Salut tout le Monde,

Est ce que c'est possible de travailler sur une ancien version d'un objet CAD,et pouvoir travailler avec cette objet CAD dans l'état de cette version.

(avec Baseline c'est pas possbile,c'est juste un snapshot)

Mon idée,par exemple je suis dans une version CAD : B.13 ,à partir de cette version est ce que c'est possible de retravailler sur le dessin CAD qui était pour cette version.

J'ai pas envi de tout refaire,donc je préfére de revenir à la version B.12 pour recommencer.

Hello,

Isitpossible to workon anoldversion of aCADobject,andto work withtheCADobject inthe state ofthis release.

(withBaselineisnotpossbile,it's just asnapshot)

My idea, for exampleI'm in aCADVersion:B.13,fromthis version isthatit ispossible toreworktheCADdrawingwasfor this release.

I havenotviedtoredo everything, so Ipreferto return toB.12versionagain.

Autrement: Otherwise :

                         CAD 000000001 A.1

                         CAD 000000001 A.2

                         CAD 000000001 A.3

                                      |

                                      |

                                      v

                         CAD 000000001 B.12   ( Revenir à cette version et travailler avec l'objet CAD de cette version,pas la la derniére version B.13 ...)

                                |                   |

                                |                   |

                                v                  v

        CAD 000000001 B.13       CAD 000000001 B.14

                        |                                   |

                        |                                   |    

                        v                                  v

Merci

Thank you

Hello to all;

I wanted to start this blog to share the success we have had over the last year leveraging Windchill's product structures bill of materials functionality and some customizations with our drawing publishing to provide a single data set for our type design documentation that would be viewable in both the client web browser and the mobile application. December 12th we went live with WTParts, doesn't sound like a big success with just that said. Over the next weeks I will  lay out our old documentation, configuration’s and the issues that surrounded that configuration.

How did the E-BOM help us transform into a single data entry point and single drawing artifact in Windchill? Thanks to the presentation in Boston, System Generated Drawings, I was able to use their concept and apply it to our drawings. Today in our production environment when a drawing is published at the end of the release workflow we are extracting the approver task name and date from the promotion request and the WTPart E-BOM and automatically appending it to the last page of the drawing PDF.

See Attached Drawing Example

One small thing that has an impact for the mobile applications is that we are also generating a PDF with watermarks along with the auto appended  page and attaching it to the drawing object in Windchill as an attachment. Note: The mobile application does not allow you to view the Creo drawings, only 3-D Models, Microsoft files and PDFs. This was not acceptable for our use to justify the deployment of  the mobile apps. With the appended PDF of the drawings  the mobile apps become a viable piece of technology.

Hopefully the following paragraphs will keep you interested. I know there are other companies out there working on this and others that are ready to implement, hopefully people will comment, ask questions and provide lessons learned from their experiences. I am in no way the expert on this topic.

2008 implemented Windchill 8.0 as Data Warehouse for all of our CAD data; (Including: Creo, Microstation, MS Word and MS Excel). At that time our configuration management group set states of files as they were manually released with a paper copy of the ECO. This was a migration from PTC Intralink to Windchill 8.0.

Our drawing package consisted of Creo Parametric 3-D models, 2-D drawings and an Excel spreadsheet for the Parts List fully revision controlled in Windchill. One area of concern with this was anyone viewing the data, had at a minimum, 2 artifacts displaying in the search results that had to be opened and viewed in Creo View to see the whole drawing packet and then had to navigate to the promotion request process tab to view the release information. Also any time a drawing packet was delivered to a supplier multiple artifacts were required to be exported from Windchill for each drawing. In addition when the engineering staff  Revised or Re-Numbered items, multiple artifacts needed to be updated and revisions keep in sync. This created an environment with multiple manual data entry of the same data into different software applications and Windchill UI's.

April of 2013 we worked jointly with the FAA to transition our CM manual paper ECO release processes into Windchill electronic workflows. Most of the workflows were re-configured from the out of the box standard promotion request workflow.

December 12th, 2014 we worked jointly with a consulting services organization and were able to implement WTParts for our 2nd conforming for flight test article aircraft, a new product offering planned for full production in 2015.

So what does this mean and who really cares?

Our aircraft products are world class and highly configurable at the point of sales. From a product structure architecture standpoint they are complex but not overwhelming. Over the next 6 months we will transform the Windchill E-BOM (WTParts) into a configurable product leveraging Windchill’s Options and Variants functionality to generate serialized E-BOMs for sold configurations from the overloaded E-BOM and manage serialized effectivity using Windchill’s Change Objects functionality. This is no longer a dream it will be a reality in a very short time.

The surprising thing is that my implementation team consisted of 1 full time individual (myself), 1 consultant 72 hours billed), 4-5 conference calls with a few of PTC's experts and a couple part time individuals (80 hours billed to project) and a management staff that allowed me to focus on this 100% of my time over the last year.

Below are bullet points of future blog additions I will cover. I will attempt to add these by the dates shown below.

    (12-27-14)   Project Overview, Planning & Actuals

                      Dissecting the System Generated-Appended Page

    (01-06-15)   Required Windchill Re-Configuration to implement WTParts (changes to existing Windchill configurations)

                      Windchill Customizations

    (01-06-15)    Handling Standard Parts, Material Specifications and Reference Specifications

                      Bill of Materials Expectations - how do you get consistency in your data?

    (01-09-15)    Decisions and Why

                      How did we enter 10,000 object line for top level structure

    (01-23-15)   Options and Variant

                      Prodcut Structure Architecture

    (02-13-15)   Configuration Management, Change Objects & Serialized Effectivity

    (03-06-15)   Enterprise System (MES, ERP, CRM) Integration Expectations

I encourage you to interact and ask questions, this is just one method we used and I am sure there are many ways to accomplish this.

Hi All,

I would like to retrieve  Classiffication  attribute details using

Tables:

1.  Part (wt.part.WTPart)

2.  Classification Node (wt.csm.navigation.ClassificationNode)

3.  Reference Value (wt.iba.value. ReferenceValue)

Joins:

1.  Reference Value- IBAHolder Reference- Part

2.  Reference Value- IBAReferenceable Reference- Classification Node

It gives "no rows selected" still attributes are available.

Does same query works in Windchill 10.2?

The ‘Did You Know?’ series focuses on providing PTC Windchill users with informative, “how-to” tips to help them get the most out of their software. Today, PTC application expert John Peng shows us how to integrate features from multiple models using PTC Windchill PDMLink.

Before you begin, follow these five steps to ensure you are properly set-up.

1. Have at least one saved version of the model in PTC Windchill 9.0 M030+ or higher.
2. Create two workspaces that have the same version (in this example it is A.1) of the model added to them.
3. Start PTC Creo Parametric 2.0 linked to one of the workspaces and save a newly modified or different iteration. Repeat for the second workspace.
4. Check-in one of those iterations into PTC Windchill (in this example it is A.2) to make the iteration in the other workspace that is out-of-date.
5. Have PTC Creo Parametric 2.0 tied to the workspace with the out-of-date model.

