22-Sapphire II

Question

Does anyone else............

Forum|Forum|14 years ago
December 23, 2011
3 replies
11392 views

.....hate Windburn, er, Windchill, as much as I do? At the 3 different compaines I've worked for now that have gone to it, we've had NOTHING but trouble. I can't think of a single instance where W/C is even close to the equal of Intralink in terms of productivity, let alone faster. In fact, in every metric that I've tried, it's 2 to at least 4 times more difficult to do anything, if not impossible to actually do it. I get to hear all my new Pro/E users coming from Solidquirks complain about Pro/E, when in fact it's Windchill they're having issues with. I want my Intralink back......NOW!

Other

Patriot_1776

Author

22-Sapphire II

I just tried to revise a dwg, and the top-level assembly that was the model for the drawing. When I tried to advance the revision of ONLY those 2 files, this HAL9000 monstrosity tried to revise almost ALL the filles in the assembly, literally, a hundred or so. I could not unselect anything because of a "script error" pop-up that stopped me dead. By changing the view to "Structure", HAL9000 let me unselect the files......but then went and advanced all of them anyways! So now, I have almost a hundred files where I need to delete ONLY the revision the system created today through this error. And, worse, I'm absolutely sure that the system will not even be capable of doing that without deleting ALL the versions of the file.

Words in any language cannot express how furious I am with this "product" because of the frustration and wasted money and man-hours.

B

BrianMartin

13-Aquamarine

I hear ya... but the system can remove those files and get you back to where you were very easily. As for speed... when things are properly set up, you should have numerous advantages with Windchill. First, during some processes in the old system (checkin) you were locked out of using Pro/E until Pro/INTRALINK finished it's work. The new system works asynchronously and often you CAN resume work while background processes like checkins are occurring.

With one notable exception (related to renaming), you can do everything in Windchill that you could do in Pro/INTRALINK 3.4. It's just the growing pains that get you. I admit those pains can be significant. Still, the new system can do things the old one could only dream of.

I completely get the frustration because I've cussed out WIindchill, too... but it does get better. And if you have specific questions, post them. I'll help any way I can.

Patriot_1776

Author

22-Sapphire II

Dunno man, I've been on it almost 3 years now, and it's the only software I hate MORE the more I use it. Growing pains shouldn't get worse. I know for a fact that the file vaulting I have to do was done far easier in Intralink, with far less screens to go thru and far less input from the users. IF, I can even get w/C to perform the task at all. Now I've got a TON of extra work to do to remove those revisions the HAL 9000 created. And, worst of all, I totally don't trust the system. I have absolutely zero confidence that it did what I wanted and didn't somehow screw something up. In my professional opinion, I'd recommend staying on Intralink even if it meant staying on WF4, or getting a different vaulting system. My experience with it has been that bad, in 3 different companies now.

C

Celia

5-Regular Member

No need to thank me, Brian. It's part of my job, and it is a job that I love even though it is filled with challenges.

We often make assumptions about how our customer's work, but we know that we need to get out there and hear the real challenges our customer's face. We are trying to arrange more live visits, but that takes time on both sides.

I have a Diary Study that we've been trying to gather data with for some time. The intent of the study is to gather data over a period of time (2 weeks) from CAD Data Management users. We hope to verify the most common commands (i.e. Check in, Save, File Open, etc...) as well as some other assumptions we make about users. But we also want to find out what cammands are most used

I only ask for your email so that I can track how many times someone responds. We are hoping that you could spend the 5 or less minutes to fill this questionaire out every day for two weeks.

The survey is done through a Google form which can be accessed here:

If you know of others who might want to spend the time providing this data, please share the link. I'll probably post it elsewhere in the community a little later.

Thanks,
Celia

B

BrianMartin

13-Aquamarine

Thanks Celia...

I'll take the survey... no problem at all. We use Google Forms at my current employer, too. They're so tremendously easy to use and customize... they're lifersavers!

I can appreciate that you love your job. Your presence here shows you care. Now... if we could just get some of those people on the Creo team to pop in once in awhile, that would be really wonderful.

Take care...

