Windchill 10 + embedded browser Pro/e

[FredericVannest]

We are getting close to our go Live with Intralink 10 (M030) after a lot
of test migrations of our 3.4 databases.
Our data integrity was first priority as we needed to merge 6 databases
with a lot of (15000+) PI conflicts into one windchill server with 6
replica sites.
That part we are very happy with for the moment (after months of
cleaning up the 3.4 source dbs), our data looks fine after migration.

We are also quite happy with the client performance when using
chrome/firefox/etc, no problem there.

We do however have major stability and performance problems on the
client side with the embedded browser in Pro/e (Creo EP/5 M120).
We have a mix of XP-32, XP-64, win 7-64 clients so we are stuck with
Internet explorer 8 (corporate policy).
Ie_in_sep_process with IE8 has terrible performance, certainly when
working in the floating windows (add to ws, set state, etc)
Also IE8 needs a truckload of tweaks on each client just to get some
degree of performance, if we can we would like to avoid that.

Logical choice is to go with the embedded firefox, this was initial
choice and after testing IE8 we are convinced to stick with it.
The OOTB performance is far from perfect, but much better than a tweaked
IE8.

Problem is that working in the embedded browser in pro/e is very
unstable (both IE & FF):
- we are constantly losing connections
- having to re-login
- "server unavailable" errors
- pro/e hangs during basic actions (add to workspace, etc)
- script/SOAP errors

We have had loads of calls with ptc support, even windchill specialists
from ptc looking at our config on site but still no stable work
environment.

Is anyone else experiencing this with Windchill 10 (Intralink or
PDMLink)?

Thanks,

Frederic
---
Frederic Vanneste
Windchill Project Coordinator
CAD Administrator
General R&D
BARCO N.V.
Noordlaan 5
B-8520 Kuurne
TEL: +32-56-368901

[davehaigh]

You're not going to get around the need for registry settings on the client side to improve the performance of PDMLink. However I believe you can setup policies that will make all those settings. (Anyone that has done this with policies should chime in here.)

Attached is what I think the settings should be.

In regards to Chrome, Firefox, vs I.E.

I don't find that for general browsing Firefox is any faster than my IE. Chrome is much faster. However ProE uses I.E. internally for the embedded browser. When you're making changes to the registry you have to make sure you make the changes for xtop in addition to IE or you will not see any improvement inside of ProE.

The download performance tweaks need to be tested by running ProE in debug mode and then looking at the uwgm log files for the start and ending of the download.

In a shell you can search for Background in the uwgm log file and get the start and finish times.
<shell prompt=">findstr "Background" "<proe home=">\Log_PROE_28_05936_2011_10_17_14_36_21_000001\uwgm.log.1"