Export all CAD files from Windchill

[bmüller]

Hi,

is there a way to export all CAD files from Windchill to a fileserver?

How hard is it to query information from the database about file structure and their position in the vault?

Does anybody have some experience on this?

We already exported files from the workspace and renamed and moved them by script according to a CSV export. But for another server doing this by hand would be too much.

br Bernhard

[BenLoosli]

The first question is WHY?

PTC does not make it easy to export a lot of files from Windchill. I have done it for about 30 assemblies which ranged in size from a hundred components to over 2000 components. It is not an easy task as even putting the top level drawing in your workspace, which is the only place to export from, does not always grab all related files. I had  to do the download to workspace, then open the file in Creo to get all related files in the workspace for export.

The scripts should not be too hard if you know the Windchill table structure. I am not an Oracle/SQL person, but have seen scripts to do this in the community. Remember that the file name on disk in the vault is an encrypted name and you would have to rename it to the real name when exported with revision and iteration.

[bmüller]

We want to shut down an old Windchill server. Data was not migrated to a new server.

To have some backup if there is ever the request to view old files, we'd like to export files to a fileserver.

feels safer than starting the server in 2022 or so....

[MikeLockwood]

If practical depending on quantity, add everything (latest) to one workspace, and the export to local disk all in one folder, giving all the native CAD files directly.  May run out of RAM and may need to do in chunks.

If this doesn't work, it's possible to create and run two simple querries against the database:

- Find the child object(s) if they exist for every object (e.g. if a drawing, list the related model(s); if an assembly, list the related children.  Gets messy very fast because of family tables, etc., etc. but can be done.

- Find the vaulted file name (e.g. 000025cd53ba) for each cad object.

With this, one can laboriously find related files when needed.

[remy]

This is an actual migration project.

The best solution is to build a script tooling. 

[bmüller]

hm, for another server we exported fewer files by hand. every revision and renamed them to prt.1, ... by script.

I'm only the IT-guy but family table - idea would be to just save the part that's used in the asm.

if space increases it wouldn't be a problem. It's only a static backup for old versions. If ever someone wants to look on an old version.

The latest versions are already migrated to a new production server.

script tooling - any alternative to direct database query?