There are several business scenarios that may lead you to create and deliver information through a package for use offline or outside of your Windchill installation.

Packages can be used to collaborate with a partner outside of your company. For example, if you manufacture bicycles, you may rely on an external supplier for tires. The supplier would need to know about your bicycle design to be able to provide appropriately sized tires for the exact configuration of the design. As a result, you may want to send them part and design information about the configuration of your bicycle assembly, particularly the wheel and tire parts of the assembly. If the supplier does not have access to your Windchill system and does not have their own Windchill installation, you can send them a copy of your Windchill data that can be reviewed outside of Windchill. The design files can be loaded directly in the appropriate authoring application. The offline viewer includes limited browsing capabilities through the list of the package contents and a basic information page for each object. A manifest file contains a simple list of the package contents. Whether using the offline viewer or the manifest file, the package delivery can be sent using various mediums, the practicality of which are determined by the size of your package and the requirements of your relationship with your partner.

You may collaborate with a partner outside of your company who also has a Windchill installation. After you create your delivery, you can select the importable format option when creating your package ZIP file. Your importable package ZIP file can be sent using various mediums, depending on your package size. Once you have created and sent your package delivery, the recipient can import the package data into their Windchill installation and access the data. The objects are imported with the intent of being viewed or referenced, but not modified, except as required by system administration. Select attributes of the objects, such as life cycle states and folder location, can be mapped from source system values to values available on the target system. It is required for the objects in the package to have an identical object type hierarchy for successful data exchange and advisable to make the two systems as administratively identical as possible (life cycle states, numbering schemes, and so on).

In some companies it is not unusual to have two or more disconnected Windchill installations. When a company has this configuration, there is sometimes a need to view or use product design data created in one Windchill installation in another Windchill installation. You can accomplish this using a special type of package called a replication package. The replication package allows you to send all supported objects in a product or library from one Windchill installation to another. Like other importable packages, the target system imports the package data to be able to view and use the imported product design data. As with external collaboration packages, many attributes, such as life cycle states and folder location, can be mapped from the source system to the target system. It is required for the objects in the package to have an identical object type hierarchy for successful data exchange and advisable to make the two systems as administratively identical as possible (life cycle states, numbering schemes, and so on).