Windchill Information Modeler is one of the Windchill development components that can be used to customize your Windchill environment. Information Modeler contains the Windchill modeling files and source code that you will use to develop your customizations. Custom Java Annotations are used to model business objects. Windchill then uses this model to generate code that is used in server and client development.

Information Modeler provides the most powerful capabilities for creating custom business objects and relationships in Windchill systems, but requires greater development skills and is less flexible than using subtypes. For example, subtypes can be added and changed by an administrator while the system is running, but model changes must be made by a skilled Java developer during strictly managed checkpoints. On the other hand, modeled objects can be created by assembling specific collections of Windchill plug-and-play interfaces to create unique server behavior but subtypes can only be created as super types of existing modeled classes with additional attributes.

For more information on Java Annotations see Modeling Business Objects.