2004 PTC/USER Nashville ConferenceDaily Email Day 3written by Kelly Bryant, Teknovation, Inc. The second day of the conference is finally complete and the long days are starting to show on the faces of many people. One day to go. Today's topics: Tips & TricksFor me, one of the highlights of the conference on Wednesday was the Tips & Tricks session. Even as long as I have been using Pro/ENGINEER (since Rev. 2), I always learn something new through this session. Yes, I would expect most users would already know some of the tips. But, there are rookies at this conference, just as there are some old, grizzled veterans. (And at this conference, some of the old vets were starting to look … well, you can fill in your own word here). Anyway, back to the Tips & Tricks. The one that caught my attention the most was one of the simplest tips. It was about changing the color of your part to easily highlight machined surfaces in a different color. Like many of you, I had always taken a cast/machined part and manually changed the color of the machined surfaces to easily highlight it. But this tip showed how to change the entire part color, then change the color of the “surfaces” to a different color. Then, when you create a feature that removes material, the underlying part color shows through. This allows you to easily see the machined surfaces. Wow, what a simple concept. In explaining this to a co-worker, I used an analogy of taking a lump of colored clay and forming it to a shape. Then, apply a thin layer of a different color clay to the outside surfaces. When you cut out a feature of the clay, you see the color of the main lump of clay showing through. I hope the entire contents of the Tips & Tricks session will be posted soon on ptcuser.org CollaborationThe last session I attended was Collaborating with an Outsourced Product Development Team. This PTC presentation was not based on a demo or any particular PTC module, but discussed the elements involved in collaboration. Collaboration challenges
My comments: how many companies have outsourced design or manufacturing but didn’t develop a strategy on how to make it work? They thought collaboration would just “happen” auto-magically and were shocked when everything didn’t go smoothly. To make it work, whether across the plant or across the globe, requires planning and teamwork. If one part of the team doesn’t want it to work, they can easily cause the project to fail. Today, the technology doesn’t seem to be the limiting factor in a distributed product development team. I didn’t see any presentations on the peer-to-peer conferencing available in Pro/ENGINEER. Maybe I missed them, or possibly no one is effectively using that functionality yet. I expect at the conference next year we will see several presentations on how companies have been able to implement the peer-to-peer conferencing with their product development teams. I counted 11 presentations at this conference that discussed collaboration or data sharing. I also talked with many people at the conference who were currently in a product development team with members at remote sites. Obviously, many companies have a lot of interest in product development collaboration. Look at the recent surge in products claiming to help with collaboration, and not just in the area of MCAD. Even Microsoft understands the importance of remote office collaboration, as seen by their purchase of the Placeware software and renaming it Microsoft Office Live Meeting. The challenge we all face is planning for our own system of collaboration and not expecting it to just happen overnight. As the old saying goes, Failing to plan is like planning to fail. Final ThoughtsAs always, attending the PTC/USER Conference is like going to eat at a buffet restaurant. You want to put a lot more on your plate than you will ever be able to eat. When I return to work after the conference, there are many new things to try and only a limited amount of time in the work week. But, there is always next week! I believe that the conference accommodations were as good as any we’ve had. If you’ve never been to the Gaylord Opryland, it is difficult to describe. It is about 9 acres enclosed under glass. One attendee called it the Biosphere. My description is “awesome”. I’ve uploaded a small sampling of photos if you want to get an idea of the resort at: http://www.teknovation.net/nashville See you next year in Orlando.
Regards, |