HD3D Visual Reporting - Data Source 1

[MAhrens]

Hello NX Specialists,

we are interested in expanding our license package for Teamcenter 8.3/NX 7.5. The idea is to add the HD3D Visual Reporting module to the license file. From my experiences with Check-Mate, I like the idea to markup the relevant 3D components directly inside the 3D space. By reading the SIEMENS PLM Fact Sheet for this "Visual Reporting" tool I found the following statement: "...Correlates information from multiple disjointed data sources into a single visual interactive environment that delivers product analytics directly to your design teams...". That's describes our current situation. A lot of our business data are managed outside Teamcenter/NX in our ERP/MRP system SAP. Up to now I was not able to determine how to connect those "disjointed data sources" like SAP, etc. to NX HD3D Visual Reporting. How is it managed? Do I have to deal with "Knowledge Fusion" declarations like I do it in Check - Mate? Is there a NXOpen VB . NET connection available? How do I transport existing data from other sources (e.g. EXCEL files) into the HD3D environment? Or is the entire tool lmited to data, which are available via Teamcenter only? Can someone provide me with a hint or an example? Up to now I have no imagination about the IT technique, which is used to route the different information into HD3D.

Regards

Matthias

 

[kapmnit123]

Hi Matthias,
Although i am not an expert on it but may be this can be of some help to you. HD3D vusial reporting from NX perspectives takes the ATTRIBUTES and their values into consideration. So whatever that is published as an attribute inside NX can be utilized for creating ( lot of OOTB reports are already there) visual reports.
The term "multiple disjointed data sources " may point to different attributes as Visual Reporting enables you to consider multiple attributes in a single visula report (you can filter down your results at multiple levels based on attrribute value criteria and likewise).
Certainly TC adds further to it's strengths. Can you provide us waht exactly you are looking for? Though i am still on my learning curve but would like to give it a try.
As far as KF is concerned am not sure if it plays any role here (however you may use your dfa to generate some customized attributes and simmilar is a case with NX Open also)
Thanks and Best Regards
Kapil Sharma

 

[MAhrens]

Hi Kapil,

Thanks for your reply. The idea is to use the HD3D Visual report application to illustrate current MRP data in conjunction with the 3D model. MRP data could be the "Sales Status Flag", "Stock resp. Warehouse Level", "PURCHASED or SELF MANUFACTURED", "Price", "Running Manufacturing Orders", "Service Tags", etc. In our case those information will not be handled inside the PLM framework Teamcenter. These are typical information, which are managed inside an MRP resp. ERP system like SAP. But for the engineers those information are very important to evaluate the current state of a product and to develope accurate descission about "How to continue?" strategies. Currently the engineers and product managers have to jump into the PLM and the ERP system in parallel to get a complete image of the product state. Therefore this the real situation, which matches the description in the HD3D Visual Report fact sheet. But I want to avoid to make the PLM environment a mirror of the MRP system. Therefore I do not want to copy all the relevant data form the SAP system to the Teamcenter system first to visualize them in context of the 3D model. Instead of that I had the imagination that I can trigger an external script by the HD3D Visual Report (e.g. Shell, SAP-RFC script, visual basic, etc.), which collects the relevant data from the external systems and show them in context at runtime.
For the HD3D Check-Mate I have such an environment in place since one year. I have realized at in the past by using EXCEL as ACTIVE-X hoster for the SAP-Login tool. In addition to that I have routed a customized VB .dll to the Check-Mate checkers via therelated Knowledge Fusion function. With this pipline I'M able to get information from SAP at runtime an evaluate them to the Check-Mate Flags "PASSED", "PASSED WITH INFORMATION", "FAILED", etc. The issue with Check - Mate is that I have to process the information upfront to match them to the Check - Mate Logic of "GOOD" and "BAD". Especially for quantize able values it is not easy to interpret this. In such cases my intent is to attach the relevant SAP ERP data by a visual tag to the related 3D model and group the components accordingly.
Similar to one of the HD3D example images I want to simply split my assembly components in one group of "Own Manufactured" parts and another group of "Purchased Parts". But the driving field is not handled in Teamcenter. It is stored in SAP instead.

