A New Focus on ProductView 9.1
by Jim Buchanan

Let's start with the details, and then drill up. The new ProductView 9.1 combines 10-fold performance improvements and optional 64-bit processing with standards-based ECAD-MCAD collaboration and a new level of desktop accessibility, thanks to integration with Microsoft Office.

For engineers, these ProductView advancements mean that you can expect:

A richer viewing experience. Higher performance translates to faster rendering speed and, for the 64-bit option, higher rendering capacity, so you'll be able to load, render and interact-even with massive assemblies-in real time. In a large project, for instance, it's common for individual subcontractors to work only within their own projects, and not see how their customer's entire finished product will function. Higher-performing visualization will let the entire design team-all the subcontractors-assemble their virtual prototypes into the finished-product prototype.

The viewing experience won't stop with a static display. Engineers will be able to animate the prototype to check fit and function of moving parts. And you'll be able to step into the 3D prototype, using virtual reality devices to get a better understanding of the design scale. Designers of a bus, for instance, can step inside the virtual prototype and try out the dashboard controls. Or an airplane design team could check the ergonomics of a new seatbelt design.

According to internal benchmarks, the new ProductView 9.1 will render approximately 10-times faster than the previous version. What's the trick? A new architecture, says Michael Rygol, VP of Product Management at PTC. ProductView has been re-written into a multi-threaded architecture so it can perform calculations in parallel on multiprocessor platforms. "Multiprocessors are popular in desktops and laptops; the new architecture takes advantage of that," Rygol says.

Fewer interruptions. If you're a design engineer, your daily routine probably includes talking with test engineers, manufacturing engineers, project managers, and others. But frequently you get non-technical requests. Purchasing might want to look at some parts that are on order, marketing might want something to show a prospect, or documentation or assembly people might have questions about how some parts fit together.

With ProductView 9.1 they can now stay at their desks and see for themselves, thanks to a ProductView plug-in that fits into their own PowerPoint applications.

You may spend less time at design review meetings, because non-technical team members will be able to check on certain aspects of the product under development without requiring that you be present. For instance, marketing may bring in some sales people to show how a product is being changed. The new ProductView release-and the PowerPoint plug-in provides superior performance and interactive scripting so the presenter will have no problem showing the product in 3D.

A new look at ECAD. If you're an ECAD test engineer, you'll now be able to use ProductView 9.1 to look at layouts and schematics for printed circuit boards and their components, and to automatically compare changes-in board size, component location, packaging, pins, devices, or properties-that have taken place from one design version to the next.

"Component layout is an important factor in testing the performance and reliability of the manufactured printed circuit board," says Rygol. "A test engineer would use ProductView 9.1 to figure out the test procedure so it can be automated. Also, the engineer can cross-check between the board's schematic and the visual layout, to make sure that any changes were handled correctly."

Less time spent making 2D drawings. Handing off the finished model to manufacturing can be a painful experience for the design engineer, because it is up to the designer to create the 2D drawings that manufacturing needs to build the product's components. According to PTC studies, creating and managing 2D drawings can take as much as 50 percent of a design engineer's time.

For those designers, and for manufacturing engineers, another ProductView 9.1 enhancement will be welcome news. The new version is able to display richer engineering annotations in the form of a 3D drawing that manufacturing can use in place of 2D.

The 3D drawing shows a particular display state of the model, complete with all measurements and any other annotations. The manufacturing engineer can review the design intent captured in the form of Combination States from Pro/ENGINEER or Capture States from CATIA V5. That way, the manufacturing engineer can interrogate the smart model as if it were a live 2D drawing, rather than a paper drawing.

Drilling up. With a new architecture, new Microsoft-licensed UI paradigm and Office integration, optional higher-performance versions, and ECAD functionality, PTC is taking ProductView more seriously than ever before.

PTC has now made ProductView a family of scalable products. With the release of ProductView 9.1 there will be different versions available, ProductView Express, a free, but capability-limited version, and two professional versions, one 32-bit and the other 64-bit. It will be easy for companies to move up from low end to high end, because the products all share the same architecture.