|
Nearly 110 PTC/USER Technical Committee members braved the New England cold to gather at PTC’s headquarters in Needham, Massachusetts for three days in January. Thirteen TCs conducted onsite meetings, drawing participants from North and South America, Europe, and Japan.
During the sessions, TC members met with PTC product managers to review current and future software development projects. Two common themes that recurred throughout the discussions were PTC’s new enhancement database and the increasing importance of the Product Development System Technology Roadmap to the company’s software planning process.
A week before the Massachusetts meetings, Brian Shepherd, PTC’s Senior Vice President of Product Management, conducted a webcast for TC members on PTC’s current corporate and product strategy. Shepherd described how PTC is evolving its Product Development System Technology Roadmap, a guide for developing solutions that address specific business processes. He also spoke about the increased integration between the MCAD and Windchill products, and reconfirmed PTC’s commitment to future product development and technical support.
In addition to the PTC executive overview, a number of the Technical Committees also held webcasts in advance of the meetings. TC members benefit greatly from these preliminary discussions so that they all share the same baseline information before the face-to-face sessions.
PTC/USER hosted an evening reception for TC members and PTC’s product management organization. This informal get-together provided another valuable opportunity for meeting attendees to network and exchange information. Based on the amount of interaction, this event was a great success.
During the TC chairs’ dinner, PTC demonstrated a simulated design process highlighting the integration of Pro/ENGINEER, PDMLink, and ProjectLink. PTC also explained its new enhancement process and how it will affect TC discussions. TC members agree that the new process is a positive step toward including the needs of all users in product planning activities.
|
As a volunteer organization, PTC/USER relies on its members to provide leadership. While serving as a Technical Committee chair is a rewarding experience, it is also a time-consuming commitment. As a result, committee chairs are often forced to step down if they have to take on new responsibilities at work or if their companies are in a major transition.
That is the case for several committee chairs at this time. I would like to thank the following individuals for their dedicated service to the TC process. I know that their committee members share in this appreciation.
Ben Franklin, Data Management
Jonathan Durston, Sheet Metal
Jeff Bradley, Data Exchange and Archiving
Rick Yahn, Windchill Solutions
Kristine Bothwell, Visualization
Karen Dougherty, Usability and Training
I also want to welcome following individuals who have now taken up leadership of these committees.
Mark Crum, Data Management (Acting Chair)
Joel Nelson, Sheet Metal
Matt Meadows, Data Exchange and Archiving
Jeff Zemsky, Windchill Solutions
Jill Schwegel, Visualization
Denise Justice, Usability and Training
|
In particular, the enhancement process now provides much needed organization and a feedback loop for requests. Individuals who submit enhancement requests will receive a reply from the appropriate PTC product manager about the status of those requests. In addition, product managers will be able to extract a report of enhancement requests pertaining to the products covered by a particular TC. This will enable TC members to consider enhancements during the specification and prioritization process. The link to the new enhancement request form can be found on PTC’s Technical Support page at www.ptc.com/support/support.htm.
Several of the Technical Committees that met in January provided the following summaries of their sessions, including their current focus of activity.
Core Modeling drew members from Europe, North and South America, as well as visitors from several other TCs. The discussions centered on product development plans and projects related to finishing or extending functionality introduced in post-Wildfire releases of Pro/ENGINEER.
The TC met to prioritize their white paper efforts and review PTC projects currently under development. Topics under consideration include:
- config.win. May be co-developed with the System Administration TC.
- Mirror of Part, Assembly, Drawing, and Instance. Would expand on a paper developed by the Sheet Metal TC
- Model Compare Functionality. Relates to a series of TC white papers addressing design data change and change management.
Netesh Gohil and Ric Leeds of PTC led a use case development session on several projects, including Resolve Mode, Annotation Features, Sketcher Tools, and View Manager. Dan Glenn of Solar Turbines described the implementation of Wildfire at his site. Heinrich Bartels of Stewart and Stevenson Services presented his work regarding development of a user interface for generating and managing corporate model/drawing notes.
Customization met with eight TC members and three PTC representatives. The sessions featured an interesting user presentation on software revision using a product called Concurrent Versions System (CVS). PTC presented enhancements and improvements for upcoming releases, plus a tutorial on customizing the Wildfire user interface. Interest in J-Link programming seems to be increasing.
Data Exchange and Archiving had 10 attendees. The group reviewed enhancements to Wildfire 2.0 and discussed potential improvements in Wildfire 3.0. The TC will complete two white papers and conduct a survey before the June meeting. Members have agreed to meet via webcast every six weeks to comment on enhancements before they go into the software.
Data Management has conducted webcasts throughout the year. The January meeting was well attended by member companies and PTC product management. Areas of discussion include change management, archiving, migration, maturity states, and product roadmaps for PDS, Pro/INTRALINK, and Windchill. Several webcasts are planned over the next couple of months to further support these efforts.
