**FIRST EMAIL**/FIRST Announces PTC Collaboration Software Sponsorship!

[Mark McLeod]

Greetings Teams:

FIRST is pleased to announce that PTC, The Product Development Company, is The Collaboration Sponsor for this year’s FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC). Through this sponsorship, PTC is offering a hosted version of its collaboration solution, Windchill, to be used by FRC teams to improve collaboration among team members, helping teams work faster and smarter during the build season in the following ways:


* Create Web-based, compartmentalized project portals and easily self-administer team access to content -- Project portals enable everyone to track the project schedule, deliverables, status and associated tasks while personalized subscription and notification capabilities allow members to be attuned to the latest changes
* On-line discussion forums enable teams to keep track of conversations between members and decisions made
* Web-based portal reduces the need for travel and increases the responsiveness to issues
* Robust document management capabilities allow teams to manage any documents as well as special purpose capabilities to manage CAD data and visualize CAD data -- Visualization capabilities enable all team members to see designs and take measurements, and markup and add comments without access to the CAD application itself
* Comprehensive project management and execution capabilities including the ability to define and manage milestones, tasks, deliverables and resources
* FRC project template pre-loaded with “Getting Started” Guide, online tutorials, and FRC schedule


Registration process for a Windchill-based FRC team project

Registration is easy. Each team interested in using Windchill to manage their FRC team project should have their team leader register for a project. The team leader will be the project manager and will manage member access to the project. Each project will use a project template created specially for FRC. Within the project, team members will have access to a 'getting started' guide that will aid them in using Windchill for collaboration and content management related to all aspects of their robot design project. In addition, team members can review the FRC critical schedule dates via the Windchill Project Plan.

[Team Leaders can] register for a project team today. From within the project you can download, Mathcad Student Edition for documenting and solving engineering calculations.

Go Teams!

[Elgin Clock]

Ooh... that's interesting.

PTC makes both the Pro-E CAD software, and also MathCAD as well.

Hmmm.... :yikes:

[Madison]

Mark, did you edit anything out of this e-mail blast? I'm waiting for this to be forwarded to me by our main contact. I'd like to take a look at what this has to offer, but it doesn't seem to provide any actual information about how to get started.

Windchill:
http://www.ptc.com/appserver/mkt/products/home.jsp?k=37

I'm particularly interested in how it manages CAD data and whether or not it'll handle native Solidworks (or Inventor, for that matter) files -- or whether it's tailored for PTC's own Pro/E.

[Pat McCarthy]

I'm particularly interested in how it manages CAD data and whether or not it'll handle native Solidworks (or Inventor, for that matter) files -- or whether it's tailored for PTC's own Pro/E.

Looks like it can handle a bunch of design packages, AutoCAD, Inventor, Solidworks..
http://www.ptc.com/products/disciplines/cad_and_software_integrations/index.htm

[Mark McLeod]

I removed the link to the screen that creates the team leader login account. There's no information there. It just sets up the account, then sends a verification email with the real link.

There's no obvious validation of who's creating the account, so I thought it best to leave that link to team leaders.

P.S.
The documentation in Windchill seems pretty Pro/E-centric, but I haven't read it yet.

[Tottanka]

I've just started using it, it's awesome!

The main contact is the one creating the accout.
After that he recieves a confirmation mail, and only later he can see in the project managing itself a file which instructs him how to start.

I should just mention that it's awesome,
You can let all you team members be a part of it, your sponser or just guests (you can make them belong to different groups with different user modes).
You can arrange meeting through it, and ofcourse, cad managing is aweosme!

STRONGLY SUGGESTED TO ALL TEAMS!

[Madison]

I've been looking it over a bit this morning and it seems interesting, if a bit overwhelming at first. It seems to allow online project management in the same sense that Microsoft's Sharepoint does -- the software we've begun using this season -- but it is also tailored specifically for CAD file version management. The installation of Windchill we're being provided includes support for both Inventor and Pro/E, though because my team uses Solidworks, I'm not sure if it'll be helpful for us. For teams that use Inventor, this should become a great resource.

