Page Last Updated And Links Checked: 4 August 2003 Page Last Updated And Links Checked: 4 August 2003 Background
Pro/DESKTOP Express 2001 (Free)
NEEDHAM, Massachusetts, Feb 4, 2002. PTC, the company known best for its Pro/ENGINEER software, is now offering its Pro/DESKTOP Express 2001 software for free, downloadable (34MB) from its website. Go to download.
Pro/DESKTOP Express is a parametric solid modeling program. It is a reduced version of Pro/DESKTOP which normally sells for around US$995 plus US$500 for maintenance.
Among the major difference between pro/DESKTOP Express and Pro/DESKTOP are the lack of photorealistic rendering, VBA, and Parasolid import/export. A full comparison is available at Pro/DESKTOP Express FAQ's.
Pro/DESKTOP Express is interoperable with Pro/ENGINEER, as both are based upon the Granite, PTC's solid modeling kernel. Pro/DESKTOP Express can read Pro/ENGINEER files and Pro/ENGINEER can read Pro/DESKTOP Express files (as long as it is Pro/ENGINEER datecode 2001320 or higher).
Pro/DESKTOP is based up DesignWave, which PTC acquired when it bought ComputerVision in 1998. DesignWave had sold at $1,995 but PTC raised the price, selling Pro/DESKTOP for $3,495 before dropping it to the current price of $995.
PTC Offers Free Pro/E, Pro/DESKTOP For Educators
NEEDHAM, Massachusetts, May 8, 2002 - PTC, the product development company, today announced it is providing educators worldwide with design software and other cutting edge teaching resources to help young people master the use of technology and prepare for careers in design, technology and engineering. View the video news release: www.ptc.com/for/education/vnr.ram (RealPlayer required).
As part of its expanded Partnership for Innovative Learning, PTC will provide educators with its Pro/DESKTOP and Pro/ENGINEER design software, affordable teacher training, instructional materials and other resources that are often too costly for school systems and institutions of higher education.
To encourage technological literacy in its home state, Massachusetts, PTC offered its Pro/DESKTOP program and instructional materials completely free to every one of the state's 600 middle and high schools. In addition, PTC will provide Massachusetts teachers with free training to help them learn to use and teach Pro/DESKTOP. Massachusetts last year became the first state in the nation to establish K-12 curriculum standards for engineering and science.
"Technological literacy will continue to be more and more important as our society is led by those who are aware of how technology works, its many ramifications, and how it affects people around the world," said Kendall N. Starkweather, executive director of the International Technology Educators Association, an organization of educators pushing for technological literacy programs. "The more people know about technology, the better equipped they will be to control the impact on society."
PTC's program allows children as young as nine to think and create in three dimensions with sophisticated design software typically used by manufacturers.
"We are forming working partnerships with educators to prepare today's students to adapt to new technology throughout their lives," said C. Richard Harrison, chief executive officer and president at PTC. "Our legacy of design engineering innovation has also made it possible for us to help inspire more students to become the innovators of tomorrow by choosing careers in product design and engineering."
"In industry," Harrison continued, "we are seeing a renewed corporate focus on the product development process as a key driver of economic growth. It is essential to give the workforce of tomorrow the critical thinking and collaboration skills to use technology effectively."
School and College Programs
PTC's global offering extends to virtually any middle or high school that wants to teach technology and supports curriculum standards developed by the International Technology Educators Association. PTC provides schools with Pro/DESKTOP - its easy to learn and use 3D design software - and other instructional materials for free. Training courses taught by experienced technology teachers are offered at little or no cost. In addition, PTC allows teachers to give students Pro/DESKTOP to install on their home computers.
PTC has made a complementary offer to colleges and universities that wish to teach engineering with its flagship Pro/ENGINEER mechanical computer-aided design and related software solutions. Universities pay a modest $2,500 annual fee to cover the cost of program activities.
The commercial value of PTC's software grants ranges from $25,000 for a typical 25-seat middle or secondary school installation up to $4 million for a university mechanical engineering program. PTC's software grants thus far to 3,600 middle and high schools in the United States and the United Kingdom have an estimated commercial value of $90 million.
Worldwide Expansion
Today's announcement signals the worldwide expansion of a program that PTC has been operating on a pilot basis since 1999.
At the middle and high school level, about 5,500 teachers, mostly in the United States and United Kingdom, have already been trained to teach Pro/DESKTOP. In the U.S., teachers in 25 states are participating in the program, with concentrations in Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Schools already participating in Massachusetts include Newton South High School in Newton, the Rafael Hernandez School in Boston and Shawsheen Valley Regional Technical High School in Billerica.
