Skip to main content
KeeperOfThe7Ks10-Marble
10-Marble
September 21, 2026
Question

Intermittent issues in a CAD/PDM integrated environment

We are experiencing several intermittent issues in a CAD/PDM integrated environment and would like to understand whether other users have encountered similar behavior.

The main symptoms reported by users are:

  • Sometimes a Save operation does not appear to work correctly.
  • Sometimes, after Check-in, locally modified data is replaced by the unmodified data from the commonspace.
  • Sometimes drawings are published with incorrect attributes: the drawing itself shows the correct attribute values, but the published PDF contains different/old values.

The issues are intermittent and do not occur consistently on every model or operation.

During our investigation, we have observed that some of these cases appear to correlate with CAD structure/dependency processing performed during PDM operations. In particular:

  • CAD structures can contain external references or other inter-document relationships.
  • During operations such as Save, Check-in or Save As, the integration traverses the CAD structure and its relationships.
  • We have seen API/COM-related errors while retrieving relationship or occurrence information during this traversal.
  • Activating additional assembly components can expose a significantly larger number of relationship-processing errors in the logs.
  • However, the Check-in itself may still complete successfully, with no obvious indication to the user that something went wrong.

At this stage, we do not know whether the API errors are the root cause, a consequence of a CAD model condition, or an integration-handling issue.

Has anyone experienced similar symptoms, particularly:

  1. a Save operation that does not persist the expected CAD changes;
  2. local modifications being replaced by the previous commonspace version after Check-in;
  3. published drawings/PDFs containing stale or incorrect attributes while the CAD drawing itself shows the correct values;
  4. successful Check-ins despite incomplete or inconsistent relationship processing?

We would be particularly interested in similar real-world experiences, known limitations, configuration recommendations, or diagnostic approaches.

Thanks in advance for any feedback.

8 replies

Dobi17-Peridot
17-Peridot
September 22, 2026

​@KeeperOfThe7Ks are you working in Creo or a non-PTC CAD when you’re running into these issues?

Translate
KeeperOfThe7Ks10-MarbleAuthor
10-Marble
September 23, 2026

Hi, we are working with a non-PTC CAD system.

Translate
Dobi17-Peridot
17-Peridot
September 23, 2026

I’ve seen this type of behavior in the past with incorrectly setup cache with Solidworks where some data is in the workspace and some isn’t.

NX can also be odd at times with external references and wave links but that’s mostly handled by Windchill if all of the data is on the servers. 

Are you doing multiple different CAD tools or just a single non-PTC CAD? What does your cache setup in environment variables look like? Is there a practice of referencing external files?

Translate
lhoogeveen17-Peridot
17-Peridot
September 25, 2026

My best guesses:

  • Windchill has a preference/setting called “Update Overwrite Local Content” (located in the Workgroup Manager Client section) to control the Update command default to Reuse or Download files when the user has local workspace modifications. In my opinion, No/Reuse is a terrible default value, and admins should lock this setting to Yes/Download.

    • Yes = Download as default:

      • Download will make the Update command use the latest file(s) from Commonspace. If a user Updates a locally modified file, any local changes will be gone. We tell our users to check out before making changes. If you had changes you wanted, then you should’ve checked the object(s) out so someone else couldn’t make changes.
      • This makes it harder to check in old versions (which is a good thing!). Reuse can still be set manually in the Update menu and is best left to power users / admins who wish to restore an old version of a file.
    • No = Reuse as default
      • Reuse creates different Update behavior based on the question “Do local workspace file(s) contain modifications?”:
        • No workspace modifications: - Commonspace file(s) and metadata will be downloaded.
        • Workspace modifications: - Only Commonspace metadata will be updated, and the local modifications will be kept. This will enable the old file(s) to be easily and accidentally checked in as users think they updated to the Commonspace file(s). Most users do not understand this and easily/accidentally checking in old versions is not something a PDM system should want.
          • Note: Sometimes native CAD will modify itself upon open/regen if there’s external references, etc. which can modify the files in the workspace, making this situation worse. Smart Locking can help reduce this but reduces effectiveness of external references.
    • Additional info/preferences can be found in this article: https://www.ptc.com/en/support/article/CS135234
  • Published PDF vs what’s displayed in native CAD (ex: Creo, SolidWorks, etc). The default way to publish a PDF is to do ‘As Stored’ which means publishing the viewables (PDF, etc.) as checked in. Native CAD will regen/rebuild/render the latest attributes dynamically which can create some confusion as users think “Native CAD looks like I want the PDF to look” which is often different than as checked in. Some attributes like Lifecycle state can be updated as a new PDF publish occurs. When using ‘As Stored’, you will need to check in the native CAD drawing again to update the PDF.
Translate
KeeperOfThe7Ks10-MarbleAuthor
10-Marble
September 28, 2026

Thank you for both replies — together they give us several very concrete things to check.

We are currently using Solid Edge as the CAD system integrated with Windchill, and I'm also introducing SOLIDWORKS for another team in the same environment, so your point about cache separation in a multi-CAD setup is particularly relevant.

I will check how the WGM cache/workspace locations are configured for each CAD system, and whether the environment variables consistently point to the physical locations actually used by the CAD applications.

Your description — WGM pointing to one physical cache location while the CAD application modifies files in another — is very close to one of the behaviors we're investigating: the file on disk contains the latest modifications, WGM doesn't flag it as modified, and a subsequent Check-in completes and increments the iteration while Commonspace content stays unchanged.

We plan to reproduce this first with a fully self-contained structure (no external references), compare it against the structures where we currently see the problem, and monitor the physical file paths against the WGM workspace/cache configuration during both tests.

The "Update Overwrite Local Content" setting is very relevant to our second issue. I will check the current configuration and the actual Reuse vs. Download behavior in our environment, in particular whether an Update can leave local modifications in place while only refreshing Commonspace metadata — which could lead to an old local version being checked in later without the user noticing.

The publishing point is relevant to our third issue: we see cases where the native drawing shows updated attribute values while the published PDF still shows the previous ones. I will check whether our publishing process uses "As Stored" and which iteration/content the publisher is actually using.

A fourth area we're tracking separately: during monitoring we've seen API/COM-related errors while Solid Edge/WGM processes relationship and occurrence information, and the error count increases noticeably when additional assembly components are active. We're treating this as potentially related to the external-references question, but not yet confirmed.

Two questions, if you have a moment: with "As Stored", is the expected flow that the CAD drawing must be checked in and then explicitly republished for the PDF to reflect the new attributes — and is that republish triggered automatically by the check-in, or is it a separate manual action?

And for the multi-CAD cache setup, are there specific WGM environment variables or configuration points you'd check first?

Thanks again — this gives us a clear set of things to verify before we draw any conclusions.

Translate
Dobi17-Peridot
17-Peridot
September 28, 2026

​@KeeperOfThe7Ks 

https://www.ptc.com/en/support/article/CS44499 goes over how to separate out cache for different applications. That’s your best starting point. 

 

On publishing - In your publish rules you define when you publish from a drawing. In our environment, I publish PDFs on check-in - so every time there’s a new iteration. I only publish 3D models on state change - when they are prepared for release and ultimately released. The idea is that when the data is needed downstream for other functions, the necessary collaterals are available. If you have a file-synced worked, you don’t need to republish to get new updated attributes to update. The worker does that on it’s own. But if you haven’t set up a file-synced worker - then a republish would be necessary. 

Translate
Terms & ConditionsAccessibility statement