Windchill 10.2: Supported CAD Application, PTC Windchill Workgroup Manager and PTC Creo View Adapter Release Combinations for File and Content Synchronization

Introduction:

• CAD Application, PTC Windchill Workgroup Manager and PTC Creo View Adapter release combinations and platforms that are tested and supported at Windchill 10.2 for:
  • File Synchronization
  • Content Synchronization (CAD Packages)
• In some cases this information may be more restrictive than what the PTC Creo View Adapter Software Support Matrices show

Background:

• After the initial upload or check-in is completed using PTC Creo Parametric, PTC Pro/ENGINEER Wildfire or the PTC Windchill Workgroup Managers (WWGM), it is possible for the CAD Document metadata to change, without the CAD Document content being updated accordingly
• For example: -
  • The Life-cycle State may change
  • Drawing or Assembly dependencies may change (e.g. 'Save As' and 'Rename')
  • Other mapped Windchill attributes may be altered
• At PTC Windchill 9.0:
  • The download mechanism from PTC Pro/ENGINEER Wildfire Integration is used by WVS to update the CAD Document content during retrieval from Windchill
  • This mechanism is referred to as Wildfire Download or File Synchronization (aka File Sync) and was disabled out-of-the-box
  • This capability include many of the 3rd Party CAD WWGM's and was enabled out-of-the-box
  • File Sync requires the additional configuration of the WWGM on the worker machine, for it to function correctly
• At PTC Windchill 9.1:
  • Content Synchronization (aka Content Sync) was provided in addition to File Sync
  • Due to the additional configuration of the WWGM that is required some customers have found it difficult to implement, when they may not even have a requirement for it
  • Therefore, at Windchill 9.1 M010 File Sync is disabled out-of-the-box for all PTC Windchill WGM's (excluding PTC Creo Parametric, PTC Pro/ENGINEER or PTC Arbortext), so that customers will only need to configure the WWGM and enable File Sync when required
  • This is also true at PTC Windchill 10.0, 10.1 and 10.2

Further explanation of File and Content Synchronization.

File Sync: What is File Sync?

• The ability to synchronize CAD Document content with PTC Windchill metadata, e.g. attributes/parameters in the CAD files mapped to properties within PTC Windchill
• A physical file that is stored in PTC Windchill may be "out-of-date" because it does not incorporate PTC Windchill meta-data changes that have happened since the file was last uploaded/checked in by the WWGM or PTC Pro/ENGINEER Wildfire integration with PTC Windchill
• For example:
  • The PTC Windchill CAD Document Life-cycle State attribute has been exposed in a text field on a CAD drawing
  • The Life-cycle State has been changed in PTC Windchill (set state, promote, etc.) after check-in
  • But the CAD document content will still contains the old Life-cycle State value
• In this case, it is imperative that when the CAD Document is published via the PTC Windchill Visualization Service (WVS), that the CAD drawing content file is "synchronized" with the PTC Windchill meta-data changes during the publishing process
• Ensuring that the resultant drawing Representation reflects any updates that have occurred to the file
• In the example above, it will then show the updated Life-cycle State value
• WVS does not modify the CAD files stored on the CAD Documents

Content Sync: What is Content Sync?

• This refers to the synchronization of CAD Document content for the purpose of providing Packages (Zip file) of CAD data
• These Packages can then be sent to users disconnected from PTC Windchill
• This process employs the WVS Import/Export Framework and PTC Creo View Adapters capabilities to add the resulting synchronized content to the zip file
• This functionality enables the user to save synchronized model data to disk for each supported CAD system