Anark 4.6.2 Release Announcement - June 27, 2025

June 27, 2025 - Publishing, sharing, and collaborating on the highest quality engineering product data is complex business. Our Engineering team has put in the work to improve product quality, enhance flexibility for IT administrators, and expand features for end users. Our latest release includes enhancement requests from customers like you, planned product features that improve value, and changes that open new use cases to our customers.

Anark Release 4.6.2 includes the following enhancements, new features, and bug fixes. Additional information can be found in the product documentation included with the release and please also look at the Anark Software Release Download Page.  Note that the next release is 4.6.3 planned for later summer 2025.

Please contact Anark Support if you have any questions about this or the content of any release.

Anark Release 4.6.2

Anark Publish Upgrades

When upgrading Anark Publish to versions 4.5.85 and later from 4.5.83 or older, you must uninstall the old version before upgrading to new versions.

Example: If you are on 4.5.80, and will upgrade to this latest release of 4.6.2, you must uninstall 4.5.80 and then install 4.6.2.

Features and Enhancements

Anark Collaborate

• Anark Collaborate is undergoing architecture-level improvements and simplifications that will make the product faster and more reliable while preserving current product functionality. Later this year we will also release improvements to simplify product installation through better automation of typical customer configurations.

Anark Workstation and Anark Publish

• MScript now supports inverted BOM tables in the PDF. See user guide for more details.

PLM Integrations and Publishing

Teamcenter Reference Integration:

• NX Data Publishing via Teamcenter Active Workspace: Added a configurable user-friendly graphical interface for selecting publishing recipes and 3D PDF templates before initiating translation request. This configuration streamlines the publishing process and allows users to manually select supported Recipe\Templates.

• CREO Data Publishing - Introduced support for publishing CREO data when Teamcenter and CREO CAD connector (IPEM) configuration is in place. The integration supports the following list of features

  • Attach and Embed Dataset Files: Introduced the ability to attach and embed supported dataset files directly into 3D PDFs. This feature includes preference-based configuration to extract files from Teamcenter and incorporate them as 3D PDF file attachments or embedded content (i.e. appending additional pages) within the generated 3D PDF.

  • Rich client & Active Workspace GUI-Based Recipe and Template Selection: Added a configurable user-friendly graphical interface for selecting publishing recipes and 3D PDF templates before initiating translation request. This configuration streamlines the publishing process and allows users to manually select supported Recipe\Templates.

  • Implemented support for triggering 3D PDF generation via workflow handlers: This integration enables seamless automation within enterprise workflows, removing the need for manual intervention in the publishing process.

  • Expanded publishing capabilities to handle pseudo folders in Teamcenter: Allows for greater flexibility in organizing and managing data within the system.

  • Support MFK Model Support (Multifield Key): This allows publishing data with MFK data model configurations in place.

  • Publishing process feedback:

    • Supports SMTP-based email notifications to provide feedback on publishing statuses, errors, and successful completions through automated alerts.

    • Supports Teamcenter Envelope based notifications inside Teamcenter and if outlook configurations are in place, notifications are sent accordingly.

Windchill Reference Integration:

• Automated Activity Creation: Collaborate activities are now automatically generated from Windchill packages, prepopulated with relevant content and users, improving efficiency and consistency.

• "Where Used" Query for Parts: A new query capability has been added to identify all Collaborate activities that reference a specific Windchill part or assembly.

• Enhanced metadata extraction from Work Package: Introduced configuration-based attributes extraction from Windchill package business object and are published as separate data component associated to Work Package content.

• Windchill packages now support linking to all related content items and associated Collaborate activities using URL display text based on linked part numbers  for easier navigation and association.

• Enhanced capability to support multiple ways of publishing work package data based on configuration.

  • Option 1 : Creation of multiple Content Items for each supported business object associated with work package and linked to an Activity. This publishing results in multiple content items which are searchable independently.

  • Option 2 : Creation of single content item with associated business objects as data components. In this case, only work package business object is searchable.

• Standardized Anark Publish logging nomenclature for metadata: The run meta field was utilized to identify association between input part data and run logs. This was typically custom concatenated values (for e.g. “PartNumber_Revision”) without any configuration or pattern. This enhancement allows to populate data based on combination of multiple configurable metadata extracted from Windchill with delimiters for better reporting and debugging if necessary.

• Anark Publish job log details are now displayed in Windchill, enabling users to monitor the status of their individual publishing jobs. The users will no longer be able to see published requests posted by other users. With the introduction of this capability, users can close the pop-up window which appears when jobs are posted using action menu based triggers.

• Anark Publish job log details table columns are configurable. This will allow administrators to control what is displayed in the interface. This capability is planned to enhance in the upcoming releases to allow admin users to control the display of columns independent of the users display, so that complete logs can be reviewed by administrators.

Bug Fixes

Customer feedback and continuous improvement are an important part of how we develop our products. Thank you to all who have recently submitted support tickets so we can deliver you the best overall product quality. The support ticket number is included with the item where appropriate.

