Across Feb & March 2021, LEAP is running a 6-part webinar series on PTC Windchill suitable for both existing & new users of PLM. During this series, we intend to provide an in depth look at the core capabilities of Windchill and highlight examples of how companies around the world are using PLM to boost their efficiency and product quality, at a time when teams are increasingly forced to collaborate remotely.
The recording of the first webinar in the series entitled Introduction to Windchill PLM and the Digital Thread is available for those of you who missed it – read on for the highlights of webinar two of the series, Windchill for Product Data Management.
To start off proceedings, LEAP’s PTC Technical Manager Allan Thompson introduces the topics covered in this session and provides an overview of the Windchill packaging structure as requested by several participants of our first introductory webinar.
Next Allan takes a closer look at the common data management problems companies face including:
- Design data residing in multiple locations in multiple states (version control, change management etc)
- Limited ability to search (finding and reusing existing data, viewing history etc)
- Manual business processes controlling design data (excessive user input, lack of visibility / insight into processes)
and the Windchill capabilities that directly address these problems such as:
- Requirements and validation
- Source code management
- CAD data management
- Enterprise visualisation, validation and review
- Document management
- Enterprise document publishing and collaboration
Allan continues with a deep dive into Windchill’s object-based digital data model and how it manages product data. The model starts with an object that the business produces which may then have a structure which defines it, CAD associated with it, CAD derived content such as drawings or STL files associated with it, history and versions associated with it for version control and meta-data, attributes, documentation and much more associated with the structure. We then take a step-by-step look at related data in Windchill using Creo data as an example.
Allan then guides us through an overview of each of the key Windchill Product Data Management capabilities including integral component management, Creo data management, Windchill workgroup manager (for Solidworks, Inventor, Autocad, CATIA) and Windchill integration for E-CAD.
Next is a demonstration of CAD data management in Windchill starting with a brief overview of the user interface for those unfamiliar with it. This is followed by a more detailed look at Windchill’s core PDM functionality including tracking down in which assemblies a particular part is used, connectivity between Windchill and your CAD system (in this case Creo), workflows and tasks and much, much more. If you have not yet seen Windchill in action be sure to watch the clip below!
Finally Imran Muthaliph, Application Engineer at LEAP Australia provides an overview of document management within Windchill including desktop integration with applications such as Microsoft Word and Excel and Windchill’s enterprise document publishing and collaboration tools before providing a live demonstration of this functionality in action.
We hope you have enjoyed the second of our six-part webinar series on Windchill. If you have not yet registered for the upcoming events you can do so here and as always if you have any questions about anything discussed here please don’t hesitate to contact us.