To help you follow along, shrink the “base model” (version A.2) dialogue box and move it to the upper left hand corner of your screen. Then take the “integrate differences box” and stretch it across the entire bottom half of your screen. Finally, take your current version (the one you are making the changes to), which we’ll call the “comparison model”, and drag it to the upper left hand corner of your screen. It should look something like this.

Now, let's begin the model integration process. First, you'll want to filter for geometry differences by checking “geometry” in the integrate differences box; scroll down to identify the main geometry differences between the base model and the comparison model.     

To bring a feature that's unique to the comparison model over to the base model, simply highlight the row of information for that feature. 

Note: When you highlight a feature row in the integrate differences box, that feature will also highlight in the actual model. 

To keep this change click the “Action” dropdown menu and select “take from comparison model”. Then click “Execute” found at the bottom right hand side of the differences box. You've now brought a feature over from the comparison model to the base model.   

Continue by going down the list - line item by line item - to look at all the differences between the two models. Remember to refresh your screen so that when you click to highlight features, any differences will be graphically pointed out for you in the model as well. As you do this you can decide which features you want to keep and which ones you want to move to the comparison model.  

To recap:

• Highlight the unique feature in the comparison model that you want to keep
• Click the “Action” list dropdown
• Select option for “take from the comparison model”
• Click “Execute” at bottom right side of screen
• Refresh your screen before highlighting your next feature

To walk through these steps following John Peng’s video tutorial in action (“Quick Start to Creating Multiple Models into Single Design), sign-in or create an account on the PTC University Learning Exchange.

The ‘Did You Know?’ series focuses on providing PTC Windchill users with informative, “how-to” tips to help them get the most out of their software. Today, PTC Education Development Manager David Eberle shows us how to create a multi-level BOM (Bill of Material) Compare Report using PTC Windchill PDMLink. The purpose of the multi-level BOM Compare Report is to identify the differences between versions, configurations, and/or unrelated product structures.

Step-By-Step Instructions

Step 1: Access the Report

To start, access the Multi-Level BOM Compare report from the Structure page of any object.

Step 2: Specify a “source” and a “target” Bill of Material

For this type of report a source and a target BOM are required for the comparison. By default the product structure that the report was initiated from is automatically selected as the source for the report. The target BOM must also be specified. Your choices are to search for and select an entirely new BOM, select a specific configuration specification, or select a saved expansion criteria.

Step 3: Understand the final reports

The generated report will look similar to the image below. In this case the BOM comparison was done on an overloaded BOM and the BOM was filtered on specific option choices. The information on the left side pertains to the source BOM and the information on the right side pertains to the target BOM. In the tabulated area, the information shows that there are several components in the source BOM that are not in the target BOM. This type of report is particularly valuable for BOM configuration and interrogation and change audits.

To walk through these steps using David’s original article featured in PTC University Learning Exchange, (“Creating a Multi-Level Bill Of Material Compare Report in Windchill PDMLink”) sign-in or create an account on the PTC University Learning Exchange.

The ‘Did You Know?’ series focuses on providing PTC Windchill users with informative, “how-to” tips to help them get the most out of their software. PTC Windchill includes integrated 3D Model viewing capabilities with PTC Creo View. Today, we will explore the different ways in which you can view and interact with 3D models in PTC Creo View.

Before we get started, it’s worth noting that PTC Creo View allows users to select different 3D scene navigation methods including; “PTC Creo”, “CATIA v5 compatible” and “Product View”. These methods are selectable from the “File -> Options -> General -> Navigation -> Navigation Model” option settings. This article is written using the default setting of “PTC Creo” for the navigational model.

Set-Up

To get started, you’ll need to open a model within PTC Creo View.  To do this, go to “File/Open”, select “All Types” below the “File Type” dropdown, and choose a model.  In this example, we are going to follow along using a chair assembly.  At first, the screen will appear blank. This is the default behavior which  speeds up the part loading process. The model tree on the left allows you to interactively set the visibility of the assembly components. To make the full 3D model appear, select all of the boxes in the left column menu by clicking the top box in the upper corner.  If you want your models to always display when loaded, you can configure this in the Creo View options menus.

When viewing and interacting with 3D models, the most frequently used operations are “rotate”, “pan”, and “scale”.   All of these operations have a virtual camera in common that looks at the 3D models and reflects what it “sees” in the main display window. Let’s experiment with these various viewing options plus a few others.

Rotating/Spinning Chair

Let’s start with “spinning”. To do this, click down on the scroll wheel and move your cursor in the direction that you want the model to rotate. By default, the model will continue to spin. To stop the rotation, click any of the mouse buttons. If you don’t have a scroll wheel mouse (i.e., a laptop) you can use the middle mouse button and trackpad input, as well.

Flying

Next, let’s “fly” about the model. This mode of 3D scene navigation enables you to bring the model closer or farther from your view and to move to the left and right. At first this may seem a little tricky, but once you’ve worked out the basics, it allows you to smoothly interact with and view the model by moving your mouse in the corresponding direction. To familiarize yourself with these motions on screen, right click and hold the mouse button. The cursor changes from the normal 2D arrow to an icon of a spaceship to remind you that you’re in fly mode.  Moving the mouse up  brings  the model  closer to you, moving  it down pushes the model away, moving it right moves the model to the left, and moving the mouse to the left  brings the model to the right.

Panning & Zooming

Next, let’s practice “zooming” (also known as scaling) the view of the model and panning the location of the model.  There are multiple ways to zoom in and out;  the easiest way to is to use the scroll wheel to increase or decrease the scale factor.  Another method is to press and hold the control key while pressing and holding the scroll wheel in place and moving the mouse.  If you don’t have a scroll wheel mouse press and hold the middle mouse button and the control key while providing trackpad input. Note that for all of these methods, the model will zoom away from the current location of the mouse in the view window. So if you want to zoom directly to the center of the model, move the mouse to the center of the window.  Alternatively, you can use the “Zoom Window” feature in the navigation bar. With the mouse in the main 3D viewing pane, use the left mouse button to drag a selection region over the object and then select “Zoom Window.” This will zoom to the selected location and center the view over that region.    If you want to reset the view, use “Zoom All” to make the entire model visible on the screen again. To “pan” the object about the viewing window, press and hold the shift key and the scroll wheel at the same time while moving the mouse. Again, if you do not have a scroll wheel, hold the shift key while holding the middle mouse button and move the mouse or use the trackpad.  

