SofTech Expands ProductCenter CAD Platform Support with New 8.3 Release

ProductCenter 8.3 Adds Support for Pro/Engineer Wildfire for UNIX, SolidWorks 2004, Autodesk Inventor 8, CADRA 2003 and Oracle 9i; Along with Expanded New Feature Set

“ A hallmark of ProductCenter, and focus of 8.3, is ProductCenter’s best-in-breed PLM integrations to popular CAD products, especially 3D modeling solutions from PTC, SolidWorks, and Autodesk,” states Jay Pappas, SofTech ProductCenter product manager. “Many companies have found out the hard way that 3D brings new complications in managing product data. SofTech stands out with an in-depth understanding of this environment. We know what it takes to more readily and cost effectively implement PLM, helping companies make the critical transition from 2D to 3D and to better manage and maximize these and other important product resources.”

ProductCenter Integrators provide direct accessibility to ProductCenter PLM functionality from within the user’s familiar CAD environment, including configuration management, release control, workflow for automated ECO approvals, BOM creation and management, and enterprise integration. ProductCenter eliminates common CAD management problems, such as difficulty finding where-used or reference items, the overwriting of files, and other similar situations that can occur without proper control. Associated product specifications, planning, test, and other important information can also be linked to CAD models for quicker reference and greater reuse. Information is centralized and accessible to minimize wasted effort recreating items impossible to find. ProductCenter also automates PDF conversion of CAD drawings and other product data for easy access and viewing by manufacturing personnel, suppliers, vendors and others.

Summary of ProductCenter 8.3 Enhancements:

• Support for Newest CAD Package Releases: SofTech has premier partnerships with leading CAD solution partners to keep up with the most current releases of their products ensuring in-depth and reliable operation for customers. ProductCenter 8.3 adds updated integration support to latest releases, including PTC’s Pro/Engineer Wildfire for UNIX, SolidWorks 2004, and Autodesk Inventor 8.
• New ProductCenter CADRA Integrator: ProductCenter 8.3 extends its CAD integrator suite with a brand new ProductCenter Integrator for SofTech’s CADRA design solution. As with other ProductCenter Integrators, the new ProductCenter CADRA Integrator uses the Hierarchy Explorer and provides accessibility to ProductCenter PLM features directly from within the CADRA application.
• New ProductCenter Pro/Engineer Integrator for UNIX: Expanding its existing integration to Pro/Engineer, SofTech introduces a new ProductCenter™ Pro/Engineer Integrator for UNIX, a true client/server implementation similar to the existing ProductCenter Pro/Engineer Integrator for Windows and a replacement for its previous Motif/X-Windows client. This new Pro/Engineer Integrator for UNIX now includes functionality introduced in 8.2 that supports a new data model for representing Pro/Engineer family table generics and instances members and provides a more intuitive display of the Pro/ENGINEER file relationships through the ProductCenter Hierarchy Explorer.
• CAD-to-BOM for Pro/Engineer and Inventor: Available previously for SolidWorks, and now with this release for Pro/Engineer and Inventor, 8.3 introduces new CAD-to-BOM export capability for these applications. ProductCenter supports open standard XML BOM import/export capabilities to enable users to directly populate BOMs from their CAD models and even consolidate BOMs from multiple sources, such as mechanical and electrical CAD systems. BOMs are keyed just once, which can then be used and viewed by any user, as well as imported or exported to other proprietary systems, such as ERP/MRP systems. This saves time and eliminates the potential for error that can occur when re-keying BOMs between systems.
• Other New Time Saving Features: To make searching much more specific and efficient, ProductCenter 8.3 now supports multiple-value search statements. This allows users to search for more than one possible value in a statement, as well as to repeat an attribute in two or more statements. In addition, the ProductCenter 8.3 Web Client has been enhanced to provide the ability to select multiple items for a single operation (such as Check out, Get copy and Return Unmodified). The new release also adds additional flexibility for designing style sheets for forms, modifying elements such as fonts, attributes displayed, the colors of attributes, background color, etc. to fit a company’s needs.
   

About SofTech, Inc.
SofTech, Inc. (OTCBB: SOFT) provides design-through-manufacturing productivity solutions with its computer-aided design (CAD), computer-aided manufacturing (CAM) and product lifecycle management (PLM) products including CADRA®, DesignGateway™, Prospector™, and ProductCenter™ (through SofTech’s Workgroup Technology Division). SofTech’s solutions optimize product lifecycle processes at the lowest cost by fostering innovation, extended enterprise collaboration, product quality improvements, and compressed time-to-market cycles.

SofTech has more than 100,000 users benefiting from its solutions, including Boeing, FlightSafety International, General Electric Company, Goodrich Turbine Fuel Technologies, Honeywell, Millipore Corporation, Siemens, Sikorsky Aircraft, U.S. Army, and Whirlpool Corporation.

Headquartered in Tewksbury, Massachusetts, SofTech (www.softech.com) has locations and distribution partners throughout North America, Europe, and Asia.