Annotation:
I have tried to upload a PDF file and a JPEG image in parallel to illustrate the intent. But I#m not sure if the upload was correct at this stage.

http://files.engineering.com/getfil...-a57b-17827db714e9&file=NX_Check-Mate_SAP.jpg

http://files.engineering.com/getfil...1432_MA_NX_HD3D_Checkmate_checks_SAP_Data.pdf

Regards

Matthias

 

[kapmnit123]

Hi Mattias,
I know CHECKMATE can use KF for making your own customized checks but frankly speaking i have not seen KF being used in visual reporting as such till now (due to my limited knowledge offcourse) but i feel that the brilliant customization glimpses you have shared with us can be used for creating NX attributes (through KF or NX OPEN) too which then can be used for visual reports.
I will see if i can catch hold of some expert on it....
Best Regards
Kapil

 

[TheKaizer]

We have the same problem here. Alot of our usefull data/information is stored within SAP. Was anyone able to resolve what Matthias is asking?

Thanks,
Kai

 

[MAhrens]

Hello Kai,

I have now the HD3D Visual Reporting license in place for NX 7.5. I have figured out, that it is able to operate with Teamcenter 8.3 Runtime Properties, which are routed from SAP to Teamcenter via the TESIS T4S Gateway. I have tested to generate a few T4S RTP's for the plant specific Material status as well as for a few accounting data. After activating the T4S Runtime Mapping I got those RTP's as new properties for the Items. Finally in NX I used this Teamcenter T4S Runtime Properties as source for the HD3D Visual Reporting function.
But after a few tests on larger assemblies I have turned off this RTP function in the T4S Gateway. In our Teamcenter 8.3 4-Tier setup active T4S RTP's will stress the server architecture too much. In our example for each Item, which will be loaded by a user with activated SAP T4S Interface, a SAP call will be initiated to gather the related properties from SAP at runtime. This happened even if the user will not operate in HD3D Visual Reporting. The entire information flow is handled via the Teamcenter 4-Tier business server layer. In our case the server was close to a stall scenario. Therefore be carefully if you run into such a test scenario with T4S RTP's if you do not have enough server power in the backend!
As intermediate workaround I have provided my user base with an EXCEL to NX-COMPONENT attribute lookup tool, which created component attributes from a current running EXCEL session by key-value matching lookup. With this workaround we can extract related data from SAP (e.g. Quick Viewer SQVI Transaction) into an EXCEL dump and populate the NX assembly from there. No doubt, it is not realy a runtime lookup, but it works.
In addition to that I'm planing an NX integrated SAP Lookup macro, which fetches the data from SAP via the RFC_READ_TABLE function. It should looks similar to the one, which I have already established for the HD3D Check-Mate function. But it should not perform a SAP call for each component step by step. Instead of that it should collect all relevant SAP Material keys first, create a single RFC_READ_TABLE query to speed up performance and should than populate the component attributes.

Regards

Matthias

 

[kapmnit123]

Hi Matthias,
Sorry for not able to get back on this query.Thanks for the valuable information.
Best Regards
Kapil

 

[MAhrens]

Dear All,

as feedback to this thread I want to inform you about my solution for this topic, which I have published to our user base. Like mentioned in a previous message, my idea was to store attributes on component level for the reporting task only. I do not want to store them persistant in the assembly structure. Therefore our users have to close assemblies without saving after a HD3D Visual Reporting task. To populate component attributes they can use an older EXCEL to NX lookup script, which is searching inside a running EXCEL session for a dedicated key and captured a corrosponding value from an excel cell and add it as component attribute. This operates similar to the Vertical Lookup excel and nx equations. In addition to that i have written a new NX to SAP interface, which I have called SAP Data Lookup. This application launches an excel session in the background with an embedded SAP RFC client. Via the SAP RFC_READ_TABLE function it read various ERP resp. MRP data from the SAP system and stores them as component attributes. In our setup this offers the option for the engineer to analyse fast if all the used components have a valid MRP status at his target plant.
To illustrate our solution I have attached a small video and a animated gif file with a few example screenshots.

http://files.engineering.com/getfil...e=GEA_Farm_Technologies_NX_HD3D_meets_SAP.avi

http://files.engineering.com/getfil...Visual_Report_SAPDataLookup_Examples_Anim.gif

 

[kapmnit123]

Thanks a lot Matthias.
Best Regards
Kapil