Clean up workspaces

[BenLoosli]

Preparing my users for an upgrade from Windchill/PDMLink 9 to 10 and want some feedback on a best practice. As part of the upgrade, all workspaces MUST be deleted before I do the upgrade.

What is the cleanest method for the users to remove their workspaces? I have asked them to do the 3 steps below. As I was thinking some more, is step 2 needed for a clean workspace delete? Will deleting the workspace only cause issues with marking the files as being removed from the workspace?

1) Check-in or undo checkout all files

2) Open each workspace and remove all files

3) Delete the now empty workspace

[mlocascio]

What most WindChill users do is delete the folder under "WF" that has all of
the particulars for the workspaces. Then when that user opens up Pro/E the
next time, a new set of folders, etc is created. SIMPLE!



Michael P. Locascio

[SteveVinyard]

Agreed, WS's are fine but uses need a fresh cache as part of the upgrade on the clients. I pretty much remove as much as possible under Appdata/Roaming/PTC and maybe even LocalLow folder as well. Workspaces themselves upgrade just fine.

They key from a user standpoint is to have everyone start checking in on Monday if you are doing a Friday upgrade. Inevitably there is a guy or two that haven't even uploaded in over a month and will have significant issues resolving checkin problems. Incremental checkins help mitigate this as the week goes on.

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Steve Vinyard
Application Engineer

[BenLoosli]

I find this approach to give me problems because you are deleting the OS location of the files BUT Windchill will still thinks those files are in a workspace.

I do delete the WF folders but only AFTER the workspaces have been deleted in Windchill.


Thank you,

Ben H. Loosli
USEC, INC.

[mlocascio]

Been there and done that. I had a lot of "local stuff" that I needed to
check in when I worked for Cummins. That was a bit messy, to say the least.



Michael P. Locascio

[SteveVinyard]

Ben, deleting the .WF is a very good thing. This is not a problem as the WS's are stored server side. I've done well over 40 migrations/Upgrades for thousands of users and never once removed workspaces.


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Steve Vinyard
Application Engineer

[mlocascio]

REALLY? You have "never removed workspaces" to do your migrations?



How do you do that? Usually everywhere I have been the buzz is that you
almost always have to resolve or clean out your workspaces beforehand.



Michael P. Locascio

[Lohbauer]

If you were migrating from Ilink 3.4 that would be n

[davehaigh]

Part of my process when we rehosted out PDMLink this last summer was to have the users run a script that backed up their local cache to a folder and then renamed all the files to the original ProE names. That way if the user was missing anything they could go look in that directory for the files. This saved a couple of guys some real head aches.

This is what my script looks like: windcill_update.bat

1. set INNAME=backup_cache

2. set BACKUPRENAME=%INNAME:.ps=%-%date:~10,4%-%date:~4,2%-%date:~7,2%

3. if not exist "%USERPROFILE%\pro\wf4_home\%BACKUPRENAME%" (mkdir "%USERPROFILE%\pro\wf4_home\%BACKUPRENAME%")

4. xcopy "%APPDATA%\PTC\ProENGINEER\Wildfire\.wf\.cache2008\wpdms2.llnl.gov443\lid_*" "%USERPROFILE%\pro\wf4_home\%BACKUPRENAME%\"

5. copy \\<server_name>\<share_name>\bin\recover_workspace\WorkspaceRename_2.exe "%USERPROFILE%\pro\wf4_home\%BACKUPRENAME%\."

6. cd /d "%APPDATA%\PTC"

7. ren "ProENGINEER" "%BACKUPRENAME%"

8. cd /d "%USERPROFILE%\pro\wf4_home\%BACKUPRENAME%"

9. WorkspaceRename_2.exe

Lines 1 & 2 set the variable BACKUPRENAME to be backup_cache-xxxx-xx-xx where xxxx-xx-xx is year, month, day
Line 3 creates a directory with that name
Line 4 copys the lid_* files to the new directory, only the files starting with lid_ are locally modified.
Line 5 copys the executable that will rename the lid files into the directory. There is another program on the PTCUser site that does this also.
Lines 6 & 7 changes directory to the cache location and renames the ProENGINEER folder to the backup name
Lines 8 & 9 changes back to the new directory and runs the rename command.

David Haigh

[SteveVinyard]

WS's are server side. They are part of the database that is upgraded. Can you imagine what an immense amount of work it would take to literally delete all workspaces before an upgrade for 300+ CAD users out of the database? It's not needed in the least and I've never seen it in a PTC upgrade guide (not saying much though).

Just a note, I'm strictly referring to server side workspaces (ones visible via a web browser. I do of course always have users remove their .wf cache



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Steve Vinyard
Application Engineer

[Lohbauer]

Sorry, typing one-handed today. If the WS data is uploaded to the server then wiping the client WS does not compromise anything.

[SteveVinyard]

This wipe is key. An upgrade will give you new .wf cache files. You don’t want your cache to be from 9.1 while your new system is 10.1. You will have a LOT of Creo issues if your users don’t start with a new cache. Even on maintenance updates where it will technically “update your cache” it doesn’t do a good enough job.

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Steve Vinyard
Application Engineer

[mlocascio]

Good precautionary step...

[DaveEngel]

My Creo launch batch file sets the .wf folder to a specific location. With each Creo/Windchill upgrade I change the location.

Something like this:

set PTC_WF_ROOT=c:\CreoWork\%USERNAME%\WC101-M020_CREO2-M020

The users cache needs to be new for each Windchill upgrade. I find it good practice to do it for each Creo upgrade as well. Users do not need to delete workspaces, however.


-Dave

[DonSenchuk]

I can confirm what Steve is talking about here.

We just went through an upgrade; still on the verification stage actually. We did not delete any user workspaces. Making sure everything was checked in was the only requirement the users were forced to comply with. Once the upgrade was complete (onto a new server as well), the workspaces were still present and full of the files the users had left in them. Of course the .wf folder had to be deleted, as many have mentioned.

In Reply to Steve Vinyard:

WS's are server side. They are part of the database that is upgraded. Can you imagine what an immense amount of work it would take to literally delete all workspaces before an upgrade for 300+ CAD users out of the database? It's not needed in the least and I've never seen it in a PTC upgrade guide (not saying much though).

Just a note, I'm strictly referring to server side workspaces (ones visible via a web browser. I do of course always have users remove their .wf cache

[mpendep]

DonSenchuk,

Did your users received any cache error after upgrade since you did upgrades without deleting the Workspace?

Cause we are about to upgrade from CREO 3 - 4, and the discussing is, if we should advise our CAD users to delete their Workspace or just make sure they check in/save all their work to WC will be sufficient.

thanks!

Replying to below:

We just went through an upgrade; still on the verification stage actually. We did not delete any user workspaces. Making sure everything was checked in was the only requirement the users were forced to comply with. Once the upgrade was complete (onto a new server as well), the workspaces were still present and full of the files the users had left in them. Of course the .wf folder had to be deleted, as many have mentioned.

[BenLoosli]

If you are only doing a Creo upgrade, you should be fine with them checking everything in.

When doing Windchill upgrades you do need to delete the old cache files (.wf folder structure) as new versions of Windchill have new cache structures.