Process Overview for Publishing CAD Document Structures to Other Systems
The detail process flow that can be followed in order to use this functionality is as follows.
Creating New Distribution Target
A user with ESI author or ESI administrator credentials can create a new Distribution Target of type “Distributed Process.” See
Creating a Distribution Target for more information.
Associate the Distribution Target to CAD Document
CAD Document will have an “Associate Distribution Target” using which, user can associate “Distributed Process” type of Distribution Targets to CAD Documents. This is action is available from the Distribution Target table on CAD Document details page as well
It is possible to associate a Distribution Target to a CAD Document using “Update Distribution Targets” action in structure browser. This is a multi-select action and using this action, user is able to associate targets to multiple objects.
Send to Distribution Target Action
A CAD Document will have a “Send to Distribution Target” action. If the CAD Document is associated to any “Distributed Process” type of Distribution Target, a Send To Distribution Target page is launched. This allows you to select specific Distribution Targets (if multiple targets are associated) to which the CAD Document is to be published.
Only the organization default target cannot be excluded from publishing. You can view a preview if desired and the Send button will initiate the publishing action.
For each publishing, the Distributed Process creates a schedule, a job and an ESI transaction. See
Sending to a Distribution Target for more information.
Reviewing Transaction
An ESI transaction can be accessed from the ESI Transaction Log page (available from > ) page for an Organization Administrator. Each transaction will be associated to a job. User can navigate to corresponding job details page using a context (RMB) menu action on a specific transaction.
Event Based Publishing
Apart from being able to manually publish a CAD Document structure to Distribution Target, Windchill also offers an event based publishing capability. It is possible to publish any CAD Document when its LC state changes. You can define the LC states at which the publishing event should be triggered. This is controlled through the “Lifecycle States Triggering Publication of a CAD Document” preference.
Reviewing Jobs
You can navigate to the Jobs List page from the Process List page using the List Jobs action available from the context (RMB) menu. The Jobs List page lists all jobs against the selected Distributed Process. On the Job Details page, you can view the attributes defined on the job.
The Operation Status tab provides a list of all operations in the job. It provides information about the name and status of each operation. From here you can view the logs associated with each operation as well. The Export And Publish operation will have the exported JAR file attached to it. This file can be downloaded for further use if required.
You can add a custom tab to the job details page and add a custom table using > > . This displays a Related Transaction table which provides information about the related ESI transaction.
Details on Delta
The following objects are factored into delta calculation; EPMDocument, EPMMemberLink and EPMReferenceLink. When delta information is sent, it is categorized in 3 distinct categories; Create, Changed and Unchanged.
• Create – The object is being sent for the first time to the distribution target. When an object is categorized in the “Create” category, the complete object information is bundled in the PLM message. This includes all metadata in PLM Services format along with all content information
• Change – The object is changed since the last publishing to the distribution target. When an object is categorized in the “Changed” category, the complete object information is bundled in the PLM message. This includes all metadata in PLM Services format along with all content information. A CAD Document will be considered as Changed only when its iteration, revision or LC State changes. An EPMMemberLink will be considered as Changed only when any attribute information on the EPMMemberLink changes. If a parent is iterated, but no other attribute information changes on the EPMMemberLink, then such EPMMemberLink is not called as Changed.
• Unchanged – The object is Unchanged since last publishing to the distribution target. When an object is categorized in the “Unchanged” category, only reference information (the information which is absolutely required in a PLM message in order to establish relationships, etc) is sent in the PLM message. Note that content is not sent for objects categorized as “Unchanged”