PTC/USER Technical Committees (TCs) held their first global meeting at PTC’s headquarters in Needham, Massachusetts, USA in January 2003. About 120 members—participating in 20 committees operating in both North America and Europe—met with PTC’s product managers to review current and future software development projects.

PTC’s unified briefing for all TC members also marked a first. Before the on-site meeting, Bill Berutti, Senior Vice President of Strategy and Product Marketing, Brian Shepherd, Senior Vice President of MCAD Product Management, and Dave Orecchio, Vice President of Windchill Product Management, delivered a webcast outlining PTC’s current corporate and product strategies. These presentations provided extremely valuable information-sharing that laid the foundation for the in-person discussions to follow.

During the three-day event in Needham, the Technical Committee chairs and 16 participants from PTC’s Product Management organization conducted a highly energized brainstorming session about ways to improve the committee process. The dedication and time devoted by both groups to this exercise demonstrate the commitment to the Technical Committees. The recommendations identified will be carefully considered over the coming months as we constantly seek to maximize the value of the committees. The ultimate goal is to improve PTC products, and the PTC/USER Technical Committees are key to that improvement.

Session Summaries

Here are some highlights from the meetings of individual committees.

• The Core Modeling Technical Committee meeting was attended by members from Asia, Europe, and North America, as well as by visitors from several other TCs. The discussions centered on product development plans and projects related to finishing or extending functionality introduced in the Wildfire release. The TC also presented project requirements for a number of areas including model-centric design, increased ability for interfacing with manufacturing, improved Pro/ENGINEER patterning, and the handling of assembly mass properties.

• The Sheet Metal Technical Committee covered a number of key issues, including specific plans for new development in Pro/SHEETMETAL in the version of Pro/ENGINEER after Wildfire. Also discussed were new concepts relating to fundamental sheet metal wall creation, creation of patterns (in general), bend reliefs, and sheet metal reports. The committee identified ideas and problems involved in sheet metal to solid part conversion, creation of sheet metal libraries, and sheet metal manufacturing issues. PTC also made a presentation on the new Progressive Die Design extension.

• The Data Exchange and Archiving Technical Committee addressed data exchange issues such as tools needed to produce viable exchange formats, processes for data exchange, and compatibility with STEP. Members discussed the archiving of design baselines and the implications for long-term data integrity. PTC presented an overview of new Wildfire capabilities as well as other enhancements for future releases. They also demonstrated functionality that builds 3-D models from 2-D drawings, along with examples of interoperability with STHENO.

• The Industrial Design and Surfacing Technical Committee conducted in-depth discussions on Style, Re-Style, Global Modeling (Warp) and Photorender within the Wildfire version of Pro/ENGINEER. Enhancements to the recently released Pro/CONCEPT conceptual design software were also covered. Among the highlights of the meeting was the announcement that the second release of Pro/CONCEPT would be ported to Apple Computer's Mac OS X operating system, In addition, PTC announced various new enhancements to Style features that the TC had been instrumental in specifying.

• The Usability and Training Technical Committee focuses on training and proficiency tools, ModelCHECK, documentation and help files. Most recently, a primary concern has been the level of training that users may need to get up to speed with Wildfire. The committee has been working with PTC to ensure there is plenty of information available (especially free information) to ease the transition to the new release. For ModelCHECK, the committee has focused on increased checking functions and user interface enhancements. PTC and CADTRAIN continue to add to their list of classes with exciting new course offerings, plus more under development. With Pro/ENGINEER Wildfire, users will see greatly improved documentation in the help files.

• The Visualization Technical Committee reviewed new functionality available in Division ProductView 6.4 such as Composer, which can either step through a process plan or be used to create the actual process steps. The committee is actively seeking new members interested in helping to define the future of PTC visualization products.

• The Customization Technical Committee had an interesting user presentation on how Perl can call Pro/TOOLKIT code and Pro/TOOLKIT can execute Perl scripts (available for download at the Customization Committee web page at www.ptcuser.org). Discussions were also held on ways to improve the committee’s interaction with PTC development. Pro/INTRALINK Toolkit is approaching a point where PTC will be better able to respond to specific enhancement requests.

• The Data Management Technical Committee had more international participation than ever before—including several representatives from Europe and one from Japan—and looks forward to productive collaboration with these colleagues via webcasts and meetings. The committee is now in the process of organizing its members into a work group and a review group, based on the level of interest and participation of particular members.

Committee Structure

In organizational news, the Enterprise PDM TC has been renamed Windchill Solutions, and the Windchill Operations TC has been renamed Windchill Infrastructure to better reflect their focus. The Windchill Solutions TC is now forming work groups in several areas:

• PDMLink™
• ProjectLink™
• PartsLink™
• DynamicDesignLink™
• Core Windchill

Individuals interested in guiding the future direction of these products should contact either Rick Yahn, chair of the Windchill Solutions TC, or myself. The five new work groups will hold meetings at the PTC/USER World Event in Orlando, Florida in June with the intention, given sufficient interest, of becoming full technical committees.

The Pro/DESKTOP TC will no longer meet as a formal committee. It was determined that the small number of committee members could be more effective working directly with the PTC product manager. Pro/DESKTOP users will hold a Special Interest Meeting during the 2003 PTC/USER World Event to solicit input from attendees.

Another event to look for at the PTC/USER conference is the “Meet Your Technical Committee Breakfast,” where you can learn more about the specific activities of each group. Some TCs are looking for new members and this is your opportunity to become actively engaged in the product enhancement process. This breakfast is also a chance for each and every conference goer to bring PTC product issues to the forefront. Each committee welcomes enhancement ideas from users everywhere in an ongoing effort to insure the broadest scope of issues and applications are considered when specifying future functionality.

Evan Caille is PTC/USER Director of Technical Committees and can be reached by e-mail at evan@ptcuser.org.