PTC Joins the Direct Modeling Bandwagon

I guess I can open my trap now. People at PTC/USER 09 have started reporting on PTC’s modeling plans. I was shown some of it during my visit to the PTC Headquarters in Needham this April, but was asked not to talk about it till PTC/USER 09.

Direct modeling will not be in Pro/ENGINEER Wildfire 5.0. Rather it will be part of Wildfire 6.0. But since they are already working on it, I suspect that it will be in the software but the functionality will be hidden from the user. When I asked PTC top management why they were not shipping this technology in Wildfire 5.0, they told me that they were not completely satisfied with the technology and in their view it would be in shipping condition in time for Wildfire 6.0.

So does that mean that like Siemens, PTC is abandoning the history based feature modeling approach that they pioneered years ago? Hell No! PTC has managed to find a way to do quick localized rebuilds so that a complicated history based parametric model can be solved much faster that it previously could, thereby giving the user the feel and easy of direct modeling. At least, that’s what they told me.

DEVELOP3D is covering PTC/USER 09 live and has a sneak peek of the direct modeling that will become part of Wildfire 6.0.