ECAD Options for windchill

[Aaronm87]

We are trying to incorporate ECAD data into windchill and have been having a difficult time. We tried schematics with the bridge, but it was buggy. We've looked into autocad and solidworks electical as well.

We rarely deal with PCBs and mostly it is cable or power distribution schematics. Here is what we are trying to accomplish:

• Engineer makes a schematic / cable drawing and uploads to windchill
• Document Uploads to windchill
• Schematic is auto associated with a WT Part that contains a BOM of WTparts with required connectors/backshells, wiring, sleeving, etc

Any ideas on if there is any OOTB that will solve this?

[joe_morton]

For the BOM portion of it, we use the "Import from Spreadsheet" command to generate the BOM in Windchill. This requires a few things to work:

• ECAD tool has to be able to export the BOM, and you have to get it into the right format to be importable to Windchill
• All the part numbers used in the BOM should already be created in Windchill

At the end of a project, we'll have an assembly related to a 3D CAD model, and then any ECAD files are associated to the WTPart as documents. The Import from Spreadsheet command ensures that the BOM is being driven by the Electrical designer.

Hope that's helpful for you!

[avillanueva]

We solved this via soft-typing and some customization on the create and edit form for WTDocuments. We deal a lot with PCBs and our schematic numbers are not quite the same number as the CCA but similar. But in your case, much as ours with cable schematic drawings, they are the same.  Part of that soft-type customization was to auto-create and associate a WTPart with the same name, number and other attributes as the created Schematic. In our case, we have an overarching soft-type called "General Drawing". That captures cable drawings along with any non-Creo drawing (Visio, PDF from customers, etc). 

So General Drawing as subtype as Schematic, Layout and CCA Drawing-PCBA. Since Schematics (PCBs) were able to get BOM outputs from the Cadence Tools,  I did require a special attachment to exist of a properly formatted BOM file when those were checked in. It forced EEs to keep BOMs in sync but the BOM was not associated to the Schematic, but rather the CCA it represented. Over time, we found that Import from Spreadsheet was easier for them and more OOTB.

So, if you want to customize this, its possible to have it auto-create/associate to a WTPart. I would recommend using the Import from Spreadsheet to upload your BOM as a second step. Now don't forget about any 3D CAD for those cables. I struggle sometimes with these too. You can see I have that WTDocument for the "drawing", a WTPart that represents the cable and its BOM, a CAD assembly with similar number and the harness part which is the routed model. Where we struggle is with changes to the 3D route. Cables technically has not changed but the route might which causes us to unlock and relock to accommodate. 

[Aaronm87]

Thanks for all the info! It certainly seemed like we were going to be headed down this path from our research. I think ultimately that will work for us once we get a workflow established.

Can you elaborate a bit more on the customization? Is this something that PTC has guidance on or did you have a PTC partner perform the customization for you?

[avillanueva · Accepted solution]

It was modification we created using standard customization practices for the create and edit wizard. Two actions were added that were mapped to new custom delegates.

The delegates only process if the soft-types are mapped right. This is where we stuck the custom logic. The steps in the UI are not visible.

[Aaronm87]

Awesome! I'll have to mess around with this on the test environment. Thanks!