Autodesk Productstream Professional 2009
April, 2008
Release Notes - Readme file
Autodesk, Inc.
This Readme file contains information that became available prior to releasing
Autodesk Productstream Professional 2009 or that you will find useful while using Autodesk
Productstream Professional 2009.
For translated or updated versions of this readme in English, French, Italian, German, or Spanish, please visit the Autodesk support site on Autodesk.com.
LEGAL NOTICE
SYSTEM RECOMMENDATIONS
Productstream Professional Server
- Microsoft Windows 2003 Server Standard (SP2) (32 and 64 bit)
- Microsoft Windows 2003 Server Enterprise (SP2) (32 and 64 bit)
- Microsoft Windows 2003 Server Standard R2 (SP2) (32 and 64 bit)
- Microsoft Windows 2003 Server Enterprise R2 (SP2) (32 and 64 bit)
Supported Languages: English, French, Italian, German, and Spanish.
Database Support
SQL Versions
- SQL Server 2005 Standard Edition (SP2) (32 and 64 bit)
- SQL Server 2005 Enterprise Edition (SP2) (32 and 64 bit
Oracle Versions
- Oracle 9i (9.2.0.7)
- Oracle 10g (32 and 64 bit) (10.2.0.1, 10.2.0.3)
Minimum Hardware Requirements
Database Server
- Intel Pentium III or AMD Athlon 1 Ghz
- 1 GB memory
- 1 GB disk space
File Server
- Intel Pentium III or AMD Athlon 500 Mhz
- 1 GB memory
- 1 GB disk space or more depending on number of files
Recommended Hardware Requirements
Database Server
- Intel Pentium 4, Intel Xeon, or AMD Athlon 2 Ghz or better
- 2 GB memory
- 30 GB disk space
Productstream Professional Clients
Note: Please refer to the respective CAD application hardware requirement specifications for CAD specific system requirements.
INSTALLATION INFORMATION
Please consult the System Manual (file PSProfAdminManual.chm) for information about installing and updating the software. The System Manual contains
the complete installation instructions for the main program and all modules. You can open the document by navigating directly to the main
directory of the install image.
Note: It is recommended to back up all data prior to installing Autodesk Productstream Professional 2009.
The following clients for Autodesk Productstream Professional are supported.
- Autodesk Inventor Suite 2008 / Autodesk Inventor Suite 2009
- Autodesk Inventor Routed Systems Suite 2008 / Autodesk Inventor Routed Systems Suite 2009
- Autodesk Inventor Simulation Suite 2008 / Autodesk Inventor Simulation Suite 2009
- Autodesk Inventor Professional 2008 / Autodesk Inventor Professional 2009
- AutoCAD Mechanical 2007 / AutoCAD Mechanical 2008 / AutoCAD Mechanical 2009
- Mechanical Desktop 2009
- AutoCAD 2007 / AutoCAD 2008 / AutoCAD 2009
- AutoCAD LT 2009
The following 64-bit clients are also supported.
- Autodesk Inventor Suite 2009
- Autodesk Inventor Routed Systems Suite 2009
- Autodesk Inventor Simulation Suite 2009
- Autodesk Inventor Professional 2009
- AutoCAD Mechanical 2008 / AutoCAD Mechanical 2009
- AutoCAD 2008 / AutoCAD 2009
Autodesk Productstream Professional client for Microsoft Office can be installed on these applications and versions.
- Microsoft Office XP
- Microsoft Office 2003
- Microsoft Office 2007 Standard
- Microsoft Office 2007 Professional
For best results, it is also recommend to install all available hot fixes and service packs for your version of Microsoft Office.
Autodesk Productstream Professional 2009 supports these viewers.
- Autodesk Design Review 2009
- Autodesk TrueView 2009
Note: Autodesk DWF Writer is included in the Productstream Professional 2009 install, however it is not recommended to publish DWF(x) files using DWF Writer.
It is recommended that DWF(x) files be created in the appropriate CAD applications. Use of DWF Writer is at your own risk.
General Installation Information
- NOTE: Migrating data from a BETA product to release software is not recommended and is not supported.
- The Productstream Professional 2009 client should not be installed to a directory which contains the @ symbol.
- It is not recommended or supported to run Productstream Professional server or client on a virtual environment.
- If both Webserver and a PSP client are installed on the same computer, and Webserver is then later uninstalled, you
will need to reinstall the PSP client. This is do to some client components becoming unregistered.
CAD and Office Application Client Installation Information
- It is recommended that all CAD and Office applications should be installed prior to installing the Productstream Professional client.
