How CoLab Works With Windchill for Engineering Design Review

CoLab’s Windchill integration enables engineering teams to share Windchill-managed CAD, drawings, BOM data, and associated product information directly into CoLab for design review. Reviewers can inspect the design, discuss issues, and leave feedback in CoLab while Windchill continues to manage the controlled product definition.

I spend a lot of time talking to customers about how CoLab should connect with the engineering systems they already use, and the first thing I usually want to understand is what they are actually trying to accomplish. 

With PTC users, that means looking at how Creo and Windchill already handle the design and product structure, then asking what changes once that design reaches review. At that point, manufacturing and quality teams, suppliers, and other subject matter experts enter the picture, often with very different access needs and ways of interacting with the design. How do we ensure the CAD, associated documents, and revision information stay connected to the product structure already managed in Windchill?

How does CoLab integrate with Windchill for design review?

CoLab’s Windchill integration is installed as an add-on to the Windchill server. The installer adds the components Windchill needs to communicate with CoLab and registers CoLab actions within the existing Windchill interface and configuration. It does not require new Windchill object types, lifecycle states, user groups, or changes to the Windchill database.

Once the integration is installed, engineers can access CoLab from the Windchill objects they already use. From a relevant object, an engineer can select Share with CoLab. Windchill then traverses the product structure, gathers the objects within it, and identifies associated CAD Documents and WTDocuments. The engineer chooses what belongs in the review and which CoLab workspace should receive it.

For an assembly review, we should remember that CAD or engineering drawings rarely exist in isolation. Windchill already connects how the assembly, drawings, BOM, and associated documents relate to one another, so those existing relationships can be used when preparing for a design review instead of asking the engineer to recreate them in a folder or separate review package.

Windchill permissions continue to determine what the person initiating the share is allowed to access and send. Once the design reaches CoLab, access is governed by CoLab’s own authentication and permissions model. That can include workspace access, role-based permissions, and, for organizations with more restrictive requirements, additional attribute-based access controls. In other words, Windchill permissions are not simply mirrored into CoLab; teams can apply CoLab controls to determine who can access the shared design and what they are able to do with it.

Windchill permissions continue to determine what the person initiating the share is allowed to access and send, while CoLab authentication and workspace access govern what happens once the design reaches CoLab. 

The Windchill integration page covers supported versions, installation requirements, architecture, and security in more detail.

Can you review Windchill CAD without giving every reviewer Windchill access?

Before adopting CoLab, one Windchill customer described taking screenshots of a design and sharing them on Microsoft Teams because several people without Windchill licenses needed to look at it and add notes together.

I can understand why teams end up there. If somebody from manufacturing only needs to inspect a housing and comment on tool access, putting the design somewhere they can open it quickly solves an immediate problem. The complication is that the engineer now has to keep that discussion associated with the correct CAD iteration and make sure any revised material gets back in front of the same reviewers.

With CoLab, the review can move out to that broader audience without first severing the connection to Windchill-managed data. Using CoLab, a supplier can navigate the 3D model in a browser, isolate the feature they are concerned about, and attach feedback directly to the geometry under discussion.

There is a boundary here that I would describe carefully. The person sharing from Windchill can only send CAD Documents or Parts they are authorized to access. After the share, however, access to the review is governed by the selected CoLab workspace. Windchill permissions are not dynamically mirrored into CoLab, so the engineer still needs to choose the correct workspace and audience for the data being shared.

Does CoLab preserve Windchill revision context during design review?

Suppose a supplier flags a tooling problem on a housing and the design engineer changes the geometry before the next review. A week later, everybody may have the latest CAD, but the engineering history is only useful if the team can still tell which feedback belonged to the earlier version and whether the new geometry correctly addressed it.

CoLab keeps feedback associated with the latest file version under discussion. For files already shared to CoLab, Windchill can also display the latest review status and feedback count, with an Open in CoLab action that takes the engineer back into the design review.

Those values refresh from Windchill. They are not a continuous two-way synchronization of every action taken in CoLab, and review discussions do not automatically become Windchill records. Where a formal PLM record is required, teams can retain a CoLab feedback export or link the relevant review to the corresponding Windchill object.

Does CoLab work with both Creo and Windchill?

With CoLab, PTC users also have the option to begin a design review directly from Creo.

CoLab’s Creo integration adds a Share & Review area to the Creo ribbon, where the active part, assembly, or drawing can be sent into a CoLab workspace without leaving the CAD session. Creo parts and assemblies can be uploaded directly, while drawings are converted to PDF for review.

There is also an important connection back to Windchill. When the file has been opened in Creo from a Windchill PDMLink or ProjectLink workspace, CoLab preserves its Windchill revision and iteration metadata during the upload.

That gives engineers some flexibility in where the review begins. Feedback on geometry that is still being developed can start from Creo, while a review centered on controlled PLM data can begin from Windchill. Both routes lead into the same review environment without requiring the engineer to manually export the CAD first.

How a more integrated engineering AI stack reduces admin headache

Schaeffler is a useful example of the CoLab-PTC integration because the company was not trying to replace its PTC environment. Windchill was already managing their product data. The difficulty they faced was what happened between that controlled data and the engineering decisions being made during design review.

Before CoLab, review discussions and action items were often captured in meetings and Excel. As a result, an engineer looking back later might be able to identify the relevant CAD iteration in Windchill, but couldn’t easily reconstruct why a particular feature had changed, who had raised the concern, or how the team had resolved it.

CoLab provided a way to keep more of that review history with the design itself. Comments could remain attached to the 3D model, its view state, and the file version under discussion, which meant engineers could return to earlier customer feedback before releasing another iteration rather than piecing the discussion back together from meeting notes or a separate markup sheet.

Using CoLab, Schaeffler ultimately reported 2x faster design cycles, and its initial 50-user deployment expanded to 300 users and counting.

For me, the Schaeffler story is most relevant when you picture an engineer coming back to the design after several revisions have been made. Windchill may tell an engineer exactly which version of the design they are looking at, but the version history alone does not necessarily explain why the geometry changed. Keeping the review discussion attached with the latest revision gives the next engineer a much better chance of understanding an engineering decision with all the context right at hand.

How CoLab complements Creo and Windchill for design review

For PTC users, the value of the CoLab integration is not simply getting data out of Creo or Windchill and into another application. What we’re really talking about here is providing a shared space for engineers to run the design review while keeping the CAD, revision information, and product structure connected to the systems they are already using.

A better integrated engineering AI stack means that mechanical design teams can bring together colleagues from manufacturing, quality, suppliers, and other reviewers into the discussion without turning the review into a separate trail of screenshots, spreadsheets, exports, and meeting notes.

If that “messy middle” problem hits a little too close to home, I encourage you to talk to a fellow engineer to see how CoLab can fit into your existing Creo and Windchill workflow.