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Interacting with Windchill

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Written by Michael Schilling Tuesday, 24 April 2012 13:19

 

Ever thought of a usecase where it would be great to have a clean, stable, fast and simple way to communicate with Windchill from any kind of other application?
 
The first approach for something like this would be to make use of the InfoEngine and its possibility to define tasks and webjects etc.
You can then communicate using XML over the network - you need to send and receive this XML and it's quite specific to the type of InfoEngine tasks you're using. Maybe not always the most generic way to tackle communications?!
 
We gave the thing some thought and defined a way to talk to Windchill PDMLink using a modern, state of the art web API. A very small and lightweight extension on the Windchill Server which communicates over plain HTTP - all within the authentication realm and permissions of Windchill!
 
Just send a simple request and get the results with the information you need. No additional hazzle with setting up any InfoEngine tasks or other configuration. Just send your request and get the results.
 
Requests can be of several types - they typically retrieve information. But you can also send some information to create, update or add any kind of information to objects managed in Windchill.
With this kind of API, it becomes possible to create powerful applications leveraging the latest developments in web-applications. Check out our other posts in the blog here or take a look at some of our videos on youtube:
 
 
Don't hesitate to contact us in case of any interest... we're here to get it done: simple access to complex information!
 

nexiles|finder

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Written by Michael Schilling Friday, 30 March 2012 15:00

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Check out this video on how nexiles|finder simplifies the daily lives of people that need access to the wealth of data managed in PTC Windchill.

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And even for the design engineer, there is added value due to the PTC Creo Integration:

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Access information managed in Windchill PDMLink with a really simple to use and interactive interface.

Users can find information such as objects, parts and documents using live search and can access important details of these objects right from the search result list.

Furthermore, users have the possibility to compare selected objects with each other and show differences between their properties. Another stunning feature is the graphical display of relations between objects. This can be typically the visual representation of an assembly structure of a product design.

Watch the video to see the details in action!

 

 

dojox.grid.DataGrid in HTA Application

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Written by Michael Schilling Thursday, 22 September 2011 10:24

When trying to load a dojox.grid.DataGrid object from within a HTA application using Dojo 1.6 you will receive an exception telling:


Unable to get value of the property 'html': object is null or undefined

This exception is not thrown and caught in the following method: dojox.html.metrics.initOnFontResize

In this function there's a check if the current browser is of type Internet Explorer and then some action is done when this is true. To solve this issue you can catch the excpetion and fail silently. I've been checking our applications thoroughly and couldn't find any downsides of this approach. So the original line looks like this:


f.onresize = f.contentWindow.parent[dojox._scopeName].html.metrics._fontresize;

The fixed lines would look like this:

try{

f.onresize = f.contentWindow.parent[dojox._scopeName].html.metrics._fontresize;


}catch(e){};

 

   

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