Operating System Specific Installation Information
- On Windows Vista the Productstream Professional setup should be run as Administrator, otherwise the install will not be executed correctly.
Database Specific Installation Information
- On Windows 64-bit Operating Systems the 32-bit Oracle client must be installed (since Autodesk Productstream
Professional 2009 Client is a 32-bit Application the connection to the Server can only be established using a 32-bit Oracle client).
- Asian character cannot be used for Username, Password, and Server name on the logon Oracle Server dialog when you install the server.
- If your previous version of Productstream Professional was installed on SQL Server 2000 and has been updated or migrated to SQL Server
2005 you have to change the compatibility level of the database using the SQL statement: “EXEC sp_dbcmptlevel <database_name>, 90”.
To find out which compatibility level the Productstream Professional database has, one can use the following query: “select name, compatibility_level
from sys.databases where name = <database_name>”. Note: Changing the compatibility level while users are connected to the database can produce
incorrect result sets for active queries. For further information and best practices look at:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms178653.aspx
- The Autodesk Productstream Professional Client should be either installed to a directory without parenthesis - the default directory on x64 machines
is ‘C:\Program Files (x86)\Autodesk\Productstream Professional 2009’ - or one of the following Oracle patches containing a fix for Oracle Bug 3807408 should be
applied to the Oracle client. Otherwise the client startup will fail and the error message ‘ORA-12154: TNS: could not resolve the connect identifier specified,
errno=2’ will be written to the errlog.err file.
- 9.2.0.7.0 Patch 6: Apply Patch 4928723 or later
- 10.2.0.1.0 Patch 4: Apply Patch 4923768 or later
- 10.2.0.2.0 Patch 5: Apply Patch 5383042 or later
- 10.2.0.3.0: Apply Patch 5337014 or later
Note: Oracle patches are only available for registered Oracle customers on Metalink (https://metalink.oracle.com)
- Autodesk Productstream Access Control Manager is not available for Oracle 9i because there is no .NET support (CLR) available. As a result this
prevents operating Productstream Professional 2009 with Access Control Manager on Oracle 9i.
- 64-bit support is not available for Oracle 9i.
MIGRATION - WORKING WITH LEGACY DATA
- The password for the COMPASS login was changed in Productstream Professional 2008 from "EASYcompass" to "ADSKpspro5!".
The password is encrypted in the compass.ini file, however you can also type it in unencrypted into compass.ini. If you have
a database created prior to Productstream Professional 2008, then Productstream Professional 2009 will not be able to establish a
database connection due to the password change. You must either manually delete the COMPASS login before installing Productstream
Professional 2009, changed the password to the new password in SQL Server, or change the password to the new password in compass.ini.
- In order to use the new Unicode functionality a manual database migration has to be run (please see the System Manual "Updating
from non-Unicode versions")
- Automatic Client Updates are not possible after update to Productstream Professional 2009. In order to update the Client components you have to
launch the client installer located here: "server directory"\client\setup.exe.
- Productstream Compass 2005 clients will not be updated to Productstream Professional 2009. Uninstall Productstream Compass 2005 clients, prior to
installing Productstream Professional 2009 clients, to avoid any problems due to having both installed at the same time.
PRODUCTSTREAM PROFESSIONAL 2009 KNOWN ISSUES
PRODUCTSTREAM PROFESSIONAL
- Document type can be changed when importing by Dragging & Dropping.
- The 'dbo.XREFCRCLIST' table is not cleared out though the elements have no relation.
- Cannot print a class bitmap.
- The command ‘Edit > Modify’ on menu bar of PSP selection dialog does not work.
- Cannot link PAIP documents to an Organization via Drag & Drop.
- PSP will not login name if a user name contains any special symbol such as ‘@’, ‘\’.
- An Expression error dialog will pop up if edit a report template of a List on a Japanese OS.
- DWF file may be deleted from data directory for update DWF with Create DWF-secondary file using Vista 64bit OS and ACADM/MDT 2009.
- If you change state on multiple selections with notification, as many emails as elements will pop up.
- If Micorsoft Office is not installed, change state on an office document will fail.
- The Reserve button is available for multi-selection even when the reservation mechanism isn't enabled.
- DWF Creation for Class pictures may not work properly, especially when Inventor files are being used as Class pictures.
- If your previous version of Productstream Professional was installed on SQL Server 2000 and has been updated or migrated to SQL Server
2005 and the compatibility level of your database is < 90 the installation of Productstream Professional Access Control Manager will fail.
- If you try to uninstall Productstream Professional 2009 Client but the server directory is not available or accessible anymore uninstall
will fail. A workaround is to remove the data of the registry string value “PRGPATH” within the key
“HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Autodesk\Productstream Professional\8.0” before uninstalling the Client.
