DEVELOP3D - Technology for the product lifecycle

Pro/Engineer users, and anyone else for that matter, are being invited via webcast to listen to PTC offer its six-point mantra for helping make companies more money.

Despite sounding like a dodgy pyramid scheme, the series of webcasts will show major companies explaining how they’ve boosted their profits by improving their product development practices.

Promising a six-way initiative that can help boost productivity it seems unlikely that it will provide a definite stop to the country’s economic recession, but any advice that might help and we’re listening.

The first webcast takes place on 24 November.

News just out (literally, via twitter) that Sir Richard Branson, a guy that needs very little introduction to anyone in the western world, is going to be the keynote speaker at SolidWorks World, held at the Swan & Dolphin in Orlando, February 8 - 11 next year.

Yup, the man that re-signed the Sex Pistols, brought the world Culture Club, high speed train to the UK, and founded the first space tourism company that’s ever likely to get off the ground (using a former SWW keynote, Burt Rutan’s technology) is going to speak to the assembled masses. About what, its not clear, but what ever comes out of one of the most intriguing people of our age*, its going to be interesting.

If you have the time and inclination and can justify the time, I’d recommend SolidWorks World to anyone involved with the product, the learning and networking potential are incredible and of course, its in Florida in the dead of the British winter.

*He did, on the other hand, bring us Tubular Bells. Ying and Ying I guess.

I thought this was made available in the Wildfire 4 release cycle, but it appears that I was wrong (blame my rapidly increasing years) - anyway, this is good stuff. PTC has released a new add-on (for Extension as they like to call them) that allows you to integrate a digital mannequin into your product models. The human models can be customised according to a pretty wide range of human factors inputs, whether that’s gender, race, nationality and they conform to the H-ANIM standard (ISO/IEC 19774).

Pro/Engineer Manikin Extension seems to let you put the human form into your models, while the more advanced version which lets you analyse your humans against “a number of quantitative human factors, and workplace standards and guidelines.”

But what I love the most is the fact that PTC is an impressive company all round, has some fantastic tools and technology that is, despite the message from many vendors, still highly active in many sectors - the stories we’ve been writing about industrial designers and product developers, backs this up - but when they put together their product pages, to show off a tool that’s modern, fresh and pretty impressive choose to show the female variant of the mannequin stood at a sink (as below). Either that or its a dude with a pony tail. Either way, its pretty outdated.

One thing that is a constant source of puzzlement is how the average user finds out about all the new tools, software and technology that’s present in the application set they have already acquired. Take SolidWorks. Look at the list of ‘stuff’ it does and its huge, from standard part, assembly and drawings tools, through all the Xpress products and then you get into all the tools that are part of the Office offerings - there’s a huge amount to discover and learn. I’ve banged on about how important printed manuals were in that informal learning process outside of formal training, but of course, the web can play a huge part in not just shortening that learning curve, but also in just flagged up the fact that something even exists and what it can be used for.

DriveWorks worked with SolidWorks in the last few release cycles to introduce DriveWorksXpress - for a tool that’s essentially free for many SolidWorks users, its incredibly powerful - but how do you find out if Rules-based automation is for you? well, the team has just released a whole bunch of targetted examples, to show you the type of thing it can do, including Stainless Steel Extraction/Ventilation Hood, Porch/Entrance Canopy, Vehicle Suspension System, Hydraulic Cylinder.

Automation means you cut out the crappy boring stuff, formalise your standard designs variants and get to work on the really interesting stuff. If you’ve got SolidWorks, its there. Go play. and if that’s not enough, get a copy of their fantastic Little Book of Rules. I take my hat off to these guys and the shear effort they put in - if only all vendors did the same.