Windchill bites - huge problem

[barnam]

I'm pretty pissed. This isn't the first time windchill has crapped on me. Maybe it's just me, I don't know... Anyway, I spend my day working on an assembly- simple assembly, 4 or so parts, but the took me a while ot model. A couple of them are sheet metal parts with lots of compound angled flanges, so yeah, it took a while to get it all perfect. so, I get all happy, make a drawing, export .igs files, and try to remove a part that was a failed attempt at modeling one of the parts. Windchill would not let me, kept giving me some unhelpful reason that may as well have been in greek. I don't care, I can live with that for now, just as long as my assembly is sound. As I worked, I clicked save frequently. Even when it told me my part hasn't changed since last save, I'd click save anyway- just to be sure. So, after all that is said and done, I move on to some other work in a differnt workspace, and when I came back to my original workspace, all my work reverted back to the way it was as if I never came it today. I know I'm not crazy. I have the iges files of the finished flats, I ahve a prited out drawing of the complete assemby. Why did it rever back? It's done this to me in the past but I wasn't sure what actaully happened, and not much was lost so I just went on with life. Now it's quitting time on Friday, and I'm looking forward toan exciting call to ptc customer service. Yay.


When workign in windchill, where are the parts that are in my workspace? Are there iterations as if I was working outside of windchill? Is there any way to access all the files outside of windchill? I hate windchill.


Thanks.


BM

 

[avinashkor]

Hi


Which version of Windchill you areusing ?? Is it 9.0??


For check all iteration >Go to detail page of that part and envvoke Iteratin History.


~Avi

 

[djor]

If you are on 8.0 and using WF2 older than M210 then you should update Pro/E to at least m230. There were a number of workspace issues fixed in newer builds of WF2

 

[pjw]

It seems as though you've found out how diabolical Intralink 8 is.


Sounds like your client side locally modified files have become lost. It is only the server side unmodified files you can access?


Don't worry about corrupt workspaces either. They'll happen often. It's just something you're going to have to live with.


Oh, and I forgot to mention - you can't access the files anymore through .proi if you do - all the files are embedded in .wfcont files now.

 

[Knut Fiskergård]

So you know your'e not crazy???

We use PDMLink 8which Iunderstand is part of the same pile of crap. If not the same in a differnt wrapping. And WF3 M080


I too have huge part of my work disappear into Windchillsomewhere from time to time. I too was sure I wasn't crazy, but I'm slowly loosing it as I struggle to deliver my work through PDMLink.


The worst is when I loose a new drawing, about half way trough, and I just know 100% that I've clicked "save" AND "save and upload". It's just gone and I'm allowed to make a new drawing with the old name/number. So, when the drawingis almost finished, the old and lost version REAPPEAR and again you are set back........


I just don't now how to get my manager to believe me. Or have I lost it completly?

 

[barnam]

I let myself calm down over the weekend, accepted what had happened and just decided to start over and remodel my parts. Thanks for the comments, glad to hear I'm not alone. The crazy thing is my co-workers don't have any of these problems. I wonder if it's because I jump back and forth between workspaces more often than they do? Also, my machine is set up as the client for the product view for the non-proe users in the company. Don't know if that has anything to do with it...


I work for a job shop and I'm the one that has to deal wiht customers' parts. My coworkers gernerally do work for our own products, so they stick with one project for a while and don't jump around very much. I get all kinds of crap "sample" parts from our customers and I get to reverse engineer them. Yay. The only somewhat cool thing I get to do that's my own work is the weld fixtures for whatever parts need to be fit and welded.


BM

 

[hckenney]

Windchill leaves a lot to be desired and is probably the least intuitive interface I have ever seen, not only with wasted space in the GUI but also the need to scroll to get to the buttons is maddening.


In order to get around the lack of "frames" whichI understand is coming back in Windchill 9.0, I created a mapkey that saves and uploads the current part, but also backs up the current item to a folder which I named "AA_Backup" on my local drive.


The files that are saved to this folder are in fact sequentially marked and if pushcomes to shove, I can go to this folder and recover that last or previous saves that I have made.


