Windchill Tips

When there are a large number of objects in a Windchill workspace, it is difficult to identify the object representing the top-level object of a large assembly without any clue of its identity information.With the same or similar intent, the featured object live has been provided to restrict the number of objects displayed in the workspace table and display only those objects that are likely to be of value or use to you. Windchill automatically sets the featured state of certain objects in the workspace. Objects automatically set to the featured state by Windchill have:been initially selected for Add to Workspace or Check Out actions.been previously checked out.been modified, either locally or in the server-side workspace.drawings included for objects already selected.been previously opened in the CAD tool (embedded browser only).From Windchill 11.0 M020, a new “top level objects list” view is available in the Windchill workspace that filters out child objects and displays only top lev

Example of using Part Compare with and showing how Show Only Differences works   (view in My Videos)

An example of uploading multiple representations to one CreoView session rather then having to start new sessions for each one.   I was adding as a comment on a Product Idea but it was not letting embed it so I added this a separate video and linked it.  The idea is the following:     (view in My Videos)    

Recently a customer asked if it were possible to disable Owner association, and instead have the system default to using Contributing Image association between WTParts and CAD Documents.  I figured there might be others interested so I thought I would post the solution, as the steps to achieve this desired behavior might not be entirely obvious. Before doing so, however, I have to give credit to my colleague, Jennifer Pierron, for providing me with these steps. Here we go… In this case, the goal is disable Owner association for CAD assemblies and parts and display Contributing Image as the default association type in the Edit/Auto Associate UI.  You configure a set of Site preferences to accomplish this task.  I repeat - Site preferences.  These preferences cannot be set on a per-user or organization level basis. They apply across your entire installation. First, you need to establish which attributes you want to pass from CAD Documents to WTPart via the Contributin

  Have you had a chance to learn about PTC Navigate yet? Did you know that PTC Navigate provides universal data access? Any stakeholder in the product’s lifecycle can access the latest, most accurate product information to drive better product decisions – with a user experience that is as simple and straightforward as the average smartphone app.   Join us on Tuesday, October 25th, at 1:00pm EST for the live webcast, “PTC Navigate: Easy Access to Enterprise Product Data”, to see a demonstration of how intuitive and easy to use PTC Navigate role-based apps are to: View documents. View drawings. View requirements. View part properties. View parts lists. View part structures. View design files. View and measure in 3D.   Don’t miss this opportunity for a live Q&A with PTC Experts, Chris Bergquist, Senior Solutions Director, PLM, and Steve Partridge, Director Solutions Management. REGISTER NOW   Are you already a customer using Windchill 10.2 or higher? If so, yo

Starting in Windchill 10.2 M020, security labels and their values can be displayed in your workspace views.  If you have security labels configured, you are now able to add security labels to your workspace table views, just like any other attribute.   You do this by creating a new table view in your workspace.  In the New View wizard, add your security labels as part of the Set Column Display (step 4).  This can be done by either adding the “All Security Labels” from the "Available Columns" list on the left over to the “Selected Columns” list on the right. This, as the name suggests, adds all of your defined security labels into your table view in one step.  Alternatively, you can select individual security labels by name from the Available Columns list as shown in the following figure with the security label “Training Required” moved over to the Selected Columns list. Now that your workspace table view is saved to include your security labels, you are able

Prior to Windchill 11.0: Required using the same Windchill Workgroup Manager CPS on both the server and client machines.   Windchill 11.0 M010 Onwards: You can use different CPS levels on the Windchill server and client machines within the same maintenance release. Workgroup Manager will now check version compatibility at the Windchill maintenance version level; not at the CPS level. Windchill Workgroup Manager is no longer installed from the Windchill server. A company now has the flexibility to have their end users at desired CPS levels and still connect to a single Windchill server.   For example, the following scenario is supported. A company has Windchill 11.0 M010 CPS05 server and user ‘A’ can connect to the Windchill server with Windchill Workgroup Manager 11.0 M010 CPS03 and user ‘B’ can connect to the same server with Windchill Workgroup Manager 11.0 M010 CPS07.   Illustrated below is the supported configuration.             &nb

