Opinion of the integration PDMLink and Creo

[BjoernRueegg]

I love both tools PDMLink and Creo. The basic interface works. But by now I would expect some real new features from PTC. I still can't belief why these two major programs of PTC can't get a better and deeper interface. The following examples show my considerations:

Homogeneous CAD-Templates

This includes that if a new CAD-Document is being created in Creo by the File->New Dialog, all the attributes are automatically being pulled from PDM. So the Material, the values of enumerations etc. are being managed in one single system.

This will also address the idea

Having a single "Material" Business Object in Windchill

Revising

If an engineer revises the CAD-Document there is no help to collect the Drawing or the WTPart. Instead of the Creo Dialog it should show the PDMLink collector dialog. Otherwise the user needs to revise the WTPart by itself.

Also it should be possible to revise CAD-Documents only if the user connects it directly to a change task. Otherwise he needs to do it before or afterwards. The dialog should show all the open change tasks like on the user homepage.

Revise released objects only with a connected Change Notice

Cabling or Piping

It should be possible to transfer the length to the BOM insted only the quantity "each". Most smaller companies don't have a WTPart for each cable. They have a single WTPart for the complete cable reel and will cut them for each length by theme self.

....

I haven't yeat created a new idea because there are already many around. What are your thought's about that? Are you happy with the current compilation?

Since Creo and PDMLink are the "Main Products" of PTC, I would really expect more and a further development of these two products.

For me, the development of these two products are still far away from my expectations. Since three years I can't really tell, what new features are being showed. I still belief the development is being done by two different teams which don't talk with each other...

Thanks

Björn

[GregoryPERASSO]

Agree with you

Still thought that for some features, Windchill/Catia V5 integration is better than Windchill/Creo ... may be except now the "Option and Variant" Creo 3 integration ....

I assume because maybe there's more big customers with Catia/Windchill

than proE/WIndchill customers which may be comes mainly from Intralink ....

and agree with the fact that

Creo and Windchill product management does not talk each other .....

CAD methology or use cases are not the same in the context of a PLM wide Entreprise integration, that in a strict CAD PDM vaulting. And think that ProE does not take care of that enough ...

[BjoernRueegg]

It looks like we are only two person which aren't that happy with the integration...

[cc-2]

Hallo Björn.

nicht allein.... Aber ich hatte diese Seite noch nie gesehen.....

Sie braucht mehr Werbung

Ich bin auch 100% deiner Meinung.

MfG

[Vincent-Kulak]

You are not alone

[Anand]

Yes,

You are not alone Bjorn

Regards,

Athmanand

[LewisLawrence]

You are not alone in struggling with the limitations of the current functionality.

I sympathise on the issue you mention with no UOM other than Each being supported when building Usage Links is somewhat limiting. In addition to cabling and piping this is also a similar use case for weldments and other fabrications, where the “components” are really just cut lengths of raw materials, they have a length and are never setup in any business system as unique parts.

In addition to the things you previously mentioned here are our main pain points:

1. Representations/Visualisations are not handled very effectively when there are multiple EPMDocument associations to the same WTPart. This also fits with the above issue, in that there is not really a way to handle representations of different lengths of the same WTPart.
2. The toolset for creating/editing association between EPMDocuments and WTParts is weak and pretty clunky in operation, this creates much confusion around what should be straightforward operation.
3. The terminology for the different association types (owner, image etc) is confusing and the differences or intent of each is not clearly explained/illustrated in the user interface. E.G. if you have a WTPart with attribute values today, if you associate an EPMDocument with a build rule that will update attributes or build structure you may well modify the WTPart during the association. There is no easy way to “preview” what the changes will be, once the association is built it is surprisingly difficult to roll back.
4. With WTDocuments you have to edit the relationships to WTParts from the WTPart, with EPMDocuments you have to do it from the EPMDocument. This is very confusing for users, who are not sure why there is any discrimination between the two document types at all. To users they are both Documents.
5. The Compare tool that shows a split screen structure view of the WTPart and EPMDocument structures does not “prefer” a particular CAD system, this causes issues in a heterogeneous CAD environment because it will show only the owner linked CAD. For example, if I have an Assembly that is being driven (Owner associated) by a third party CAD structure, when I compare the structures between EPMDocuments and WTParts I am only interested in “my” CAD system. But if my WTPart structure uses Library parts that have an Owner association to a Creo Model and an Image association to an EPMDocument from my system, the compare screen will only show me the Creo model.
6. The Calculated association relationship that is provided out of the box between WTParts and EPMDocuments for Drawings does not work reliably, in many circumstances it will show inaccurate and confusing information that cannot be corrected. Thankfully you can turn it off with a preference, but why it is even there is puzzling.
7. Attribute values exchanged between EPMDocuments and WTParts can only support “numbers” not “Unit” type attributes that have a measurement system. So you can only pass “5.00” to the WTPart, but not “5.00 mm”.
8. It is not possible to exclude or easily filter “format/frame/border” EPMDocuments from the collector or the association tool. So fairly regularly users accidentally “save as” and create new *.frm files, or mistakenly associate them to WTParts when they did not really want to be doing that.
9. When there is a build rule between an EPMDocument and WTPart the only way to remove that is to delete the impacted iterations of both objects or delete the objects entirely. This prevents the purge tool from removing old iterations, even if both objects are candidates for purging.

Hopefully as a community someone reading this can direct us to any Ideas already in place for these issues, if not I will get busy creating some!