Control Characteristics

Control characteristics created within Windchill MPMLink and associated to a part (or to a manufacturing object such as a process plan or an operation) may be published to a distribution target. A certain attribute on the distribution target determines whether or not control characteristics associated to a part (or to a process plan) would be published. For example, with the attribute Publish Control Characteristics when Publishing a Part set to Yes, control characteristics associated to a part would be rendered and sent with the ESI response. Likewise, control characteristics associated to a process plan (or to an operation) would be published when the attribute Publish Control Characteristics when Publishing a Process Plan has a value of Yes. Both these attributes have a value of No by default.

Note the following:

• Control characteristics may be created and associated to a part or to a manufacturing object using the Manufacturing Product Structure Explorer.

• A control characteristic that is associated to an operation will be published upon publishing the holding process plan, provided the distribution target attribute Publish Control Characteristics when Publishing a Process Plan has a value of Yes; this happens even if the control characteristic is associated to a part as well and the attribute Publish Control Characteristics when Publishing a Part has a value of No.

The following attributes are passed:

The attribute Model Item Reference holds a reference to the model item that is associated to the control characteristic being published.

Several other attributes may get passed as well, depending on the type of the model item. For more information see the Windchill Enterprise Systems Integration Implementation Guide - SAP or the Windchill Enterprise Systems Integration Implementation Guide - Oracle Applications.

If a model item’s EPM document is not associated to the owner of the holding control characteristic, an attempt to publish the control characteristic results in a failure.

Windchill ESI passes the following information pertaining to associations from Windchill PDMLink to the EAI software components when publishing control characteristics associated to a part, to a process plan or to an operation respectively:

Each of the above carries information on the objects that are related. For example, the PartQualityLink element in the ESI response holds the name and number of the part and the associated control characteristic. The OperationQualityLink element carries some additional information, in that it carries the following attributes as well;