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Leading manufacturing companies have a corporate initiative to lower product costs, increase engineering productivity and speed time-to-market through increased internal part reuse. Given existing reuse search tools, though, this is a formidable task. PDM systems—designed for version and revision control—often don’t support reuse search, and corporate parts libraries are often inadequate and difficult to use. Because of these shortcomings, engineers often skip internal part searches—resulting in duplication of work, lower productivity and higher product costs.
The minimum requirements for an internal part reuse system include a high-performance search engine, ability to classify data and attributes, and the ability to perform a parametric search. These requirements enable users to find parts meeting specific technical design criteria from an internal component library.
Windchill PartsLink is PTC’s parametric search engine and classification solution that can be deployed either as an internal component library in conjunction with our PDM solution, or as an external product catalog. For engineers, Windchill PartsLink helps them find internal parts that can be reused in new designs, reducing both design cycle time and product costs. For suppliers, Windchill PartsLink offers a powerful new web-based marketing channel that brings their catalog information directly to the desktops of Pro/ENGINEER Wildfire users.
Whether using a paper catalog, internal catalog, or component management system, engineers select parts on the basis of their technical attributes or properties. Windchill PartsLink addresses this requirement by featuring a parametric search based on an attribute-rich classification.
Windchill PartsLink catalogs are structured into a hierarchy of classes and subclasses. Attributes can be assigned to any class and are inherited by child classes. The Windchill PartsLink interface displays a graphical tree-like classification structure that helps users navigate to a desired class. Once a class is chosen, users can narrow their results set by defining an attribute’s search criteria. Search results are then displayed in a table that allows multi-column sorting.
In addition to graphical navigation, parametric search, results table sorting, and part number searches, Windchill PartsLink also supports natural language queries. For example, users can enter "bolts," and the application will return all bolts found in the library.
Click here to try a Windchill PartsLink search.
Each item in a Windchill PartsLink catalog has a part detail page where its attribute values, attachments, related documents, CAD models, and 3D viewable files are located. Users can bookmark a page for later use or email it to a co-worker. With 3D visualization, users can spin, zoom, pan, view solid, view wire-frame, and take feature and distance measurements.
Click here to view a Windchill PartsLink part detail page.
Windchill PartsLink supports dynamic model generation of Pro/ENGINEER parts and assemblies, IGES, STEP, and 2D DXF files. Using a Windchill PartsLink catalog, a user can define a CAD model’s parameters for 3D visualization or CAD model download. For example, a leading air cylinder manufacturer is using Windchill PartsLink technology to dynamically generate CAD models for custom-length air cylinders.
Click here to try this out.
Pro/ENGINEER Wildfire has an embedded web browser that allows users to view web pages without having to leave the application. Pro/ENGINEER Wildfire also features a direct link to the PTC Catalog Directory web page. The directory includes links to 3D content partners, supplier catalogs, and four Pro/LIBRARY catalogs. A company’s internal component library can also be listed directly from within Pro/ENGINEER Wildfire.
Pro/ENGINEER Wildfire's new component interfaces also allow Windchill PartsLink catalog parts to be auto-assembled directly from the catalog. For instance, users can drag a bolt from the PTC Windchill PartsLink Pro/LIBRARY catalog anywhere near a hole in the assembly and it falls right into place.
Component interfaces are defined at the part or assembly level, enabling quick placement of instances of components. For example, a surface mate interface may be defined for the underside of the head of a bolt while an insert interface can be defined for a shaft. When the bolt is assembled, it can be automatically placed using the references defined in the component interfaces. This avoids the manual effort required to position each individual assembly component and then having to assign several mating constraints.
Downloaded Pro/ENGINEER CAD models are automatically flagged in Pro/ENGINEER Wildfire as catalog parts, making them read-only components. Pro/ENGINEER CAD models downloaded from a Windchill PartsLink catalog contain complete part information, including name and description, critical attributes (e.g., diameter, material, and displacement), vendor or supplier information, and a hyperlink back to the catalog’s part detail page.
Although users of Pro/ENGINEER Wildfire will see the biggest benefits from accessing Windchill PartsLink-delivered content, users of earlier releases of Pro/ENGINEER (as well as other CAD applications) can also download CAD models from available component libraries and product catalogs through any web browser.
Visit the PTC Catalog Directory at catalogs.ptc.com to view the metric, ISO, JIS, and ANSI, ASME Pro/LIBRARY of standard mechanical components, as well as hundreds of supplier catalogs with 3D CAD Models.
For more information on Windchill PartsLink, click here. 
Aaron Smith is Windchill PartsLink product manager at PTC. He can be reached by e-mail at partslink@ptc.com.
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