Explore how companies benefit from our solutions and services.

Due to the sensitivity of some of our customer projects, we are just describing some cases that we are currently working on and that have been delivered in the past. Please do not hesitate to contact us to get more information about what we do and how we create benefit for our customers.

alt

Access to production documents

Customer: Global provider for Offshore load handling systems.
Project Type: Process consulting and software development

Customer Background

The customer is a leading provider of advanced offshore load handling systems. Designers work on product development at different sites in several continents using Pro/ENGINEER and Windchill PDMLink. The customer needs a consistent process to provide all involved employees with access to all relevant information about their products. The information needs to be accessed in the most simple way - very much like a online-search-portal showing only content intended for the user.

Implemented solution

Based on the power of Windchill PDMLink, nexiles has implemented a search portal (based on nexiles|finder) with a minimalistic user-interface and a single input field. Users can open the portal in their browser and just start typing away. Already while typing, found content is listed as search results directly with icons to download published PDF files, access to detailed information and extensive filtering functionalities.

With the implemented solution, all involved users can easily and reliably find content managed in Windchill PDMLink through a very simple to use interface without having to go through trainings for how to use the interface of Windchill PDMLink to access relevant information. It becomes as simple as - type a drawing number and download directly the related PDF of the drawing.

Go to top

Publishing of documents

Customer: Global provider for Offshore load handling systems.
Project Type: Process consulting and software development

Customer Background

The customer is a leading provider of advanced offshore load handling systems. Designers work on product development at different sites in several continents using Pro/ENGINEER and Windchill PDMLink. For means of documentation, the customer needs all released documents (Drawings, Office files and AutoCAD) published in various formats - specifically PDF, DWG, and ProductView. The generation of those converted files shall happen automatically in the designs lifecycle process.

Implemented solution

In order to publish the required documents, the existing installation of Windchill PDMLink has been extended and configured in a way that Office Documents, Pro/ENGINEER and AutoCAD drawings are automatically converted to PDF upon release of the document. In addition, all Pro/ENGINEER drawings shall be converted to AutoCAD DWG format. The implemented solution is based on a generic worker setup (nexiles|publisher) which supports conversion of virtually any content type into a wide range of other formats. The generic approach allows for easy extension for future conversion needs regarding publishing. The nexiles|publisher allows a single worker to publish to multiple formats without having to define several workers and potentially pulling several licenses for the CAD workers. One CAD worker - multiple output formats.

With the implemented solution, all released documents automatically contain all required file formats published for sub-sequent processes. In this particular case, the published documents are also attached to the original document as secondary content (or attachment) which is then used in Work Packages for document delivery.

Go to top

Customized Save-As functionality in Windchill PDMLink

Customer: Global provider for Power Transformation Systems.
Project Type: Process consulting and software development

Customer Background

The customer is a leading provider of equipment for power transformation and transmission. Product designs are built on a highly parametric template system which makes heavy use of save-as functionality when creating new designs derived from those templates. The standard behavior of the default Save-As of Windchill PDMLink does not support features like automatically renaming all new objects based on information which is stored in the targets context meta-data or reflecting the original templates folder structure also in the target context. At the same time it was required to have a responsive user-interface which provides feedback about the running process while copying large datasets.

Implemented solution

In order to address the customer's requirements, a custom add-on has been developed to provide advanced Save-As functionality to all designers working with Windchill PDMLink and Pro/ENGINEER. The designer defines, which design shall be copied and selects for this design the action to kick-off the custom Save-As. Based on the settings from the template design, all (really all relevant!) dependencies are collected, the target is specified and objects are properly renamed and copied into the corresponding folder structure in the target location.

With the implemented solution, designers are now easily reusing complex designs from templates with highly complex dependencies.

Go to top

Meta-Data Management

Customer: Global providers for general equipment and machinery.
Project Type: Process consulting and software development

Customer Background

The customers are leading providers of equipment for offshore, oil and gas, energy and general machinery. Production drawings are based on 3D models designed in Pro/ENGINEER and managed in Windchill PDMLink. To be able to find and reuse designs it is necessary to describe all models with a consistent set of meta data. All information which is required for the Bill of Material (BOM) relies also on the correct definition of the designs meta data.

Design work is done at multiple sites in various countries. Not all sites have English as first language and therefore it's required to support a set of languages. Certain definitions (such as design descriptions) shall be entered in one of the supported languages and then be automatically translated to the corresponding words in the other languages. Example: A designer in Germany describes his model as "Abdeckung" and all other sites shall be able to find this model in Windchill PDMLink. Thus, the entered word needs to be set as description for all other languages. So that an English speaking user could find the design under "Covering".

