Reference Topics > What's new (previous releases) > What’s new in Windchill Modeler 9.4
What’s new in Windchill Modeler 9.4
Reviewer
Windchill Modeler Reviewer now has an improved user interface that provides you with a richer user experience, consistent with Windchill Modeler, as well as several new functional capabilities. Reports now include additional information that shows the user that initiated the review and when it was run. The generated report output can now be easily exported for sharing with colleagues. Reporting of review metrics is more accurate with the introduction of decimal places, and you can now specify the priority of reviews which allows you to include or exclude reviews of a certain priority. New reviews that report on the status of OSLC links have been added so you can quickly understand the overall design traceability within a model or package.
For more information, see Getting started with Reviewer.
Windchill Modeler 9.4 provides you with an innovative Quick Review feature which allows you to run reviews directly inside Windchill Modeler as you are creating your designs, without having to utilize the full Reviewer tool. This provides a rapid, accessible review of model correctness and completeness and provides a condensed summary of results that allows you to easily navigate to reported items for dispositioning. This new feature also allows you to continue to work on the model as the review is executed, further increasing productivity. Quick Review provides you with a rapid, ad-hoc model review capability to complement the improved full, formal reviews that can be conducted using Reviewer.
For more information, see Quick Reviews.
Diagram Filters
The next major addition in Windchill Modeler 9.4 is the ability to simplify complex diagrams by quickly and easily applying filters to hide diagram symbols. By defining rules based on item type, relationships, or properties, you can rapidly create simple or powerful, complex rules that ensure only the relevant information is displayed on your diagrams, improving communication and review efficiency. It’s also very easy to share diagram filters using XML, meaning they can be made available to all other users, as well as to other sites using a different instance of Windchill Modeler.
For more information, see Working with Diagram Filters.
Another diagram usability enhancement is a new option providing additional control over the behavior of link auto-routing. This option allows you to prioritize that links do not cross on a diagram. While typically reducing link crossings will make diagrams clearer and easier to view, this may not always be the desired behavior so the option can be disabled as needed.
Package State and Versions
With Windchill Modeler 9.4 you can control the evolution and maturity of your models, ensuring end-to-end management of your design lifecycle. Packages can now be assigned a State value, which is used to track the maturity of model items within the package. For example, you may want to indicate that the package items are still in work, are under review or are completed, approved, and released. Transition rules are also possible allowing you to specify the valid paths between different states, meaning your specific design development processes are enabled, managed and enforced within Windchill Modeler. You can tailor the available State values and transitions to match your development processes and business needs. As well as the new State property, packages also have a new Version property which is a free text field so you can optionally add version information when needed, for example when designs are released once completed. To track changes to State and Version, packages also have a new History property which records the details of all changes to these properties, including the time and the user that initiated the change.
For more information, see Package State and Version Management.
A Structured Action Language (ASAL)
Windchill Modeler 9.4 delivers enhancement for more flexible, productive software engineering by providing extensions to the existing action language ASAL. You now have available a toolkit for defining custom action language generators, integrated within the modelling environment.
For more information, see A Structured Action Language.
OSLC
Windchill Modeler 9.4 continues from previous releases by delivering market-leading capabilities to enable product traceability across engineering design tools. Firstly, user experience is improved with support for single sign-on (SSO), reducing the number of logins for users and providing a seamless experience when accessing remote data in multiple systems.
Another important enhancement is the ability to update OSLC links defined in Windchill Modeler when external OSLC servers are moved/rehosted, or to point to different versions of OSLC Resources. For example, you may need to update all OSLC links due to hostname change for an RV&S server, or you may need to update individual OSLC links to point to a specific version of a Windchill part instead of the latest/canonical version. Another major advancement for product traceability is the ability of Windchill Modeler 9.4 to work in concert with IBM DOORS Next and Global Configurations. This means that when using OSLC links to DOORS Next data, Windchill Modeler respects configuration management driven by global and local configurations and ensures traceability with the correct version of remote items, based on the currently active configuration.
For more information, see OSLC Links Editor.