The chapter even starts with a note “The instructions in this chapter are intended for advanced users only.”

The thumbnail generator can reside in three places:
• Windchill Server: The standard installation of the ProductView Adapters CD installs the thumbnail generator on the Windchill server (but typically this is only of any use if you are not using a separate CAD-Worker PC).
• Remote: The thumbnail generator can be installed remotely, and the agent.ini file is configured with the appropriate settings. In this case, ProductView uses the remote thumbnail worker instead of the thumbnail generator on the server to generate thumbnails. The remote thumbnail generator is installed from the ProductView Adapters CD onto a machine other than the Windchill server.  WVS will use a thumbnail worker when the property thumbnail.usecadagent is set to true in wvs.properties.
• Worker: The thumbnail generator is installed on the worker machine as part of the ProductView Adapters installation. This configuration tells the WVS Loader not to generate thumbnails from the Windchill server.

ie. this is what we wanted to do  !!

There are three ways to generate thumbnails:
• By Worker allows the Worker to generate thumbnails, and is the default configuration. This configuration requires the following wvs.properties settings. Note: These are the default settings.
– thumbnail.byworker.enabled = TRUE (affects all workers on the Windchill server)
– thumbnail.usecadagent = FALSE
Note: For this option to work, thumbnail.byworker must be enabled in ProductView and the thumbnail generator must be installed with the worker.  By default, the thumbnail generator is installed into the worker’s adapter installation directory.  If you do not want a specific worker to generate thumbnails, you must remove pvsthumb from the \bin subfolder of that worker’s adapter installation directory.
• By WVS Loader uses the thumbnail generator configured on the Windchill server. This configuration requires the following wvs.property settings:
– thumbnail.byworker.enabled = FALSE
– thumbnail.usecadagent = FALSE (pvsthumb runs locally)
Note: Setting thumbnail.byworker.enabled to FALSE applies to all workers across the board. With this setting, no workers will generate thumbnails.
• By WVS Loader - using the CADAgent and a thumbnail worker uses the CAD Agent to generate thumbnails via a remotely configured thumbnail worker. In this scenario, the WVS Loader sends the request to the CAD Agent to generate the thumbnail via a worker that is configured as type THUMBNAIL. This configuration requires the following wvs.property settings:
– thumbnail.byworker.enabled = FALSE
– thumbnail.usecadagent = TRUE

Viewable & Thumbnail creation by a remote worker will fail unless it is ‘authorised’.  We learnt this with v9.0 when we tried to generate a viewable for a checked-in Pro/E file and it failed.  The solution then, and still is :
(a) to install and use the Thumbnail Generator on the CAD-Worker PC, and
(b) to add a files on the Windchill server :
 C:\ptc\Windchill_10.0\Windchill\auth.properties
with one line of content :  auth=wcadmin:wcadmin

Note : the filename auth.properties is already used OOTB in the file C:\ptc\Windchill_10.0\Windchill\codebase\wvs.properties, where it says :

publish.cadconvert.PROE=com.ptc.wvs.server.publish.CadConvertPROE,useworkerdownload\=$(wt.home)$(wvs.dir.sep)auth.properties

Make use of the new (since v9.1 M060) option to encrypt password files to improve security, as this line used to be made visible to all users in the Publish Monitor logs !

Some further settings need to be made with xconfmanager to specify this file (auth.properties) as a setting for use with any other adaptors than Pro/E or Arbortext, as for example, OOTB the entry for SolidWorks only says :

publish.cadconvert.SOLIDWORKS=com.ptc.wvs.server.publish.CadConvertSOLIDWORKS

See also the PTC Tech Documents CS48758 (and CS65880, CS36748) for setup of File Sync enabled cadworker for eg. SolidWorks, esp. for the essential cache folder settings.

See the  PTC Tech Documents CS43043, CS52697 & CS52088 for the steps to enable publishing / re-publishing upon state change (eg. Promotion), but limiting multiple republishing when not appropriate.

You guys are correct, the information provided to me was incorrect.