DEVELOP3D - Technology for the product lifecycle

#1: It’s June, it’s the annual PTC/User event and this year it’s in a swelteringly hot Orlando. PTC are making a huge noise about its Social Product Development initiative, intended to give a greater ability for those developing products to actually conduct both the formal and informal interactions that occur with a design project, in a managed, but not overly so, environment. There’s going to be a whole host of stuff coming in the next few days and you’ll probably be sick and tired of hearing the term “Social Product Development” (Jim Brown take on the subject is here and also see the note below)

But I thought I’d kick things off with a look at what’s coming in Pro/Engineer Wildfire 5.0 – due for shipping sometime in the near future, presumed to be Q4. After all. That’s what we all really want to know. Isn’t it? And of course, in true DEVELOP3D style, it’s perhaps best done with a bunch of sketchy, shaky videos.

Things to look out for are the new modelling tools for assemblies and mechanisms, the new draughting/drawing creation interface. It’s based on the Ribbon – in itself something I commented about back in January because the stark contrast between this and two UI methods Pro/E already has.

You’ll also see a quick sneaky look at the direct editing tools that PTC are developing for inclusion into Pro/Engineer (no confirmed shipping date yet) – note that it references many of killer things that CoCreate have been doing for many years – particularly the Co-Pilot manipulation widget used to manipulation of geometry. But its the same story of direct editing of feature-based geometry, without the traditional lag that history-based modelling gives you.

Rendering: Now based on mental images rendering engine, Mental Ray and a bunch of new quality material pre-sets. That sees a move away from the LightWorks rendering engine and should see you be able to achieve some fantastic results, particularly if you take advantage of global illumination to get your image quality just right.

Interoperability: There’s a new (no additional cost) import options for working with both SolidWorks and Inventor data models.

One final one I’ve got to find a bit more about is the new Pro/Engineer Spark Analysis Extension is the “only commercially available product that helps analyse and optimise the electromechanical clearance and creepage properties of designs.”

We’ll be covering this in more depth as we get more details. Ken Wong is also doing some wonderful stuff (including the most delightful video voice over ever) over at Desktop Engineering and Josh is doing his thing at SolidSmack.com.

Note: Turns out that PTC has copyrighted the term Social Product Development. Yup. Not exactly in the grand scheme of all things social media related is it? I think that simple fact says a great deal. Mostly about how larger, traditional software vendors (and PTC are by no means the only one doing it) jump on the latest in web 2.0 trends – and completely miss the point by a pretty wide margin.