Sasha:
Our system was set up to make WC Name, WC filename and WC NUMBER the same by default, which I believe is a quite common implementation. Afterwe finally realized what the "Common Name" was for and how it related to Pro/E / Creo files and Windchill we decided to use WC Name as the description(I feel that PTC never properly explained what "Common Name" was for when it suddenly appeared some years back).
When we started to use WC Name we just started copyingthe value from a filebased attribute on legacy files, but the attribute frequently was incorrect for various reasons (copying parts and not changing it, overtyping the parameter with text in the drawing format, etc.) and since one of the goals of using WC Name was to clearly indicate what the object was, we had to come up with a formal naming convention document, since we never had one before.
Even the values of the old description parameters that were supposedly "correct" were all over the place, from very clear to chock full of meaningless acronyms that made no sense to anyone, even the originators. This made it diffcult to determine what you were actually looking at, at a glance.
We couldn't use a tool to copy values because of the inconsistency so in order to move forward we have enforced it on all new objects and during revisions to exisiting ones. In addition, we have gone back through released active legacy objects and have renamed many of them on a product by product basis as well. Since we started in January 2011 we have just over 73,000 of just under 93,000 objects using WC Name which is about 79%. The renaming tool in Windchill could be better, but it has been flexible enough to help us using wildcards so that we were able to rename lots of objects in one operation (e.g. by assembly or by family).
For us, the fact that the WC Name is not versioned actually works better for us because once we establish the "proper" name, we can identify all versions easily.We can always find out what it was named when the object was released by looking at the old parameter values.
The immediate benefit is that all the out-of-the-box views now become useful particularly the Structure (BOMs), Related Objects and Family views we use. Search results are instantly readable. Although this can also be done using your own attributes, this is easier since it's baked into the system defaults already.
(Creo's use of "Name" and "Common Name" in the new file command is a constant source of confusion to new users when youhave to explain that Creo Name = WC filename, Creo Common Name = WC Name and WC Number is something else entirely. It doesn't seem very well thought out.)
We've determined that you need to enforce your naming conventions as part of the Release process if you want consistency. In practice this hasn't been a big deal and has been more of a user habit issue than anything else: most of our users aren't too concerned what to call something anyway, so if you say its got to be a certain way, they don't usually have an issue with it.
Andrew Mansfield
KI
Green Bay, WI
In Reply to Sasha Johnson:
We currently have a Creo string parameter DESCRIPTION that is designated in Winchill for our part and assembly drawing descriptions. I'm under the impression many organizations are using Windchill NAME for part and assembly descriptions. Does anybody have any experience with this and input on pros/cons?
Our filename and number are already set up to be synced automatically. It seems to me if we could use name as our description then searches would be tons easier not to mention save-as, table views, ...
Should this be an ideal way to go does anybody have a tool/robot of some kind that would run overnight to automatically modify all objects' names to the value from the existing designated object parameter?
Sasha Johnson
Sr. Design Engineer
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Russ Bassett Corporation
8189 Byron Road
Whittier, CA 90606
Phone 800-350-2445 X 3345
Fax 562-447-2228
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