Every Windchill implementation reaches the moment where someone says “can we just add a button?” Usually the answer should be no, and here is why.
Custom code has a cost that arrives later: at the next upgrade, when the developer leaves, when a PTC patch changes an internal API. Configuration, by contrast, is carried forward by the product.
Our rule is simple. We write code when one of three things is true:
- The out-of-the-box path genuinely cannot express the business rule.
- An integration with another system needs it.
- The workaround would cost users more time every day than the code costs to maintain.
Everything else is a configuration or process question, and those are cheaper to answer.