Name and Number

[ErikZabokrtsky]

Is there a way to get like a full system report if there are any differences between the Name and Number of an item?

We are using Windchill 10.0 M030 and most of our items are matched up, but a few of them have contradicting Names and Numbers. I would like to know if there is a way to get a list of all the items with discrepancies?

Attached it what I am looking at trying to match up.

Thanks for any help!

[jkent · Accepted solution]

I think this SQL Query will return what you want.

SELECT

DISTINCT EPMDocumentMaster.CADName "FileName"

,EPMDocumentMaster.name "Name"

,EPMDocumentMaster.documentNumber "Number"

,WTUser.name "Created By"

FROM

EPMDocumentMaster

,EPMDocument

,WTUser

WHERE

EPMDocument.idA3D2iterationInfo = WTUser.idA2A2

AND EPMDocument.idA3masterReference = EPMDocumentMaster.idA2A2

AND (

(

(

LOWER(EPMDocumentMaster.CADName) != LOWER(EPMDocumentMaster.name)

)

OR (

(

LOWER(EPMDocumentMaster.CADName) != LOWER(EPMDocumentMaster.documentNumber)

)

)

)

)

AND EPMDocument.statecheckoutInfo = 'c/i'

ORDER BY

EPMDocumentMaster.CADName ASC;

[ErikZabokrtsky]

Thanks Joe,

I'll check out how this query works.

[BuddyHudson]

Hey Joe, how would I get the ouput from this query to dump to a text file?

[ErikZabokrtsky]

After I ran the Query I just right clicked in the results area and clicked on "Save Results As"

There you can choose to save as text file, but it is really jumbled.

I chose Comma Separated Value and it puts it to an Excel file that works very nicely.

[jkent]

In SQL Server Management Studio you can just have it output to a file.

[MikeLockwood]

I'm continually amazed that people want to make the Number and Name the same.

Why not use some descriptive text for Name?

[HugoHermans]

You know, Mike, people tend to be lazy. Entering twice the same is so much easier, even if it doesn't make sense.

[ErikZabokrtsky]

I like how you come into a discussion and just immediately dog on someone's practices instead of trying to enlighten them to a different way of doing something. This is our first Library Manager and we were not aware that you could have the same Name for 2 different parts until Mike's comment.

Mike thank you very much for pointing out that we could do this instead of going back and updating a part number log in an Excel sheet like we always used to.

[GregOlson]

Mike and Hugo...most of the time a system is setup by a VAR or consultant that doesn't have the background to recommend things like this. Their job is to get the company up and running as fast as possible and get on to the next job. We keep Number, Name, and File Name the same for no particular reason other than we were not told a benefit to having them different....NOT lazy, just uninformed at the time. So here is your chance to enlighten us with your experience. Currently we have two text description parameters that are pulled in to WC as attributes. How can changing the name from match to descriptive text help with search when we already have two sentences (attributes) in the system that are searched? The only one I can think of would be that the drawings would now be searchable with a text description (our drawings pull the parameters from the cad parts and assemblies, but do not have descriptions themselves.

[MikeLockwood]

Both doc's linked below that I posted long ago are somewhat incomplete and out of date, but they show the essentials. I would encourage you to do a similar very quick test - takes all of 10 minutes to create. Can then discuss internally Work backward from what you want to appear on Drawings and in Windchill pages.

http://communities.ptc.com/docs/DOC-2683

http://communities.ptc.com/docs/DOC-2478

Many people live with this:

Number Name

000000005231 000000005231

Seems to be much more convenient:

Number Name

000000005231 BRACKET,LEFT,XYZ...

[GregoryPERASSO]

Will avoid lot of parametrization or customization ... as Number and Name is the default "identity" displayed in all the OOTB info pages or search pop up windows in Windchill ...

What I've seen, is that lot of companies who came from Intralink/ProE to Windchill use the schema number=name and a custom "Designation" attribute.

[ChrisPLM]

Hello,

I agree with the comments that some VAR, just want the customer use the system and this often does not including looking at business processes and simplifying things. There are also some basic understanding/skills of data management. A primary question should always be. Why do I duplicate the information ?

We have had something similar in our company. Not about Number and Name for the 3D Model/Wtpart but for the 2D drawings. Some of our users (including senior manager) insist in putting the Part Number (so for use the WTPart number) into the field NAME of the EPMDocument for the drawing. Their reason is that when they key in a partnumber in the global search box, they get the wtpart, the 3D models and the 2D drawing at the same time.

