I-deas & Teamcenter - Is it the end ? 1

[Lunar7]

Hi,

I'm the last remaining I-deas user onsite and have come up with a problem I need some advise on !
We migrated from Ideas to NX & Teamcenter back in 2009

Our current version of Teamcenter (9.1) is nearing the end of its support life.

Out IT department wants to push for the upgrade to TC10.3 or even TC11.2

The problem I have is that once we move, we no longer will be able to use TC to open the I-deas parts we have stored in TC as there is no I-deas integration for any newer version of TC

Almost all of our parts have been migrated successfully to NX, but every so often we get a problem with a Legacy part where the migration to NX that was not successful.
In most cases is a simple case of remodelling the part in NX either from scatch of just making the change to the resultant geometry from the CMM Migration.

However I have had cases where I have needed to have the I-deas part open and work back up the feature tree while remodelling a new version of the part in NX.

How are other old I-deas users dealing with this?

Is it time to let I-deas go and just move On, or do I risk leaving a version of Teamcenter running that has past its end of support ?

 

[SDETERS]

We are going through the same thing. We are keeping the CMM and just upgraded to tc 10 and NX10. If we need an I-Deas fix we are looking into options of leaving our old teamcenter NX8.5 environment up and going for a couple years. We still do not have a good plan. I will say with the limited testing with CMM in tC 10 the program seems to be better than in the past.

We have let I-Deas go. Everything is NX or remodeled in NX. We are going as far as adding a status to the old I-Deas data and hiding to all users.

 

[rothers]

You could do what we did a few years ago, let Teamcentre go and migrate Ideas data back to native TDM.

 

[CADPat]

I obviously don't review these postings very often, so it's not timely, but if you and your IT are still investigating, my team works regularly with (ex) I-deas customers in your situation, so I may have some advice that will help.

As you suggested, most sites have already completed their migration from I-deas to NX and we do encourage any who ask that their best option is to "let go" if that's feasible.

But for some, I have found recently that many of the questions and calls that get pushed my way are no longer about how/if/when to migrate, but are situations like yours where they are "done" but have a small amount of I-deas data that, due to various non-technical local constraints at the customer site (long term project, legal requirement, unexpected project changes,...), needs to be "carried along for a while".

To me, these scenarios are more like "long term archive" than "migration" and the customers I talk to seem to agree.

There are various options being adopted to this by customers, depending on the customer situation. None is right or wrong.

I have had some same take the approach suggested here to dump the "archive" back to a TDM and use that as the "long term storage", going back to it when/if needed (main challenge there is not technical, but what happens when, like your site, there are few or no I-deas literate users left?). Your NX licnese will support it, but you'll need to have IT maintain that IT installation.

Other sites have take to exporting each key program or assembly or project etc... to PKG files that they store off (some even store them as large ZIP attachments to the items in Tc as a means to index). They don't need to keep I-deas installed that way.

In both those cases, future uses could utlize PKG input of required items, run through CMM, to get NX data out to be used in Tc, if/when it's needed in the future.

The other approach (which basically doing "nothing") is to just let the I-deas items hang around "forever" as Release data in Tc, just as any other item would. They would need to also keep I-deas and TcII if they think they need to open that data I-deas in the future, or some chose to rely on CMM to migrate it when/if needed to remove I-deas.

Some sites are doing the simlar, but storing JT representations in Tc along with the native I-deas (or it's even easier to do both, especially if the JT is auto-created, to have native and still be "future proof").

I have some of these I'd prefer/recommend over others, but the "best" for you will depend on your situation.

We continue to stand by our statements from 2001 that we want your transition to be as smooth as possible and we do not yet have any plans to leave anyone hanging -- so my I-deas skills surprisingly still help customers even after 15 years and the pre-mature death of TcII at v8 has been greatly exaggerated! ;-).

To that end, we will have updated versions of TcII and I-deas coming this year to match new Tc and NX releases

Specifically, regarding your TcII question:

1) As Shane mentioned, the TcII 10.x version has been out a while (June 2014 Release, I think) so Tc 10.x upgrade is certainly possible today.

2) If your IT would prefer to move to Tc 11.x that's also possible.

We will have the full TcII 11.x out later this year for sites still needing to actually use their I-deas data.

For sites who simply want to just leave I-deas data in their Tc DB for archive, but need the TcII Template to do their Tc DB upgrade to 11, we have started, from the Tc 11.2.1 Release in December, to now include the TcII upgrade template as standard with the TEM.

So former I-deas sites no longer need to wait for the TcII app to Release before upgrading Tc (since it needs the Template).

If you have any questions about any of this, feel free to contact GTAC and if they cannot help, they will usually forward the queries to me or someone in my group.

Hope that helps!

Regards,

Pat McManus
Sr. Technical Consultant
NX Development, Major Accounts and Migration
Siemens Product Lifecycle Management Software Inc.

 

[Lunar7]

Hi,

Thanks for your response Pat.

As I'm in New Zealand I don't have direct access to GTAC, so I have passed this on to our Reseller for them to try and get more information.

 

[CADPat]

Hi Lunar7!

I had an e-mail on this subject shortly after your posting, via GTAC Asean, so your Reseller's query got to the right place.

TcII 11.2 started shipping a few weeks ago (see "SFB-Teamcenter-9912"), so your IT could also plan to move to Tc11.2 if it makes more sense.

Hopefully you have what you need now.

Good luck.

Pat McManus
Siemens PLM