Render Color and Transparency

“Rendering” is the process of making the objects in the 3D world visible. Like an artist renders a painting or drawing, PTC Creo View takes into account object shapes and colors, lighting conditions, and the location of the virtual camera.  There are multiple options for rendering the color and display type. To change the model display, select the “Render Mode” button in the navigation bar.  In this example, I’m changing the chair model from “Shaded” to “Wireframe”. To change the background color in the main window, right click and select “View Settings” at the bottom of the pop-up menu.   This brings up the Options dialog box.  In the left menu column select “Color” below the “Model” header. Within the center menu area, select “Wireframe” as the background (since that is how we are currently rendering), select a color, and then click “Okay” and “Apply”. To change the color back, click “Reset to Default” and click “Apply”. Close out of this screen to return to the main viewing window.

To change the color of the actual model, first change the “Render Mode” back to “Shaded”. Select the entire feature again, right click, and select “Color”. In this example, I am changing my chair from green to black. Should you want to add transparency, highlight all of the features, right click your mouse, and select “Local Display Style” and “Transparent”.

Changing Orientation

Sometimes, it’s useful to look at an object from a very specific set of viewing conditions -- for example, from the side, top down, or off axis. This is known as “changing orientation”. If you wish to change the orientation of the model, select the “Orientation” button in the navigation bar and choose any of the pre-defined options. Alternately, you can customize your orientation by clicking “Customize” and “New”. Then, save the model with a unique name.  Now, no matter how your model is orientated you can always go back to a previously saved orientation. To wrap this up, save the current view of your model by clicking “File”, select “Save Current View As”, select “As an Image File”, and name the model.

To walk through these steps following the PTC University video tutorial in action (An Introduction to Viewing 3D Models in Creo View“), sign-in or create an account on the PTC University Learning Exchange.

Enhancement Request - I would like to send a Windchill document to someone merely for review and approval (i.e. Directors, VP's, etc...) without them having to log in to Windchill for a myriad of reasons.

The solution PTC has designed to send the Primary Business Object (PBO) as an email attachment from a workflow task is completely unusable because attaching the PBO to an email will only occur if the "recipient(s)" are non-Windchill users AND these non-Windchill user email addresses are hard-coded into the workflow task:

How would this work in the real world?  How would you change the recipient distribution? If you provide me the ability to send the PBO as an attachment in my workflow notification robot:

..then don't turn around and make it unusable by requiring hard-coded email addresses in the workflow robot!  Send the PBO as an attachment (if this option is selected in the Attachments tab) to the Role indicated in the Recipients list:

If I have this wrong, please share with the group how your current solution was intended to work.

The ‘Did You Know?’ series focuses on providing PTC Windchill users with informative, “how-to” tips to help them get the most out of their software. Today PTC’s William Gruss shows us how to check-out and modify PTC Creo Parametric CAD documents using PTC Windchill Project Link 10.1.

Let’s say we wanted to increase the pitch of the angled surface on the tip of a part. To do this, the related CAD document needs to be checked-out and the geometry needs to be altered. First, let’s locate the ‘parent assembly’ and ‘dependents’ and check-out the CAD document in one, single operation.

Check-out the Document

To locate the CAD documents, use the “Search” function. Download the assembly and the dependents to the workspace by selecting “Add to Workspace” in the dropdown menu. The “Advanced” tab enables you to visualize the CAD documents marked for download within the workspace as well as enables you to simultaneously accomplish other tasks. Select “Okay” to complete this operation. It should also be noted that you can just as easily use the PTC Windchill "Search" function to achieve this same outcome. 

Modify the Document

You can display the workspace contents by selecting the “Common Folders” menu, then “Workspace”. From here, it’s possible to open the model in PTC Creo Parametric and make the necessary change. In this example, to increase the pitch of the angled surface at the tip of the “Chuck”, you need to modify the D5 dimension that defines the tip geometry. It may be easier to identify this dimension if you switch the display to their symbols by selecting “Model Intent” in the menu and then switch symbols. Save the model to the active workspace then close the model window.

Review and Share

To review these changes within the Workspace contents, refresh the page.  You will notice that the iteration for the CAD document has been incremented.

Let’s verify that the associated WT part has iterated, as well. Use the “Add Objects to Workspace” functionality to locate and display the version of the associated WT part to the latest version of the document. The “Advanced” tab will enable you to display the information about each. Within the “Advanced” menu, select the “Collect the Related Parts” functionality to locate the associated WT part. You will now see that the version of the “Chuck_5-10” WT part matches the version of the “Chuck_5-10 CAD” document. Aternately, you could simply navigate to the WTParts information page to confirm that the it has iterated and is described by the newly checked-in CAD document version. To share these changes with other users, check-in the CAD document again.

To walk through these steps following the PTC University video tutorial in action, sign-in or create an account on the PTC University Learning Exchange.

Hi,

Am new to windchill customization. i tried to create a new wizard in windchill. i made change is action.xml and actiommodel.xml. but it is not reflecting in my UI. i need a steps to create a wizard and what are the files i need to use for that

Salut tout le Monde,

Est ce que c'est possible de travailler sur une ancien version d'un objet CAD,et pouvoir travailler avec cette objet CAD dans l'état de cette version.

(avec Baseline c'est pas possbile,c'est juste un snapshot)

Mon idée,par exemple je suis dans une version CAD : B.13 ,à partir de cette version est ce que c'est possible de retravailler sur le dessin CAD qui était pour cette version.

J'ai pas envi de tout refaire,donc je préfére de revenir à la version B.12 pour recommencer.

Hello,

Isitpossible to workon anoldversion of aCADobject,andto work withtheCADobject inthe state ofthis release.

(withBaselineisnotpossbile,it's just asnapshot)

My idea, for exampleI'm in aCADVersion:B.13,fromthis version isthatit ispossible toreworktheCADdrawingwasfor this release.

I havenotviedtoredo everything, so Ipreferto return toB.12versionagain.

Autrement: Otherwise :

                         CAD 000000001 A.1

                         CAD 000000001 A.2

                         CAD 000000001 A.3

                                      |

                                      |

                                      v

                         CAD 000000001 B.12   ( Revenir à cette version et travailler avec l'objet CAD de cette version,pas la la derniére version B.13 ...)

                                |                   |

                                |                   |

                                v                  v

        CAD 000000001 B.13       CAD 000000001 B.14

                        |                                   |

                        |                                   |    

                        v                                  v

Merci

Thank you

Hello to all;

I wanted to start this blog to share the success we have had over the last year leveraging Windchill's product structures bill of materials functionality and some customizations with our drawing publishing to provide a single data set for our type design documentation that would be viewable in both the client web browser and the mobile application. December 12th we went live with WTParts, doesn't sound like a big success with just that said. Over the next weeks I will  lay out our old documentation, configuration’s and the issues that surrounded that configuration.

How did the E-BOM help us transform into a single data entry point and single drawing artifact in Windchill? Thanks to the presentation in Boston, System Generated Drawings, I was able to use their concept and apply it to our drawings. Today in our production environment when a drawing is published at the end of the release workflow we are extracting the approver task name and date from the promotion request and the WTPart E-BOM and automatically appending it to the last page of the drawing PDF.

