I agree Windchill's documentation management capabilities need improvement. Having transitioned from Intralink 3.4 to now PDMLink 10.1 our users really miss the ability to manage documents in workspaces. The workspace is nice because objects in there never leave the system and you can tell if objects are out of date.
Working only with the browser and downloading documents to a hard drive folder requires extreme discipline from the users or wrong versions can be uploaded. Plus you can't tell when downloaded documents are out of date.
Desktop integration is not a silver bullet either. DI only works with Microsoft Office, so if you are using the browser and DI you must have a good understanding of Windchill preferences, especially when working on Office and non Office formats. The way the Windows Explorer view into Windchill via DI shows multiple revisions of documents is confusing. DI does not work if a folder or file in a folder contains an ampersand (&).
With all due respect: If PTC or PTC's VARs don't understand Windchill's documentation management shortcomings, then they don't understand the needs of their customers. I know firsthand how these shortcomings make user adoption and expansion of this tool very difficult in my organization.
Even our Engineers who use Creo/AutoCAD etc. make documents. Actually they make lots of documents, more documents than drawings. The way Windchill treats WTDocuments different from EPMDocuments makes the system hard to use. If the system would just allow management of WTDocuments in workspaces (just like EPMDocuments) our users would be much happier with Windchill.
v/r
Dave Engel
