Export Windchill files and save locally

[mastachef]

Greetings.

Currently, my task is to research various capabilities with Windchill. One question that has presented itself is the ability to save documents locally (outside of Windchill). For example, a book file that contains references to other files and images.

- How does one save this file and all its dependencies as XML and save it locally (Windows 7)?

Thank you

[BenLoosli]

I would guess that your native system for authoring documents has an export/save as function, just use that.

For use with PTC Creo (CAD software) we pull the files from the Windchill common folders to a local working workspace and we can export directly from the workspace or we can load the files into Creo and do a save as to a local disk. I would guess a similar scenario would exist for other products stored in Windchill.

[mastachef]

Thank you for your response.

We do not use PTC Creo. 

After connecting to Windchill using Editor 7.0, I did find a menu option (Tools -> Save Application). After performing this action, it seems as though it does pull the document and all dependencies to a local location. However, I am trying to resolve some of the issues regarding images. The messages received reflect that it can't find various graphics file(s)

<Level>ERROR</Level>

<Message location="(27150,1,38)" publicId="EPIC">Can't find graphics file: copying "file=<image number>.jpg" to "<user created location>portable_doc\portable_doc_files/file_<image number>.jpg,poid"
(Saxparse for <document name>).</Message>

Any suggestion on how to troubleshoot and resolve this issue?

[ShirishMorkhade]

Hi @mastachef,

In your comment you mentioned that "ability to save documents locally". So before I comment on this, I would like to know whether you are talking about wt.doc.WTDocument (Documents) or wt.epm.EPMDocument (CAD/EPM Documents)?

Regards,

Shirish

[BenLoosli]

The OP is using ArborText, so not sure how those are classified by Windchill. I would guess they are just wt.doc.WtDocuments (documents).

[mastachef]

Thank you for your response.

I am learning the differences between the two but I believe that the document we are dealing with is a EPMDocument (dynamic document, bursted config file).

[DanHarlan1]

Yes, ArborText documents are Dynamic Documents which are a sub-type of EPMDocuments.

[ShirishMorkhade]

Hi @mastachef,

In older release release of WC (I guess before 9.1 M060 release), the "Download content" link was available to directly download the primary content of CAD Document from pages displayed in a standalone browser.

However in later WC release this link is removed to prevent data loss or data corruption that may occur by bypassing the Workgroup Manager Adapter.

While opening a CAD document in a registered CAD application, any metadata changes (e.g. updated parameter values, lifecycle states or links to renamed dependencies) are propagated into the CAD files by the workgroup manager Adapter. This data synchronization is essential to ensure that the binary CAD Data is updated correctly and reflects any changes made in Windchill.

By using the hyperlink that was available on the standalone browser HTML UI prior to 9.1 M060, users could download incomplete CAD content (bypassing data synchronization), resulting in the download of incomplete or even corrupt data.

In order to avoid this situation, the "Download content" option will no longer be available from 9.1 M060 when viewed in the standalone browser.

The content link for Pro/ENGINEER primary content has also been changed to a *.pha file (Pro/ENGINEER Helper App File). When this link is selected, Pro/ENGINEER launch and attempt to connect to the Windchill server to download the content ensuring the primary content is updated appropriately.

Our apologies for any inconvenience you may have experienced because of the termination of this functionality.

Alternate Technique:

       In order to ensure data integrity (see below for more information), CAD data must be downloaded and processed by the workgroup manager CAD Adapter. In order to export CAD data, the correct technique is to first open the required data in the appropriate CAD application in registered mode, followed by a "Save As" operation available in the CAD application to save the content to local disk.

I hope this explaination helps you understand why it is not recommended to download CAD Document directly from HTML UI and why to use CAD tool to download them.

Best Regards,

Shirish

[mastachef]

Thank you for the response.

Am I to understand that the ability to save dynamic documents from Winchill to my local machine was a feature in earlier versions of Windchill? Also, this feature was removed due the possibility of data loss/corruption (I have version 11.0)?

So the solution is to use a CAD tool (Editor/Styler I presume) to connect to Windchill and open the dynamic document. Then use the 'Save As' feature to save the content to my local disk?

Do we know if this manuever will allow the user the ability to download dependencies and referenced files (graphics)?

[plutsky · Accepted solution]

The easiest way to save dynamic documents locally is to use the Arbortext Browser menu File->Export Compound Document.

This will fix up the XML links to point to the locally downloaded content.