2009 PTC Announcement

[PTC_FRC]

FIRST is pleased to announce that PTC, The Product Development Company, is expanding its sponsorship in this year’s FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC).

PTC’s Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) solutions, including Pro/ENGINEER, Windchill, and Mathcad, are the tools engineers use everyday to do their jobs. As a Crown Level Supplier to FIRST and the FRC program, PTC is offering these solutions to help students design their robots and, through which, FIRST students can learn the language of engineering. The following software products are available to each and every registered 2009 FRC team!!!

Pro/ENGINEER - FIRST teams will have access to Pro/ENGINEER, PTC’s integrated 3D CAD/CAM/CAE software. Pro/ENGINEER is the standard in 3D product design, featuring industry-leading productivity tools that promote best practices in design while ensuring compliance with industry and company standards. Pro/ENGINEER enables students to detail the form, fit, and function of their robot.

With Pro/ENGINEER, high-fidelity digital models have full associativity, so that as your robot design changes during the build season, those changes will be reflected in your drawings and assembly automatically. Used by 15,000 high schools and 1,451 colleges and universities, Pro/ENGINEER offers an intuitive user interface making it easy to learn and use. For many years, FRC teams have used Pro/ENGINEER as part of their high school curriculum.

Windchill – Through its understanding of structured information such as CAD files, engineering calculations, and technical documentation, Windchill helps teams to work concurrently together or virtually from home. You can find the right files, and share product development data during the build season.

Windchill supports CAD authoring tools such as Pro/ENGINEER, Autodesk Inventor, AutoCAD, and Solidworks. Windchill also includes robust visualization capabilities, and provides a secure environment for project management and execution.

Windchill facilitates collaboration with web-based workspaces, alerts, discussion forums, and Microsoft Office integration. Hosted by PTC, web-based Windchill is easily accessible through a Web-browser.

Finally, Windchill can manage your entire project including fundraising, marketing, and finance information. Last year, over 300 teams signed up to use Windchill.

Start your FRC project now and get familiar with the capabilities that will allow you to plan, manage, share, and get the most out of FRC team information during the fast-paced build season.

Mathcad - Mathcad, PTC’s engineering calculation software, is used to perform, document, and share calculation and design work. The unique Mathcad visual format and easy-to-use whiteboard interface integrates standard mathematical notation, text, and graphs into a single worksheet making Mathcad ideal for knowledge capture, calculation reuse, and engineering collaboration. Mathcad lets teams work with interactive designs to capture the critical methods and values behind each of their robot designs.

Mathcad simplifies and streamlines documentation by combining equations, text, and graphics in a single worksheet. Mathcad makes it easy to keep track of the most complex calculations. Last year, teams used Mathcad to help them with key calculations during the build season to predict the behavior of their robot.

Lastly, PTC has created a dedicated web-page containing various information to aid teams in getting started using the PTC solutions for their robot design. You will find recorded product demos to learn more about the use of our products and how they can help enhance your design and collaboration for your team in this year’s FRC Competition! This page can be accessed from the project OR from www.ptc.com/go/firstgettingstarted.

How to register for the software:

Registration is easy. Your team's main contact will register at www.ptc.com/go/frcregistration Once registered, he/she will have the ability to create their team project or projects. In addition, the main contact will become the project manager and manage member access to the team project.

From the project, team members will download the Pro/ENGINEER Schools Edition, for Integrated CAD/CAM/CAE and Mathcad Student Edition for engineering calculations.

For Questions and Technical Support please email: firstsupport@ptc.com

Go Teams!

[martin417]

As a user of pro/E at work, I was disappointed that PTC only provided the student version of Pro/E. With this version, no collaboration between cad platforms is possible (including the commercial version of Pro/e). The chassis team created the chassis in Autodesk inventor, while much of the manipulator design was done in pro/e. The student version will not allow import or export of any part or assembly, so there was no way to bring the two together. As a mentor, I would like to be able to open student's models so that I can offer suggestions and help. Since I use pro/e, you would think that it would be easy to interface with the Pro/E teams. This was not the case. I could not even look at files created by student versions of Pro/e. However, I had no trouble importing files from the autodesk using teams. In addition, COTS parts 3D files cannot be used, since they are offered in a neutral formats like step or IGES.

If PTC wants to be a part of First, they need to step up and give teams the full commercial version of pro/e. The student version is useless in this context.

[PTC_FRC]

Hi martin417,

The schools enables users to import/export in various formats, not only IGES or STEP. While you are correct we do not enable educational models to be opened in commercial Pro/E, there are several different techniques to make this happen. IF you use Windchill ProjectLink, you can use the various Work Group Managers to connect Pro/E and other CAD tools to your Project to manage your cad data. WE include a web based viewer allowing you to view the models without needing the CAD tool installed. This will enable you measure, mark up the design.

In addition, Pro/E Schools Edition can be installed by the mentors to review the teams CAD models.

I would be happy to discuss this with you further. I can be reached at mfischer@ptc.com.

Regards,
Mark Fischer
PTC - Director

[martin417]

Mark,

Thank you for your reply. Is this year's version different than what was provided last year? The seat the team installed had no ability to open or save as any format other than student pro/e files. It is possible that it wasn't configured correctly, but I don't know.

If import / export through STEP / IGES is possible, that would solve most of the problems I have with using the student version.

I have been a Pro user since Rev 17, and believe that Pro/E is the premier 3d CAD package. I would very much like the team to be able to use Pro/E, because I can teach them. I don't know Inventor and therefore can't be much help there.

I am keeping this in the open forum rather than private email because I suspect that there are others in the First community that can benefit from this knowledge.

Thank you for your time,

Martin

[PTC_FRC]

Hi Martin,

The edition provided to FIRST teams is the latest release of Pro/ENGINEER Wildfire 4.0 schools edition. Last year we also provided the schools edition, but it was Wildfire 3.0. WE have enhanced the latest edition to include more import and export capabilities to help teams.

There is nothing to configure....it is available by default.

I would be happy to discuss this with you live.....

Let me know.

Good luck in the upcoming season.

Thanks,
Mark