IMPORT AND EXPORT
- Export and import for Classification has the following limitations:
- Class Characteristics will generally not be imported; though they can be included in an export package
- If items shall be exchanged between PSP with classification the export must include classes (at least the default class “Not classified”)
- Import of items must include Insert or Update of related classes. Otherwise items will be imported but they are not visible due to the missing class link
- Import of items creates a link to the default class “Not classified” only if this default class is part of the export package
- If the ‘Conflict Description’ is not shown in the correct format; you must invoke ‘Check for Conflicts’ to show the correct information.
- PSP will show as Not Responding and the status bar will not update if you switch dialogs during import.
- Exporting documents whose Document Number contain ‘(’ or ‘)’ will cause an error.
- The relation between Inventor files which are not migrated will be lost after renaming the files in the import dialog.
- There will be an error when importing data packages into a Oracle database if XML and Java packages are not installed.
- Sometimes the 'Create New Revision' command will be enabled when it should not be when multi-selecting elements in the Conflicts tab.
ENGINEERING PROCESS IMPROVEMENTS
- On a French OS, the report language should be configured in Compass.ini (English: ReportLanguage=01), otherwise the report command will not work.
- On a Japanese OS, the report command cannot be invoked from the context menu, but can be invoked from the toolbar.
- Sometimes encounter CER error when using horizontal scroll bar on "Change State -State Transition Conflict" dialog.
- IDW files can be Released when the linked component is in "Work in progress".
UNICODE
- Some Unicode characters cannot be displayed in the title bar of datasheet.
- Cannot create higher revision for element whose entry number contains czech characters.
PREVIEW AND AUTODESK DESIGN REVIEW
- For better performance of Preview, launch Autodesk Design Review in standalone mode once so that ADR checks for updates. ADR checks for
updates every 30 days, so it is recommended to launch ADR in standalone mode once in every 30 days.
- A DWF for the first document in the List View takes longer to load.
- Autodesk Productstream Professional 2009 only supports Autodesk Design Review 2009. Both DWF and DWFx formats are supported.
- When previewing DWFs for certain types of documents, view panes of Autodesk Design Review will be displayed in the preview area.
- DWF for the new document will be marked Out of Date whenever an Engineering document is copied because of property update.
- Preview of Stress Analysis and Dynamic Simulation documents does not work properly.
- Preview of some documents types such as MSG, TXT and PDF does not work properly on windows Vista clients without adding the
server machine’s name into “Control Panel->Security->Internet Options->Change security settings \ security tab->trusted site”.
- Customer Error Report may pop up when closing the application while Preview is loading a DWF.
- Native Preview does not work on 64-bit Operating Systems without checking the Browse in same window option. To enable Browse in same window option,
select Tools > Folder Options. On Folder Options dialog, activate File Types tab. Select the file type of the MS Office document in the list, press the Advanced
button, on the Edit File Types dialog, enable the option Browse in same window and confirm by clicking on the OK button. Close the Folder Options dialog.
- Contextual menu in Preview displays separators in place of suppressed commands.
- Processes for Office applications sometimes do not quit after using Native Viewing.
- DWF for the very first document in the List View of Engineering Documents, Items, Projects folder take longer to load. DWF for the very first
document in the Uses, Where Used, Secondary Documents tabs also take longer to load in Preview as Autodesk Design Review needs to initialize.
- The clocks on all Client workstations must be synchronized with the clock on the Server in order to preview up to date DWF files.
- If Preview tab is active for a while, it is recommended to refresh the view in order to preview up to date information for that particular document.
- Even though it is possible to edit some of the DWF properties such as Markups, in the Preview area, it is not possible to save the changes to the DWF
file.
- If tool bars such as Animation are activated manually for Inventor Presentation documents, they will remain active for documents that are not Inventor
Presentation documents.
- Sometimes DWFs will not be zoomed to the extents automatically while previewing.
- Memory usage while previewing DWFs varies between different folders, different tabs and different document types.
- When Office 2003 is installed, previewing of Excel 2007 documents may not work correctly.
- Error messages may pop up while previewing Word documents.
- When switching between Excel documents while Preview tab is active may lead to “Page cannot be displayed…” message in Preview.
- Preview may not work properly for Office documents if they are opened by double-clicking while preview is still loading. And the document opened in
this manner may not contain correct information.
- Opening Excel documents by double-clicking while Preview tab is active may lead to unexpected behavior from Excel, especially when working with Office XP.
- Toolbars on Open DWF Markup dialog from Inventor may not work properly if a Markup document does not have a file assigned to it.
