Overview of Capabilities
About The Gateway
The Windchill Gateway for Creo Elements/Direct Model Manager exports product structures from Creo Elements/Direct Model Manager and imports them into Windchill by operations scheduled by pre-defined criteria. Users continue to use Creo Elements/Direct Model Manager as their daily data management tool. Data files, content (though not primary CAD files), and secondary content are periodically published from Creo Elements/Direct Model Manager into Windchill for enterprise visibility, visualization, technical publications, and manufacturing planning, including the following information:
• Masterdata (which form Windchill part objects)
• Metadata (object attributes)
• Creo View data
• Derived drawing and model data in neutral CAD and visualization formats
• BOM information
This implementation allows users to keep Creo Elements/Direct CAD data management and core design processes in Creo Elements/Direct Model Manager while Windchill supports enterprise product development activities.
The gateway is a common infrastructure (controller, message-oriented middleware, and gateway adapters) to describe, execute, and control a business process. It integrates disparate business logic running in separate processes into a harmonized, orchestrated process. In this specific implementation, it allows the exchange of part structures across PDM systems. The execution of a process is handled through a set of messages that flow between the controllers and the adapters. The controller provides a single point administering of the business processes that are run by the gateway.
The user interface allows a new instance of the business process to be created by identifying endpoints at which operations of the process run, and also identifies the task that constitutes the business logic of the step. It allows for scheduling the jobs and monitoring a specific run of a business process. For this specific implementation, PTC recommends that you use job scheduling on the Creo Elements/Direct Model Manager side rather than the Windchill side. Diagnostics are available to monitor progress of a running process instance. With the interface you can resolve conflicts from a process step and retry that step, and browse output artifacts from the execution of the process.
The gateway publishes Creo Elements/Direct data from Creo Elements/Direct Model Manager to Windchill. It executes the following steps as part of publishing process:
• Collect and Export is performed by Creo Elements/Direct Model Manager. A collection criteria or user selection determines what is exported from Creo Elements/Direct Model Manager. The result of an export is an IXB package file containing the Windchill parts and Windchill documents to be uploaded with representation.
• Import to Windchill is enabled by the IXB import. Import takes an IXB package file as input and imports part structure into a specified Windchill product.
After configuring the publishing process, execution of the process becomes automatic.
Users Of The Gateway
Users for the Windchill Gateway for Creo Elements/Direct Model Manager are
• Creo Elements/Direct Model Manager administrators and users
• Windchill administrators and users
A Creo Elements/Direct Model Manager administrator must:
• Define a set of selection rules for objects to be published.
• Set up schedules for regular publishing. Objects are selected using one of the selection rules.
• Configure the GatewayConfig.xml file with all the required mappings, attributes, collection rules, versioning, and number managing
A Creo Elements/Direct Model Manageruser can manually select objects and trigger one-time or regular publishing of the selected objects.
A Windchill administrator and user must:
• Monitor the process and troubleshoot the execution if necessary