Anark Collaborate

• None for this release, more enhancements later in 2025

Anark Workstation and Anark Publish 

• Fixed an issue with exporting to PRC not respecting clipping planes and hide or show states (Support ticket 7743 and internal 12890)

• Fixed an issue with how hemispherical edges for 2D are rendered (Support ticket 8238)

• Fixed an issue with Solidworks add-in registration (Internal 13048)

CAD Integrations and Publishing 

• Catia CAD adapter

  • Added support for several parameters in A3DRWParamsTessellationData (Internal 11918)

  • Fixed an issue where views appear cut off in PDF (Support ticket 8223)

  • Fixed an issue with extra annotations appearing in views (Support ticket 8187)

  • Fixed an issue where a CATPart failed to import (Support ticket 8186)

  • Fixed an issue with colors for certain 3D parts (Support ticket 5412)

  • Fixed an issue with surface highlighting for certain annotations (Support ticket 8203)

• NX CAD adapter

• Fixed a discrepancy between UG model and PDF (Support ticket 8217)

• Fixed an issue with NX import failure (Support ticket 2505)

PLM Integrations and Publishing

• See the enhancements to both the Teamcenter and Windchill reference integrations above which addressed a number of functionality and performance requests.

Support Notices

Siemens Teamcenter Support Notice

Release 4.6.2 now supports the Teamcenter versions below:

• 2406 (Only for NX Data)

• 2412 (For both NX and Creo Data)

Please note that support for the Teamcenter versions below has been removed:

• 14

• 2312

Support for the Teamcenter version 2406 is deprecated and will be removed in the 4.6.3 release.

Support for 2506 is tentatively planned for 4.6.3 release.

Siemens NX Support Notice

Anark added support for NX2412 in Release 4.6.1.

Support for 2506 is tentatively planned for Release 4.6.4 in Fall 2025.

PTC Windchill Support Notice

Release 4.6.2 continues to support the Windchill versions below:

• 12.1.2.0

• 13.1.0.0

Support for the Windchill versions below is deprecated and removed from release 4.6.2.

• 12.0.2.x
  
  
• 13.0.0.x

Support for 13.1.1.0 is tentatively planned for Release 4.6.4 in Fall 2025.

PTC Creo Support Notice

The current implementation of the Anark dveloped Windchill reference integration for Windchill 12.x and 13.x does not support publishing with Creo 11. This is due to a bug that PTC is aware of and has fixed in Creo 11.0.5.0.  Once Creo 11.0.5.0 is tested by Anark, the next release of the Anark - Windchill reference integration (likely version 4.6.3 or 4.6.4) will support publishing with Creo 11.  Please note that there are no known problems using Anark Workstation directly with the Creo 11 MBD Adapter.

Third Party Deprecation Schedule

Our products use or depend on some third party components. Our philosophy is to provide support to match the oldest version officially supported by each third party provider. For example, we follow the Microsoft support plan for versions of Windows. This section is intended to communicate these schedules in advance to allow our customers to plan. See more info below.

Anark Collaborate

Collaborate currently supports both MongoDB 6 and 7. Per the Mongo schedule, they will remove support for MongoDB 6 in July 2025.

MongoDB Server support schedule (https://www.mongodb.com/legal/support-policy/lifecycles)

RHEL support schedule (https://access.redhat.com/support/policy/updates/errata/)

Collaborate currently supports RHEL 8 and 9. Per Red Hat’s policy, you must purchase support from Red Hat for RHEL 8 beyond May 31, 2024.

Anark Workstation and Anark Publish 

Workstation and Publish currently support Windows Server 2019 and 2022, Windows 10 and Windows 11. Note that Microsoft is dropping support for Windows 10 on Oct 14, 2025, and has dropped support for Windows Server 2019 on Jan 9, 2024. We support .NET Framework 4.7.2 and up.

• Microsoft Windows, Windows Server
  (https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/lifecycle/faq/windows
• .NET Framework
  (https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/lifecycle/faq/dotnet-framework)

PLM Integrations

Anark PLM integrations support the Java Runtime 11 LTS and 17 LTS (https://www.oracle.com/java/technologies/java-se-support-roadmap.html)

Anark Release versioning since 4.6.0:

The main reason behind the new release numbering scheme that started with Release 4.6.0 is to support a major.minor.patch scheme that follows SEMANTIC VERSIONING. For more information, read https://semver.org/ . Essentially, the new numbering scheme means:

1. MAJOR version - when we make incompatible/breaking changes or offer significant new functionality. For example, a new and improved API, a new database schema, etc. These changes should be reviewed thoroughly before upgrading.

2. MINOR version - when we add new functionality in a backward compatible manner. The majority of Anark’s changes to Publish and Workstation will be MINOR or PATCH.

3. PATCH version - when we make backward compatible bug fixes.

We will endeavor to maintain backward compatibility as often as possible to reduce the impact on you, our customers. However, if the potential benefit significantly outweighs the impact, we may elect to make those tradeoffs and will communicate those changes in advance.

Customers who are experiencing problems should strongly consider taking PATCH releases. Customers who want to evaluate new functionality should consider MINOR releases.

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Recent topics of interest in releases include the below and much more that can be found at the News portion of the website or, we can provide documents as needed:

• Role Based Access Control (RBAC)
• Lo-Code Template Capabilities
• Measurement within Anark Collaborate for 3D CAD
• DODI 5000.97 Digital Engineering support
• Anark 3Di (3D PDF) TDP's for MIL-STD-31000B
• Performance improvements to both MBD Adaptors and PLM Integrations
• Anark support of industry events, MBD, 3D PDF, MIL-STD-31000B, DoDI 5000.97, ASME Y14.x

For more information on this or any previous releases, current customers can use the Anark Support Portal.