Open STEP file in Creo View from PDMLink

[mganzer]

Hi Folks,

I can open STEP files in Creo View directly from Windows when working stand alone. I create a document in PDMLink with the STEP files as the content. When I try to open that document in Creo View from PDMLink I get this error:

File does not begin with '%PDF-'

If I chose to download the file from PDMLink, choose "Open" and select Creo View as the program it works fine.

I am finding it irritating that Windows can open a file in Creo View where Windchill cannot.

Any ideas?

Thanks,

Mark

[ZacharyAlexande]

Hi Mark,

Are you creating the STEP file as a WTDocument? Does the document have a
generated representation? If so, have you tried opening it in Creo View?

Windchill does not open WTDocument files in Creo View by default. However,
there is an add-on you can get that allows Creo View to open PDFs. This is
why you see Windchill throw an error looking for the "PDF" extension.

Thank you,
Zack


Zachary D. Alexander
Systems Manager
ProductSpace Solutions Inc.
Phone: 630-495-2999 Ex. 8104
Cell: 630-460-4905

[mganzer]

In Reply to Zachary Alexander:

I Creating it as a document. I am not generating and representation since you can open a step file directly in Creo View when running stand alone. I also tried importing it through a workgroup manager but no luck. Would not recognize the type. Wouldn’t be so perplexing if Creo View could not open step files natively outside of WC. I have attached screen grab of document properties.

Mark

Hi Mark,

Are you creating the STEP file as a WTDocument? Does the document have a
generated representation? If so, have you tried opening it in Creo View?

Windchill does not open WTDocument files in Creo View by default. However,
there is an add-on you can get that allows Creo View to open PDFs. This is
why you see Windchill throw an error looking for the "PDF" extension.

Thank you,
Zack


Zachary D. Alexander
Systems Manager
ProductSpace Solutions Inc.
Phone: 630-495-2999 Ex. 8104
Cell: 630-460-4905

[ZacharyAlexande]

Hi Mark,

I do not think you will need to alter the OOTB functionality, there is an
easier way:

The problem you're running into is that these STEP files are going in as
documents (WTDocument type) instead of as CAD Documents (see attached). If
you have users add the STEP files to PDMLink as CAD Documents, you should
be able to generate the representations for the STEP files. These
representations will have the option to be opened directly into Creo View.

[TomU]

OOTB the publisher does not publish the STEP files. (At least not in 9.1 M050.) I have also been testing bringing these in as EPM Documents instead of WT Documents using the "allow_import_file_extension" config.pro option.

Tom U.

[Sudeep_Bhattara]

Yes OOTB publisher does not publish the STEP files. You will have to
integrate JLink for Pro/E for the conversion to STEP. Here (

create wt.representation.Representable "object" out of STEP file.

If you already have STEP file then life could get easier. Suppose your
resulting STEP file path is "c:\output.stp" and EPM oid is
"wt.epm.EPMDocument:1234" then

PublishJob publishjob = new PublishJob(true, "wt.epm.EPMDocument:1234",
null, ...

[mganzer]

I have never been able to create CAD Documents outside of the workgroup manager. Whenever I try to create them this way the WGM only recognizes Pro/E file extensions, not step. I don’t think you can create a CAD Document inside a web browser. What am I missing here? The whole point is to stay out of the WGM. There are no native CAD files to associate too. This is a supplied step file from a customer w/o CAD data. They would like to create it as a document & be able to open the content in Creo View. Like I said the mind blowing thing here is Creo View opens up the file outside of PDMLink, but not inside. When you open a PDF or Offoce document inside Creo View there is no publishing, correct?

[TomU]

Creo View can open native Pro/e files directly, but that doesn't mean you want to. The published files are much smaller and lighter than the native files. If you watch a STEP file being opened in Creo View you will notice a step2pv process running that is converting the STEP file to a Product View (Creo View) file. Once this file is loaded you can save the resulting Creo View file to disk. This file will be much smaller and open much faster than the original STEP file. The same holds true for native Pro/e data as well. If you're going to push this stuff over a web interface you want it as small and light as possible, hence the publishing process. My 2 cents worth.

Tom U.