See Attached Drawing Example

One small thing that has an impact for the mobile applications is that we are also generating a PDF with watermarks along with the auto appended  page and attaching it to the drawing object in Windchill as an attachment. Note: The mobile application does not allow you to view the Creo drawings, only 3-D Models, Microsoft files and PDFs. This was not acceptable for our use to justify the deployment of  the mobile apps. With the appended PDF of the drawings  the mobile apps become a viable piece of technology.

Hopefully the following paragraphs will keep you interested. I know there are other companies out there working on this and others that are ready to implement, hopefully people will comment, ask questions and provide lessons learned from their experiences. I am in no way the expert on this topic.

2008 implemented Windchill 8.0 as Data Warehouse for all of our CAD data; (Including: Creo, Microstation, MS Word and MS Excel). At that time our configuration management group set states of files as they were manually released with a paper copy of the ECO. This was a migration from PTC Intralink to Windchill 8.0.

Our drawing package consisted of Creo Parametric 3-D models, 2-D drawings and an Excel spreadsheet for the Parts List fully revision controlled in Windchill. One area of concern with this was anyone viewing the data, had at a minimum, 2 artifacts displaying in the search results that had to be opened and viewed in Creo View to see the whole drawing packet and then had to navigate to the promotion request process tab to view the release information. Also any time a drawing packet was delivered to a supplier multiple artifacts were required to be exported from Windchill for each drawing. In addition when the engineering staff  Revised or Re-Numbered items, multiple artifacts needed to be updated and revisions keep in sync. This created an environment with multiple manual data entry of the same data into different software applications and Windchill UI's.

April of 2013 we worked jointly with the FAA to transition our CM manual paper ECO release processes into Windchill electronic workflows. Most of the workflows were re-configured from the out of the box standard promotion request workflow.

December 12th, 2014 we worked jointly with a consulting services organization and were able to implement WTParts for our 2nd conforming for flight test article aircraft, a new product offering planned for full production in 2015.

So what does this mean and who really cares?

Our aircraft products are world class and highly configurable at the point of sales. From a product structure architecture standpoint they are complex but not overwhelming. Over the next 6 months we will transform the Windchill E-BOM (WTParts) into a configurable product leveraging Windchill’s Options and Variants functionality to generate serialized E-BOMs for sold configurations from the overloaded E-BOM and manage serialized effectivity using Windchill’s Change Objects functionality. This is no longer a dream it will be a reality in a very short time.

The surprising thing is that my implementation team consisted of 1 full time individual (myself), 1 consultant 72 hours billed), 4-5 conference calls with a few of PTC's experts and a couple part time individuals (80 hours billed to project) and a management staff that allowed me to focus on this 100% of my time over the last year.

Below are bullet points of future blog additions I will cover. I will attempt to add these by the dates shown below.

    (12-27-14)   Project Overview, Planning & Actuals

                      Dissecting the System Generated-Appended Page

    (01-06-15)   Required Windchill Re-Configuration to implement WTParts (changes to existing Windchill configurations)

                      Windchill Customizations

    (01-06-15)    Handling Standard Parts, Material Specifications and Reference Specifications

                      Bill of Materials Expectations - how do you get consistency in your data?

    (01-09-15)    Decisions and Why

                      How did we enter 10,000 object line for top level structure

    (01-23-15)   Options and Variant

                      Prodcut Structure Architecture

    (02-13-15)   Configuration Management, Change Objects & Serialized Effectivity

    (03-06-15)   Enterprise System (MES, ERP, CRM) Integration Expectations

I encourage you to interact and ask questions, this is just one method we used and I am sure there are many ways to accomplish this.

Hi All,

I would like to retrieve  Classiffication  attribute details using

Tables:

1.  Part (wt.part.WTPart)

2.  Classification Node (wt.csm.navigation.ClassificationNode)

3.  Reference Value (wt.iba.value. ReferenceValue)

Joins:

1.  Reference Value- IBAHolder Reference- Part

2.  Reference Value- IBAReferenceable Reference- Classification Node

It gives "no rows selected" still attributes are available.

Does same query works in Windchill 10.2?

Design reviews often take a lot of preparation. Marking up and annotating a file isn’t that difficult, but sharing your work? Do you have a reliable way to pass on the information to reviewers? For those who use PLM, you might pull the data from the PLM database and then save or print the file. But if you use PTC Creo View with PTC Windchill, there’s an easier way says Matt Sheridan,director of PTC PLM marketing, and presenter at the upcoming PTC Live Global event.

When PTC Creo View is integrated with PTC Windchill, you can easily share your markup data via email with other PTC Windchill users. Here’s how:

1. Find your saved annotation within PTC Windchill.
2. Right-click and from the pull-down menu, select Save Annotation.
3. In the Save Annotation window, click Save as Link.
4. Then click Email filename.

When the recipient clicks the link in the email, PTC Creo View launches with just the content the user needs. Not only does this save time, it ensures anyone who receives your link sees exactly the right information. You can even email animations this way.

Best of all, the data is still hosted within PTC Windchill; so it’s much more secure than sending email files over the network.

Image: Annotations in PTC Creo View

For more insights from Sheridan, look for him this year at PTC Live Global, June 7-10, in Nashville, Tennessee. Sheridan will present two topics, including one about PTC’s just announced new offering, PTC PLM Cloud.  He’ll also talk about how, in a multidisciplinary/multi-CAD environment, an engineering bill of materials is more important than ever.

Matt Sheridan is Director of PLM Product Marketing at PTC.  He’s been part of product development for more than 20 years. Over the years, he helped implement CAD and PLM software at companies like NASA and Lockheed Martin. Today, he is part of PTC’s PLM Segment, defining strategy and positioning of PTC’s PLM solutions. He holds degrees in aerospace and mechanical engineering.

Suppose you want to assemble a spring, rivet or mechanism to an assembly. Often, developers will model different flexed, formed and/or kinematic states of the component in a family table—for example, they might model instances for the different ways a rivet can be formed when assembling sheets of different thicknesses together. The trouble is, if you also work with PTC Windchill and use WTParts, you now have to manually associate each of those formed instances of the component to the WTPart.

There’s a simpler way, says Darcy Parker, PTC product manager. Parker is teaching the course “Advanced PTC Creo Parametric Data Management Processes and Techniques Using PTC Windchill PDMLink 10.2,” at PTC Live Global, June 7-10. In this course, aimed at users who already know the basics of CAD data management, Parker will dive into WTParts and how CAD documents can be associated to WTParts in order to drive their structure.

For springs, rivets or mechanisms, Parker suggests that instead of modeling an instance for each assembled state and associating these instance’s CAD Documents to their WTPart, create a flexible component in PTC Creo Parametric. Dimensions, parameters, and features in a flexible component can vary when assembled so you don’t need separate components for each assembled state. So you only have to  associate the CAD Document to  the WTPart once. And you won’t have to model new assembled states for future assemblies that may use the component.

