Ghost drawing formats

[dcox-2]

We use Creo template parts that have associated drawings. When I create & save a new part, the drawing is automatically created, so far all as expected. However rather than pull the drawing format from the formats directory, Windchill creates a ghost part for the format in the workspace. This means that for it to work properly the format must already exist in the workspace.

This looks much the same behaviour as this thread: Ghost objects during replace by copy

and ptc support have sent me this document: https://support.ptc.com/appserver/cs/view/solution.jsp?n=CS5822

both of which indicate that this is expected behaviour. I find this hard to accept so I'm going to put the question out to the community whether this really is normal and whether anyone has a workable solution?

Tom Uminn‌, as creator of the above thread, did you come up with a fix?

Until recently our pro_format_dir was a location on our local C drives, and we never saw this issue, but since we moved them to Windchill, these ghost parts have been appearing.

Thanks,

Dave

[ChrisPLM]

Hello David

have you checked that the user have the right access permissions ?  Can they manually add to workspace, download and open directly the format used in the drawing template ?

Best regards

[dcox-2]

Yes, I have looked at this. As far as I can see, there are no access issues. Unfortunately I think this I'm just coming up against a limitation of Windchill.

[TomU]

Tom Uminn, as creator of the above thread, did you come up with a fix?

Nope.  It seems like the dumbest thing, but this is the way it works.  The "required dependents" option seems to not apply to the drawing's dependents when the drawing isn't the initially selected object.  I would suggest that you either manually add the formats to your workspace in advance, or open the drawing first before duplicating the part.  Opening the drawing will automatically add the missing format to your workspace (as long as you haven't already created a ghost object in it's place.)

[TomU]

David Cox‌,

I created a product idea.  Go vote it up!

Automatically Add Formats to Workspace (or "Don't create ghost objects for things that already exist!")

[dcox-2]

Good man. This is one of those ones you want to vote up more than once.

I really struggle to see why this issue exists, it seems like a fairly reasonable thing to want to do. I've been tearing my hair out this week thinking there was a typo in the config.pro or something that I'd done to make it not work. Now it turns out that it's "working to specification".

[RoyCrerar]

Hi, We've recently seen this while working through a clients Windchill. One of my colleagues had this issue.  I resolved it quire easily.

Go to your workspace tab in the creo embedded browser and secect the ghost items, do add to workspace. At the next screen there is a checkbox for reuse modified workspace content. Untick this box to force the download to your workspace and the files should be ok again.