Also included are licenses of Pro/E Schools Edition and MathCAD. I'm not sure if there's a limit to the number of seats available of each per team, but it initially appears as if there is not. This is a nice gesture, certainly, and necessary to get the most out of the Windchill software, I'd guess. I don't know if we want to deal with the headache of trying to adapt to Pro/E, though, and I'm concerned about what'll happen to our data at the end of the season. With our Sharepoint setup, at least we're in control of our data.

[Don Wright]

I did the registration this morning, but haven't received anything yet. How long did it take to get a a reply?

[Madison]

I did the registration this morning, but haven't received anything yet. How long did it take to get a a reply?

I registered at about 11 PM Pacific last night and received a reply overnight -- it must be automated. It took about three hours.

[Mark McLeod]

No more than a half hour for me for the confirmation email to arrive.

[Don Wright]

I wonder if it cross references the list of leader email addresses, because it has Gail's email address, not mine...

[Madison]

I wonder if it cross references the list of leader email addresses, because it has Gail's email address, not mine...

I used all of my own information and I'm not our main contact, so I don't think it will be a problem.

[dsmoker]

M. Krass, do I correctly assume from your mantra (Dancing through life . . .) that you, like me, are a musical theater enthusiast as well as a robotics nut?

[Madison]

M. Krass, do I correctly assume from your mantra (Dancing through life . . .) that you, like me, are a musical theater enthusiast as well as a robotics nut?

Veering off topic for just a moment...

Yep, I love musical theater. With respect to Wicked, I've seen it twice so far. I try not to subject the team to too many cast recordings during the build season, but it's so hard to resist. ;)

[Pat Fairbank]

I did the registration this morning, but haven't received anything yet. How long did it take to get a a reply?
The main contact for our team sent me the project manager login credentials this morning; seems like the registration didn't take very long. So I logged in and added my e-mail address to the list of members, but I haven't yet gotten a reply in the 12 hours since then. I've tried since then with a couple other e-mail addresses, but nothing has come through (yes, I did check the spam bin). Has anyone been successful at adding other people to their projects? (Or do they maybe have some sort of script that sends out all the queued e-mails in the middle of the night?)

I'm somewhat disappointed that PTC isn't providing support for CAD versioning of Solidworks and other softwares. According to the literature, they produce plug-ins for Inventor and Solidworks (and Unigraphics, Catia, etc.) but are only providing the Inventor one free of charge. I guess it wouldn't be a sound business decision, though, to pass up the opportunity to influence thousands of potential future customers into using Pro/ENGINEER.

[Madison]

The main contact for our team sent me the project manager login credentials this morning; seems like the registration didn't take very long. So I logged in and added my e-mail address to the list of members, but I haven't yet gotten a reply in the 12 hours since then. I've tried since then with a couple other e-mail addresses, but nothing has come through (yes, I did check the spam bin). Has anyone been successful at adding other people to their projects? (Or do they maybe have some sort of script that sends out all the queued e-mails in the middle of the night?)

I'm somewhat disappointed that PTC isn't providing support for CAD versioning of Solidworks and other softwares. According to the literature, they produce plug-ins for Inventor and Solidworks (and Unigraphics, Catia, etc.) but are only providing the Inventor one free of charge. I guess it wouldn't be a sound business decision, though, to pass up the opportunity to influence thousands of potential future customers into using Pro/ENGINEER.

I was able to invite add'l members to the project this afternoon and they successfully signed up and were able to log in. Did you "start" the project? I recall reading somewhere a step-by-step guide that called for "starting" the project before inviting new members. I don't know what the distinction is, really, but I followed those steps and it worked.

I'm also upset that they haven't yet made a Solidworks plug-in available. I downloaded the provided copy of Pro/E and have been playing around with it a bit and all that's done is remind me how much I despise Pro/E. I think this has a great feature set, but it's not so great that it's going to get me to switch all of my work over to Pro/E -- especially since my job uses Solidworks and that makes it much easier to sneak in other work during the downtime. Pro/E is clearly different and just confuses everyone. :)

[Pat Fairbank]

I was able to invite add'l members to the project his afternoon and they successfully signed up and were able to log in. Did you "start" the project? I recall reading somewhere a step-by-step guide that called for "starting" the project before inviting new members. I don't know what the distinction is, really, but I followed those steps and it worked.
Thanks, that did the trick. No sooner did I "start" it than I got three e-mails in my inbox. :)

[yarb65]

To use ProE must you be hooked up to a network server. I tried to use it at home after using it at school yesterday. It will not work. I live in the woods. Dial up only.

