Deltas between Windchill, Enovia, and Agile

[cswaner]

Greetings Gurus,
Is anyone out there using Enovia or Agile to manage Creo Parametric, Creo Illustrate, and Visualization effectively?

I have been task to show the deltas between Windchill and these, as well as show use cases.

Any help is greatly appreciated.

Cameron Swaner
MCAD Architect
GE Healthcare
STO-Global Technologies-DET

T 801-536-4514
E -<">mailto:->

384 Wright Brothers Drive
Salt Lake City, UT 84116

GE imagination at work<">http://www.gehealthcare.com/worldwide.html>

[MikeLockwood]

We were forced to do this by corporate before buying Windchill 9 years ago.

Frank M. and I came up with a small set of CAD files (about 30 files) and a brief procedure to exercise them. We did this in Intralink 3.4, then attempted to repeat in Windchill 7.0 - all worked very well. At that time, it only took about 12 seconds to break any system but Windchill. The sales guys say "yes we can" but the application engineers quickly get nervous.

CAD

* Create a few PRT and ASM models, including family tables, inheritance features, etc. Simple geometry.

* Drive some dimensions via skeletons; bring a skeleton from ASM to PRT level and another just at PRT level in a family table

* Use a few assembly level cuts

* Create simple Drawings of PRT and ASM; use repeat regions and show balloons on the Assy drawing

* Use a Layout, drive some dimensions from here

* If you get ambitious, set up publishing; publish all

Procedure

* Rename several of the CAD Doc's (most can't do this cleanly)

* Restructure the assembly

* Add an instance to the family table; remove another instance and make standalone

* Check out some objects which are driven by the Skeleton and Layout as USER1

* Change some elements of the Skeleton and Layout as USER2; have all driven by these update

* Confirm that all viewables are correct after this messing around (may need to republish)

* Could add many more, but it's pretty easy to break things with this much

[rhegde]

Some information that may help you.

*CAD Integration with PLM*

Windchill

ProE - built in

Other CAD - Work Group Manager

Enovia

CAD application extensions (SmarTeam)

Agile

Engineering Collaboration Web Dialog


*PLM for CAD*

Windchill

CAD data is maintained in PDMLink. EPMDocument is the main object type
where CAD data is stored

Data uniqueness is based on the CAD file name

Windchill allows server side CAD renaming (without requiring designer to
open the model in CAD authoring application)

Windchill stores CAD attributes in the server

Enovia

Enovia changed its architecture few years back and it is now based on
MatrixOne - EMatrix.

Data is maintained in Designer Central. Several objects are provided to
store different CAD components (such as assembly, part, drawing, formats,
diagrams etc)

Data uniqueness is based on the CAD object number and the object type. This
allows you to have two different objects with same number. Example ABC
(type: Assembly representing ABC.ASM) and ABC (type: Part representing
ABC.PRT). This is not possible in Windchill (as all CAD data is stored in
EPMDocument)

Enovia allows server side CAD renaming (without requiring designer to open
the model in CAD authoring application)

Enovia stores CAD attributes in the server

Agile

After struggling for few years, Agile started providing better CAD
integration with Engineering Collaboration EC 3.0 (sometime in 2010?).
Design object is the main object type where CAD data is stored in Agile.

Based on EC documentation, Agile allows server side CAD renaming. However,
a client of mine specified that it did not work (I have not personally
tested this behavior)

Agile stores CAD attributes in the server


*Application Features*

CAD BOM - EBOM Synchronization

All threee applications allow users to build association between CAD Model
and a Part(item). They also allow you to synchronize CAD BOM with EBOM

CAD Publishing and Visualization

Windchill provides publishing framework to generate representation files.
Representation files can be viewed in CreoView. CreoView can also be used
for mock-up, design collaboration etc


Enovia provides 3DLive framework to show 3 CAD files. Enovia is capable of
displaying the native CAD file directly in 3DLive (as per my knowledge, it
is not necessary to generate representation of a native CAD file to view it
in 3DLive). 3DLive provides capability for mock-up, design collaboration
etc. 3DLive also has lot more capabilities (to pull details from ERP?)


Agile provides similar capability with its visualization tool AutoVue


All three applications are similar in functionality (at a very very high
level). However, they differ a lot when it comes to details. For example:

- Enovia (Designer Central) has different object types to store different
CAD file WHEREAS Windchill has only one object type. (This causes a lot of
issues if you migrating CAD data from one application to another)
- Windchill provides 5 types of association between CAD model and Part
WHEREAS Agile provides only 3 types of association between CAD model and
Part.
- Agile has good integration capability with Oracle ERP WHEREAS Windchill
requires ESI module/Tibco for integration with Oracle ERP/SAP


--
Rochan Hegde