Windchill doesn't recognize Mass Properties

[yyuan]

Hi Everyone,

I recently encountered this issue.

The company are using Creo3.0 with Windchill.

A part doesn't have a proper mass for some reason. ( The report is not set to generate automatically.) I checked out the part, manually updated mass property by click the "Calculate..." button in "Mass Properties". Then I uploaded the part to check in. Now here is the problem, Windchill told me that was an unmodified part, I simply cannot check that part in.

So what I did, I change one of the parameters of the part (Just a random parameter). Since I didn't want to change anything of the part except the mass info, I changed the parameter back to its original value. Now Windchill though that was a modified part.

I really don't understand. When I changed mass info., that was actually changed the part, Windchill think it was unmodified. And the back and forth change of parameter doesn't really change anything, it think it was modified. Why?

So basically there are two questions.

1 Why Windchill doesn't recognize the change of mass properties?

2 Why does rewriting the parameter with same value make it different part?

Yifeng

[dschenken]

Windchill depends on a flag set by Creo. There are a large, but not unlimited, number of things that will cause Creo to flag a part as modified. Sometimes it can be surprising as to the number of changes that can happen without setting this flag.

The one method that always worked for me and has no chance of damaging anything through careless typing or otherwise is to use New Layer and then Delete Layer. Creo will create a layer and the layer will remain selected for the Delete.

[yyuan]

Personally I think it is better that Windchill or Creo should have something compare the actual data to tell the difference not by flagging some changes. There are chances some changes happened might be critical but we are not aware of that. It could cause big trouble.

[dschenken]

Creo can't do a compare because Creo is a software interpreter, just like BASIC or Java, and can't tell if the stored file is any different from what's in memory because what's in memory isn't what is stored. So Creo makes the routines that make changes to the data in memory responsible for flagging significant changes. Recall that when a file is opened -all- the contents of memory have just been changed and by default would be considered new.

[yyuan]

Creo can't do it. What about Windchill?

Actually I am not expecting Creo will do the job.

My thought is :

After you upload the data to the work space on the server side. And there is stored data in the common space on the server. why can't Windchill just compare these data and tell if they are different?  Yes, mark it updated. No, mark it unmodified.

This should eliminate any of this kind of issues.

[dschenken]

WIndchill can't check models that Creo doesn't create. Creo won't create a new version unless you force it to save or make a change that Creo recognizes as a change.