CIMdata PLM Industry Summary Online Archive
21 June 2004
Product News
Proficiency Releases Collaboration Gateway Version 3.5, Advancing Feature-Based Interoperability
Proficiency announced the availability of Version 3.5 of its Collaboration Gateway* feature-based CAD interoperability solution. Version 3.5 further extends Proficiency's product lead, with support for assembly constraints, surfacing features and methodology, and provides enhanced support for top-down associative design techniques. As with prior releases, Version 3.5 also incorporates an increasingly robust feature set for high-throughput exchange of mechanical CAD models between Dassault Systèmes' CATIA® v4 and CATIA® v5, PTC's Pro/ENGINEER® and Pro/ENGINEER® Wildfire*, and UGS' Unigraphics® NX and I-deas® NX Series.
Also included in Collaboration Gateway 3.5 is the Proficiency UPR Viewer*, a lightweight application that allows CAD and non-CAD users anywhere within an organization to query, view, and leverage the product design data defined within CAD models and assemblies, independent of the original authoring system. Unlike other commercial viewing applications, the Proficiency UPR Viewer exposes the engineering-rich content traditionally only available through the full CAD system. Model details like the feature tree, sketch geometry, constraints, dimensions, and metadata are conveniently and graphically displayed.
"One strategy behind optimizing the overall product development cycle is to provide the various constituents of the development process access to as much product data as possible, in a format appropriate and meaningful to them," said Scott Berkey, president and CEO of Proficiency. "The Proficiency UPR Viewer allows users to access features, dimensions, constraints, metadata, and geometry-collectively known as design intelligence-any time and any where, without the need to be proficient in a CAD system. This will revolutionize the design and decision making processes in product development, encouraging innovation among OEMs and their suppliers, while driving real costs out of a product's lifecycle."
Particularly well suited for automotive, aerospace, shipbuilding, and heavy equipment manufacturers and their suppliers, Collaboration Gateway Version 3.5 highlights include:
• Support for Assembly Constraints-Collaboration Gateway Version 3.5 enables assembly constraints such as mate/contact, offset/distance, align, coincidence, fix, and coordinate systems to be interoperable between various CAD systems. Assembly constraints are used to ensure mating components remain properly aligned during parametric design model changes. Maintaining assembly constraints downstream is useful to assembly integrators for advanced digital verification applications like kinematics and mechanisms.
• Enhanced Support for Surface Methodology-Version 3.5 of the Collaboration Gateway includes new surface type support, including surface copy, surface replace, surface extend, surface trim, surface merge, as well as protrusion and cut use quilt. These are in addition to surface extrude, surface revolve, surface flat, and trim by surface features supported by previous versions of the Collaboration Gateway. Surface modeling is frequently used when designing automotive class-B components, support elements driven by nonstructural considerations, or stylized consumer products. The new support greatly reduces the typical manual rework traditionally performed on the most difficult and costly of design models to exchange-those using surface features.
• Proficiency UPR Viewer-Proficiency's industry-first, CAD-independent, parametric-based viewer allows users to query assembly structure, features, history, constraints, dimensions, and metadata without requiring that the source CAD system be present. The UPR Viewer enables users unfamiliar with the authoring CAD system to see feature-based design information and model construction techniques, thus allowing them to leverage or contribute to the collaborative product development process.
Proficiency Collaboration Gateway Version 3.5 at PTC's Annual PTC/User World Event held June 13-16, 2004. Customers will receive the version upgrade this month. Sample customers include Brose, European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company (EADS) Defence Electronics, Federal Mogul, The Ford Motor Company, GKN Automotive Driveline, Magneti Marelli, Hayes Lemmerz, SGF, Stryker Leibinger, Thyssen Krupp, Wärtsilä, and Yazaki North America. Collaboration Gateway Version 3.5 is available now, and is sold through a direct sales force with representatives throughout North America, and in Munich, Germany. For more information, please visit http://www.proficiency.com/ , call +1.508.486.9868 (North America) or +49 (0) 811-55526-0 (Europe).
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