Personal productivity grows like wildfire

Pro/Engineer Wildfire is designed to give manufacturing companies of all sizes the ability to bring superior products to market faster and more economically.

Pro/Engineer Wildfire is designed to give manufacturing companies of all sizes the ability to bring superior products to market faster and more economically.

The new solution is being hailed by industry analysts and experienced users who have seen and used the product as setting the new standard for the industry with its blend of powerful capabilities for both personal and process productivity.

"Pro/E Wildfire is going to impact the competitive landscape of product development", said Dr Ken Versprille, Research Director at DH Brown "Other products on the market today will be challenged to match the performance and productivity gains delivered by PTC.

The company has delivered on important new directions that make its vision of product lifecycle management (PLM) a reality".

"Previously, companies have had to choose between easy-to-use modelling tools and more fully-featured applications integrated into their design process", said PTC CEO and president Dick Harrison, "But now, with Pro/Engineer Wildfire, we will be giving product development professionals an easy-to-use, no-compromise solution that is able to unlock the power of the Internet to improve the overall design process".

Listening closely to customers in multiple industries around the world, PTC incorporated hundreds of new features and enhancements to existing capabilities.

A completely new interface enables users to become productive quickly and with a minimum of training.

A strong focus on ergonomics, through a larger graphics area for modelling, simpler view manipulation controls, reduced mouse travel, and enhanced colour schemes improve the comfort of the frequent user.

Geometry modelling is made easier, even on complex parts, through extensive graphical previews and the replacement of dialog boxes with an unobtrusive dashboard that provides direct access to critical feature controls.

Further, extensive right-mouse-button command access and intuitive drag handles for feature modification make geometry changes easy and intuitive.

Collectively, these new features streamline workflow and accelerate development by 30%.

The user is in total control in a creative and optimised work environment.

Building on widely recognised power and performance advantage, Pro/Engineer Wildfire brings innovative new technologies into the hands of engineers and designers that surpass those offered by parametric-only or ageing hybrid systems.

New capabilities for high performance assembly modelling include symbolic representations and flexible components.

Design of aesthetically pleasing products is improved through new capabilities in interactive surface design, point-cloud reverse engineering, real-time photo rendering, and warp feature-based global modelling.

Improved capabilities and integration of simulation and optimisation tools include integrated mechanism dynamics, improved structural and thermal studies, and easier to use behavioural modelling lead to greater confidence in designs without repetitive prototyping.

Further improvements in manufacturing, routed systems, openness, and system administration add impact to this new solution.

A web communications capability enables both seamless access of PTC's Windchill suite of collaboration and control offerings and live-data peer-to-peer connectivity to other Pro/Engineer users.

Previously, users had to access different applications and different user interfaces for creation, collaboration and data management.

This led to a disconnected process with many non-value added steps of data movement and transformation.

By integrating the power of the web directly into Pro/Engineer at the architecture level, users can now operate in a seamless environment that smoothly flows from working alone, to working with others, to working with Windchill-based product development databases for project collaboration, component libraries, and product data management.

"For more than 300,000 Pro/Engineer users in 33,000 manufacturing environments worldwide, Pro/Engineer Wildfire will prove to be a tremendous milestone in both personal and enterprise productivity", said James Heppelmann, PTC's Chief Technical Officer.

"From the individual engineer to collaborative groups and the virtual workspace of the internet, Pro/Engineer Wildfire streamlines and simplifies the product development and product lifecycle management (PLM) process".

To ensure that both experienced and new Pro/Engineer users can gain rapid access to the Pro/Engineer Wildfire unparalleled capabilities, PTC has established an extensive quality assurance, usability and ease-of-adoption programmes for the introduction of the product.

During the development of Pro/Engineer Wildfire, a diverse cross-section of experienced Pro/Engineer users have been introduced to the product, participating in extensive usability and quality assurance testing.

Additionally, engineering students from various university programmes were studied as they were introduced to Pro/Engineer in order to determine how easy the new version was to learn and use.

PTC is also providing enhanced service and support programmes for customers on the current release of Pro/Engineer to insure uninterrupted quality and reliability prior to and during the transition to Pro/Engineer Wildfire.

"We fully recognise the needs of our customers to receive excellent support on their current versions of the product as they plan their adoption of Pro/Engineer Wildfire", said Kevin Wrenn, executive vice president of Global Services.

"Our comprehensive portfolio of consulting, implementation, adoption and learning services and methodologies are essential elements in the roll-out of all new PTC products".

Select PTC customers are receiving a special preview edition of Pro/Engineer Wildfire in conjunction with product demonstrations and training at Pro/Engineer user conferences.

Further, all PTC Pro/Engineer customers on maintenance are eligible to receive a preproduction release later this summer.

Pro/Engineer Wildfire fully featured packages are priced beginning at $4995 (US pricing).

Many of the new capabilities of Pro/Engineer Wildfire, including the personal productivity enhancements and the web integration, are included in existing packages and are provided with maintenance to existing customers.

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