ghost objects

Ghost objects are a pain in the ass in Windchill, some make since others don’t and shouldn’t happen but they do and you just have to find a workaround like everything else in Windchill. I will explain what we have seen, how they were created, and how we resolved the problems they created. Receiving machined part files or assemblies containing machined parts from other companies that use Pro/Engineer. Basically if they used Inheritance Feature or something like that to create the machining, when the file is Backed Up it does not include the casting automatically. It will allow you to open the machining when you try to but give you a warning. Now save that to your Workspace and Walla you have a Ghost File! To fix this, either contact the customer and ask for the casting model, save it to your Workspace and you’re good to go. Unfortunately most customers are not that accommodating and will not take the time to go back and send you the casting. So, for these set to No Server and then create an empty part with the same name, set back to the Server, and save to Workspace. You should get a warning that the same object exists, override it and save anyways. This will change your Ghost Object into the part the machining was looking for and then you can check in. Bringing in files from outside of Windchill that were Backed up to a drive can cause a random Ghost File once in a while. We see it with formats more that anything else for some reason. Also switching back and forth between Workspaces will sometimes cause it. We have users exit Pro/E and then re-launch Pro before switching Workspaces, this has solved many headaches. Basically if you have a Ghost file the first thing I always do is put a check mark in front of it and select Add to Workspace. Then next page that comes up is your tell tale of what to do next. If the file truly exists then this page will show you what it found on the server and let you download/add to workspace over the Ghost file. It is not always this easy but often it is. If it does not exist, that is when we create the empty file with the same name. Yes, it fills up the vault but it has not caused us any issues so far and we have been on Windchill for 3 years. The most irritating case of Ghost Files getting created is when a user has an assembly that has been saved to their Workspace and I can’t remember but I think maybe even uploaded but not Check In. Then someone changes their mind and the assembly changes. The user has to delete a part out of the assembly and add in a different part. The part that they deleted is not going to ever be used so they remove it from their Workspace and move on. Now when they go to check in it fails and come to find out there is a Ghost File in the Workspace with the name of the part they deleted from the assembly and removed from the Workspace. If you were to do a search on this in Windchill it does not exist anywhere. If you go into the assembly and look through the model tree or BOM it does not exist. So what gives? I then take and back-up the assembly into a temporary folder out on the local hard drive and find that its not there either. So I open the assembly file in a text editor do a search for the file and it comes up as existing within the file. Age old problem with PTC, their files, they don’t totally clean up themselves. With this all being said, it appears that Windchill digs deep into the Assembly file and finds this one line within the file that shows this deleted file number/name and treats it as a part that it needs. Needless to say there is nothing that can be done since you can no longer edit these files. So the only workaround that I have found is to create a empty file with the same name or find the original file in the users cache and bring it back into the Workspace. Sometimes we end up renaming the file to something like remove_�file name� hoping that maybe in upcoming releases of Windchill we can actually get rid of these unnecessary files, I have a folder full of these. I know that was a mouthful but I hope it sheds some light on Ghost files. If none of this helps let me know and I will see if I can help. Craig Clough CAD Administrator