[JBotAlan]

So this entire service is on the Internet? If so, that would make it pretty much useless for us--we're in a GM facility without access to the Web (at least without great difficulty) during a meeting.

[Madison]

To use ProE must you be hooked up to a network server. I tried to use it at home after using it at school yesterday. It will not work. I live in the woods. Dial up only.

I installed Pro/E locally on my laptop -- in fact, the schools edition provided must be installed locally -- and have had no trouble running it at all, even without an internet connection.

So this entire service is on the Internet? If so, that would make it pretty much useless for us--we're in a GM facility without access to the Web (at least without great difficulty) during a meeting.

Pro/E itself will be installed and run locally, but Windchill is a hosted content management solution, so in this case, it's hosted out on the internet by PTC. You wouldn't be able to get to it from within your site, it seems.

[yarb65]

I finally got it to work. Needed to tweek my computer a little.

[Don Wright]

I finally got the information and had a chance to play with it a little today. Going to get some of the students to play with it a bit too and see if it's something we can use...

As for using SolidWorks... I just created new parts in WindChill and used the Solidworks parts as reference. Yes, you can't use the built in Windchill viewer/editor...but it still seems to work...

While the structure seems good as a project manager, it seems cumbersome to me (at this point) for dealing with sub-assemblies, etc...

Also, and maybe I've missed it, but the documentation falls into the usual pitfall of technical documentation. It lacks the 30,000 feet view of how the software is supposed to work all together with schedules, ProE, Mathcad, etc... It immediately goes right into specifics and totally lacks the philosophy behind how the software was designed and set-up for a project...

I still am playing around and am not giving up yet... But, if someone has found this overview document, please let me know.

I really appreciate the tool and am happy they are donating the resources to FIRST, but if it takes teams a fair amount of time to know how the system works and how to set their project up, it won't be used.

[PTC_FRC]

Hi all,

Thanks for your interest in ProjectLink for your FRC team. I am happy to answer questions you have on the use of ProjectLink, Pro/E and Mathcad.

Many of you had asked about the number of licenses being provided. We are offering each member of your team a license of Pro/E and Mathcad. These are node locked licenses and are tied to the local machine. You do not need to access a license server. You only need to be connected to the internet to generate the license. Once the license is created, you no longer need to have access to the internet.

As for the use of Pro/E and Mathcad, I can understand the challenge of moving from a known system to a new one. We have tried to assist in this effort by providing ample training via the web-based training portal. This is available at http://first.ptculms.com. User can register for this portal and take web-based training modules for Pro/E (modeling, assemblies, mechanism, Sheetmetal, detailing, etc) and Mathcad.

ProjectLink is a web-based project management system. It allows users to conduct design reviews, hold meetings, discussions forums for the teams, manage the history and revisions of documents and CAD data, notification and routing of documents, project planning, etc. We have included a number of training modules for ProjectLink in the training portal listed above.

As for managing CAD data, ProjectLink can manage many types of CAD data. For this year’s competition, we will be providing the ability to manage native Pro/E and Inventor data. Solidworks can be managed in ProjectLink, but we do not offer the work group manager (WGM) that would connect Solidworks to ProjectLink. This will be something we can consider for next year. If the WGM is not available for your application, you can still take advantage of ProjectLink. In this case, you can store the data as a zipped file into ProjectLink. This file will be controlled and versioned. Users will be able to check-out the document (zip file), disallowing anyone else to update it until the user checked in back in. Each check-in will iterate the file keeping past iterations for future design variations.

These projects have been setup for your team. The goal of ProjectLink is to unite your team members in an environment that they can conduct the design of their robots. Since this is available on the web, users regardless of where they are located can work individually or together. I will be providing a small video showing many of the ways team members can work together. I will be sending this out shortly.

