Windchill Work Packages, new in Windchill 9.1, enable you to create, deliver and track packages of Windchill managed information, allowing offline access to Windchill information for partners outside your Windchill system.

Packages are an ideal way to deliver an RFP or RFQ to suppliers, a collection of deliverables for a review, or CAD models to a manufacturer or customer. The system allows for the creation of a zip file with static offline Windchill pages with embedded help, documents, parts, product structure, CAD files, and change information and associated meta-data, which can then be sent as attachments or downloaded from a link in a Windchill generated email.

This technical tip will show you how to create a Windchill Work Package.    

A new package can be created from two places:

• The Packages table, which appears on the Packages page for each Product, Program, Library, or Project.
• The Actions drop-down menu on the information page for each Product, Program, Library, or Project.

In the following example, we’ve navigated to the Packages page for a Product. This product has had packages “enabled”, which is a step performed by the Product Manager and creates the roles on the Product team to support package governance. If this step has not been performed, the New Package icon will not appear in the Packages table.

We’ve selected the New Package icon and the New Package wizard has appeared, allowing us to define the details for this package. In our system, the package will be auto-numbered and we have the option to specify a Name, Description, Options (Basic packages contain one collection, while Advanced may contain more than one); Recipient Instructions, and we have the option to filter content with specific file extensions.

After we’ve defined the details to describe and control the package we are able to specify the objects to include in the package. We first define our collection options which allow us to control how dependencies are handled, types to include or exclude, and contexts to include or exclude.

Once we’ve defined our rules we are ready to search the system for content. We begin by selecting the “Add Objects” icon.

We are then able to search the system to select the items to include. Here we’ve searched for and selected a Change Notice.

After we have added all of our selections to the list of objects to include, we can preview the list of items that will be collected according to the collection options that we have specified.

Our initial selection of 4 objects (Change Notice, Change Task, Part, and CAD Document) has resulted in 95 dependencies being included. 

We are then able to view the information page for the package that we have just created. This package is now managed in the system, allowing you to subscribe to it, lock and deliver it (to both Windchill users and non-Windchill users), and revise and manage it.