Prior to Windchill 11.0: Required using the same Windchill Workgroup Manager CPS on both the server and client machines.   Windchill 11.0 M010 Onwards: You can use different CPS levels on the Windchill server and client machines within the same maintenance release. Workgroup Manager will now check version compatibility at the Windchill maintenance version level; not at the CPS level. Windchill Workgroup Manager is no longer installed from the Windchill server. A company now has the flexibility to have their end users at desired CPS levels and still connect to a single Windchill server.   For example, the following scenario is supported. A company has Windchill 11.0 M010 CPS05 server and user ‘A’ can connect to the Windchill server with Windchill Workgroup Manager 11.0 M010 CPS03 and user ‘B’ can connect to the same server with Windchill Workgroup Manager 11.0 M010 CPS07.   Illustrated below is the supported configuration.             &nb

In my last blog post Productivity Enhancements on Windows Explorer Integration for Windchill Desktop Integration 10.2, Part I I discussed the possibilities and enhancements around the Windchill Documents system folder in the Windows Explorer. This blog will show you how easy it is to display Windchill Meta data information in the Windows Explorer Integration. I will also discuss the integrated Windchill search and how leverage the Windchill Index Search functionality.   View Windchill Information   Windchill metadata information of your documents can be displayed in the Windows Explorer without opening a browser to access the Windchill web application. Even applying filters is possible. To do so, you have to navigate from the Windchill Documents node to the context that you are interested. On the right hand pane you will see the stored documents. You may add or remove attributes by right-clicking a Windows Explorer column heading to see a drop down menu of additional columns

In my last blog post Productivity Enhancements on Windows Explorer Integration for Windchill Desktop Integration 10.2, Part I I discussed the possibilities and enhancements around the Windchill Documents system folder in the Windows Explorer. This blog will show you how easy it is to display Windchill Meta data information in the Windows Explorer Integration. I will also discuss the integrated Windchill search and how leverage the Windchill Index Search functionality.   View Windchill Information   Windchill metadata information of your documents can be displayed in the Windows Explorer without opening a browser to access the Windchill web application. Even applying filters is possible. To do so, you have to navigate from the Windchill Documents node to the context that you are interested. On the right hand pane you will see the stored documents. You may add or remove attributes by right-clicking a Windows Explorer column heading to see a drop down menu of additional columns

In Windchill 10.2 a lot of effort has been made to enhance and simplify the user experience when working with WTDocuments from your Microsoft Windows Desktop. In this blog I will show you some of the enhancements and how they can significantly simplify your interaction with documents stored in your company’s Windchill system.   Windows Explorer Integration   The PTC Windchill Desktop Integration plugin adds the Windchill Documents system folder to your local environment. You can you use that Windows Explorer Integration to find, open, access and download Windchill documents without the need to open the Windchill web application in a browser.   This will give you a variety of ways to easily access and interact with documents just like they had been stored on your local system:   by double clicking on a file in the Windows Explorer by using the context (right mouse button) menu on the Windchill node, any context folder or document in the Windows Explorer by the File

PTC is happy to announce the new HTML5 based drag-n-drop file upload utility with Windchill 10.2_M020. This new utility will replace the existing Java based drop target and give people a much simpler and more intuitive way to upload new documents and attachments. This video demonstrates how easy it is to create a single document and its associated attachments using the new drag-n-drop upload utility.   This video does not contain audio, yet...     Unable to play video. Please try again later.(view in My Videos)

