Migration Question - Folders Yes or No???

davehaigh · ‎Jan 16, 2014

When we migrated from Intralink to Windchill, many years ago now, folders and such were mapped into Products and sub-folders to match the organization we had in Intralink.

Now that we are looking at migrating from two different Windchill servers into a single Windchill server, we are being told by the vendor that they can't do that.

I'm not clear on if this is a limitation in the migration software PTC supplies, or if this is just laziness on the part of the vendor.

We are being told they can make us a file that would be a "decoder" ring so we could put the stuff back into folders if we want.
Right, like I want a large number of designers having to move files into folders to get back to what we originally had.

1. Can someone tell me if this is possible or not. I don't really care how hard it is for the vendor. Is it possible.

2. Next, if it is possible, how hard is it?

3. And how would it be done?

David Haigh
Phone: 925-424-3931
Fax: 925-423-7496
Lawrence Livermore National Lab
7000 East Ave, L-362
Livermore, CA 94550

rstewart-2 · ‎Jan 16, 2014

Hi David,

It is possible. PTC has a tool - the Windchill Bulk
Migrator. It's available through PTC GS or Services Advantage Partners.

Thanks,

Ray

AL_ANDERSON · ‎Jan 16, 2014

We exported all of our Windchill 8.0 customized data, then imported it
into a Windchill 9.0 system that had been previously migrated from
Intralink. This allowed us to combine, and ultimately link our CAD data
from Intralink with our Windchill parts which had previously been in two
distinct systems.

We were able to load our migrated parts into libraries and folders without
any problem. Of course, we wrote our own loaders with the help of PTC
Global Services, but the end result was that all of our data came into
libraries and folders of our choosing based on the "cabinets" and
subfolders of the old Windchill 8 system.

As with all things like this, the devil is in the details. Your
consultants might have an existing tool or framework in which they did not
design the ability to assign libraries and folders. If that is the case,
then it is certainly possible for them (or you) to write something
different, or modify what you have, to load data into your new system into
a library or folder of your choosing.

One final note worth mentioning is that we did not migrate or convert any
cabinets or folders. Instead, we manually (actually using XML bulkloads)
created brand new libraries and folders in our new system based on our own
mapping from old Windchill to new PDMLink. Then we extracted part and BOM
data from old Windchill along with original location. Then we transformed
that extracted data to set new system locations based on our own mapping
of old location to new. Then we loaded the transformed data into our new
system. So, if your consultants mean that they cannot automatically
"migrate" the contexts automatically, then they are probably correct,
since we didn't even try to do that.

Al Anderson
Solar Turbines Incorporated

[solutions] - Migration Question - Folders Yes or No???

Haigh, David A.

pcnelson · ‎Jan 16, 2014

x2 what Mr. Stewart said. That is the tool our consultant used and the architecture we had in Intralink 3.3 was duplicated in Windchill 10.0

patrickchin2000 · ‎Jan 16, 2014

Hi David,

Regarding mutiple intralinks/Windchill or multiple CAD implementation. It is not impossible. But, the can be issues is the filename uniqueness is OOTB and if you already implemented ProjectLink. There has been many discussions in PTCUser with different titles, such as

Two Intralink 3.4 servers to Intralink9

Windchill Multi-CAD Data Management

There is a very high probability that you will have the same filenames from the 2 systems that really different models. Most common practices is to rename/renumber them but that could be abusiness issue since it really based on IPs of 2 different companies. The common one is the default numbering convention of ProE 123.prt. But, there are instances that they may have numbering (filename + extension) conflicts.

We've been asking PTC constantly to just change/add the database unique index to for the filename:

CADNAME, authoring tool and orgid

or CADNAME, authoring tool, orgid and namespace (for projectlink with branching)

Instead, the uniqueness is built into the WGM code. We've been asking PTC to remove the code and just depend on the database index. It is better for performance and instantly prevenative.

There are so many cases where we have to import/migrate customer data like AML/AVL with different orgid's principles. It wouldamazing to have a workspaces allowed to point to a different orgid principle to designate the ownership of the files. Once checked in, all the member links will take over for the collectors of the files and not just the file names with the baselines as well. Thus, communication with customer/vendor data with their nomenclature/numbering/filenaming is seamless. Even exporting it back and viewing it in ProjectLink doesn't create any confusion.

It is still a outstanding issue that is being looked at by PTC, but it requires work just to remove the code. Yes there is a chance to add to a workspace of different CAD tool or ORGID, but only then should the WGM complain of a uniqueness issue for that one ProE session. That use case is different than a migration and multi-CAD. It's for a single ProE workspace session that behaves like if all files are just placed in 1 hard drive folder.

Good luck,

Patrick

In Reply to David Haigh:

When we migrated from Intralink to Windchill, many years ago now, folders and such were mapped into Products and sub-folders to match the organization we had in Intralink.

Now that we are looking at migrating from two different Windchill servers into a single Windchill server, we are being told by the vendor that they can't do that.

I'm not clear on if this is a limitation in the migration software PTC supplies, or if this is just laziness on the part of the vendor.

We are being told they can make us a file that would be a "decoder" ring so we could put the stuff back into folders if we want.
Right, like I want a large number of designers having to move files into folders to get back to what we originally had.

1. Can someone tell me if this is possible or not. I don't really care how hard it is for the vendor. Is it possible.

2. Next, if it is possible, how hard is it?

3. And how would it be done?

David Haigh
Phone: 925-424-3931
Fax: 925-423-7496
Lawrence Livermore National Lab
7000 East Ave, L-362
Livermore, CA 94550

ddemay · ‎Jan 16, 2014

Are both systems Windchill and at same version and maintenance release. Database vendor and version? also? If feasible to do this (because they are not today) I would duplicate the old database in tact and import it or just database link the two databases and Migrate data into the system as inserts and select froms. I just migrated all engineering data from a 10.1 M010 to M040 system doing only primary key ( ida2a2) manipulation. No issues. Had to recreate indexes separately. Completed in less then two weeks....

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