Internationally, the Hong Kong Department of Education officially endorsed the program in February when 80 secondary school teachers adopted it. Participants are also active in Australia, Canada and New Zealand. PTC is focusing its expansion efforts in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Japan and China.
At the university level, more than 1,500 institutions worldwide already are using PTC's Pro/ENGINEER and other software applications in mechanical engineering courses, including the top 15 U.S. engineering programs as ranked by U.S. News & World Report.
Origin in the United Kingdom
PTC's Partnership for Innovative Learning began in the United Kingdom, where design and technology has been a core subject - along with English, history and mathematics - since 1988.
Three years ago, PTC agreed to provide its Pro/DESKTOP software to the British Department of Education and Skills to serve as the principal 3D design tool used in its K-12 design and technology curriculum. Since then, more than 1 million students in 72 percent of the 3,000 secondary schools in England and Wales have learned design and technology with Pro/DESKTOP.
"PTC has made one of the largest-ever contributions from private industry to the British education system," said the Right Honorable Estelle Morris, M.P., secretary of state for education and skills. "It is giving our children a head start in the design process and releasing their creativity. Nowhere in the world are so many secondary schools involved in such an innovative program."
In 2001, to encourage the adoption of design and technology curricula in the United States, PTC formed a partnership with the Department of Technological Studies at The College of New Jersey. This college has established an infrastructure for training teachers and providing them with teaching resources when they have completed certain requirements.
Changing Lives
Design and technology studies are already having a profound impact on the lives of many young people.
Neil Szegota was an indifferent student when he became deeply involved in a design project as part of the United Kingdom's national design and technology curriculum at Theale Green Community School in Reading, England.
"I loved Pro/DESKTOP from the minute I started using it in class," says Neil, now 20 and a design student at Buckinghamshire Chiltons University College. "When I was 17 and still in secondary school, I used it to design my 'prawn chair,' which is shaped like a shrimp. After I won third prize in an international design contest -- competing against university students -- I decided to go to university to pursue industrial design as a career. My experience with design and technology, and with Pro/DESKTOP, changed my life."
Additional information about how to participate in the Partnership for Innovative Learning may be obtained by visiting http://www.ptc.com/go/pi or e-mailing pil@ptc.com.
About PTC
PTC (Nasdaq: PMTC) develops, markets, and supports software solutions that help manufacturers win with superior products. PTC is the world's largest software company with a total commitment to product development. The company services more than 33,000 customers worldwide. Further information on PTC is available at http://www.ptc.com.
Pro/ENGINEER Student Edition Suite. (US$149.98)
NEEDHAM, Massachusetts, Aug 27, 2002 - Journey Publishing Inc. and PTC (Nasdaq: PMTC), the product development company, today announced several initiatives aimed at making PTC's product development software even more accessible for personal educational use by students and, for the first time, professionals including:-
The Pro/ENGINEER and Pro/MECHANICA Student Editions have been combined in a single Pro/ENGINEER Student Edition Suite.
The Student Edition Suite is now priced at $149.98, compared to the previous price of $199.98 for Pro/ENGINEER, $149.98 for Pro/MECHANICA and $399.98 if both were purchased at the same time.
Journey's editions of PTC software will now be available for personal educational use by professional engineers, as well as students, allowing professionals to use Pro/ENGINEER and Pro/MECHANICA when taking courses or refreshing job skills.
Through its Partnership for Innovative Learning, PTC provides educators with low priced Pro/ENGINEER, Pro/MECHANICA and other PTC software for use on campus. Journey's student editions allow students to use this software for educational purposes at home and other off-campus settings.
"PTC and Journey are committed to helping educators provide students with the real world skills they will need when they go to work in private industry," said Journey Publishing General Manager Janet Drumm.
John Stuart, senior vice president of education at PTC, said, "Manufacturers increasingly need to hire young engineers who are familiar with the full range of technology underpinning product lifecycle management. PTC's Partnership for Innovative Learning is designed to help educators train those young engineers. The student edition is a key component in our efforts to support educators as they teach engineers of the future. We're pleased that Journey is making it even more accessible than in the past."
The Pro/ENGINEER Student Edition includes interactive surface design, advanced surface design, advanced assembly, behavioral modeling, mechanism design and design animation.
Pro/MECHANICA provides the industry's premier design and analysis tool that simulates how a product will function in its intended environment. Pro/MECHANICA includes structural simulation, motion simulation and thermal simulation.