-Brian

Patriot_1776

Author

22-Sapphire II

Ok, so, now my Workspaces have been completely worthless to me for the last week or so. I can't even VIEW them let alone do anything, it just stalls for 20 min or more at a time. I can view Commonspace and even download to workspaces, but can't even look at my workspaces now. Great. So, I'm simply backing up everything to a network drive to be able to continue working. So, the system, as a vaulting system, is now completely worthless to me since I can't even use it as such. AWESOME! WooHoo! Now my day's complete.......

B

BrianMartin

13-Aquamarine

Hey Frank...

Just a few thoughts here. The behavior you're describing sounds like it could have several causes. And yes, as we've discussed, some of these causes seem like larger system issues. However, there are literally dozens upon dozens of config settings, options, and other switches which control your workspace and the Windchill environment.

It also occurred to me, maybe you have a "sick" workspace. First... are you clearing your workspace cache regularly? As your workspace cache starts filling up, performance starts to lag. This continues until literally you're stuck with a nonresponsive workspace.

Try this... go to Tools>Server Registry (or Server Manager - they've changed the name over the past few software revs). Select the Cache tab. Note the "Total Cache Used" versus the "Target Cache Limit". There are different settings for managing the cache limit (we can discuss this later). Select Clear. If you're promoted with a message asking you if you're sure you want to clear the cache, select "Yes".

Also... if you're prompted with a dialog box showing your current workspace and a warning about clearing the cache of an active workspace, go ahead and clear it anyway. You may have to select a drop-down box or something to do this in WF4. I'll send you a private email with better instructions (I can't share them as public documentation at this time).

Try that first. Next, make sure you're synchronized your workspace (Tools>Synchronize). Having a workspace that's very far out of sync also causes wreird performance issues.

Finally... how OLD is your workspace? In the old system, you had to contend with the 1.2GB size limit. If you hit that magic number, your workspace was virtually GONE with no hope of getting it back. With Windchill, you don't have to worry about that local.ddb file anymore... but you DO need to clear out workspaces more frequently. There's no written recommendation on this other than to suggest you frequently create new workspaces and delete old ones.

As PTC explains it... workspaces are meant to be transient, temporary repositories for data. Use them for a few days and then remove them. Then make a new one and repeat the process. Ideally, if you had to open a small subassembly one day, you'd make a new workspace JUST for that subassembly. You'd open the file, work on it, check in your work, and then wipe OUT the workspace. THAT is what they mean by "temporary".

In real life, many designers only make workspaces once every week or two. I've seen guys use the same ones for months on end with no bad effects. All I can say is... they're playing with fire. It's kind of like working for hours in Pro/E without saving. We've all done that... and had a crash just moments before we reached for the SAVE icon. Then we kick ourselves for not stopping to save sooner. Well, workspaces are like that. They can get flaky... so use them temporarily and then wipe them out.

Also... just as a side note, are you making your own workspaces? There are also some "default" workspaces made by Windchill (one for each Product/Context). Don't use these. They're known to be a bit flaky. There's a way to stop the system from making them but it's not really necessary. It's just best practice to make your own workspace and frequently clear the cache, synchronize, and remove workspaces you've been using for more than about two weeks.

The more diligent you are with workspace management, the better the system runs.

There are TONS of files on how to milk a bit of extra performance out of the Windchill system. But in my experience, the biggest "bang for the buck" is in workspace management. Keep the workspaces small and clear them out frequently.

Does ANY of this help? Or is any of this information something you haven't heard of before? If so, let me know so I can follow up some of these topics with more information.

thanks!

-Brian

PS: Look in your personal email, too. Thx!

Patriot_1776

Author

22-Sapphire II

There was only about 365meg cache, and there is no cache limit set. I just cleared that, and I'll try rebooting. My workspaces are only a few months old, some less than that. I just got rid of a few actually. So, I usually try and keep all that clean, like I was used to purging frames in I/L. And, supposedly there are frames in W/C, so I thought about clearing those as well but I can't even get into my Workspace.

Thanks!

Whadja think of those models? Did you get a chance to look at 'em? I'm still looking for the .prt files for ya.

Grazie!

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