A component’s flexibility is defined in the Flexibility dialog and there are different ways to get to this.  A common way is to select File > Prepare > Model Properties. In the Model Properties, find the Flexible item under Tools, select Change.  This takes you to the Flexibility dialog where you can define items you want to vary: dimensions, parameters, features, geometric tolerances and/or surface finishes.

Flexible components then appear in the model tree with a special icon, such as and their geometry will vary according to the assembly constraints and the variable items defined in the component’s Flexibility property.

For more about working with CAD Documents and WTParts, attend Darcy’s class at PTC Live Global this June in Nashville, Tennessee.

Darcy Parker began his career at PTC 15 years ago as a technical support engineer. Since then, he has filled roles as a consultant, developmentmanager, process master architect, and product manager. Parker is best known today for his work with the Expert Modeling Analysis (XMA), a tool for assessing PTC Creo Parametric and Pro/ENGINEER models. Darcy says you can find out more by attending sessions about XMA at PTC Live Global, or just look for him on the convention floor and start a conversation!

Did you find this article interesting? Click to Tweet ---> Check out this #PTCLive tip: You’re Mapping Too Many WTParts!

Are you experiencing poor client performance when using Creo or the Windchill Workgroup Manager and when interacting with your Windchill server?

Do you wonder what should be done to setup clients that manage CAD models (MCAD, ECAD or EPM Documents)?

Configuring or performance tuning client for CAD Data Management performance does NOT need to be an overly complicated or time consuming process as client machines can typically be configured in a couple minutes with a handful of changes.  Spend a couple minutes with me going through the typical steps PTC recommends when configuring clients for CAD Data Management performance, specifically the following:

• Reference Articles
• Configuring a Creo Client or Windchill Workgroup Manager Client

Reference Articles:

Technical Support has created a set of Articles that is the basis of the configuration we’ll be walking through.  Review and bookmark the following:

• CS23960 (https://support.ptc.com/appserver/cs/view/solution.jsp?n=CS23960)

[TS KP] Pro/ENGINEER Wildfire and Creo Interaction with PDMLink - Recommended Initial Performance Client Settings

• CS140968 (https://support.ptc.com/appserver/cs/view/solution.jsp?n=CS140968)

[TS KP] Windchill Workgroup Manager Interaction with PDMLink - Recommended Initial Performance Client Settings

Configuring a Creo Client (CS23960) or Windchill Workgroup Manager Client (CS140968):

Clients are quick and easy to configure as there are a small number (5 or 6) of changes to make when configuring:

1. Update to the latest Internet Explorer release available from Microsoft that is supported with your Creo and Windchill release
   • When working with CAD models in Windchill, the client browser typically processes and renders large lists of objects which can be heavily browser engine performance dependent
   • Microsoft has improved browser performance in each Internet Explorer release and as such, one can to take advantage of performance improvements by simply updating to a later Internet Explorer release.
   • The following is a graph showing relative performance difference of Google Chrome (baseline) vs. Firefox vs. various Internet Explorer releases running a number of Javascript benchmark tests:
     
     
     
     Now that isn’t to say that a transaction like refreshing a Workspace will take 10x longer on a IE9 x64 or IE8 machine vs an IE10 machine as the JavaScript processing portion of a transaction is only part of the overall transaction.  You will, however, notice that the UI (scrolling, selection, etc.) responds more quickly or feels more “snappy” when using a later, more performant Internet Explorer release.
     
     
   • Refer to the article for more detail and links to software matrices that document what IE releases are compatible with various Creo, Windchill Workgroup Manager and Windchill releases.
     
     
2. Set config windows_browser_type (Creo) or wgmclient.ini preference windows.browser.type (WWGM) to the most performant browser release
   Config windows_browser_type or preference windows.browser.type can be set to configure the client to use an in-process Internet Explorer release (Creo/WWGM), out of process Internet Explorer release (Creo only), bundled Mozilla browser release (Creo/WWGM) or bundled Chromium browser release (Creo 3.0).  Refer to the table in the article for more detail and choose the browser type that performs best.
   
   
3. Set config dm_network_threads (Creo) or wgmclient.ini preference windows.browser.type (WWGM) to a higher than out of the box value to more fully utilize network bandwidth when downloading content from the Windchill server
   When downloading content to the Workspace during an Add to Workspace or Check Out operation, clients may not fully utilize available network bandwidth (Creo or the WWGM will typically only download using two network threads).  If network bandwidth allows, making this configuration change in combination with Windows Registry settings (#5 below) will improve content download performance.  Refer to the article for more detail.
   
   
4. Set config dm_http_compression_level (Creo), environment PTC_WF_NETWORK_THREADS (WWGM) or wgmclient.ini preference wf.network.threads (WWGM) for WAN clients
   Enable compression of information and content being transferred between a client and Windchill server where the network bandwidth between the client and server is limited (typical in WAN environment).  Refer to the article for more detail.
   
   
5. Add Internet Explorer and WAN client TCP related Windows Registry entries to improve performance
   Internet Explorer and the Windows TCP stack is by default is not tuned particularly well for processing large lists of objects, for simultaneously downloading large sets of files or for auto-tuning the TCP stack in WAN environments.  Refer to the article for a single Windows Registry file that can be merged into the client registry (save to disk and double click to implement) and for detail regarding the Windchill Client Inspector that can be used to validate that client machines are configured appropriately.
   
   
6. For 32-bit clients, configure for 3GB of virtual memory (Creo only)
   For those running 32-bit Creo, configure Windows to allow processes (Creo xtop.exe process) to allocate up to 3GB of virtual memory (allows you to open larger, more complex models).  Refer to the article and Pro/ENGINEER and Creo Elements/Pro or Creo Parametric on 32 vs. 64-bit Hardware & Operating Systems and Interaction with Windchill Solutions for more detail.

Introduction

Are you new to Windchill Visualization?  Would you like WVS Jobs to be processed more efficiently or to just have more control over how they are processed?  This blog will cover the fundamental concepts behind WVS Job Processing and how WVS utilizes Windchill Processing Queues to achieve this.  In addition, I have included links to key Technical Support knowledge base articles for your reference.

The primary TS knowledge article CS149619 - How Windchill Visualization Services uses Windchill Queues for processing WVS Jobs.

WVS Jobs

Since Windchill 10.0 there are three types of WVS Jobs:

• Publish Jobs - Traditional WVS Publishing
• Clash Jobs - Batch Interference Detection
• Print Jobs - Batch Printing

All three WVS Job types are managed and processed using Windchill Processing Queues but WVS utilises these in a unique way.

