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BernardWielfaer1-Visitor
1-Visitor
January 25, 2012
Question

Download files from Windchill by Excel

  • January 25, 2012
  • 12 replies
  • 15329 views

Dear Reader,


Our purchase department is spending hours downloading manuallya dxf file for each drawing beforesending it to the manufacturer.


We like to automate this manual downloadfrom Windchill and would like to work with Excel (and VBA).


The number of the drawing to look for could be entered in the Excel list and the vba code could download the dxf file attached to the drawing and place this in a folder.


Does anyone have experience with this and likes to share his code ?


Best regards,


Bernard Wielfaert

12 replies

S
shudh1-Visitor
1-Visitor
January 25, 2012
Hello Bernard ..

You could approach this as follows..

1) On the server side which is Windchill, write a REST ful web service,
which would take the number as input and return the dxf file attached as
content from the drawing over HTTP.

2) Your client side which could be anything from Flex / RIA based service
consumer to excel..Although I have no experience in developing excel as a
web service consumer but a quick search revealed that it should be quite
easy " by using a specialized web service add-in and by writing a small
amount of macro code. The first step is to download the Office Web Services
Toolkit, a free add-in that gives you the ability to call remote web
services from inside an Office document. To download the toolkit, surf to
the Microsoft Download Center and search for Office Web Services Toolkit.
You'll see two different versions: one that's designed for Office XP and
another that works with Office 2003. Once you install the toolkit, you're
ready to web-enable your worksheets." In other versions of excel the
approach might differ...

Regards
Shudh Datta
Shudh@shudh.me
——--------
Written on Droid
S
ssenthil1-Visitor
1-Visitor
January 25, 2012
Hi Bernard

OOTB package seems to be best approach for meeting your requirements. You
can keep track of the packages you shared with your manufacturer.

Please find the attached for another custom approach. All the drawing
numbers can be collected in a flat file and the flat file can be uploaded
into Windchill for downloading the drawings dxfs.

This approach is very handy if you want to navigate associations for
downloading the content.





Thank you and have a great time.

Best Regards

Swamy Senthil

Principal Solutions Architect, Swasen Inc

swamy.senthil@swasen.com(Email); 909 800 8423(M); 973 324 2729(W); 866
908 6561(F);




D
dwilliams1-Visitor
1-Visitor
January 25, 2012
Hi Bernard,

We had a similar requirement but it was for documents. I wrote a query
in report manager and embedded that query into excel. This allows the
users to query Windchill and download the content without having to go
to the information page for each object.



I'm using VB to control the buttons (Run Report, Clear, Download All
Content). This should be easy to re-create for EPMDocument attachments.







Let me know if you're interested in this option and I'll send you some
more detail.



Thank you,

Dax Williams
Engineering E-Tools Administrator
GE Healthcare OEC

Surgery
-


S
sdrzewiczewski10-Marble
10-Marble
January 26, 2012
Are these DXF files the drawing file or visualization representations? Are
you using WTParts as well?



I wrote a VB application that takes the .zip/.jar file from the WTPart
Export command. From a Part's details page click the Actions menu and Click
Export. One of the options has the option do download the Cad data as well.



My little application extracted the zip/jar,

Copied the part files to their own folder and renamed them with version and
iteration

Move the documents to their own folder

Found all the representation.jar files that were primary content of drawing
objects and extracted the PDFs to their own folder.



We happen to publish our Pro/E drawings to PDF.



This was relatively easy to do and more could probably be done with it, but
I don't have the time or need to expand it. I'm hoping that improvements in
Packages in 10 will negate the need for this tool to survive our upgrade.



Steve D.




B
BernardWielfaer1-VisitorAuthor
1-Visitor
January 26, 2012

Hi Shudh,


This seems to be a decent solution but requires heavy knowledge of the insides of Windchill which I do not have actually.


Can you shed some light on the REST full web service that needs to be written at the Windchill side ?


Best regards,


Bernard Wielfaert


Software Engineering


LVD Company NV Belgium

B
BernardWielfaer1-VisitorAuthor
1-Visitor
January 26, 2012

Hi Dax,


Yes, that sounds as a possible solution. Please send me more details.


Best regards,


Bernard Wielfaert


Software Engineering
LVD Company NV
Belgium

B
BernardWielfaer1-VisitorAuthor
1-Visitor
January 26, 2012

Hi Swamy,


Thanks for your reply.
I gave the "packages" a try but find that there is still much operations (clicking and searching) involved before one can send a package.
Working with Excel enables also the possibility that the numbers are imported from an ERP system, so we prefer to work with Excel.

Best regards,


Bernard Wielfaert
Software Engineering
LVD Company NV

B
BernardWielfaer1-VisitorAuthor
1-Visitor
January 26, 2012

Hi Stephen,


The dxf file is a secondary contents attachment to the drawing, seeattached picture. We are using WTParts as well. The drawing and 3Dmodel are associated the the WTPart.


Best regards,


Bernard Wielfaert
Software Engineering
LVD Company NV

J
jkent1-Visitor
1-Visitor
January 26, 2012
We do something similar. Wrote a Java application that allows the user to enter a pro e file name. The application searches the database for the product view files then copies them from the vault to the local machine renames them and launches Product View. We also have one that searches for DXF files since we publish to DXF.


Joe Kent
Engineering Systems Administrator
R&D/Leverage
Structural Brand Development / Mold Manufacturing
"With Us, Ideas Take Shape"
S
sdrzewiczewski10-Marble
10-Marble
January 26, 2012
What I don't like about my approach is that user's have to do the export. I'm sure I could write code to do that, but for the use case it didn't make sense. But the positive side is you get all the children's cad, docs and viewables in one download.

Steve D.

Sent from my iPad

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