However, this is not good practice. If we change the partnumber, this is extra work to then go to the Name of the 2D drawing. Also it is not making use of system functionality to maintain the dependency between the object. The system does it for you more reliablely than the user. So why doing it. In addition, we often have more than one 2D drawing for the same model. So then they cannot make the difference between the different results without digging in further. (actually some users take this further and the first drawing, the name will be the number of the wtpart, but for the second drawing, they will add a _ followed by some type of description !!!)

And icing on the cake, in the ERP system, when we create drawing object in ERP to link to the pdf of the drawing, The drawing object has a Number and a NAME, For the number they put the drawing number as in PDMLink but for the Name here they put a Name/Description !!!!

Yes, this is no sense, Why have one rule for one system and another for another system while we are talking about the same information. We currently do not have PDMLink linked with ERP, so people can do this, but once we link them, PDM Number and Name will be transfered to ERP in a 1 to 1 match.

Greg,

I agree with you that some comments were unfair, Every company has legacy and it is not always easy to change. I think we all understand the what the ideal world should look like but we all have different path to follow. The great thing with PDMLink is that it is very flexible. 9 months ago we had to change Number, Name and filename of Wtpart and EPMdocument, this has also impact drawings which did not have an automated BOM. We have developed scripts and we were able to change 15 000 parts/hours (changing number, name and filename for epm) and automatically modify 2D drawings at a rate of about 10 per minute. (check out, replace BOM, replace certain parameters and check in)

I have a question for Eric.l assume that you use an ERP system. Whatever it is called. you will have a NUMBER (part number/material number/article number= and a NAME (description). Do you make those 2 fields the same in ERP ? If not, I am wondering why no one thought that PDM should be the same than ERP ?

The good news is that you can export the Name/description from ERP and push into PDM very easily

[ChrisPLM]

What I also wanted to say is that I make the difference between a business consultant (should tell me eg that Number should be different than Name) and technical consultant (should tell me to use Window 7 and not 98, or write the code to customize Windchill so I can continue to work my old ways. Yes dear customer we can do that for you but they will not tell you (not sure if they actually realize it) that this customisation will actually not help you in the long term business improvement companies are all seeking)

Unfortunately, most VAR I know are more the technical consultant and when we start talking about business processes, business best practices, there is no one there.

The world hates change,

yet it is the only thing that has brought progress.

—Charles F. Kettering (1876–1958)

American inventor, holder of over 300 patents. head of research for General Motors for 27 years.

[GregoryPERASSO]

agree !

I'm trying to explain that if the target is an "Entreprise PLM"

It is important to spent may be , more time and money to clean and retrofit legacy datas before migration. And not just copy from one system to another .... In order to have an homogeneous datas .

without that, datas are not reliable.... Users have to know the old way to work to understand differences .... where the system should just give them the right answer ...

I caricture by saying that a good budget repartition for an Enterprise PLM project is

1/3 of parametrization/customization

1/3 of retrofit/cleaning/migration

and last but not least 1/3 of process /methodology/training and Organisation change management

[mbonka]

Great motto.

[ErikZabokrtsky]

Yea we use AS400/MAPICS for an ERP system. Windchill and AS400 are in no way tied together, even though I have had meetings about it and quotes made up stating what it would take to streamline everything. I am actually in IT and have been learning everything CAD as I go along while managing Windchill server and Creo installs.

Before Windchill, we were just using a regular File Server to store our CAD data on, but had to change since we now have remote sites. Everything was migrated in to Windchill and at the time, the migration team said most people just tie the File Name, Name, and Number together. So that is the direction we went and never thought any different.

Since this conversation started I've been talking with Engineering about trying to get this all tied together, but changing someone set in there ways is not that easy to do.

[ChrisPLM]

Hello Erik

how are you getting on with your quest ?

The good thing with PDMLink is that it is very flexible and it will let you change Number, Name and filename of the EPMDocument, as well as WTpart very easily.

We had to go through such exercices (not because number, name and filename were the same) where we had a script developed for us. The script is ran from the Windchill Shell and read a csv file.

The csv file contain the Number of the object that need renaming, and the new number, new name, new filename.

This has worked very smoothly. We changed about 15 000 EPM/hrs and WTpart were a lot quicker.

The thing that took time was that changing such fields, imply to "refresh" other object that may use that field. For us it was the BOM tables on the drawings. Some were created without repeat regions, or just as text. We had to developed other scripts in weblink to modify all the impacted drawings.

Furthermore, we use an application that create pdf outside pdmlink on release of 2D drawings. Obviously, even if your BOM table is properly created (ie when you open the drawing in ProductView or ProE the BOM table update automatically correctly), we still needed to republished the pdf which were outside of PDMLink to ensure they showed the correct new Number, Name etc......

That was actually took the longest.

Let me know if you want to discuss more in details

Best regards