WVS Queues and Job Processing

At start-up, for Publish Jobs, WVS creates three Prioritized ‘Waiting Queues for High, Medium and Low priority jobs, and a single Numbered ‘Processing’ Queue where the work is actually done.  These together are referred to as the default (unnamed) WVS Queue Set.  WVS also creates similar Queue Sets for processing Clash and Print Jobs but including the respective queue set names, CLASH and PRINT, i.e.:

An Administrator can optionally then create additional Numbered ‘Processing’ Queues to which WVS will attempt to distribute the entries from the Prioritized ‘Waiting’ Queues equally, thereby spreading the publishing load across multiple queues in parallel.  Although, if publishing large numbers of small and quick publish jobs (simple parts), only the lower queue numbers will be loaded (Refer to TS knowledge article CS42096).

WVS processes each logical WVS Job using a combination of two physical Windchill Processing Queue Entries:

• A Prioritized ‘Waiting’ Queue Entry - Target Method queueJob
• A Numbered ‘Processing’ Queue Entry - Target Method doJob

Note: Clash and Print Jobs do not currently support all the capabilities that are supported for Publish Jobs; for example, Clash and Print Jobs cannot be processed in Dedicated Publisher Queue Set or using Dedicated Workers (see below).

WVS Job Related Queue Entry Processing

The following shows a conceptual diagram of the traditional WVS Publisher Queue mechanism in the context of the overall WVS architecture:

WVS adds queue entries (that execute the queueJob method) for each newly submitted Publish Job to the relevant Prioritized ‘Waiting’ Queue, based on the type of the content to be processed and source of the request.  The mapped priorities for the type and source combinations can be configured using property settings in the wvs.properties file (refer to TS knowledge base article CS28472).

Note: Similar settings are available for prioritizing Print and Clash Jobs (refer to the wvs.properties.xconf file alongside wvs.properties).

All Windchill processing queues are FIFO (First in First Out) queues.  Queue Entries initially have a READY state when they are created, EXECUTING state when they are being processed and COMPLETED state once processing completed successfully.  Since Windchill 10.0, the NONEVENTFAILED state is used when processing completed but unsuccessfully; the Windchill Queue Entry states COMPLETED and NONEVENTFAILED now map to the WVS Job completion states JOB SUCCESSFUL and JOB FAILED respectively. Refer to TS knowledge article CS37569 for details of the different Windchill Queue Entry states and how to manage the related queue entries.

Queue Entries in the WVS Prioritized ‘Waiting’ Queues are processed one-at-a-time, so there should only ever be one EXECUTING entry in each queue and the rest waiting in the READY state.  All entries in the High priority queue are processed before those in the Medium and all those in the Medium priority queue before those in the Low.  An EXECUTING ‘Waiting’ Queue Entry (queueJob) is simply looking for an idle Numbered ‘Processing’ Queue that has no READY or EXECUTING entries.  When it finds one, it creates a new ‘Processing’ Queue Entry (doJob) within it, initially in a READY state.  The related ‘Waiting’ Queue Entry is then COMPLETED and is automatically removed by the Windchill Queue Service.

Note: Out-of-the-box, this process is repeated every 5 seconds for all ‘Waiting’ Queues in every defined WVS Queue Set, based on the value of the publish.publishqueuepollinterval property in wvs.properties.

Queue Entries in the WVS Numbered ‘Processing’ Queues are also processed one-at-a-time, so there should only ever be one EXECUTING entry in each queue and the rest already processed in the COMPLETED state.  An EXECUTING Queue Entry (that executes the doJob method) will identify and execute the Document Publisher (for WTDocuments) or the respective CAD Publisher (for EPMDocuments) configured using the Authoring Application specific CadConvert properties in wvs.properties, e.g. for Creo Parametric, with an internal Authoring Application of PROE, the publisher class defined by the publish.cadconvert.PROE property is used.  It is the Publisher that controls the execution of the publishing process for its respective CAD application data type.

Upon successful completion of publishing, the ‘Processing’ Queue Entry state is set to COMPLETED and depending on the Numbered ‘Processing’ Queue name and the value of the respective wt.queue.removeCompleted.<QueueName> property in wt.properties, will automatically keep or remove it (refer to TS knowledge base article CS32811).  After publishing is complete, the Publish Job Details log is added to a BLOB data column in the COMPLETED queue entry, so removing the queue entry also removes the logging.  At Windchill 10.0 the new state NONEVENTFAILED was added so that completed unsuccessful Publish Jobs are not automatically deleted by this mechanism.

WVS Dedicated Publisher Queue Sets and Workers Sets

Since Windchill 9.1 M010, WVS has also supported the concept of Dedicated Publisher Queue Sets.  The purpose of this capability is to extend the ability to manage and control specific categories of Publish Jobs using a completely separate and dedicated publisher queue set.  For example, to separate the publishing of Parts, Assemblies and Drawings, or to separate publishing of different CAD authoring application content, so that all the Numbered ‘Processing’ Queues in each dedicated publisher queue set can be dedicated to optimally loading the CAD workers for the same application. These Dedicated Publisher Queue Sets can also be combined with Dedicated Worker Sets for even greater control over which workers should process Publish Jobs from specific Publisher Queue Sets.

For a detailed example configuration, including sample filter code, refer to TS knowledge article CS132318 - Windchill PDMLink 10.0: An example of how to configure WVS Dedicated Publisher Queues and/or Workers to process Publish Jobs based on custom criteria.

I hope you find the information in my blog post interesting and of use.  As always, your comments and feedback are very welcome.

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 that we are continuously working on (the Internet of Things opens up interesting possibilities), but there are actions that you can take right now to safeguard your server from some of the more common causes of EDOWN situations:

• Take regular backups– Daily incrementals is what you would normally strive for. We do occasionally get cases where production server backups are old or non-existent and a catastrophic hardware failure has led to data loss. Needless to say, this is beyond repair with possibly months or years of lost work as a consequence. Information on Windchill backup strategies can be found in the PTC Windchill Backup and Recovery Planning Technical Brief.
  
  
• Configure mail notifications– Windchill itself and some of its third-party components have built-in monitoring that can send out e-mail alerts when server performance indicators start drifting outside of their comfort zones. However, some configuration is needed for the alerts to be sent out. The configuration steps are described here.
  If you get a monitoring alert that you are unsure about, search in our Knowledge Base for information on the alert and what actions might be required in response to it. If no information is found, open a case with Technical Support.
  
  

• Set up a test server and use it– Any change to a Windchill server, no matter how small, can have unexpected side effects. There is a good chance that any adverse side effects will reveal themselves on the test server so that you know about them before applying them to the production system. It might not seem worth the extra cost and hassle to do this, but it makes troubleshooting so much easier for everyone involved so please reconsider if you don’t already have one.
  Other advantages include:

  • Troubleshooting which requires verbose logging and/or frequent restarts does not disrupt the operation of the production server

  • Reconfiguration for data capture does not disrupt production system. For example, profiling with the Windchill Profiler is greatly simplified with a single Method Server, which can be easily configured on a test server.

  • Testing of potential fixes can be done without interfering with the production server.
    
