Windchill 10.1: Supported CAD Application, Windchill Workgroup Manager and Creo View Adapter Release Combinations for File and Content Synchronization

 Introduction:

• CAD Application, Windchill Workgroup Manager and Creo View Adapter release combinations and platforms that are tested and supported at Windchill 10.1 for:
  • File Synchronization
  • Content Synchronization (CAD Packages)
• In some cases this information may be more restrictive than what the Creo View Adapter Software Support Matrices show

 Background:

• After the initial upload or check-in is completed using Pro/ENGINEER Wildfire or the 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
  • PTC System Attributes (i.e. PTC_WM_REVISION) is not displayed or displays outdated value in published representations
• At Windchill 6.0, 7.0, 8.0:
  • The download mechanism from Pro/ENGINEER Wildfire Integration was 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
• At Windchill 9.0:
  • This capability was extended to 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 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 Windchill WGM's (excluding Creo Parametric, Pro/ENGINEER or Arbortext), so that customers will only need to configure the WWGM and enable File Sync when required
  • This is also true at Windchill 10.0 and 10.1

 File Sync: What is File Sync?

• The ability to synchronize CAD Document content with Windchill metadata, e.g. attributes/parameters in the CAD files mapped to properties within Windchill
• A physical file that is stored in Windchill may be "out-of-date" because it does not incorporate Windchill meta-data changes that have happened since the file was last uploaded/checked in by the WWGM or Pro/ENGINEER Wildfire integration with Windchill
• For example:
  • The 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 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 Windchill Visualization Service (WVS), that the CAD drawing content file is "synchronized" with the 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 Windchill
• This process employs the WVS Import/Export Framework and 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.