- Focus switches away from Productstream Professional while previewing large Word documents.
- In some cases, Office 2007 documents cannot be previewed with older versions of MS Office even when the Office 2007 Compatibility pack is installed.
In such situations, it is recommended to create DWF files for the Office documents. To create DWF files for Office documents,
DWF Writer is required.
- For Outlook message documents, if there is no Outlook installed and if there is no .txt secondary file, the message in Preview asks
the user to create a DWF file. However, DWF creation for Outlook message is not supported.
- When previewing Office documents that are as large as 10MB and higher, a “Server Busy” dialog may pop up. Clicking on the “Retry”
button on this dialog would make this dialog disappear and the document to load fully in preview.
CLIENTS FOR CAD APPLICATIONS
Inventor Information
- An exception dialog pops up when linking some excel documents into an Inventor assembly.
- The relationship between Excel file and IPT or IAM will become embedded after linking a excel 2007 document into an IPT or IAM when Excel 2003 is the
current installed version of Excel.
- For linking XLS files, using the command “Change Source” in Inventor does not bring up the Productstream Professional selection dialog.
- When Inventor 2009 and ACAD 2009 applications are installed on the same machine, it is recommended that before using PSP Inventor Integration, that
you launch Inventor in windows explorer to confirm Inventor registers successfully.
- Within Inventor 2008/Inventor 2009 it is not possible to select the document types “AutoCAD DWG” or “Inventor DWG” for the command "Save As”. But you
can use these document types with the command “Save Copy As”.
- When Inventor drawings (IDW) are saved with the command “Save Copy As”, the user can choose the document type AutoCAD Drawing. In this case the
Inventor drawing is exported using the export wizard. Productstream Professional supports only the export of one sheet of the drawing.
- Copying a part or assembly in Productstream Professional differs from the function “Save Copy As” in Inventor. When this operation is performed in
Inventor, the IDW or INVDWG cannot be copied. Using the Productstream Professional copy function here would prevent the user from making any changes to the document
type.
- When Inventor documents are imported into Productstream Professional by drag & drop, the Inventor file properties weights and units of measurements
are not handed over to the corresponding Productstream Professional fields. To hand over these properties to Productstream Professional, it is necessary to open
the Inventor parts or assemblies after they have been imported and run the command “Update Documents”.
- Inventor Browser names are only updated for the components of an assembly. For the document display name (top browser name in the browser and in the
title bar) the update is disabled
- "Replace with Copy" command for the referenced components in Productstream Professional is possible when the assembly is open in the authoring
application.
- When the command “DWF Secondary File > Create” is called from the contextual menu or the command “Update All DWF Preview Files” is called from the
Tools menu, sometimes Inventor.exe does not quit after publishing the DWF.
- The help documentation on Inventor Integration incorrectly states that it is possible to save an Inventor drawing as an AutoCAD drawing or Inventor
DWG by using the command “Save As” in Inventor. This task can be achieved by using the command “Save Copy As” in Inventor.
- Pipes that are inserted from Content Center can be found under the folder Functional Design but not under the folder Piping.
- Unexpected error message may pop up from Inventor while updating iParts and iAssemblies.
- Some of the Inventor icons in Productstream Professional might not be up to date with the new icons from Inventor 2009.
- When working with Standard Parts, the path for the location of these parts in the Inventor project file must match with the path in the Configuration
Editor including the backward slash “\” at the end of the path. Additionally, when working in replicated environments, if one site uses backward slash in the path
for Standard Parts, all other sites also must use backward slash in order to have the Standard Parts replicated to the correct locations.
- If the file names of any of the components of an assembly are renamed on the import dialog, the assembly may lose references to its children
upon import.
- Whenever the command “Transfer Document Structure to Item” is called, some components that are not part of the BOM in Inventor will become part of
the BOM in Productstream Professional. In order to get correct results, it is always recommended to use the “Transfer BOM” command in Inventor.
- When User Access Control is turned on on Windows Vista Operating Systems, Inventor Integration may not work properly, especially when Inventor 2008 is
installed along with AutoCAD 2009.
- While updating properties for all levels of an Assembly or a Drawing, documents that have been reserved by other users will be skipped
and no property update will take place on those documents.
- Once an Inventor project file is opened with a new release of Inventor, it cannot be opened with a previous release of Inventor anymore.
- Updating Assemblies that reference iParts or iAssemblies which have been edited, may cause Inventor to not respond. As a workaround,
open the Assembly in Inventor, save it and close it.
- The new features such as Support for Stress Analysis and Dynamic Simulation, Substitutes, Support of Excel Parametric files and Load Markups
are supported only with Inventor 2009.
