Overview

PTC Global Product Development Package I is a foundational solution for PDM and MCAD data management. The package contains everything needed for MultiMCAD data management, document management, publishing, and visualization. It includes the following features:

•Replication to provide high-performance design collaboration among distributed global teams

•Support for integrations with all Creo Parametric applications, Mathcad, AutoCAD, Autodesk Inventor, SolidWorks, and NX

•Visualization, validation, and review capabilities with Creo View light and all the Creo View adapters for publishing formats from Creo Parametric Apps, SolidWorks, Autodesk Inventor, AutoCAD, and NX

PTC Global Product Development Package I does not include support for parts, changes, packages, or security labels and agreements but is extensible in that Windchill modules that do not require parts, such as ProjectLink and additional MCAD workgroup managers, can be added.

Logging On as the Administrator

You can access your Windchill solution using a URL from a Web browser.

Note

The server manager, method server, and web server must be running before Windchill can be accessed.

The URL string is formatted as follows:

http://<hostname>:<port>/<webapp>

The required parameters were defined when your Windchill solution was installed. You only need to include the port number when the Web server being used is using a port number other than 80 (default).

If the web server is using the default port, then you can enter http:// <hostname>/<webapp> in your web browser’s Address (or Location) text box. For example, if you specified Windchill for the <webapp> parameter, then the following URL entered in the Web browser Address text box opens the Windchill home page:

http://<hostname>/Windchill

Tip

If you are logging on using the same system where your solution is installed, you can use localhost as <hostname>.

Note

If your system was configured with SSL, then the URL used to access Windchill uses the https prefix, rather than http

Use the administrative user defined during the installation to log on. This user is a member of the Administrators group and has out-of-the box privileges that give you full control over all Windchill objects.

After you log on, you are initially presented with a welcome page that highlights the main features of Windchill. This welcome page displays each time you log on, unless you select the Do not show this page upon startup checkbox. You can view the welcome page at any time by selecting Quick Links Help Welcome to Windchill.

Best Practice

If you want to use a site administrator to manage Windchill, you should create a second site administrator for these tasks to improve Windchill performance. For more information, see Establishing Site Administrators on page 133

Home Page

Click the home icon in the upper left corner to view your Home page. The Home page is where users manage their daily work.

Note

While individual users can each have their own customized Home page, all site administrators share a single customized Home page. The site administrator’s Home page is displayed for all users who have not yet customized their individual Home page.

For information on customizing the Home page, see the Setting Up Your Environment topics in the Windchill Help Center.

Navigator

The Navigator on the left side of the page contains two tabs: the Search tab and the Browse tab.

The Search tab allows you to search for objects in Windchill by entering your own advanced search parameters or by using a saved or historic search. For more information on searching in Windchill, see the Searching for Information topics in the Windchill Help Center.

The Browse tab allows you to navigate to various contexts for which you have access, such as projects, products, or organizations. The contexts available in the Browse tab depend on which products you have installed at your site, and include the following:

•Site —Provides site administrators access to configure and manage the

Windchill system as a whole. Site is visible only to site administrators and is the context from which the initial administration activities are done.

•Organizations —Provides site and organization administrators access to

manage organization contexts, including creating new organizations (site administrators only), managing groups and roles, access control, object initialization rules, preferences, and templates. Organizations is visible to site and organization administrators only.

•Libraries —Provides users access to all libraries of which they are a

member. In a library, team members can store and provide access to business information (such as in a document library) or can store and provide access to objects that are not related to a single product (such as in a common parts library). There are no out-of-the-box libraries. (Windchill PDMLink, Arbortext Content Manager, Pro/INTRALINK only)

•Changes —Provides users access to all change objects for contexts of which

they are a member. (Windchill PDMLink, or Windchill ProjectLink installed with Windchill PDMLink only)

•Projects —Provides users access to all projects of which they are a member.

For each project, team members have access to the project information, project schedule, resources, and plan details. There are no out-of-the-box projects. (Windchill ProjectLink only)

•Programs —Provides users access to all programs of which they are a

member. A program is used to collect and manage the planning and execution of a set of projects. A program can be used solely as a means for organizing projects, or it can contain a plan, documents, and teams. There are no out-of- the-box programs. Programs is visible only if programs have been enabled at your site. (Windchill ProjectLink only)

•Products —Provides users access to all products of which they are a

member. For each product, team members manage all of the information that is relevent to the design, manufacture, and support of a product. When only base data is installed, there are no out-of-the-box products. (Windchill PDMLink, Arbortext Content Manager, Pro/INTRALINK only)

•Recently Visited —Displays your recently accessed contexts and

workspaces.

Click anywhere on the Navigator bar to expand or collapse it. Click the Search or Browse links to open the Navigator to that tab.

Working With the Initial Organization

Context

Your Windchill environment consists of a set of containers that hold all of the administrative areas (known as domains), rules, and data that make up the context from which Windchill users work. Although the underlying code refers to containers, the term Context is used throughout the user interface to identify where in the framework specific rules, domains, and data reside. Since Context is the label you see in the interface, this topic collection uses the term context (rather than container) so you can make the connection with the user interface. Unless you are working with the code, you can assume that context and container refer to the same thing.

The contexts are set up in a hierarchy so that the rules and data created in one context can be available to child contexts and the domains in one context can have child domains in a child context. The child domains inherit information from ancestor domains.

After installation, every Windchill solution has an installed top-level site context, and an initial organization context. Site context activities are performed from Site

; organization context activities are performed from Organizations .

The organization context is a child of the site context. The context name of the initial organization context is the organization name that was entered during installation. For example, assume that the organization name is Org1, then the following context hierarchy is established:

In this example, the Org1 organization context inherits rules and data from the site context.

Both the site and the initial organization contexts have the same owning organization participant (type WTOrganization). This becomes important if you want to segregate some of the objects created in an organization context from other contexts. The term participant is introduced here and used throughout Windchill as a way of categorizing Windchill objects that identify users, groups, and organizations. The organization participant created in the installation process becomes the owning organization for some of the objects created in both the site and the initial organization contexts. For example, subtypes are associated with