If you have further questions, please let me know. My contact email is mfischer@ptc.com or firstsupport@ptc.com

Thanks in advance.

Regards,
Mark Fischer
Director – PTC Education

[Mark McLeod]

Greetings Teams:

PTC has developed a workshop for teams on how to use Windchill. Please go to http://www.ptc.com/appserver/wcms/replay/index.jsp?im_dbkey=63530&icg_dbkey=362 (http://www.ptc.com/appserver/wcms/replay/index.jsp?im_dbkey=63530&icg_dbkey=362) to view now!

Go Teams!

[yoyodyne]

I just started looking at it yesterday. Have posted some docs, set up some meetings. My concerns are:

1) It is not compatible with Firefox? and I know a lot of my team members use it (don't like explorer)

2) As was stated earlier, I don't know if we can count on it to be available in months and years to come

For CM I think we will stay with our local server and JEDI VCS/subversion for now until these questions are answered.

As an interesting note it sent meeting invitations to team members that hand been invited but had not yet joined.

Greg

[AustinSchuh]

Can we run the version of Pro/E that we get under Linux? That would be a major selling point for my team.

[Pat Fairbank]

Can we run the version of Pro/E that we get under Linux? That would be a major selling point for my team.
I looked this up when I first found out about the sponsorship. Unfortunately, PTC doesn't produce a version of the student edition of Pro/E that runs (natively) on Linux - they only do this for commercial versions. So those of us who were hoping to be able to run it on Linux are out of luck.

[PTC_FRC]

Hi all,

Let me answer the questions asked in the last few posts.....

'I looked this up when I first found out about the sponsorship. Unfortunately, PTC doesn't produce a version of the student edition of Pro/E that runs (natively) on Linux - they only do this for commercial versions. So those of us who were hoping to be able to run it on Linux are out of luck.'

PTC's response - Pro/ENGINEER was ported to Linux over 5 years ago and was the first main stream CAD/CAM/CAE solution to offer support on Linux. This was a response to our commercial customers desire to run Pro/E on that OS. Once released we saw very little uptake on this OS. In actual fact, we have more people moving to our 64-bit Windows version of Pro/E. At this time, we have the following breakdown - 85% Windows, 15% UNIX and less the 1% on Linux. Even from the education market, we are not getting a lot of demand. As a result, PTC will no longer be releasing or supporting a Linux version of Pro/ENGINEER with it production release of Pro/ENGINEER Wildfire 4.0.

PTC chose to only provide a 32-bit Windows version of Pro/ENGINEER for education as that was the OS being used by over 95% of our 15,000+ schools involved in our education program.

1) It is not compatible with Firefox? and I know a lot of my team members use it (don't like explorer)

2) As was stated earlier, I don't know if we can count on it to be available in months and years to come

PTC's response - PTC is working on supporting Firefox for Windchill ProjectLink. Agreed many teams are using Firefox and in actual fact are using ProjectLink as well. As it is not official supported, there might be a number of commands that might not operate or function properly. However, your overall experience should be the same as if you were using IE.

This is the first year of many to come supporting FRC. Next year, we will be using the latest release of Windchill ProjectLink available at that time. We are confident that Firefox will be officially supported for that year’s competition. Some of the other items we are considering to add will be the Workgroup Manager support for Solidworks.

'How long will the server be available?'

PTC's response - PTC will maintain the server for one month after the competition ends. PTC will send out an email to all registered teams that they should backup their work to their local machine using the export function in ProjectLink. This function will export all content and maintain the folder structure. At the end of that one month, the server will be taken offline and formatted, preparing for the next years competition.

If you have further question, please let us know. You can contact PTC directly at firstsupport@ptc.com.

Regards,
Mark Fischer
Director - PTC Education

[Ken Patton]

Has anyone successfully downloaded and used Mathcad through the donated PTC Windchill website yet?

[kramarczyk]

Tinkered around with, yes. Used productively, no.

If install is the problem, don't forget that an e-mail to firstsupport@ptc.com is required to get a product code. This is an additional step beyond what was required to install Pro-E.