We’re running Wildfire 4 M230 with Windchill PDMLink 10.0 M030. We’ve experienced some odd issues after using the “clear cache” function under Tools, Server Manager, Cache Tools. After running this, the user activates a workspace, synchronizes and applies a check out to a file – workspace display updates to include the “checked out” symbol in that row. Open that file and attempt to modify it. Pro/E throws a conflict to the screen indicating the file is read only as it is not checked out and offers the options of check out, continue, revise and check out or cancel. If the user selects check out, it errors out saying the checkout fails because the file is already checked out. ??? Event manager shows “the object has already been checked out by an unknown user”. If I return to viewing the workspace, indeed the file still shows the indicator for “checked out” to that workspace. Attempting to cancel the check out fails with “undo checkout failed. See the event console for more details.” This still leaves the file displaying as checked out. If I synchronize the workspace again everything now starts to behave. Why do I have to synchronize after applying a check out after using clear cache? Similar behavior occurs if the workspace had files that were already checked out but were unmodified before the clear cache. Why does it behave this way?
I opened a call with PTC and the tech’s answer on the phone was to NOT use the clear cache function. PTC recommends checking in and / or uploading all new or modified files you want to keep, deleting any workspaces you can, exiting Pro/E and renaming or deleting the .wf folder. This then forces Pro/E & Windchill to start with a totally clean cache folder structure. He seemed to indicate the use of the clear or clear cache functions from Server Manager is not really “supported” by PTC. Of course he did not document any of those statements in the case number. It looked initially like the clear cache functions would alleviate some weird lockup issues we were having when working in Pro/E and accessing Windchill PDMLink through the integrated browser panel. However, resulting issues with basic functions like check out make me have second thoughts about the clear function.
Has anyone seen odd behavior like this? Have any recommended best practices? I strongly advise my users to keep workspaces to a minimum, use them for a short time for specific task etc., then delete them. However the cache can still grow fairly large which I believe leads to the flakey issues / hangs in interacting with Windchill within Pro/E. Hope was clear would be the magic bullet.
Thanks!
Erik