AutoCAD Information
- When using Productstream Professional 2009 with AutoCAD 2009, the new AutoCAD ribbon interface will not be available.
- AutoCAD prompts twice to save during close if the drawing contains more than one layout and one of them contains Associative Dimensions.
- AutoCAD can not be launched from Productstream Professional if the logged in user is a new Windows user. Starting AutoCAD from the desktop once would
resolve this issue.
- The toolbar for Productstream Professional Add-In can not be shown in AutoCAD Mechanical while switching between different servers.
- If an AutoCAD Mechanical or MDT document is assigned to an Item in Productstream Professional, the Item number will be written down to the part
reference of the DWG. If the document is assigned to a different item the document has to be opened and saved again so the item number can be updated or the command
“Update BOM” from the Add-In has to be run.
- When working with nested X-Refs the BOM may not be transferred correctly to Productstream Professional. Collapsing the BOM before calling the command
“Transfer BOM” resolves this issue.
- BOM for a drawing that has 2D components may not be transferred correctly to Productstream Professional.
- It is recommended to use UNC paths and mapped drives for Server location instead of using IP addresses. This helps especially in case of
AutoCAD integration when executing commands such as “Insert into AutoCAD” from the Client.
- When working with AutoCAD LT 2009, Productstream menu can be accessed from the File menu.
- Opening an AutoCAD drawing for the first time when ACAD LT is installed may sometimes result in an error dialog. Clicking OK on
this dialog for four to five times would open the file successfully in ACAD LT.
- On Vista 64-bit Operating Systems, when PublishDWFMode is set to 0, DWF Secondary File creation from the contextual menu for AutoCAD
drawings may fail if AutoCAD is not running. As a workaround, launch AutoCAD first before calling the DWF Secondary File creation command. Same workaround
should be used when publishing DWFs using Jobserver.
- On 64-bit Vista Operating Systems, AutoCAD must be run with Windows Administrator account once in order to work with
AutoCAD Integration successfully.
- The new feature, Transfer Title Block Properties is supported only with AutoCAD and AutoCAD Mechanical but not with MDT and AutoCAD LT.
OFFICE INTEGRATION
- Document will be opened in Powerpoint application when DWF creation is invoked for Powerpoint documents.
- Spanish Word templates are not localizied.
- Log files written by the Outlook integration are not stored to the default work directory of Productstream Professional but to the Windows user's
%TMP% or %TEMP% directory.
- Outlook may crash if the commands from the Add-In for Outlook are called without starting Productstream Professional.
- Calling commands in Productstream Professional that require Outlook may lead to errors if Outlook is not installed.
- The command “Send and Save” in Outlook Add-In may not work, if the recipient of the email message is added to the Contacts list
before calling the command.
- Commands for Outlook Add-In can be found under the Tab, Add-Ins on the Outlook 2007 ribbon.
- In order for office documents to work correctly with Productstream Professional, it is required to install “Visual Basic for Applications” during the
installation Microsoft Office.
- To open an empty MS Project document, the security settings of MS Project might have to be adjusted. To change security options in MS Project,
go to Tools > Options > Security, select Allow loading files with legacy or no default file formats, set macro-security to medium or low.
- The template formats .dotx, .potx, .xltx are not supported. Please create custom templates in the file formats .dotm, .potm and .xltm.
- While sending email messages, if recipients are chosen from a local Outlook address book, message may not be linked to the right
persons in Productstream Professional.
- Macro enabled Office 2007 file formats such as .xlsm, .docm, and .pptm are not supported.
REPLICATOR
- The file extension of DWFX files changes from .dwfx to .dwf after synchronization using the command "Synchronize All Replica".
- IAssembly family documents cannot be transferred as one set to destination site via command "Synchronize All Replica".
JOBSERVER
- During the process of running a lot of jobs which need to invoke CAD applications, if you click the “Stop Jobserver” button on Job Server
spooler there may be no response.
- Before creating jobs, it is required to start Productstream Professional Jobserver. However, this is only a one time requirement.
- Sometimes when working with Jobserver, Compass.exe does not quit after executing the job.
LEGAL NOTICE
Autodesk Productstream Professional, Autodesk Inventor, Autodesk Design Review, AutoCAD, AutoCAD Mechanical, and Mechanical Desktop are trademarks or registered trademarks of Autodesk, Inc. in the United States and/or other countries.
Windows 2003 server, Windows XP, Microsoft Vista, Microsoft Office XP, Microsoft Office 2003, and Microsoft Office 2007, are either trademarks or registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries.
All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.