Windchill Index Search (Solr) Questions

Usability

• What do you like and dislike about it? Enables searching file contents
• How does it perform compared to the out-of-the-box 'Advanced Search'? Didn’t notice a performance penalty
• Is it easier or harder to use than the built-in search? It’s not obvious how to make use of it, there’s no additional UI component, the behaviour of keyword search is different. For example searching for a document number in the keyword search will return the document and any docs that reference that doc number in the content file.
• How does your user community like it?  Do they prefer one over the other? They barely know it’s there until they’re searching for some content and need help
• Is there value to Solr if the only objects in Windchill are EPMDocuments (CAD docs)? None that I’m aware of, not sure if the content of CAD gets indexed

Configuration

• Are you running Solr on a separate server server? No, runs on master node in cluster
• What kind of resources are you giving it?  (RAM, vCPU, etc.)
• Did you add any additional foreground or background method servers to Windchill for Solr? Yes one additional MS added to master node for solar
• Did you add any dedicated queues to Windchill for Solr? Don’t think so

Maintenance

• This line from the help documentation is interesting:  "A system administrator must maintain the efficiency and usefulness of the search system as it change..."  What types of things do you need to do on a regular basis to 'maintain the usefulness and efficiency' of the system? Re-indexed it twice in the 4 years
• Are you re-indexing after each critical patch set installation? The CPS rarely updates solr, solr CPS are separate the CPS bundle and never seen one.
• How long does it take to re-index your entire system? 2-3 days

We have it installed and it is most useful for tracking down drawings with particular notes. For instance if there is a GIDEP and you want to find out what parts use an alloy from the GIDEP, you can use the keyword search to find all of the drawings with that alloy.

Or if an engineer wants to copy some notes from a unique drawing and knows part the words that that were used, the user can search based on words in the drawing notes to find it.

Usability

• What do you like and dislike about it? Makes searching of file contents and drawing notes possible. If you do not know name or number, this is your Obi wan. Cons, based on search terms, can produce imprecise results or too much returns.
• How does it perform compared to the out-of-the-box 'Advanced Search'? Fast for what it returns. 
• Is it easier or harder to use than the built-in search? Easier to initiate a index search. Other requires extra click if you have preference enabled.
• How does your user community like it?  Do they prefer one over the other? The always seem to want it to work the opposite of how they see it but I guess we are only hearing complaints.
• Is there value to Solr if the only objects in Windchill are EPMDocuments (CAD docs)? YES, Drawing notes!

Configuration

• Are you running Solr on a separate server server? Yes, we have a separate VM for it.
• What kind of resources are you giving it?  (RAM, vCPU, etc.) 4GB, 2 Cores
• Did you add any additional foreground or background method servers to Windchill for Solr? No. Not needed
• Did you add any dedicated queues to Windchill for Solr? Just the Bulk Index and regular Index queues.

Maintenance

• This line from the help documentation is interesting:  "A system administrator must maintain the efficiency and usefulness of the search system as it change..."  What types of things do you need to do on a regular basis to 'maintain the usefulness and efficiency' of the system? Reindex on upgrades but its worth checking every now and then to see if it missed objects.
• Are you re-indexing after each critical patch set installation? No, just upgrades
• How long does it take to re-index your entire system? 1-2 days

Usability

• What do you like and dislike about it?
  • Like - Search also returns results from text within documents/drawings or Windchill attributes. No need to train users to add * wildcard to the end of search or have a small customization to auto add * to the end.
  • Dislike - You may have to wait a minute or so to see new object(s) in the search results when using indexing. It would be nice if Name/Number/File Name was indexed right away but it's general not a big deal to wait a minute or so. I also wish there was a quick toggle checkbox to switch between a indexed search or not rather than toggling in the Windchill preferences - https://community.ptc.com/t5/Windchill-Ideas/Windchill-Core-Search-Improvements/idi-p/461200
• How does it perform compared to the out-of-the-box 'Advanced Search'. Performance of both seems fine. Index search can return a lot more objects and using the refinement tools ('Refine Results' or table search on the returned results) are sometimes required.
• Is it easier or harder to use than the built-in search? Users get used to either but I think most users prefer the benefits of the index search. Some users may prefer to turn off index searching if they are used to the nonindex search.
• How does your user community like it?  Do they prefer one over the other? Both companies I've worked for turned index search on by default but allow users to change this setting if needed.
• Is there value to Solr if the only objects in Windchill are EPMDocuments (CAD docs)? Search drawing text or Windchill attributes in addition to Name/Number/File Name. Not sure if the  'text preview' column only applies to documents or would also work with drawing text.

Maintenance

• Occasionally reindexing the entire system (which can take day or so) if it stopped returning the expected results.

Here are the Windchill 'keyword' search locations that I've found:

Is Windchill Index Search (Solr) installed and operational in your Windchill environment?

Yes. We have been using solr for several years now.

If you said 'yes', then I have a bunch more questions:

Usability

• What do you like and dislike about it?
  • Easy to search - simply type in key words and hit enter
  • Also indexes the contents of many document types
• How does it perform compared to the out-of-the-box 'Advanced Search'
  • The same speed
• Is it easier or harder to use than the built-in search?
  • The same. You can still use the built in search if needed
• How does your user community like it?  Do they prefer one over the other?
  • They liked it after getting it going
• Is there value to Solr if the only objects in Windchill are EPMDocuments (CAD docs)?
  • Definitely
  • You can set it up to index the text, notes of Creo Parametric drawings

Configuration

• Are you running Solr on a separate server server?
  • Nope
• What kind of resources are you giving it?  (RAM, vCPU, etc.)
  • No limits on cpu - so it can use as many as needed
  • Limiting SOLR_HEAP to 8192m in Solr/SolrServer/bin/set_env.sh
    • Which is actually upping it from the ootb 2048m
• Did you add any additional foreground or background method servers to Windchill for Solr?
  • Nope
• Did you add any dedicated queues to Windchill for Solr?
  • I added 2 more bulk index queues per https://www.ptc.com/en/support/article/cs272602
  • Didn't really do anything for improving re-indexing the whole site

Maintenance

• This line from the help documentation is interesting:  "A system administrator must maintain the efficiency and usefulness of the search system as it changes over time."  What types of things do you need to do on a regular basis to 'maintain the usefulness and efficiency' of the system?
  • I have never had to do anything on a "regular" basis. It just works...
• Are you re-indexing after each critical patch set installation?
  • Only if the critical patch set includes an update to Solr
    • Install cps in Windchill
    • Update (reinstall) solr only if cps includes a solr update. This actually happens every 2 or 3 cps updates. 
      • Re-index
      • I added more bulk index queues to try to speed this up however after adding up to 8 on a test system solr still was only using 2-3 cpu's (same as before I started). I could never get it to be a cpu "hog" and use many cpu's to speed the initial index time up.
• How long does it take to re-index your entire system?
  • A little over 24hrs
  • Most of that is spent indexing the EPMDocuments (1.2m)
    • Due to indexing the contents of the Creo Parametric drawings
  • We have a total of 2.4m indexed objects in the system