I will provide simple troubleshooting techniques that will assist you in identifying potential access related issues in your Windchill system.  Have you ever wondered: Why am I facing a NotAuthorizedException? Why are some Windchill objects not findable or accessible for me even I think I am having appropriate access permissions? Let’s get started.   Understanding Domains and Access Control   Windchill system behavior is based on a context or container model. The site context represents the system as a whole, whereas an Organization is a component of the Site and Products, Libraries, Projects and Programs are part of the Organization. Each of these contexts uses a cabinet to store data and system objects. Cabinets are associated with Windchill objects called Domain which store policies and access rules.   The chart below illustrates the default Domain Architecture; for a more detailed description please view article CS212423 in our PTC Support Knowledge Base. &nbs

Have you ever had an issue in Windchill for which you had to raise an Enterprise Down (EDOWN) case with PTC Technical Support? An EDOWN situation is the equivalent of an emergency room need: the Windchill server is down or unresponsive, productivity is crippled and the user community is impatiently waiting for updates on what’s going on and when the server is back up. It’s a pretty stressful environment. Having a support contract and the possibility of raising EDOWN cases is good to fall back on, but it’s similar to having doctors and dentists around: it’s comforting to know that they are there, but we’d rather prevent the need of their services in the first place. This is what this post is about.   General preventative measures We started doing analyses of Enterprise Down cases on a quarterly basis to get a better understanding of the underlying causes and see if we could work out some common practices that specifically targets these causes. Product improvements is one aspect tha

This is a quick video tip demonstrating how to add the Attachment and Structure column indicators to the folder browser in Windchill 10.2. These columns are not on by default and often go unnoticed since there is such a long list of columns that can be displayed. When added, any document containing Attachments or Structure will be identified by either the Attachment or Structure icon in the respective column. The icons are links which will bring you directly to the Content tab or the Structure tab.     (view in My Videos)

This video highlights many of the new features and capabilities available with Windchill's Desktop Integration (DTI) and Windows Explorer. Watch the video to see all the exciting new capabilities such as simplified connection, container filtering, Windchill actions in the Right Mouse Button (RMB) context menu, detail view configuration, sorting and filtering, drag-n-drop updates, simple and indexed search and the new document comparison.   This video does not contain audio, yet...     (view in My Videos)

This is the HTML5 drag-n-drop file upload in Windchill 10.2_M020. This will replace the Java drop target giving people a much simpler and intuitive way to upload new documents and attachments. This video demonstrates how easy it is to create a single document and its associated attachments using the new drag-n-drop capability on MacOS with Safari. This is supported on Windows with Firefox and Chrome, but not with Internet Explorer yet. This video does not contain audio.

PTC is happy to announce the new HTML5 based drag-n-drop file upload utility with Windchill 10.2_M020. This new utility will replace the existing Java based drop target and give people a much simpler and more intuitive way to upload new documents and attachments. This video demonstrates how easy it is to create a single document and its associated attachments using the new drag-n-drop upload utility on MacOS with Safari.   This video does not contain audio.     Unable to play video. Please try again later.(view in My Videos)

This is a quick video showing how easy it is to use the built in drag-n-drop features of Firefox and Chrome to upload files in Windchill. This video demonstrates how to create both a single document or mulitple documents using simple drag-n-drop operations.     (view in My Videos)

PTC is happy to announce the new HTML5 based drag-n-drop file upload utility with Windchill 10.2_M020. This new utility will replace the existing Java based drop target and give people a much simpler and more intuitive way to upload new documents and attachments. This video demonstrates how easy it is to add multiple attachments using the new drag-n-drop upload utility.   This video does not contain audio, yet...   (view in My Videos)

The following video illustrates some of the workspace upload improvements expected with PTC Windchill 10.2.   (view in My Videos)

This Rehosting Utility demo focuses on rehosting a CentOS based Windchill 10.1 clustered environment to another cluster. It also discusses some handy shortcuts that can be used when rehosting clusters to reduce the runtime of the utility.     (view in My Videos)

Hi Guys,I am wondering if anyone here has a good maintenance checklist I could have. I am looking for a good routine I can model mine after.Thanks a million!