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Collaborating with coworkers, partners and customers around the world has become a fact of life. But how can you effectively work with your manufacturing suppliers in China, for example, when they recommend a design change that will improve the quality of your product? Wouldn’t it be nice to review their designs online, saving the cost and time of travel?
Manufacturers face a variety of hurdles when they want to share design ideas developed in Pro/ENGINEER®. Why? Because many of today’s common IT tools weren’t created for design collaboration. Take ftp (file transfer protocol) sites, for example. Since few people know how to use ftp, it is an ineffective method for sharing information with cross-functional teams. In addition, ftp doesn’t keep track of file versions. This means that when you make a change, your team won’t be aware of updates and may continue to use out-of-date files.
While easier to use, email was also not designed for sharing sets of large files, and tracking the latest versions is often confusing. What’s more, people on the email list or using an ftp site who don’t have access to Pro/ENGINEER are unable to view your design ideas. There’s got to be a better way!
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Pro/ENGINEER users can quickly and easily upload information to Pro/COLLABORATE directly from their Pro/ENGINEER environment.
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Pro/COLLABORATE is a free service for maintenance-paying Pro/ENGINEER customers. Hosted in PTC’s data center, the Pro/COLLABORATE system is based on Windchill ProjectLink and designed specifically for Pro/ENGINEER users who want to share design information with a wide variety of people.
With this service, users can create online workspaces and share their designs over the web with anyone in the world. You can easily upload designs directly from your Pro/ENGINEER session into a Pro/COLLABORATE workspace, invite people to participate, and selectively provide access to the information.
Team members do not need to be PTC customers or even have Pro/ENGINEER to view designs and provide feedback. Project participants who do not use Pro/ENGINEER regularly can view an accurate but simplified version of the design with the included viewer, and then provide comments in markups or in online discussion forums. Team members can also download the designs into Pro/ENGINEER or Pro/DESKTOP®, or they can subscribe to your design so that they are automatically notified when updates occur.
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In Pro/COLLABORATE, Pro/ENGINEER files are automatically stored with a simple image of the design models.
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One industrial equipment manufacturer is using Pro/COLLABORATE to share design information between the OEM in the US and a partner company in Europe, supporting the installation of the OEM’s products at a customer site. By placing the product design information in a Pro/COLLABORATE workspace, the European partner can plan design of the installation equipment around the product earlier—reducing the time it takes to get the customer up and running.
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Pro/COLLABORATE workspaces can manage many types of product design information and team members can propose changes with online discussion forums.
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Another US-based company has been using Pro/COLLABORATE to share information between development centers. Using Pro/ENGINEER’s direct connection to Pro/COLLABORATE, engineers are uploading design models and drawings to a workspace where teams in China can use them for manufacturing planning. Since they can access the files directly, the China team can view and mark up the models and then deliver feedback to the team in the United States.
In just the past year since it was launched, Pro/COLLABORATE has given 10,000 users from 4,500 companies new freedom to collaborate on product design and development over the Internet. Users come from large aerospace, automotive and consumer products companies to much smaller businesses with just a few employees.
More than 200 new users join the Pro/COLLABORATE community each week. Among frequent users, more than 30% are actively collaborating outside their immediate departments. In addition, more than a third (36%) of the companies involved are not current PTC customers. Of the more than 130,000 files stored in Pro/COLLABORATE today, 70% are CAD files. Later this year, PTC is planning to update Pro/COLLABORATE to use a limited version of Windchill ProjectLink 6.2 that provides many new features, ease of use improvements, and a direct interface to exchange Microsoft Project plan information.
 Just visit www.procollaborate.com. Pro/COLLABORATE is part of PTC’s new User Area on www.ptc.com, dedicated to providing expert advice, tips and tricks, technical tutorials, and loads of other information.
You can quickly sign up for a PTC online account and start collaborating in minutes. PTC provides an online tutorial for getting started with Pro/COLLABORATE, as well as information on how to download plug-ins for using the service with Pro/ENGINEER. 
James Gehan is Vice President of Web Solutions at PTC. He can be reached by email at jgehan@ptc.com.
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