Upgraded software speeds product development

Latest release of integrated 3D CAD/CAM/CAE software delivers new capabilities to help customers optimise key global and electromechanical design processes.

PTC has announced the availability of Pro/Engineer Wildfire 4.0, a major release of its integrated 3D CAD/CAM/CAE software and a key component of the PTC product development system.

With this release, PTC expands the industry's most comprehensive parametric solution for product development teams, delivering new industry leading capabilities to help customers optimise key global and electromechanical design processes.

Pro/Engineer Wildfire 4.0 enables customers to create innovative, winning products with faster time to market, improved quality and reduced costs.

"Discrete manufacturers need a product development system that will help them compete in a fast-paced global environment".

"They must optimise their product development processes and adopt the latest design solutions that that will help them improve their efficiency, time to market, product quality and cost", says Marc Halpern, Research Director at information technology research firm Gartner.

Pro/Engineer Wildfire 4.0 offers powerful new capabilities and usability enhancements that optimise key global design processes and further improve personal and process productivity.

Innovative Auto Round Technology saves valuable time with automated rounding of even the most complex features.

A rounding task which took an expert user 20 minutes to complete has been accomplished by Auto Round in 40 seconds.

Automated and optimised assembly file management using simplified representations reduces memory consumption by 40% and model retrieval times by 60%.

The new version automatically displays dimensions in 3D drawings, which increases design information reuse and delivers production ready drawings, and the software also publishes and accesses saved 3D drawing views in PTC ProductView.

Advancements in surface editing help optimise designs with new capabilities for directly editing surfaces including multiresolution editing and smoothing.

Faster surface removal allows users to quickly remove round and hole geometry to prepare designs for mould making or simplify designs for analysis.

This can reduce model editing time by up to 50%.

A new Pro/Engineer Tolerance Analysis Extension module powered by Cetol Technology quickly analyses geometric tolerances and variances directly in the CAD model.

A new feature recognition tool quickly converts imported geometries to features in the end model.

The import DataDoctor features new data repair capabilities and an easy-to-use modernised user interface to dramatically improve the ability to reuse legacy and third-party data.

New and upgraded processors allow customers to better leverage other CAD data (including new module Pro/Engineer Interface for JT), publish Pro/Engineer data in 3D PDFs, and import exact product representations from ProductView.

For design outsourcing, there is a new Pro/Engineer Rights Management Extension that persistently and dynamically protects valuable design intellectual property (IP) enabling additional levels of security when collaborating across and beyond the enterprise Easier and enhanced simulation helps customers analyse designs faster and easier with smart diagnostics, improved meshing, better assembly connectivity management and analysis of results.

For manufacturing tooling and factory equipment design, the new version simplifies and automates the transformation of engineering designs into manufacturing processes with an easy to use, powerful process manager for toolpath definition, annotation features, and other key capabilities.

And electromechanical design enhancements include intelligent, automated capabilities for adding and routing ribbon cables and a new interface between MCAD and ECAD designs.

Users can automatically identify incremental changes and cross-highlight between MCAD and ECAD board designs.

"Pro/Engineer Wildfire 4.0 provides numerous enhancements and resolutions to some key product development challenges", said Frank Menendez, Principal Engineer, Alcon Research.

"We have no doubt that the added functionality and increased flexibility of Pro/Engineer Wildfire 4.0, coupled with the improvements we've seen in Windchill PDMLink 9.0, will assist us in continuing to improve product development processes at Alcon".

"The improvements in electromechanical design capabilities will increase productivity at Daktronics", states Jon Sprang from Daktronics.

"Importing a complex design that used to take over three hours to complete we can now do in about 15 minutes with Pro/Engineer Wildfire 4.0".

"Efficient ECAD-MCAD design collaboration is also an area that we have been struggling with".

"The new ECAD-MCAD collaboration capabilities will help us address these challenges".

"The new capabilities in Pro/Engineer Wildfire 4.0 focus on strengthening key processes that have the greatest impact on the success of a customer's global development initiatives", says James E Heppelmann, executive Vice President, Software Products, and Chief Product Officer, PTC.

"This release also underscores PTC's continued emphasis on quality, usability and responsiveness to customer needs".

"By constantly evaluating our customers' needs and the trends impacting the industry, PTC has made a significant investment in new capabilities for Pro/Engineer Wildfire 4.0 that will continue to speed new product development in a globally dispersed environment".

Pro/Engineer Wildfire 4.0 is scheduled to be available later this month.

Pro/Engineer active maintenance customers can conveniently download Pro/Engineer Wildfire 4.0 or order a CD from the PTC support site under their current maintenance coverage.

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