Industrial Design and Surfacing conducted in-depth discussions on Style, Re-Style, Global Modeling (Warp) and Photorender within Wildfire 2.0 and 3.0. Enhancements to the recently released Pro/CONCEPT conceptual design software were also covered. Among the highlights of the meeting was an announcement that Pro/CONCEPT 2.0 will open native Pro/ENGINEER files when run in a Windows environment. In addition, PTC described various enhancements to the Style, Re-style and Global Modeling features that the TC was instrumental in identifying.
Product Development System, our newest TC, has a unique focus and structure. Rather than software functionality, the PDS committee concentrates on specifying the business processes that companies use to develop products. The TC helps give PTC a better understanding of the different ways companies approach the development process. The PDS committee is made up of members of the other TCs in order to bring a broad perspective to the discussion. The goal is to review each process on roughly a two-month schedule, resulting in a process guide that can be used with the Product First Roadmap. Our first topic is change management and the team has already started giving PTC feedback in this area. The second topic will be top-down design.
Routed Systems discussed future enhancements, bug reports, and customizations of Routed Systems Designer, Pro/CABLING, Pro/HARNESS-Manufacturing, Pro/PIPING and Pro/ECAD. The meeting was a great success, generating many new ideas that were recorded by the product manager and software developers (some of whom teleconferenced in from as far away as Israel). The Routed Systems Technical Committee is focused on providing input to PTC in such areas as government contracts, industrial plumbing, semiconductor, and aerospace.
Sheet Metal discussed a number of key issues including top-down design in sheet metal, sheet metal materials, simplifying wall creation methods, form placement and UDFs. In the coming months, the TC will finalize several white papers including those on mirror functionality and sheet metal reports. Members will conduct conference calls on new projects in development for Wildfire 3.0. Our focus is on future releases of the sheet metal module and their impact on the user community.
Usability and Training discussed areas of training and proficiency and ModelCHECK. CADTRAIN continues to add new course offerings, including Pro/MECHANICA Structure, Pro/INTRALINK 3.3 and Wildfire. Coach content is AICC-compliant, allowing plug-and-play with other LMS systems. PTC has also launched a new program called PTC University, built on the LMS concept, which brings together all areas associated with learning, from searching for learning opportunities to tracking enrollments to accessing role-based communities. Discussions continued about ModelCHECK’s increased checking functionality and user interface enhancements. The committee also discussed PTC’s adoption aids for Wildfire 2.0.
Visualization discussed licensing, new ProductView Lite functionality and its differences with the thick client, thumbnails, and Pro/ENGINEER integration. TC members previewed the annotation feature in Pro/ENGINEER for Drawingless Models, along with details of version 7.0 functionality. After committee members discussed the idea of publishing a group newsletter as a way to share information, Mike Kotha agreed to put one together from members’ contributions.
Windchill Infrastructure shared contributions and suggestions from companies in North America, Europe, and Japan. PTC presented plans and goals for the next two versions of the Windchill solutions, and committee members compiled and prioritized topics for white papers and feedback to PTC. The primary areas of concern in the next few months will be system management and performance. Committee members will be working with PTC to identify performance metrics, functional requirements, and common use cases to be considered for future Windchill versions.
Windchill Solutions kicked off with updates on the status of the European and Japanese Windchill TCs. The group then held discussions covering PTC’s new usability model as well as reporting capabilities. The TC will be working on these topics with a focus on next-generation Windchill functionality. In addition,
- The PDMLink work group continued discussion of Product Structure Management focusing on view management, annotation set, configuration management and the needs of the federal, aerospace and defense industries for parts list management.
- The PartsLink/Classification work group reviewed functionality for the next release, and several users discussed their current needs and issues with the system.
- The ProjectLink work group spent time covering ProjectLink-specific reporting, along with user issues such as project management and secure server options.
The Winchill Solutions TC members expressed the desire for more communication with the Windchill Infrastructure TC, as well as with their European and Japanese counterparts. Several webcasts are planned before the June TC meetings to enable further discussion on the above topics.
The European Simulation Technical Committee also convened in January, with 13 members in attendance. The objective for 2004 is to grow the European Simulation TC community. The plan includes starting a ProjectLink knowledge database on simulation techniques and to hold a tips and tricks session at each meeting. Committee members are also working with PTC to increase the committee’s communication with PTC product managers.
Once again the PTC/USER World Event will feature a “Meet Your Technical Committee Breakfast.” This is where you can learn more about the specific activities of each group. Note that the following TCs are actively seeking new members:
Your participation in a PTC/USER Technical Committee is the most direct way you can engage in the PTC product enhancement process. For more information, visit www.ptcuser.org/tc . 
Evan Caille can be reached by e-mail at evan@ptcuser.org.
|
|
