ECAD publishing without using ECAD WGM or integration

[avillanueva]

I know you can create a custom CAD worker but has anyone enabled a server side publishing of ECAD designs? Specifically I am referring to Board and Schematic designs to be published post check in and available to be retrieved via Creo View ECAD. Ideally, I would like to make is as easy as possible for user to pull down the Creo Parametric CAD assembly (which is created via MCAD/ECAD integration), the Allergo board and Capture schematic in a shared session.

[ScottMorris]

Wish I had a good answer for this one, but we've never done ECAD publishing here. Most of the people who needed the data used the authoring application. With all the issues and deprication of ECAD WGM, we are currently in the process of moving ECAD to Altium Nexus and their PLM Connector for Windchill 🤞

[avillanueva]

I get that it's the future but I was hoping for an interim solution. I did read that server side was not possible. With the old WGM, it was done client side and published up. (Why? Stupid!). I figure it would be the same with an ECAD Connector.

[soundman99]

We just implemented the REST Services solution with Altium NEXUS.  PTC is trying to push the generation on the ECAD vendors and have them provide the viewable.  Altium does not have that built yet so I ended up generating my own script that creates the viewable on the fly with each check-in form the ECAD data.  It only takes a second to generate it and there is no interaction by the users, so it's pretty quick and easy.  I had a similar script that was run with WGM and Cadence EDM at my previous employeer.

I think the biggest issue with creating this on the server-side is that the viewable may not be generated by just one file.  Layouts, in general are communicated in one database file (.brd from Cadence, .PcbDoc fro Altium, etc.) but schematics are typically multiple files in variety of formats and even folder structures are required.  That makes it difficult on the server-side to evaluate and figure out which file to use.

Long story short: yesclie, you can create it on the nt side and publish it with the REST Services.  Throw a pvs or pvz file in there as an attachment and WC grabs it and puts it in the right place....

[avillanueva]

Well, we are using WTDocs to manage ECAD data. A little testing reveals that you can upload an EDA file manually to a WTDoc and it pulls up the schematic or board data.  So, all that is needed is a custom worker to do a batch publish.  This should be possible since primary content is the native file. We are using Allergo and Orcad which are singular files.