His conclusion:

Pro/Engineer is a Godzilla amongst 3D design systems and like the legendary Japanese beast, has the ability to floor its competition with a single swipe. Sure, it’s known for being a bit slow, but its power and capability can’t really be argued with. In the last few releases, while this power has been maintained and enhanced, its speed has also being increased. It’s becoming Godzilla, with a jet-pack – truly a scary thought.

The perfect example of this is the work done in Wildfire 5.0 to alleviate some of the major headaches associated with history-based modelling – namely, recalculation times, which now happens in a matter of seconds and how the system handles history and feature failure. These two updates alone should make the upgrade a worthwhile investment for existing users. Of course, if you’re looking at Pro/Engineer with a fresh set of eyes, then that’s how it should be, so the impact will be much less.

One thing that still confuses me is the introduction of the Ribbon-based UI to the draughting environment. PTC has made a lot of effort to move a lot of code to the dashboard-driven UI style and that work is getting towards the point of completion with this release. It then seems rather perverse that the developers would choose to introduce another UI scheme into the mix in the drawing tools. PTC’s response to this is that it is planning to move towards the Ribbon-based UI in forthcoming releases, but retain the Dashboard for command operations.

UI changes aside, Wildfire 5.0 is an impressive release. PTC is addressing many of the core, fundamental issues that many users face, all across the board, from the headline grabbing real-time regeneration, through to seemingly small details such as the curve tweaking tools and greater weldment control. It all works together to help make the system more efficient and the user more productive. Alongside this, there’s a smattering of new tools, such as Manikin Lite, which bring new functionality to the system.

Wildfire 5.0 is a solid release and one that the extensive Pro/Engineer community is going to get many productivity benefits from. And for those looking to move from 2D or another 3D system, Pro/Engineer continues to be one of the most powerful systems available.

Well said.

Read the article here:
SHS Technology Education advances with addition of Pro-E
by REBECCA KOMPPA

FYI…
Carom billiards, sometimes called carambol, carambole billiards, or carambole, is a family of billiards games generally played on cloth-covered pocketless tables, which often feature heated slate beds. In its simplest form, the object of the game is to score points or “counts” by caroming one’s own cue ball off both the opponent’s cue ball and the object ball(s) on a single shot.

The premier event for professionals using PTC software returns to sunny Orlando and the spectacular Rosen Shingle Creek Hotel. More details are available online at www.ptcuser.org/2010.

For folks wishing to register early for the World Event to take advantage of available budget dollars in 2009, you can download the registration form today at www.ptcuser.org/2010/RegistrationForm.pdf.

Online registration will open at a later date.

If you have any questions, please email PTC/USER at we2010@ptcuser.org or phone them at (877) 878-USER.

See you in Orlando?

You can sign up for the Dislocated Worker Program at your local Workforce Center.

Read this Dislocated Worker Program Fact Sheet

See this list of Minnesota Dislocated Worker Program intake offices listed by city

Regards,
TCPUG website admin Tony H.

As of today, most of the content has been restored. Thank goodness for backups! Anyhow, some of the old web page URLs may have changed, so don’t be too surprised if your incoming links and old bookmarks to individual pages are broken.

Regards,
TCPUG Website Admin Tony H.

The forum covers a wide range of topics such as:

• Analysis
• Animation
• Rendering
• Bugs & Builds
• CAD Administration
• Data Management
• Data Translation
• Drawing
• Hardware
• Manufacturing
• Modeling
• Mold Design
• Pro/DESKTOP
• Process for Assemblies
• Rant & Rave
• Routed Systems
• Sheetmetal
• Software Development
• User
• Wildfire
• Wish List

There is even a “Tips & Tricks” section covering these topics:

• Assembly
• Behavior Modeling
• Design Animation
• Drawing
• Intralink
• Mechanism Design
• Miscellaneous
• Part Modeling
• Sheetmetal

This is an active forum with lots of members and many posts. When I visited the forum this morning there were 56 active users online. The forum has almost 64,500 registered members who have posted 94,000+ posts in 18,603 topics.

You can visit the Pro/ENGINEER Forum at MCADcentral.com here: http://www.mcadcentral.com/proe/forum/default.asp

The video shows some interesting new capabilities of Pro/ENGINEER Wildfire 5.0.
Mentioned in the video are: improved file open dialog box, smart features for plastic part design, drag-and-drop UDFs (User Defined Features), you can open and use native files from Solid Works and Autodesk Inventor, realistic mechanism modeling, dynamic gears, new manikin module, improved method for routing cables, and easier to create realistic renderings of models.

If you found this video useful, you can view more videos from PTC on YouTube here at the PTC Studio channel.