What's New in Pro/ENGINEER Wildfire 5.0?

by Jim Buchanan

It's no secret that the best business managers are those who can remove the barriers that impede productivity. In the world of product development, the same holds true for CAD software. Pro/ENGINEER Wildfire 5.0 removes barriers to collaboration and meets the challenges of today's multiple CAD environments and dispersed systems. With over 100 feature enhancements and a completely new user interface in some areas, Pro/ENGINEER Wildfire 5.0 makes great strides in addressing some of the key pain points faced by engineers on a daily basis.

Keystrokes: less is more. Keystrokes by themselves may not be a major problem, but having to stop in the middle of creating or editing a model to enter metrics or edit a model tree can be a real obstacle to creativity. Two new functions of Pro/ENGINEER Wildfire 5.0-real-time dynamic editing and disruption-free design-can help.

Real-time dynamic editing lets you make an onscreen change simply by grabbing a drag handle and moving it to a different location. With other Pro/ENGINEER versions you need to open a dialog box, enter your new metrics, then wait for the model to regenerate before you can see what your modification looks like. With Pro/ENGINEER Wildfire 5.0, the model calculates the metrics and regenerates automatically as you move the handle, so you don't waste any valuable time.

"Most all designers edit models so this will benefit lots of users," says PTC Product Management Director John Buchowski. "But it's particularly valuable for working with surfaces, or for moving components within larger assemblies."

Disruption-free. Disruption-free design lets you override Pro/ENGINEER's resolve mode, which you need to invoke in case a model fails to regenerate while you are in the process of editing. Resolve mode can prove a substantial barrier to creative thought processes, because it requires you troubleshoot the model tree before you can go further. With Pro/ENGINEER Wildfire 5.0 you'll now get a choice of fixing the problem immediately or waiting until later. Also, the new software will highlight the failed features in the model tree, and will display the failed geometry if its onscreen position allows.

This is another function that's especially valuable to those working with large assemblies. "With an assembly, it could take a great deal of time to go back and figure out which of 10 or 20 or 50 features-all interrelated-have violated some parameters or relationships of the model," Buchowski says.

Other time- and sanity-saving functions in Pro/ENGINEER Wildfire 5.0 include cutting and pasting of assembly components, graphical browsing-where a tiny image shows each model as you hit the file, a new rendering engine that is easier to set up than before, and specific enhancements for cabling, NC, and other applications.

Clearance and creepage. In electro-mechanical applications, keeping the electronics within spec gets more difficult as cell phones, bar coders, and other devices pack more functionality into smaller, lighter packages. The risk is that the electronics will get too close to one another, or will get too hot, and break down. The result can be painful, and costly, particularly if the failure causes a product recall.

Until now, the best the design engineer could do was to either over-design the part, or use the best rule-of-thumb dimensions available. But today's products may require thousands of computations, so it's nearly impossible to get them all.

A new module in Pro/ENGINEER Wildfire 5.0 now automates this testing and predicts the electromechanical performance of these designs. The Pro/ENGINEER Spark Analysis Extension is the only software commercially available today that automates clearance and creepage testing.

Working with others. Collaboration is, for some, a necessary evil that adds time and effort to the model-building process. In the middle of your project you may have to track down a manufacturing engineer who is five time zones away, or you may have to import a model from a supplier who doesn't use Pro/ENGINEER.

In either case, Pro/ENGINEER Wildfire 5.0 can help remove the barriers of time, space, and corrupted data.

For working with other people, Pro/ENGINEER Wildfire 5.0 has embedded Windchill ProductPoint functionality into its user interface. You can use presence detection to check the real-time status of a model, or the location of a colleague. And, among other things, you can initiate a global design review with a single click, on Start Design Review. This will activate the opening of a project page and the creation of a design Wiki. From here, you can use instant messaging or other Windchill ProductPoint functions to contact the group.

If you've ever collaborated with designers or companies not using PTC software, you know that data translation can be a barrier, since so much information is typically lost or corrupted in the process. If you're receiving a model, you've got to spend time cleaning up the geometry and re-keying or importing any calculations, documentation, or other related metadata.

For cleaning up geometry files, Pro/ENGINEER Wildfire 5.0 has upgraded its DataDoctor-a tool for preserving complex geometry. And for preserving non-geometric data, Pro/ENGINEER Wildfire 5.0 now supports exchange of calculations and other metadata between Pro/ENGINEER and AutoDesk investor, and Pro/ENGINEER and SolidWorks.

"Pro/ENGINEER Wildfire 5.0 continues to focus on helping the design engineer get past barriers," Buchowski says. "No matter how complex product development may get, that's the one thing that never changes: all products begin with an idea. We want to do all we can to help get that idea onto the screen and into production, with as little hassle as possible."