I end up with a bunch of files in this folder, but within it I have also created subfolders with the current date and drag what was created on a particular date to its own folder in order to cut down on the massive amounts of files that the "AA_Backup" collects.





It is simply a CYA that I have found indespensible more than once.

 

[ABB_pajo]

A even better solution than a mapkeey is to use the config option "dm_upload_objects automatic" which will upload automatic to Windchill upon save, which will remove some of the pain.

And yes Barnam: You are correct that jumping between workspaces (or jumping between useraccounts) is screwing up the process. The cache file get really f**ked up.

What I dont (got time to) is to test working without a local cache, that would mayby reduce the problems.

A hint: If you wants to override the save, open up (Pro)program, close and you are able to save.

// Patrik

 

[kdmgooner]

Hi fellow Windchill "nutters". We too have experienced loss of work and thought that we were going insane. This has not happened to me (yet) but a colleague lost a days work after switching to an unlinked session of Wildfire and then back again to a linked session.


We are already using the automatic upload setting in config.pro but this has not saved us from the gremlins. After reading your comments I am also convinced that the cache is getting screwed (I thought that it was the cash in your bank that normally gets screwed by PTC)

 

[pjw]

Windchill leaves a lot to be desired and is probably the least intuitive interface I have ever seen, not only with wasted space in the GUI but also the need to scroll to get to the buttons is maddening.

Try scrolling through a list of 10 items during your check-in, especially if you have 1000+ items. It's unworkable. I'd say around 35% of the available GUI space is devoted to what you're actually doing. There is no longer the option to have a full Intralink window, separate from Pro/E which used to work well with Intralink 3X.


Uploading everytime you want to do a save isn't a practical solution. It can take minutes to do this. I am sure a lot of people will agree that they shouldn't have to ldo this just to guarantee not losing their work?
Edited by: pjw

 

[rjessen]

Here's a list of recommendations from one company that was having workspace corruption issues. By following these guidelines they have been able to avoid the issue:


Encourage users to use the workspace for the job at hand and then delete it when the job is over and make a new one for the next job. The constant re-use of a workspace is suspect in some corruptions.<?:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-comfficeffice" />

Extremely long names may also be a problem. We advise 20 characters or less. It may be that long object names combined with long workspace names and a ENV path that also adds characters become too many characters for Pro/E to handle.

Use of unsupported characters in the name such as a , (comma) in one particular case, will make a bad workspace.

Never doing cache maintenance may be a problem as the local cache becomes huge. Simply deleting a workspace does not clean-up the cached objects. SPR 1262398

We found that certain sequences will create workspaces that are treated as 'off-line' and are unusable and some cases that were reproduceable enough to have an SPR. I have listed them below:

1) Use of the embedded browser Home>Workspaces page to create a new workspace and then activate it. Then exit Pro/E without any further action. The next Pro/E session may be difficult to get a PDMLink page that isn't offline. We resort to the browser Location pulldown and go for a page that can be opened and then go to Workspaces and delete the bad workspace.
2) Delete a workspace and then recreate one with the same name in the same session of Pro/E. It will be a bad workspace.
3) Create a workspace from the embedded browser Home>Workspaces page, activate it and then go directly to 'Search' and add some object to the workspace. This will be a bad workspace when trying to use it later. We have found that this does not occur if workspace is created from the Server Registry or if created in the browser page when the activated workspace page is displayed first before doing search.
4) Workspaces created with the same name as another workspace except for the Upper/Lower case of some characters will share objects with each other. Very confusing if the user doesn't realize that a similar name workspace already existed.
5) Pro/E exiting via a crash or power interruption will empty the workspace. Fixed in WF2 M210. This was particularly troublesome as we had data lost.
6) Pro/E File>Save operations do not seem to be kept track of properly. Next session of Pro/E will retrieve old versions of objects instead of the last save. Fixed in WF2 M210. Also lost data with this one.

 

[kdmgooner]

Very usefull info rjessen. Just one thing, I tried to access the SPR 1262398 in the ptc knowledgebase but it returns no results. Is this number correct, I am interested in reading it if possible