A New Outlook on PTC's Pro/Engineer Wildfire




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A New Outlook on Wildfire
An opinion by Eldon Goates, May 2003

I have been asked by several of you to offer an updated opinion on Pro/Engineer Wildfire. I did, in an article at this location. I had no idea the article would stimulate such a flurry of activity. Apparently there is a lot of interest. We have received many notes saying "Thank you" and "I'm glad I'm not the only one". Please accept my apology if I did not reply to all of you.
Interesting that autodesk.com & solidworks.com were among the top 10 web referrers -- what do they know? As if this would help their cause. LET'S BE VERY CLEAR. We are strong supporters of Pro/Engineer and believe it is the Premier CAD system on the market. (We've evaluated SolidWorks (and others) and they are not as capable -- even with the issues.) In comparing Pro/E 2001 to the vision of what Pro/Engineer could be, I'm not happy with some of Wildfire, just like I did not like 2000i^2. (We did not adopt i^2 and neither did a lot of companies.) That does not change the fact we choose Pro/Engineer over the competition.
Pro/E 2001 is now a stable, capable platform and that's where we'll stay for a while. That being said, I have no intentions of wreaking havoc on PTC -- because I want them to make Pro/Engineer what I know it can be. Though other ideas may have been construed from the previous article, I think PTC got the message.
The detailed Wildfire article is now gone because it seems to have created some unintended negative consequences. Many have confused my passion for a private war or hatred or something. Not so. Do the evaluation yourself and see what you think. There are a lot of really fantastic new things in Wildfire. I can't wait till they conquer some of the issues.

Thank You ...

Thank you for all the notes. I have had a few of you point out some methods of doing some of these things -- things that the tech folks at PTC didn't know. Perhaps I'll share some of those in future Pro/E tips. Thank you for that, and have a wonderful day.

A New Outlook on Wildfire An opinion by Eldon Goates, May 2003
	I have been asked by several of you to offer an updated opinion on Pro/Engineer Wildfire. I did, in an article at this location. I had no idea the article would stimulate such a flurry of activity. Apparently there is a lot of interest. We have received many notes saying "Thank you" and "I'm glad I'm not the only one". Please accept my apology if I did not reply to all of you. Interesting that autodesk.com & solidworks.com were among the top 10 web referrers -- what do they know? As if this would help their cause. LET'S BE VERY CLEAR. We are strong supporters of Pro/Engineer and believe it is the Premier CAD system on the market. (We've evaluated SolidWorks (and others) and they are not as capable -- even with the issues.) In comparing Pro/E 2001 to the vision of what Pro/Engineer could be, I'm not happy with some of Wildfire, just like I did not like 2000i^2. (We did not adopt i^2 and neither did a lot of companies.) That does not change the fact we choose Pro/Engineer over the competition. Pro/E 2001 is now a stable, capable platform and that's where we'll stay for a while. That being said, I have no intentions of wreaking havoc on PTC -- because I want them to make Pro/Engineer what I know it can be. Though other ideas may have been construed from the previous article, I think PTC got the message. The detailed Wildfire article is now gone because it seems to have created some unintended negative consequences. Many have confused my passion for a private war or hatred or something. Not so. Do the evaluation yourself and see what you think. There are a lot of really fantastic new things in Wildfire. I can't wait till they conquer some of the issues.
Thank You ...
	Thank you for all the notes. I have had a few of you point out some methods of doing some of these things -- things that the tech folks at PTC didn't know. Perhaps I'll share some of those in future Pro/E tips. Thank you for that, and have a wonderful day.