Introduction

Welcome to this Pro/ENGINEER^® Wildfire 4.0 workshop for experienced users! Now that you have heard about the key themes and enhancements, this will provide you with a unique test drive opportunity.

Pro/ENGINEER Wildfire 4.0 Overview

Pro/ENGINEER Wildfire 4.0 offers many new capabilities and productivity improvements from previous releases. These enhancements will help you optimize your Global Design Processes, including Electromechanical Design.

Pro/ENGINEER Wildfire 4.0 builds upon the capabilities introduced in prior releases such as the modernized Pro/ENGINEER user interface (UI).  The UI, which utilizes a dashboard interface and icons that offer simple and intuitive access to menu options for creating and editing designs, has been further enhanced and extended to more Pro/ENGINEER modules.  The embedded browser and file directories have also been improved for faster navigation to valuable design data and resources.  A few of the key enhancements covered in this tutorial are highlighted below:

Global Design Process Enhancements

• Optimize Detailed Design - Create both simple and complex designs faster with improved assembly performance, new Auto Round™ capabilities, direct surface editing, automated 3D drawing annotations, and more

• Optimize Verification and Validation - Analyze your designs faster and easier with improved meshing, support for assembly contact points, nonlinear materials, better results analyses, smarter diagnostics, and other simulation improvements

• Optimize Manufacturing Tooling & Factory Equipment Design - Simplify and automate the transformation of engineering designs into manufacturing processes with an easy to use, powerful process manager tool for toolpath definition, annotation features, and other key tasks

Electromechanical Design Enhancements

• Faster Detailed Design - Create electromechanical designs faster with intelligent, automated capabilities for adding and routing ribbon cables

• Faster Design Collaboration - Accelerate design collaboration with a new associative interface between MCAD and ECAD designs. Automatically identify incremental changes and cross-highlight between MCAD and ECAD circuit board designs

For the best experience, please review the remaining pages in this section. At the conclusion, we are very interested in your feedback - so please use the comment links provided. Enjoy!

Objectives

1. Test drive what's new.
2. Experience how key enhancements will increase productivity.
3. Provide structured examples to address technical questions.
4. Prepare you for Production deployment.
5. Collect feedback about your experience.

Continue to the next page for Instructions, or return to the Table of Contents page for a list of exercises..

Tutorial Instructions

This tutorial is intended to be used alongside the release of Pro/ENGINEER shown in the Tutorial Header.  In a workshop environment, all necessary software and data files will already have been installed and setup.

Download dataset :  (~65MB)

Click the archive icon to download the full set of exercise models, as well as required support and startup files (e.g., config.pro, config.win, etc.).

These instructions are for the Microsoft Windows platform.  Web Browser must be configured to allow pop-ups and Javascript from PTC.com.

1. Install required release of Pro/ENGINEER.
2. Extract the dataset archive contents to a New Folder.
   - preserve folder structure
   - a simple path with no spaces is recommended
      (e.g., D:\PTC\WF4_Tutorial)
3. Edit startpro.ini to specify Pro/ENGINEER install path (PROE_DIR).
    - you will be prompted if this value is missing or incorrect
4. Launch Pro/ENGINEER.
   - startpro.cmd runs only Pro/E, configured for the Tutorials
   - Tutorial.exe automates total startup, plus window layout!
   - Note System Tray icon : 
   - Initial Working Directory will be "Exercises"
5. Follow instructions provided within each exercise.

Screen Layout

• Pro/ENGINEER and the web browser can be resized and arranged as shown to facilitate effective use of the material
• To maximize working area within Pro/ENGINEER, set Display Properties to a high resolution (e.g., 1600x1200)

Conventions

Information is provided at the start of many tasks

Tips are provided along the way, with time-saving or alternate techniques

Notes are provided with additional useful details, which may not be required to complete the exercise

• Menu and Toolbar commands ("picks and clicks") are shown in Bold
• Icons are shown inline with command text;
  labels match the Status bar and Tool tip text
• Text that you enter is shown in Bold
• Names of models and directories are shown in CAPS or actual case
• Keyboard keys are shown in Bold CAPS
• Areas of interest in images are green
• Mouse buttons are referred to as LMB, MMB, RMB;
  instructions will indicate click vs. drag

Navigation

If a page contains more information than will fit in the viewport, a scroll bar will appear.

Make sure to scroll through the entire contents before advancing to the next step.

There are several options to easily move through the material:

NAVIGATION	Home Page for TOPIC	Previous Page	Next Page
Header Icon Links (top right)
Keyboard* / Footer Icon Links (bottom right)
Other		Backspace

* Requires IE 5.5+

• Header Quicklinks
  Topics - drop-down enables moving between topics, without returning to the Table of Contents
  Active Topic - Returns to the start page for CURRENT Topic
  Note current / total number of pages
• Footer Quicklinks
  TOC - Returns to the Table of Contents, listing ALL Topics
  Home - Returns to the start page for CURRENT Topic
  Top - Returns to the top of the current page
  
• You may also use standard browser history (Ctrl+H)

Vista-style File Dialogs

Microsoft Windows Vista introduced a new paradigm for exploring folders.  Pro/ENGINEER Wildfire 4.0 embraces this concept of "Breadcrumbs" in the new & improved File > Open dialogs.

Note Pro/ENGINEER-specific capabilities under Tools, Open, Preview

• Selecting an element in the path will expand to show contents at that level
• Selecting down-arrow at the end of the address bar will show full path as editable text
• Arrows to the left use folder history
• Note Search... panel

You can still use Set Working Dir... from the File menu.  To use the RMB shortcut in the folder browser, you must expand the Folder Tree Panel!

Recommendations

• Proceed through the Main Topics in any order that interests you
• Proceed through the material within each topic in sequence, since many concepts/tasks build upon one another
• Follow the steps as outlined, and progress through each exercise to experience "What's New"
• Unless otherwise indicated, erase models from session before continuing with next topic

Enjoy!

Requirements

The following software is used in this Tutorial:

PTC

Download or order software from:
http://www.ptc.com/appserver/cs/software_update/swupdate.jsp

• Pro/ENGINEER Wildfire 4.0 (F000+)
  • Foundation XE, or higher
  • Pro/ENGINEER Advanced Mechanica
  • ISDX
  • ARX
  • Cabling Design Option
  • ECAD Collaboration Option
  • IDD
• InterComm
  • Expert 5.2 Patch 1
  • EDAcompare 2.2 Patch 1
    (includes Validation Manager)
• Feature Recognition Toolkit
  (included and pre-configured with Tutorial Dataset)

Third Party

• Adobe Acrobat Reader 8.0+
• Internet Explorer 6 (IE7 also supported)