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canderson10-Marble
10-Marble
January 8, 2013
Question

Windchill and Documents

  • January 8, 2013
  • 8 replies
  • 1522 views

Why has PTC not integrated all other documents to the WGM? Saving documents to your harddrive an uploadin them is a risk of populating the wrong data. If WGM can handle PRO/E data why would it be difficult to managae documents... .doc, .xls etc.

8 replies

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SteveVinyard1-Visitor
1-Visitor
January 8, 2013
Desktop Integration in WC10+. A great tool now that it has matured and most of the bugs are worked out.

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Steve Vinyard
Application Engineer
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sm_011-Visitor
1-Visitor
January 9, 2013

Great subject. This is indeed in the backlog and a project we'd really like to get started with as soon as possible. There are some challenges that need to be considered, but this is not impossible. Hopefully this will be one of the key topics discussed at the January TC sessions during the Document Management break out.

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sm_011-Visitor
1-Visitor
January 9, 2013

If this is a topic you're interested in, please vote it up on the PTC Community Idea list.


http://communities.ptc.com/ideas/2197

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canderson10-MarbleAuthor
10-Marble
January 9, 2013

Desktop Integration is weak even if bug free. It is not a true Data Base Managment tool if you have to export data outside Windchill and Import it back in. I was for sure that by now PTC would have integrated documens into the WGM. This is a truely full functional Data Managment Application. Desktop Integration introduces a higher level of risk relative to uploading the wrong data.

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SteveVinyard1-Visitor
1-Visitor
January 9, 2013
Carl have you used the DTI on WC10/10.1??

No need to import/export, if you are doing that then a little training will help get you to a better method. I can find what I want, open it directly from my Windchill drive, edit it and simply hit check in. Done. Way faster than WGM and MUCH easier for non-CAD users than using a WGM. DTI is important as Windchill is far from an Engineering only tool.

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Steve Vinyard
Application Engineer
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SteveVinyard1-Visitor
1-Visitor
January 9, 2013
Check-in and hit the "Keep Checked Out" button. That will lock it to you but also save your changes to the server. I can see value in having an "upload" button in there to do the same.

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Steve Vinyard
Application Engineer
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DaveEngel1-Visitor
1-Visitor
January 10, 2013
I agree Windchill's documentation management capabilities need improvement. Having transitioned from Intralink 3.4 to now PDMLink 10.1 our users really miss the ability to manage documents in workspaces. The workspace is nice because objects in there never leave the system and you can tell if objects are out of date.

Working only with the browser and downloading documents to a hard drive folder requires extreme discipline from the users or wrong versions can be uploaded. Plus you can't tell when downloaded documents are out of date.

Desktop integration is not a silver bullet either. DI only works with Microsoft Office, so if you are using the browser and DI you must have a good understanding of Windchill preferences, especially when working on Office and non Office formats. The way the Windows Explorer view into Windchill via DI shows multiple revisions of documents is confusing. DI does not work if a folder or file in a folder contains an ampersand (&).

With all due respect: If PTC or PTC's VARs don't understand Windchill's documentation management shortcomings, then they don't understand the needs of their customers. I know firsthand how these shortcomings make user adoption and expansion of this tool very difficult in my organization.

Even our Engineers who use Creo/AutoCAD etc. make documents. Actually they make lots of documents, more documents than drawings. The way Windchill treats WTDocuments different from EPMDocuments makes the system hard to use. If the system would just allow management of WTDocuments in workspaces (just like EPMDocuments) our users would be much happier with Windchill.

v/r
Dave Engel
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STEVEG21-Topaz I
21-Topaz I
January 15, 2013

Documents are still being imported/exported in WC 10.0 M040. If you are talking about browsing through Windows Explorer it is still exporting it. DTI just doesn't ask you where to download it. If you don't specify a location in your prefrences then it puts in in your profile directory on your C drive.


What about files other than Office files? How are they checked in? We have some Mathcad files. There is no check in for that in the program.

In Reply to Steve Vinyard:


Carl have you used the DTI on WC10/10.1??

No need to import/export, if you are doing that then a little training will help get you to a better method. I can find what I want, open it directly from my Windchill drive, edit it and simply hit check in. Done. Way faster than WGM and MUCH easier for non-CAD users than using a WGM. DTI is important as Windchill is far from an Engineering only tool.

[cid:image001.gif@01CDEE4D.E6034980]

Steve Vinyard
Application Engineer
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