Windchill Workspace Interaction with a CAD Application
CAD Workspace Interaction with Windchill
CREO interacts with Windchill PDMLink and Project-Link in the same manner. CREO needs to access files on your workstation and uses the local cache to interact with Windchill solutions. Each user below has a client machine with a CREO or any supported CAD application installed. The CAD application is connected to the Windchill workspace or Work Group Manager. The green circles represent the server side workspace and the pink circles represent the client side workspace (local cache). All the changes and modification are made in the local cache using the CAD application when a model is checked out.

Workspace Definitions
Local Workspace (Local Cache)
Workspace Location
The local cache is located based on the environment variable named PTC_WF_ROOT. This environment variable normally is set in the start batch file for starting the CAD application.
Corrupted Workspaces
When the workspace is not functioning correctly or corrupted, a user will delete the local cache top level directory. Before deleting local workspaces, a user needs to perform a check-in or upload operation to all modified CAD files.
Workspace Corruption Preventions
It is recommend not the have more than one user logged in to Windchill using the same local cache when using Creo. A workspace can corrupt when more than one user uses the same local cache. Never log into a Creo session using a Windchill Administrator user account.
Server Side Workspace
Other users can not view or use any new CAD Documents that are in a sever side workspace but search results can return object’s attributes from a serve side workspace.
All workspaces contain a server side workspace and a local workspace.
Up-Load/Check-In
Up-Load Operation
Down-Load/Check-Out
Down Load Operation
Note: Usually, Released CAD Document cannot be checked-out. A user must perform a Revise operation to set the CAD Document to an "IN WORK" state.