Users/Designers shall be assisted while entering the meta data while at the same time the amount of information which needs to be specified needs to be kept at a minimum by setting defaults and pre-defined selection lists.

Implemented solution

In order to address the need for consistent definition of meta data, the nexiles|companion was implemented. This application platform provides a modular set of functionality to manage models in a very easy way. From model creation, modification and searching to the creation and management of design drawings - all steps support the designer to create designs in a consistent manner with correct meta data and ensures the designs to follow the implemented rules and requirements.

Go to top

Application Configuration Management

Customer: Global providers for general equipment and machinery.
Project Type: Process consulting and software development

Customer Background

The customers are leading providers of equipment for offshore, oil and gas, energy and general machinery. Designs are created and maintained in multiple sites across several continents. To ensure a common and consistent design environment, it becomes necessary to have the possibility to define a central location for all configuration settings for the design software tools such as Pro/ENGINEER, AutoCAD etc. Due to the distributed nature of the customers network infrastructure, the classical approach of using mapped network drives was a poor alternative - if not possible at all. At the same time, it was necessary to have control over important settings which affect how the design software behaves within the design rules and requirements of the customers.

Another requirement was the need to implement updates and installations of design software in an easy to administrate way from a central authority.

Implemented solution

In order to address the requirement to centrally manage software installation, configuration and access, the nexiles|starter has been implemented. This application works very much like a smartphone where shortcuts are placed and the user just clicks to start the underlying program or logic. The nexiles|starter itself is installed and run from the globally available Windchill PDMLink system and any configuration settings can be pulled from Windchill PDMLink or any other sources as needed.

This way, our customers are able to have maintain the nexiles|starter and all required configuration files (such as config.pro, config.win, etc) within Windchill PDMLink with its usual access control rules, lifecycles and so on.

Working with configuration files for Pro/ENGINEER becomes very modern and effective - just place them in Windchill as a regular document and release the file. The nexiles|starter loads the file (and others) before Pro/ENGINEER is started to ensure all configuration settings are up-to-date. If any setting  needs to be changed, the corresponding file just needs to be updated and released in Windchill PDMLink.

Configuration files can be compared to each other and in the compare-view, the differences are displayed visually showing what has been added, changed and removed.

As mentioned, the application itself is installed and run also from within Windchill PDMLink - but the user experiences the nexiles|starter as a regular desktop application. All communication with Windchill PDMLink happens under the hood to make the life of the designers as easy as possible.

Go to top

Windchill Apps

Customer: Global providers for general equipment and machinery.
Project Type: Process consulting and software development

Customer Background

The customers require additional functionality which is not available in a typical out-of-the-box Windchill installation. The add-ons shall be simple to maintain and available to users of Windchill based on permissions and access rights. Due to the fact that the server itself is located in a highly secured environment, it is not easy to access the servers file system to install and update custom code. At the same time, additional functionality shall be provided to users in a desktop-like user interface which can be designed in any way and which is not limited to the user interface elements of Windchill PDMLink.

Implemented solution

Based on nexiles|gateway, the customers have the possibility to implement add-on functionality by just uploading an application package in Windchill PDMLink - very much like uploading a regular document file. This application package can then be released and made available to all users through the nexiles|gateway controller.

The nexiles|gateway for Windchill can be installed by any user which has the appropriate permissions to add content to a Windchill context. The application packages are then under the regular version and lifecycle control of Windchill and installing an update becomes as simple as uploading and releasing it. Right afterwards, the latest update will be available to all users.

The functionality of nexiles|gateway and apps for Windchill is practically without limits. We have delivered several solutions based on this approach and there are projects going on. The following list is just as short excerpt of what has already been taken care of:

  • Managing configuration files for Pro/ENGINEER in Windchill.
  • Providing a start application which gives all users a consistent gate into the available design tools.
  • Integration of an advanced calculation portal into Windchill PDMLink interacting with Pro/ENGINEER designs.
  • A web-builder suite to visually create new Apps for Windchill with powerful features regarding User-Interface and possibilities to interact with objects in Windchill itself
  • Management of meta-data of objects either in Pro/ENGINEER or directly in Windchill PDMLink.
  • nexiles.finder platform providing a modern and simple to use interface to finding content in Windchill PDMLink.
  • nexiles.apps Marketplace is powered by Windchill itself.
  • Command Shell interface for interaction with objects managed in Windchill PDMLink.

Applications are no longer difficult to maintain and install - they become easy to create, implement and maintain! All based on the combined power of nexiles.apps and Windchill!

Go to top