Exercise 4.1 - Windchill integration on Web Dashboard
- Debesh Roy Chowdhury
Objectives
The new learning objectives of this exercise are to create a repository connection to a Windchill repository on the Syndeia Web Dashboard (SWD), view the repository including properties, relations and search, and create a reference connection.
Preparation
This exercise assumes the student has
Syndeia Cloud 3.6 installed with a valid user account,
A valid user account to a Windchill repository, and
A valid user account to at least one other on-line repository, e.g. JIRA.
The user can use any Windchill repository they have available. Because the content of your Windchill repository will be different, the specific examples in the following exercise instructions are only a guide and example for your actions. It is generally advisable to carry out these exercises in a non-production repository, a “sandbox”, set up for training and practice purposes.
See the all the videos in Part 1 under Tutorials – Syndeia Web Dashboard for a general introduction to the interface.
Background – Windchill
As envisioned by Intercax, the Digital Thread is composed of inter-model connections between models in different repositories, which Syndeia creates and manages, and intra-model connections between elements in the same repository, which the individual tool creates and manages. As of Syndeia release 3.6, the Syndeia Web Dashboard can extract and display some model information from the Windchill repository. Figure 1 shows a tree view of this information, with labels identifying the Windchill element types. The label color coding indicates how the Windchill element type is mapped to the Syndeia Cloud element types: Repository (green), Container (red), and Artifact (blue). Other Container element types include Libraries and Projects.
In the case of the Syndeia Windchill integration, the Relations table (Step 7) and the Digital Thread Explorer (Step 10 onwards) can display some intra-model connection types between Artifacts, including usage links and occurrence links, as well as inter-model connections. The intra-model connections are not permanently part of the Syndeia Cloud graph; they are extracted and displayed as needed.
This information is important in formulating and interpreting Syndeia graph queries. A more complete diagram of the Windchill data model as it is understood by Syndeia is available through the web dashboard help menu on the left.
Exercise
Log on to the Syndeia Cloud Web Dashboard (see Video 1.2), click on the Digital Thread Projects icon on the left border, choose or create a project for the exercise (video 1.5) and click on the Workspace tab at the top of the Digital Thread Project dashboard (Figure 2). I am using project UGV02 in this example.
If no repository connection to Windchill is available, hover over Windchill in the left column, then click the + icon to its right. Complete the form. You may need to consult with your Windchill admin for the proper information to access your repository, including your account credentials. When complete, click Test to check whether a connection has been made. A green checkmark indicates success; click Create to save (Figure 3).
If a Windchill repository connection already appears under Windchill, but you need to add your own access credential, hover over that Windchill repository and click the Gear icon that appears to the right. Complete username and password and click Test and Update (Figure 4).
Select your repository and it should load on the right side. Expand it to show the contents of your Home folder, as in Figure 5. See Background section for discussion of Windchill artifact types.
On the right border, there are three icons, labeled Details, Relations and Search. Select a Windchill element in the Tree View column (Drive_Assby in our example) and click on the Details icon. A Detail list appears to the right as in Figure 6. Scroll down and review the attributes of the Windchill element that are available to Syndeia 3.6, including name and externalKey, which is the unique part number in the Windchill repository. Click the Details icon again to close the list.
Click the Search icon on the right.
In the Search window, select Container or Part. If Part is selected, fill in the Part number field (e.g. 0000005185, the externalKey value from Figure 6) and click Search.
The result(s) of the search are shown on the right, as in Figure 7.
Click the Search icon again to close the Search window.
Intra-model and inter-model relations to a Windchill elements can be displayed by clicking on the Relations icon. For our example, we will use the Drive_Assbly part in the UGV02 model, where there are already inter-model and intra-model connections (Figure 8). Note that there is one inter-model connection shown in the top part of the right side, in addition to five intra-model relations.
To create a reference connection between the selected Windchill item and an element in another repository, click on the + (Add) icon highlighted in Figure 8. A Create Reference Relationships window will appear as in Figure 9.
Under Select target artifact, choose the other repository to which the new connection will be made. In our example this is JIRA @ Intercax.
If you have valid access to this repository, its contents will appear at the bottom of the window. Scroll down to the element that will be the target of the new connection and click the checkbox beside it. This is issue UGV-60 (Drive Assembly Control) in our example.
Each Syndeia connection has a directionality. The Select direction pull down menu at the bottom of the window allows the directionality to be set as desired before the connection is made.
Click on the Create Reference Connection button at the bottom. The new connection should appear in the Inter-model list after the Reload icon is clicked.
Click the Relations icon again to close the Relations window.
Note: In Syndeia release 3.6, it is not possible to create Model Transform inter-model connections or intra-model connections through the SWD. Some of those use cases will be added in future releases.
Inter-model relations can be viewed in other ways. Figure 10 shows the relations table under the Explore tab for MBSB11, filtered to show all Target Names containing “Drive”. Seven relations appear.
The Digital Thread Explorer or DTE (Figure 11 - Figure 13) provides interactive visualization of relations in a graph format. To launch DTE, right-click an item in the Tree View and choose Graph View. In our example, this is the Windchill item, Power Subsystem. Initially, it appears as a single node in the Graph View, as in Figure 11.
Click on double arrow icon at the bottom of the node. If this element has any connections, they should appear as in Figure 12. In our example, we see the same seven intra-model and three inter-model that appeared in Figure 8.
Click on the Repositories icon in the left menu bar and select the same Windchill repository. With no active digital thread project, only intra-model relations are displayed in the Digital Thread Explorer (Figure 13) and the relations list opened from the Relations icon on the right.