    

• Monitor your server– use PSM if possible, or the out-of-the-box Site > Utilities > Server Status page. As a server administrator, keep the page (or an overview dashboard if using PSM) on a screen and check it regularly. This will make you familiar with the day-to-day load cycles on the server, including how user activity rises and falls on a daily basis and when background activities usually kick off. This makes it easier to spot unusual patterns that may indicate budding problems early.
  • Server Status page:
    
  • System Health dashboard in PSM:
    

Going forward

This was a brief overview of common measures that can be taken to avoid some EDOWNs. Some of this may seem basic and plain common sense to you; if so, excellent, hold on to that mindset. Nevertheless, we see a significant portion of EDOWN cases that may have been prevented with these measures, which is why they were covered here.

On a final note, there is a new set of articles that outline the most common technical areas where EDOWNs occur and contain information including:

• Preventative actions
• Informative articles and resources
• Links to articles for the most common EDOWNs issues
  
  

The main article is CS202168- How to avoid common Enterprise Down issues in Windchill, other related articles are linked from that one. These will be reviewed on a quarterly basis to ensure that they reflect the most recent EDOWN analysis results.

Thank you for your time and as always, comments and feedback are greatly appreciated.

Since the beginning of 2015 PTC customers have shared their experience and usage of PTC Windchill as part of PTC’s Webcast series.   This includes webcasts by HARMAN, iRobot and PACCAR.  Each covering aspects of how PTC Windchill has influenced their company’s product development process.  If you happened to have missed out on these webcasts the good news is recording are now available for replay from the PTC Windchill product page on ptc.com, here:

http://www.ptc.com/product-lifecycle-management/windchill

From the PTC Windchill product page scroll down and on the right hand side you will find images like those below advertising these available webcast.  Click on the image for the webcast that you are interested in to join.  As part of the replay process you will be asked to sign-in or register.  By registering in the future you should be notified of future webcast offerings.

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.

Domain structuring in conjunction with inheritance enables general policies to be applied at higher domains and more specific policies to be applied at a lower level.

When debugging Access Control you not only have to consider inherited policies from higher contexts, but also keep in mind how Windchill will evaluate Security Labels, Access Permissions on Groups and individuals as well as Ad-Hoc Permissions.

The following algorithm is generally applied:

1. Security Labels:
   • Windchill will always check first if a user gets cleared by Security Labels
2. System Policy Rules apply in the following order:
   • Group Grant is overridden by
   • Group Deny is overridden by
   • User Grant is overridden by
   • User Deny is overridden by
   • Group and User Absolute Deny
3. Ad-Hoc Rules:
   • Ad-Hoc access can only grant permissions
   • Ad-Hoc overrides a deny rule that is set by domain policy but not an absolute deny.

If you are interested in more details, please check in the Windchill Help Center in chapter “How ACLs work:” there you will find additional examples for a better understanding.

Debugging Access Control Issues

Now that you have a clear understanding on how Windchill calculates access permissions, I will concentrate troubleshooting ACL related issue. In Technical Support, most cases that are opened by customers fall into three categories:

1. Users can’t open an object or perform a specific action which results in Access Permission related error messages
2. Users can’t find object in their Windchill System by Search or they are not visible to them
3. Dedicated actions are not visible in the Windchill User interface for some users

We will concentrate in this post on the first category.

Troubleshooting Access Permission related error messages

Access related error messages come in many flavors. See below the most common ones that show up in the Windchill user interface or in the Method Server logs:

If you see one of these error messages, it is the time when you have to answer the question:

Is this intentional or should this user have access to the object?

To help you answer this question PTC provides you help with 3 tools:

1. Manage Securityfunctionality in the Actions menu:
   Refer to Windchill Help Center chapter Manage Security for an Existing Object for additional information
   
   
2. Policy Administrator on Site > Utilities > Policy Administrator or [Context] >Utilities > Policy Administrator:
   For additional information please refer to article CS26785 - How to troubleshoot the message "You do not have access to this object or it does not exist" in Windchill
   
   
3. Various Access loggers that help to understand how Windchill calculated the Access Permission and why this particular user was denied access:
   Technical Support prepared a set of articles that explain the various loggers available and helps to understand their results:
   • The Hub article CS78689 - How to investigate Policy Access Control issues in Windchill
   • CS78878 - The differences between the various Access Control related Loggers in Windchill
   • CS78846 - How to interpret verbose Policy Access related log entries in Windchill

Thanks for your attention and any questions or feedback is welcome.

Are you experiencing poor server performance managing Pro/E, Creo or Windchill Workgroup Manager (CAD) data in Windchill?

Are users complaining that when working with CAD data, interaction with Windchill or the Workspace is slow?

Do you wonder what you should do to setup or tune a Windchill server for interaction with clients working with CAD data?

Initial performance tuning of a Windchill server doesn't have to be overly complicated and time consuming process.  Time spent tuning the Windchill server will improve performance and ensure users have the best possible interaction with the Windchill.  Let's walk through the following:

• Resources that are available to guide you during tuning
• Server properties and preferences to set
• Database tuning
• Other considerations
  

Resources

• Technical Support Article CS24192 [TS KP] Pro/ENGINEER Wildfire, Creo or Windchill Workgroup Manager Interaction with PDMLink - Recommended Initial Performance Server Settings contains all the suggestions we'll be walking through and more.  I'd suggest you review and bookmark it for use while tuning your server.
• Click Add a comment at the bottom of this blog post and I'll do my best to answer your question
• Ask PTC Community
• Perform a Technical Support Search as the Knowledge base is full of useful information
• Open a Technical Support Case online or make a call to a Worldwide Support office

Server Properties and Preferences

Some settings and preferences are general in nature while others are specific to a particular Windchill version.  Although the steps to tune a 9.1, 10.0, 10.1 and 10.2 server vary (typically more to do with older releases), I'll cover the typical steps you'll do with most installations (eg. 10.x releases).  Refer to CS24192 for full detail for each Windchill release from 9.1 to 10.2 and MOR releases in between.

• Configure common Windchill properties using the Windchill Configuration Assistant (WCA)

The WCA will inspect the server (identify available resources like CPUs, RAM, etc.) and suggest changes to wt.properties and other property files.  Note that WCA execution is done automatically when installing using the 10.0 and later PTC Solution Installer.  If you've upgraded/changed hardware since initial installation or it didn't run on initial installation, you'll want to run it again.  See CS40846 and CS153338 for additional detail.

• Set optimal collection preferences for common operations via Preference Management

Set defaults for operations like Add to Workspace, Check Out, Check In, Revise, Save As, etc. to collect minimal dependencies (None or Required):

If users need different default values, they can make changes in personal preferences or in the Basic/Advanced collectors when performing the operation.

• Create or edit the default Workspace table Views so that they display a minimal amount of information

For releases prior to 10.2 M030, avoid default table displays with additional status columns (eg. Compare Status, Out of Date, etc.) as when those columns are included, the client must make additional and expensive requests to the server when refreshing the Workspace.  See CS150977 for additional information.

