Vroooooom!

Todays keynote woke everybody up. It's not very often the presenter rides in on a racing motorcycle. This was after a very bass heavy intor movie. You could feel your clothes vibrating, yikes! Harald Plöckinger from KTM Sportmotorcycle AG talked about how they implemented Windchill to connect their partners in their supply chain. It was quite an undertaking considering all that goes into their product. A great wake up call to start the day too.

The Blimp, the Blimp!

No, really it's there. Very small but how often do you see the Goodyear blimp outside of your hotel room?

Pro/ENGINEER Wildfire 4.0 Tips

Roberto Sanchez from NxRev did a great job with 25 tips in 45 minutes. A lot of good stuff, especially on intent references. Check it out at the PTC/User website here.

John Abele

I got a chance to briefly meet John Abele. He was talking with a group of young students involved with the FIRST Foundation. It was fun to see those kids hanging on every word. It was also interesting to hear him throw around Skype, Twitter and all the other social networking terms with the kids. I have some catching up to do.

Data In, Data Out

The Product Update Briefing for Pro/ENGINEER Data Exchange was today as well. Asa Trainer, the PLM for that group of functionality was on hand to conduct it himself. A lot of interesting news on this front, which includes the Import data Doctor product.

A few of the highlights are:

• Direct import support for Solidworks 2007 & 2008.
• Direct import support for Autodesk Inventor
• Expanded granite based interoperability between releases of Pro/ENGINEER
• 3D data exchange of non geometric data such as parameter values, annotations, and layer status. This is becoming increasing important in the area of line term data archiving.
• Improved Import data Doctor interface even beyond the overhaul done in Wildfire 4.0.

On the horizon (not in 5.0 beyond perhaps beta testing) is a product they are calling the Legacy Drawing Associator. Quite simply this is a tool to associate imported drawings to the imported modals that once drove them. The tool will extend to associting the views and annotations too.

Tuesday Keynote

Tuesday's events began with a keynote presentation by John Abele. John Abele is the founding chairman of Boston Scientific. Currently the chair of the FIRST Foundation, he is heavily involved in its' mission of getting kids interested in science. Mr. Abele was also key in the Search for the USS Grunion project. The Grunion was a Gato class submarine lost with all hands (including John's father, Lt. Cmdr Mannert Abele) during WWII. All of these different life experience were used to extract lessons we can all apply in our lives. It was great to hear him speak. I recommend it if you are ever lucky enough to get the chance.

Pro/ENGINEER 2D and 3D Drawings

Raphael Nascimento presented the Pro/ENGINEER 2D and 3D Drawings topic. Like Vince, Raphael covered both Wildfire 4.0 & Wildfire 5.0 topics. Like many of you we are currently on Wildfire 3.0 until we complete our upgrade from Pro/INTRALINK 3.4 to PDMLink 9.0, so it was nice to see both.
Wildfire 4.0 2D drawings:

• BOM ballons for non geometry items like bulk items.
• View name placement location choices.
• Add text locked to GTOLs around them in certain areas.
• Offset notes from axis or point locations.

Wildfire 4.0 3D drawings:

• Flat to screen annotation plane. Good for a 3D title block or notes.
• Driving dimension annotation features.
• Can change annotation orientation planes and set default active plane.
• Improved transfer of annotations from Pro/E to Productview.

Wildfire 5.0 2D drawings:

• New ribbon user interface. RMB pop up menu choices context sensative to which ribbon you are in.
• Drawing sheet tabs along the screen botton like Excel.
• A new drawing tree tool similar in function to a model tree, but for views and items in a drawing.
• Round decimal places on a shown dimension in a drawing without rounding the model dimension and affecting accuracy of model.
• Center leader dimensions.
• WYSIWTG Print preview functionalty.

Wildfire 5.0 3D drawings:

• Nammed layer states. Use for 3D drawings combined views.
• New datum target annotation type.
• Tabs for 3D drawings listing combined view, like Excel page tabs along bottom.
• Weld symbols as 3D annotations.
• Can annotate on cross section edges without any work arounds.