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NickD10-Marble
10-Marble
August 3, 2016
Question

What are the differences between Watermarks and Stamps on PDFs ?

  • August 3, 2016
  • 1 reply
  • 7167 views

We have configured and customised Windchill PDMLink to show some of the CAD Document information on native MCAD drawings created with Creo Parametric and SolidWorks, by using a combination of implicit mapping of Attributes and customised copies of the "download delegate" and the Promotion workflows.  At the end of the workflows, the Lifecycle state changes and the drawings get re-published by WVS and the cadworkers, to make new PDFs showing the latest version, Lifecycle state, etc.  Hence both the native CAD drawings and the PDF viewable copies show exactly the same information in the drawing title block.

The same behaviour is not possible for ECAD applications, such as Creo Schematic or PCBCAD tools from eg. Mentor Graphics, because they have a set of native files that get ZIPed up to make the ECAD Document primary attachments, and the viewables are (typically) made on the client-side automatically during the check-in process.  Hence there is no mechanism for sharing Attributes & values between Windchill WGM and the native ECAD drawing files, and no sensible way to re-publish the viewable copies after approval in order to show the new version and state.

Following discussions with PTC and our VAR, and as I have described on another recent posting (add cross-ref. here ...), it seems the best solution for ECAD would be to add watermarks or stamps to the PDFs (copies of drawings, etc, attached to ECAD Derived documents) in order to add and show the missing metadata.  I have been searching the PTC websites and the Internet for information about the various ways this might be achieved, and found quite a lot of it is confusing  - as the terms watermark and stamp sometimes get mixed up.  I have even read about some PDF stamping tools that apply watermarks, and vice versa !

Can anyone confirm or clarify the following tentative conclusions :

I think that stamps may be more versatile than watermarks, as they may be more easily sized and positioned to fill in a title block on different sizes of drawing sheet (A4, A3, A2, A1, A0) ?

I think that stamps are applied on top of the visible information, and that watermarks are applied behind the visible information, and that both can be made opaque or translucent ?

I think that stamps can be omitted when printing PDFs but that watermarks cannot as long as they were created with the relevant options set to prevent them being hidden ?

I think that the watermarking functionality in WVS only works on files viewed in Creo View, and that if a PDF viewable is downloaded it will not show that watermark ?

There are a few, possibly several, third party tools for adding watermarks and/or stamps to PDFs, and of particular interest are the ones that can be used from the command line (using java or javascript, as these might be used in workflows or perhaps with the WWGMTK...), from companies that provide add-ons or consultancy services for Windchill, as mentioned by other users on this forum (eg. Fishbowl, Najanaja, Wincom).  Can anyone describe how they have used any of these tools with the ECAD WGM and PCBCAD applications ?

Nick

1 reply

T
23-Emerald IV
TomU23-Emerald IV
23-Emerald IV
August 3, 2016

No idea on the ECAD stuff, but I can confirm your last point:

I think that the watermarking functionality in WVS only works on files viewed in Creo View, and that if a PDF viewable is downloaded it will not show that watermark ?

Without either republishing (Fishbowl) or on-demand marking (Wincom), the PDF files downloaded from Windchill will not have any watermark or stamp applied to them.

N
NickD10-MarbleAuthor
10-Marble
August 5, 2016

For some reason I cannot edit my original posting to add the cross-reference link, so here it is :

using Windchill Attributes from ECAD Docs on Mentor Graphics drawings ?

Given the ECAD Document structure provides a choice of possible storage locations for PDF files - as either secondary attachments on ECAD Documents or primary attachments on ECAD Derived documents - the on-demand marking method from Wincom appears to offer the most comprehensive solution, but are there alternatives ?

If we put some dumb text in title block area of our native ECAD drawings to say something like "this is an uncontrolled working copy, only PDFs from Windchill will show current version number and state", then could we hide that with a PDF stamp that has a solid white background, text labels and dynamic text showing <WC_attributes> in the foreground ?

T
23-Emerald IV
TomU23-Emerald IV
23-Emerald IV
August 5, 2016

If we put some dumb text in title block area of our native ECAD drawings to say something like "this is an uncontrolled working copy, only PDFs from Windchill will show current version number and state", then could we hide that with a PDF stamp that has a solid white background, text labels and dynamic text showing <WC_attributes> in the foreground ?

No idea.  Seems feasible.  I'd suggest talking directly to Simon at Wincom or Rick at Fishbowl.

Slightly off topic, you said the following:

We have configured and customised Windchill PDMLink to show some of the CAD Document information on native MCAD drawings created with Creo Parametric and SolidWorks, by using a combination of implicit mapping of Attributes and customised copies of the "download delegate" and the Promotion workflows.  At the end of the workflows, the Lifecycle state changes and the drawings get re-published by WVS and the cadworkers, to make new PDFs showing the latest version, Lifecycle state, etc.  Hence both the native CAD drawings and the PDF viewable copies show exactly the same information in the drawing title block.

I'm aware of mapping additional Windchill attributes via the download delegate, but I didn't think these values would automatically appear inside the Creo models unless manually added first (like the system attributes do.)  How are you displaying the approver on the drawing during republishing if the corresponding Creo parameter isn't already present?

Thanks.

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