• If Save As performance is poor, set preference save.as.trace.circular.dependents=false

For some datasets, circular dependency processing when performing Save As can sometimes be an issue (take a long time).  Configure to not trace circular dependents if performance issues have been observed performing Save As.  See CS51570 and CS3348 for additional information.

• Set wt.properties com.ptc.core.collectionsrv.engine.isIntralinkTracingEnabled=true if using later 10.x releases

Out of the box, Windchill can in some case trace dependencies for objects not explicitly requested by the user (eg. perform full dependency tracing for drawing dependents when the drawing is included in collection via Include Drawings).  This can in some cases result in long time waiting for the server to process collection requests (eg. when performing an Add to Workspace).  Making this change will disable the additional dependency tracing and should improve performance .  See CS57721& CS127319 for additional detail.

• Consider custom values for wt.properties com.ptc.core.collectionsrv.engine.limitDependencyTracing and com.ptc.core.collectionsrv.engine.collected_result_limit if using later 10.x releases

Dependency tracing for large or complex datasets can in some cases cause server performance issues.  If you observe performance issues with collection of dependents, see CS99609 and CS16012 for additional information.

• Set wvs.properties publish.retrievallfiles=false, publish.retrieveallfiles.PROE=false or publish.retrieveallfiles.CATIAV5=false if publishing with filesync CAD workers

The out of the box WVS dependency tracing publish.retrievallfiles=all setting is only needed for non-filesync CAD workers and can result in longer than necessary publishing times and put unnecessary load on the server and database.  If you're using filesync workers (most customers are or should be!), make this setting for improved performance.  See CS76293 and CS34783 for additional information.

• Configure the webserver with a 60 second KeepAliveTimeout

This setting keeps the network port between a client and server open longer than the 5 or 15 second default and allows the client to reuse an open network connection for up to 60 seconds.  As a result, response times for SSL and HTTP connections is improved.  As a side benifit, Internet Explorer doesn't work well with KeepAliveTimeout values ≠ 60.  Setting this value to 60 will reduce the number of offline client sessions as well.  See CS19706 and CS65884 for additional detail.

• Review Windchill Configuration Settings Which Aid in Scaling to Production and make changes to <Windchill>\db\db.properties or database settings to prevent runaway queries that can impact server performance

The Methodserver and database will in most cases try to process all requests that are made regardless of whether or not the request may overload the Methodserver and database.  Making a couple changes to db.properties can improve performance as it prevents high load, long running transactions from consuming all resources.

Database Tuning

The Windchill database is a primary component in any Windchill installation as requests made to the Windchill Methodserver invariably have to be processed by the database.  Having a properly sized (enough memory) and functioning database (proper database indexes) is key to good overall performance.

• Create database indexes to improve database performance

The database frequently is a performance bottleneck when Windchill is processing information for CAD objects.  Start with CS75632 and CS151400 for Windchill 9.1 installations and CS98135 for Windchill 10.0, 10.1 and 10.2 installations as they contain indexes that are known to improve database performance for not only CAD object processing but other operations.

• Periodically review and monitorSite > Utilities > Server Status for high percentage of Method Context Time is spent in JDBC Callsor PTC System Monitor (PSM)to determine if a high percentage of time is reported as being spent in the database (if there is a suggestion that the database is performing poorly):

Here's an example of Server Status showing a large amount of time in JDBC (database) calls:

Here's an example of PSM showing a much smaller amount of time spent in the database for a user transaction:

• Additional diagnosis, tuning and sizing of the database by all means can be done, but is outside of the scope of this blog post.  Refer to the following or collect Performance task detail from System Configuration Collector (Windchill System Configuration Collector (SCC) FAQ) along with test results and contact Technical Support if you're interested in taking a deeper look at the database:
  • CS51777 - Tuning Oracle and Interpreting the Oracle Gather Info Script Output
  • CS46060 - Where is the Oracle "gather_info_script.sql" located in Windchill
  • CS123644 - Where to find SQLServer diagnostic script for Windchill
  • CS139203 - SQL Statements taking too long in Oracle
  • CS49024 - Are there some best practices around SQL server database and Windchill PDMLink ?

Other Considerations

There are many other things that can be done to improve, diagnose and monitor performance.  Depending on your environment, some may have a large impact while others may not.  Take a look and let me know if you have any questions or comments:

• Client tuning

See the following blog post: Configuring Creo Parametric and Windchill Workgroup Manager Clients for CAD Data Management Performance

• Vaulting and Replication to WAN File Servers

Staging and maintaining File Servers can be a bit more involved from an administration perspective but for WAN users, being able to upload and download content from a local File Server is a big benefit.  See Windchill Vaulting and Replication Planning - Technical Brief for additional information.

• Implement a clustered environment for high load installations

Customers with many users can easily generate enough activity that a clustered Windchill environment (configuring multiple machines with multiple Method servers) to service client requests is necessary.  See Windchill Architecture Overview for additional information.

• For WAN clients with high latency and low bandwidth, implement caching proxy and/or WAN accelerator

Even if you have WAN File Servers that are local to WAN users, WAN clients still interact with the master Methodserver over the WAN for all information and requests other than content.  If you latency is high (eg. 250+ ms) and bandwidth low, consider implementing caching proxies and WAN accelerators to improve interaction with the Windchill server.  Refer to WAN Accelerators and Windchill Performance - Technical Brief for additional information.

• Monitor and diagnose server performance with PTC System Monitor (PSM)

PSM is free and powerful tool available that can be used to easily monitor activity and performance of Windchill servers.  Refer to the following for more detail:

• PSM resource page
• CS126670 - How to use the PTC System Monitor (PSM) in Workgroup Manager Transaction Performance Diagnosis

• Benchmark the system before and after tuning and/or compare to PTC Performance QA results

Last but not least, collecting a benchmark of system performance before and after tuning is important as it allows you to gauge the impact of your tuning activity.  Collect detail and/or test with a standard Creo dataset available from PTC and review posted results from PTC QA.  See the following for additional detail:

• Windchill Creo Data Management Performance Benchmark Test - Instructions
• Windchill Creo Data Management Performance Benchmark Test – Preliminary Dataset (82 KB)
• Windchill Creo Data Management Performance Benchmark Test - Data Sheet
• Windchill Creo Data Management Performance Benchmark Test – World Car Dataset (295 MB)

If benchmark results with the Windchill Creo Data Management Performance Benchmark Test Dataset are not close to or better than PTC QA results reported in the Windchill Creo Data Management Performance Benchmark Test - Data Sheet or performance with other datasets does not meet expectations, collect Performance task detail from System Configuration Collector (Windchill System Configuration Collector (SCC) FAQ) along with test results and contact Technical Support.

That's it!  I hope you find this information interesting and of use.  As always, comments and feedback are very welcome.