Passing Ownership Parameters from PDMLink to a Pro/E drawing

[ptc-2044042]

We would like to fully utilize the workflow created in PDMLink to pass the drafters name and date of submission electronically to the title block of the drawing, upon drawing promotion. The checker's name and date would also be passed electronically to the checker's box in the title block, as well as the approver's name and date of approval. What is required on the drawing format end, and on the PDMLink end to pass this data? Is there a way to pass the names via the LDAP upon user login?

Thanks,

Bill

[KevinAlexander]

Hi Bill, I'm curious to see if others have a solution but I think you will find this to be tough to do.

With Out of the Box attributes, it's easy, so things like:

PTC_WM_CREATED_BY & PTC_WM_CREATED_ON

PTC_WM_MODIFIED_BY & PTC_WM_MODIFIED_ON

PTC_WM_REVISION

Etc.

But note these parameters are updated upon check-in, NOT upon promotion - the created on shows the data that rev was created; the modified on shows the data that iteration was checked in.



The easiest way to think about it is that really Pro/E, not Windchill (though Windchill is updating them through Pro/E), is pushing those attributes into the block, and so even if you did have promotion related parameters like CHECKED_BY and APPROVED_BY they wouldn't push into the drawing format unless the drawing was actually checked in from Pro/E, so obviously it's not feasible to have the checker/approver check the drawing out again or have the drafter check the file out again.


When I was a Windchill administrator one of the first things I did was actually REMOVE that type of information from the drawing - everyone said people would complain, NO ONE ever did, never heard a peep. In my opinion (just an opinion!), a drawing should be used to document the DESIGN, not the process it went through - people should log in to Windchill to get that type of info. I only showed the created/updated stuff because Windchill gave it to me anyway - our format looked very similar to this (these formats are always hard to read since the text runs together but you get the idea):


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If you really just have to have it on the drawing, you might find a ProductView watermark will be easier to implement - with watermarks you can "pull" pretty much any Windchill attribute I believe.




Best regards,






Kevin Alexander

Senior Application Engineer - TriStar, Inc.
TEL: 800-800-1714 x3118

CEL: 270-779-9935

www.tristar.com<">http://www.tristar.com>

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[DarrenStorey]

Hi Bill,

I am looking into the same problem. Specifically I would like an expression in the workflow to write the names of users that completes a certain work flow task (eg checking or approving) to a soft attribute in the primary business object. This can then be reported on easily and also mapped to a parameter in the CAD model then displayed on the drawing. Currently I do not have a solution for this, but I would be very interested to hear if anybody else has successfully achieved something similar.

FYI you can request via the server side delegate, that additional Windchill attributes are automatically added as parameters to the CAD model on upload. I have only done this for default modeled attributes, I do not know if this can be achieved with custom attributes. I have not tried it. Has anybody else achieved this?

Darren