Overview of Architecture
Distribution and Deployment
The gateway is distributed across the following server and client locations :
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Windchill Server
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FORAN FPLM Server
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FORAN Client
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Virtalis Adapter
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Windchill Gateway for FORAN
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FORANAdapter
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FORAN
Database
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Virtalis Adapter Converter
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Windchill PDMLink
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FORAN software
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Creo View Files
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The gateway has the ability to exchange JT files for visualization that makes the Virtalis adapter an optional component. FORAN is able to directly generate the JT files.
The gateway adapters can also be deployed on several different hardware systems. In this diagram, the component in white boxes (System A- Windchill PDMLink) is the prerequisite installed software, and the components in light blue are software to be installed.
Gateway Publishing Workflow
The following diagram depicts the sequence of operations of the gateway in relation to FORAN and Windchill.
The Gateway Service is the primary service that interacts with Windchill. It reads publishing requests from the Windchill Job table in the database, extracts data from FORAN and sends it to Windchill.
Data transfers are bi-directional in Windchill Gateway for FORAN integration. The following user actions trigger a transfer:
• Publish/Update FORAN to Windchill – creates an entry in the Windchill Job table
• Publish/Update Windchill to FORAN – creates an entry in the Windchill Job table
Only entities with their library parts usage is transferred to Windchill, not CAD documents. Data transfer always happens in the backend, and the FORAN client never communicates with Windchill.
