In some operating systems, the file system performance for directory access degrades significantly as the number of files in the directory grows beyond a certain threshold. Performance is affected for both reading the contents of the directory and adding files to the directory.

To ensure adequate Windchill performance in such environments, you can enforce a limit on the number of files per vault folder has been introduced. This applies to all non-DBMS Windchill storage locations for Windchill-managed application files, such as CAD files or text documents. In a new Windchill installation, the limit on application files per folder is set to a default value of 50,000 files. You can enable or disable this setting through the following property in the Windchill wt.properties file for each Windchill installation:

If the limit enforcement is enabled (in other words, if wt.fv.useFvFileThreshold is set to true), then the actual file limit is set using the property:

When this limit is set and a currently writable folder reaches the limit on the number of files it can hold, Windchill automatically makes that folder read-only and switches to the next available folder for file uploads.

Before increasing the value of this limit, ensure that the new value will not have an unfavorable impact on performance. You may want to review the documentation for your operating system and file system.

For performance reasons, the limit on the number of files per folder has a range of plus or minus 10% of the limit. For example, if the limit is set to 10,000, the folder becomes read-only at somewhere between 9,000 and 11,000 files.

When the Windchill limit is disabled, you should monitor the growth of the number of files in the Windchill folders. Eventually, a point is reached when it is appropriate to manually discontinue additions to a currently writable folder by making it read-only, and switch to the next available folder for further file uploads.