(Pro/MECHANICA - design simulation tool for motion, structural, thermal and vibration analysis. From PTC.)
The two products together enable students to create designs, including those that are driven by specific objectives and desired functional behavior, and to test them in a simulated real-world environment.
Students at the top 30 U.S. engineering colleges, as ranked by U.S. News and World Report, are learning to use Pro/ENGINEER. Further underscoring the product's leadership, Pro/ENGINEER is also taught at an additional 400 U.S. universities and 1,000 universities in other countries.
Pricing and Availability
The Pro/ENGINEER Student Edition Suite is available now and is priced at US $149.98. Customers need to sign the PTC License Agreement at the time of purchase.
The
suite is available in the United States, Canada, Europe, Mexico, Australia and New Zealand and Japan. Pro/ENGINEER is available in English, French, Italian, German, Japanese and Spanish. Pro/MECHANICA is available in English, French, German and Japanese.
Orders may be placed at the Journey Publishing Web site at www.ProEStudent.com or www.JourneyEd.com. For
information about the PTC Partnership for Innovative Learning go to the following URL:
http://www.ptc.com/for/education/index.htm.
About Journey Publishing Inc.
Journey Publishing Inc. is a wholly owned subsidiary of Journey Education. Journey Education Marketing, Inc. is the leading multi-channel software marketer to the post-secondary academic market that includes students, faculty, staff and educational institutions. Journey offers more than 6,000 academic software and technology products at deep discounts to verified academic buyers. For more information on Journey, visit www.JourneyEd.com.
About PTC
PTC (Nasdaq: PMTC) develops, markets, and supports software solutions that help manufacturers win with superior products. PTC is the world's largest software company with a total commitment to product development. The company services more than 33,000 customers worldwide. Further information on PTC is available at
http://www.ptc.com.
Notes From Peter Eland's Site at www.eland.org.uk/pages/Misc/cadnotes.html
ProDesktop from Parametric Technologies Corp (PTC), the same people who make my old favourite Pro-Engineer. As at November 2001 (still OK at April 2002), this is now an almost unbelievable free download - it's a full-featured parametric solid modeller, does assemblies, and has good import-export. The free version has rendering, scripting and a few fancy export formats I've never heard of disabled, but is otherwise the real deal. Fantastic help files/tutorials, and if you're into a career in CAD you could do worse than train yourself up on this - I'd imagine the transition to the full Pro-ENGINEER would be painless.
It only runs on Windows and nneeds some reasonably fast hardware. Download the file first from www.ptc.com/products/desktop/index.htm (** leads to Pro/D Express -AJ **) and check out the info available there. When you install and run the program it'll ask for an unlock code, and offer a 'get code' button. Click this and it'll fire up a web browser and take you to the PTC website, where you have to create an account by registering (no particularly nasty questions) and they then email you the unlock code. Worked fine for me.
I can hardly believe they're giving this away - it's about all the CAD some companies would need - and of course great for the hobbyist. At the moment I'm still much faster on VariCAD, particularly with the parts libraries, and I think VariCAD does have the edge in pure speed of working. But get beyond simple shapes and Pro-Desktop starts winning.
Update 10.8.2002: the link above still works fine but reader Sean Kerslake tells me: "You can get a legit free copy of the student version at: www.ptc.com/go/sdrcideas/offer_info.htm. Very little cut down from the commercial version and it includes rendering, surfacing and freeform surfacing. It does insert a banner on any print offs and files cannot be used with the commercial version." You don't have to be a student - it's free for all educational or personal use, so you're fine just so long as you don't use it commercially.
Brent Burton adds (August 2002) in comparison to TurboCAD (see below): "I installed ProDesktop and went through a tutorial. I was simply amazed at how easy it was to create their demo shape. In contrast to TurboCAD, ProDesktop allows you to "describe" the shapes of things whereas with TurboCAD one sculpts the shape. In other words, ProDesktop has a parametric feel where you can change fundamental metrics and any subsequent shelling (or hole creation, etc) are automatically redone. With TurboCAD one would have to restart the shape with the appropriate changes. This is quite a productivity boost."
PTC's DownLoad Page Notes for the Pro/ENGINEER Special Edition which is a personal version of Pro/ENGINEER, based on Student Edition (as referred to by Eland and Burton above).
Pro/ENGINEER Special Edition
Pro/ENGINEER is the de facto standard 3D mechanical and design suite. With its patent-pending, award-winning technology, Pro/ENGINEER users more quickly and consistently bring innovative new products to the market.
