CIMdata PLM Industry Summary Online Archive

9 December 2008

Implementation Investments

PTC CoCreate Cites Momentum in Special Machinery Segment During Fiscal 2008

PTC announced increased momentum for its CoCreate® products in the special machinery segment during fiscal year 2008. CoCreate is the explicit 3D CAD modeling and data management software that provides companies with a lightweight and flexible approach to designing products. During 2008, PTC saw a growing number of special machinery manufacturers standardize on CoCreate to meet their product design requirements. Additionally, many CoCreate customers returned to active license support, which also contributed to the strong finish the PTC product family achieved this fiscal year.

Among US companies standardizing on the CoCreate explicit modeling software is California-based American Wave Machines (AWM) Inc. AWM develops artificial wave technology that replicates real ocean surfing. AWM’s SurfStream™, the world’s first surfable wave pool, is a technology breakthrough for the water park industry. CoCreate Modeling® gives designers the flexibility to modify SurfStream models to fit the dimensions of individual hotel, resort, water park and sports exhibition facilities. With CoCreate Modeling, expensive physical prototyping has been replaced with virtual 3D prototyping, which has reduced time-to-market and improved sales presentation effectiveness. “Our product is very unique and highly specialized, requiring multiple design iterations,” said Bruce McFarland, founder, president and CEO, American Wave Machines. “With the CoCreate explicit modeling approach, I can easily modify a design and reissue prints in a matter of hours. CoCreate reduces the time from design to manufacture, enabling us to be responsive to frequent changes without lengthening the development cycle.”

Japan-based, Chinontec, headquartered in Nagano, designs and produces optical units for major optical instrument manufacturers. To increase competitiveness and accomplish its business initiatives to reduce time-to-market and reduce costs, Chinontec streamlined its product development process by deploying CoCreate Model Manager™ in its tooling and molding department. With CoCreate Model Manager, Chinontec designers can manage CoCreate models, locate existing data for reuse and ensure that team members are accessing the most current version of the model.

Chinontec has already expanded on-site use of CoCreate with plans for enterprise-wide deployment, which will centralize model data from all development locations, enhance data sharing and significantly increase data reuse for optimal productivity. “CoCreate Model Manager provides our designers with up-to-date revisions of design data across the development team, ensuring the integrity of the design and preventing design changes from impacting other team members’ work,” said Atsushi Shiba, director, engineering dept, unit business division, Chinontec Industries, Inc. “Additionally, the ability to reuse existing parts and design data for new projects has resulted in lower costs, reduced time-to-market and improved product quality.”

Paatz Viernau GmbH, based in Viernau, Germany, operates a highly modern machinery park for production of its portfolio, which includes multi-spindle drill heads and units for vehicular motors and special machinery. Paatz implemented PTC CoCreate to offer its customers speed and flexibility in design. “The PTC CoCreate product family is essential for our success,” said Achim Petter, CAD administrator at Paatz. “Every job is unique and, in this business, we can’t plan in advance. Changes up until the last minute are the rule.” The CoCreate explicit modeling approach to design allows for quick and flexible changes in every phase of the development process.

Paatz manages its 3D data with CoCreate Model Manager. Custom projects involve many team players, making the efficient organization and control of the design data extremely important. CoCreate Model Manager offers high performance functionality such as versioning, partial load, and model comparison. Automatic status and real-time notification of changes made to a model make it easy for numerous designers to work on models in parallel and eliminate the danger that someone works off an old version. “With CoCreate, we can respond quickly and efficiently to time-critical design demands,” said Petter. “We could never imagine working without the explicit modeling approach of CoCreate Modeling or developing custom products in a team without CoCreate Model Manager. Explicit modeling is exactly the right design approach for our projects.”

“Flexibility to respond to unexpected changes and speed of iteration are critical to the success of companies challenged with short design cycles and pressure to quickly create product designs in highly specialized markets,” said Martin Neumüller, CoCreate product management director, PTC. “CoCreate provides the capabilities that help streamline the design process and improve collaboration among design teams. This increased efficiency helps to shorten time-to-market and strengthen competitive advantage.”

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