“Requirement: Enable Line Number/Find Number Preferences at Organization Level (Excluding CATIA Orgs

[SumA_ZF]

Version: Windchill 13.0

Use Case: We are implementing the functionality described in Article CS197902 (“How to set up Line Number and Find Number in Windchill PDMLink”). At Site > Utilities > Preference Management, the following preferences are mentioned: EPM Services Preferences > Build Service Preferences > Find Number Attribute EPM Services Preferences > Build Service Preferences > Line Number Attribute However, when configuring at Organization level, these preferences are not available in the list. Our requirement is to apply this configuration at the Organization level (not only Site), so that it is inherited consistently by all Products and Libraries. Important Note: This feature (Line Number/Find Number driven from CAD BOM) is not available for CATIA. Therefore, Organizations using CATIA need to be excluded from this implementation. We require guidance on either: Enabling these preferences at Organization level for non-CATIA organizations, or Providing a supported workaround if Organization-level configuration is not possible.

Description:

We are implementing the functionality described in PTC Article CS197902 – “How to set up Line Number and Find Number in Windchill PDMLink”.

At Site > Utilities > Preference Management, the following preferences are available and configurable:

EPM Services Preferences > Build Service Preferences > Find Number Attribute

EPM Services Preferences > Build Service Preferences > Line Number Attribute

However, when we try to configure at the Organization level, these preferences are not available in the preference list.

Our requirement is:

To apply these preferences at the Organization level so that they are inherited consistently by all Products and Libraries.

To exclude CATIA-based organizations, since this functionality (Line Number / Find Number driven from CAD BOM) is not supported for CATIA.

We need guidance on:

Whether these preferences can be enabled at Organization level for non-CATIA organizations.

If not, what is the recommended workaround to achieve Organization-specific configuration.

[avillanueva]

What CAD system are you using? Creo is shown. I tried this once and found it did not work as I had expected. Relies on component level attributes but I think I found a flaw in that it was possible to have the same component have different parameters. It did not seem to work quite right or required too much on the user's part. 

[SumA_ZF]

Hi @avillanueva , it works for creo, but not for catia.i have implemented this for creo and works, but it's a cad centric approach meaning line number and find number can be fetched from cad to Wt part but not vise verse. if you need more details i can help you in creo part

[joe_morton]

I think the setting is only available at the Site level. I think you should be able to set it, even for your Catia Orgs. If the attribute is not included in the EPM Document, there's nothing to build to the WTPart, so it should have no effect. (Test to make sure!)

To @avillanueva's point, the way PTC set it up is weird. We just enabled this a few weeks ago, but have yet to really pilot it out with real data. I found a method to limit some of the issues: 

• Checkout the assembly to a Workspace
• In the Workspace, go to the Structure view.
• Set the Display to Merge Uses <-- This is key to avoid the same PN with 2 different numbers
• In the uses tab, now you can set the line/find number for each part number

It's still easy to mess up, but this method allow you to have a BOM table on the drawing where the find/line numbers match the find/line numbers on the WTPart. We're still exploring this and how to use it

[SumA_ZF]

Hi @joe_morton , when we set the mentioned preference for the line number and find number, in practice the value need to be fetched from the cad to wt part. but for Catia this method won't work and also if the Catia user need to have line number and find number he is forced to use wt part approach meaning updating line number and find number in the pt part structure. due to this while building the same cad "update required" issue will comes up. i got to know we can't have these preferences set in org level.

any suggestions or work around? would be appreciated.

[joe_morton]

hi @SumA_ZF

Sorry I don't have any experience working with Catia in Windchill. I'm really not sure how to manage that.