More companies have moved from other CAD systems to Pro/ENGINEER than any other product. The Pro/ENGINEER Special Edition is a personal version of Pro/ENGINEER, based on Student Edition, that is intended to help designers and engineers re-tool their CAD skills. The package includes the following Pro/ENGINEER modules:
Pro/ENGINEER - Foundation*
Behavioral Modeling
Mechanism Design
Advanced Surfacing
Design Animation
Advanced Assembly
Interactive Surface Design
Sign up for your free copy today! www.viewinfo.net/cdoffer Also included is:
PTC's Online Help
Pro/ENGINEER 6 Hour Basic Computer-based Training Primer
English, French, Italian, German, and Spanish languages included on the CD - you select which language you want to install Pro/ENGINEER in. (Tutorial is available in English only)
Read the frequently asked questions to find out about system requirements. (Same as for Pro/ENGINEER Student Edition)
Commercial SRP: $24,485. May be used for educational or personal use only...not for commercial use. Designs
created with this package cannot be used with the commercial version of Pro/ENGINEER.
* This edition does not include the following modules that are part of the commercial Pro/ENGINEER Foundation product bundle: Pro/Interface for CADDS, Pro/Interface for CATIA, Pro/PDGS, or Pro/CDT
"Special Notice for Windows XP Users: If your machine was recently upgraded from Windows 95/98 to Windows 2000/XP the environment variable "winbootdir" may be incorrectly set. Please go here for Details."
Download Pro/E
www.freebyte.com Well presented free software listing. Look for catagories of software that interest you here. Includes Pro Eng.
www.ptc.com/products/desktop/index.htm PTC's download page for Pro/D Express 2001 running Granite One (I downloaded Build 995 on 12Sep02).
www.ptc.com/go/sdrcideas/offer_info.htm PTC's download site for educational users that is suppose to offer you an even better download (See Peter Eland's notes above).
Pro/ENGINEER Special Edition is a personal version of Pro/ENGINEER, based on Student Edition.
Pro/E Sites Of Interest
www.ptc.com PTC parent company behind Pro E.
www.proe.com A Pro E magazine.
www.prouser.org The (official?) independant Pro E User Group.
www.prouser.org/links Their resource page.
www.socalproe.com Southern California Pro E User Group.
utopia.knoware.nl/users/ocorten Personal site of a Dutch practitoner who has been using Pro/E for 11 years odd. See tips and Tricks.
Pro/D Sites Of Interest
www.prodesktop.net ProDesktop.Net
Independant ProDesktop User Group.
www.prodesktop.net/article.htm ProDesktop.Net
Download ProDesktopExpress. Pro/D(+Express) articles, tutorials forums, links.
www.tcnj.edu/%7Encc National Coordinating Center (Education)
Instructional Resources for Pro/DESKTOP Design & Technology.
www.intad.asn.au/prod/default.asp Industrial Technology and Design Teachers' Association of Queensland.
Training program and teaching/learning materials for PTC's Pro/DESKTOP 2000i2.
Magazine Articles
www.caddigest.com/subjects/pro_desktop CAD Digest Pro/E Reading Room. Articles and tutorial links
Also links to TopTen Pro/DESKTOP.
Some Pro Eng Tutorials
Where can I find Pro/Engineer(2000i, 2000i2, 2001) tutorials?
www.pro-stuff.net
www.me.uvic.ca/~mech410/proe_tutorials.html University of Victoria (Canada) School of Mechanical Engineering. Comprehensive range of tutorials, pdf notes and information. Dr. Zuomin Dong, a mechanical engineering instructor.
www.schroff.com Here you can find easy tutorials for Ver 2000i
kahuna.sdsu.edu/~johnston/pro_e_tutorials.htm
This is one of the best sites I've found... it posts all the free tutorials produced by Frotime.
www.frotime.com Their entry page seemed to be doing something that I could not see. Must require a download of something from somewhere in order to view their site and that's on the list of things I don't do. ** Look into! could be some other problem. **
Pro Eng Forums
Google Group's CAD Forums Includes AutoCad/AutoDesk, Solidworks, Microstation or Pro/Eng forums for example. Active Pro/Eng
www.eng-tips.com/../ Eng Tips. Fairly active Pro/E forum.
www.cad-portal.com/forums/forum.php3 Enough activity. Sections for AutoCad, Solidworks, Catia (DeAssult), Pro E and others. www.cad-portal.com describes itself as a portal for "Engineers" and has a review of the freeware "FreeCad" by ASKoh which is good 3D and motion software. Pro/ENG not very active.
Contact: Aussie John wpsmoke@yahoo.co.uk