Novedge Pulse™ of Geoff Hedges

In real life, new products don’t always start as an empty plane, waiting for you to birth a fresh model. Sometimes they start as an old CAD design that just requires some updating. And by “old CAD design,” we mean a model developed by someone else, perhaps long ago. Someone who—despite your best efforts—you have [… [more...]

If you’re going to build a million dollar car, it better do more than just look good. It’s going to have to be nothing short of a technological and artistic marvel. At least that’s how Horacio Pagani sees it. He is the mastermind behind Pagani Automobili, the Italian supercar manufacturer. Pagani’s latest creation is the [… [more...]

Imagine you get the specifications for a brand new product, and you have to deliver it six weeks later – tough right? Now imagine you’re a student whose day is filled with classes. That’s the challenge the team from Metamora Township High School in Illinois faced when they signed on to the FIRST Robotics Competition. [… [more...]

What do you think? Does Padmini need PDM? Padmini VNA Mechatronics is a privately held company in India that designs and manufactures automobile components like valves, sensors, and vacuum pumps. It uses PTC Creo for design. Many of its products are developed within the company’s own R&D, manufacturing, and test facilities. The company is considered [… [more...]

If your software is PTC Creo and your business is adventure, you’re not alone. At PTC, we’ve been checking in with our customers, and do you know what we are finding? High-tech mountain bikes, fast motorcycles, personal airplanes, and high-flying helicopters. All best in their class. Not to be outdone, PTC Creo user KTM has [… [more...]

At Maped, design is a core value: Careful reflection bringing together research, marketing, and, of course, attention to visual and tactile details goes into each Maped product.  The challenge is to invent innovative and attractive products for the competitive school and office supply market. Maped makes writing instruments, compasses, drafting tools, pencil sharpeners, scissors, staplers, [...] > Read mor [more...]

The world needs design more than ever. In part, because we face new problems, like limited resources in a world where demand just keeps growing. And in part because technology is now opening doors we hadn’t even considered before. Luckily, some rather brilliant young minds are already addressing these challenges. One shining example is the [...] > Read mor [more...]

Just a few days ago, we celebrated Earth Day here in the United States and in 191 countries throughout the world. Earth Day is an opportunity to think about environmental issues and perhaps up our efforts to tread a little lighter. So, I’m thinking the Sanyo Eneloop electric bike. The Eneloop is a low-impact nonpolluting [...] > Read mor [more...]

You’ve probably seen the work of the Wyeth family. Andrew’s iconic Christina’s World portrays a woman lying on the prairie, looking toward a distant house. Andrew’s father, N.C. Wyeth, was a beloved illustrator of books and magazines.  But even if you never stepped into a gallery or cracked an art textbook, you could not have [...] > Read mor [more...]

PTC Windchill PDM Essentials: Easy to deploy, easy to configure, easy to use. Sure. But what does that mean really? If you’ve ever purchased a product before based on its “easy-to-deploy” and “easy-to-use” claims, you might have found out that their “easy” isn’t always the same as your “easy.” In fact, you might have learned [...] > Read mor [more...]

Spring! The ice retreats. Birds fill the air with song. And grown men and women fall in love all over again—with their motorcycles. You’ll see just what I mean in this video review from New Zealand of the Ducati Diavel Chrome. The Ducati Diavel, designed in Italy in 2010 by a PTC customer, was featured [...] > Read mor [more...]

In the United States, Specialized is a leading brand in the $6 billion bicycle industry. As the manufacturer of the first major mountain bike, the Stumpjumper, the company has a long history of innovation and advocacy in the sport. Its most recent models include features like sophisticated suspension systems, carbon and aluminum frames, and on-the-fly [...] > Read mor [more...]

Zaporizhia (that’s ??????´??? in Cyrillic) is an industrial center in the Ukraine.  Built on the banks of the Dnieper River, the city (whose name means “beyond the rapids”) is the 6th largest in the country and is fueled by a 1500 MW hydroelectric plant. In 1947, as the city emerged from WWII, one company began [...] > Read mor [more...]

There’s a reason you don’t have to worry much about getting sick from the food you eat, the sodas you drink, or even the lotions you smear on your face before you sunbathe. AES CHEMUNEX. AES CHEMUNEX is a biotechnology company based in Brux, France, that makes the devices that spot micro-organisms before they ever [...] > Read mor [more...]

KTM motorbikes are some of the toughest in the world. They’re lighter, better powered, and more durable than any competition. That’s because KTM engineers its products for the racetrack first. That is, many of the company’s most successful innovations had to prove themselves in competition before they earned their way into a consumer product. That [...] > Read mor [more...]

Mass customization rocks. It’s the reason my computer is just like yours, but with a different graphics card. It’s why our cars look the same on the outside, but yours has a manual transmission. And it’s why I can finally eat candy that has the Green Bay Packers logo. Vive la variant! Of course, if [...] > Read mor [more...]

You take an infrared laser, a centrifugal compression impeller, and a robot with a smidge of artificial intelligence. You put them in the hands of business school students. Add $25,000 in seed money. And what do you get? A vacuum cleaner that doesn’t need you. The Neato Robotics Vacuum is a programmable home-cleaning device that [...] > Read mor [more...]

Olaf Seger, an engineer at KTM, just reinvented the wheel. That is, he designed a new wheel for the 2013 KTM 690 Duke, a powerful single-cylinder motorcycle used in racing and road riding. “The KTM 690 wheel introduces a new generation to the product line,” says Seger.  “Going forward, KTM will use these wheels on [...] > Read mor [more...]

They say that the MonoTracer is part car, part motorcycle, and part airplane. If you watch action movies, you’ve probably already seen one. Featured in the 2012 movie, Total Recall, the MonoTracer plays a futuristic police motorcycle. If you prefer television, you can see the MonoTracer featured on TechToys 360 or Brazil’s Auto Esporte TV. [...] > Read mor [more...]

When your company’s specialty is carbon fiber, there’s no guessing at what you might be asked to develop next. Golf clubs? Bicycles? A violin bow? Carbon fiber is a light but extremely strong and durable material that is used in everything from aerospace to fishing equipment—and it’s finding its way into more products every day. [...] > Read mor [more...]

What do you think is the most rewarding part of working in product design? Expressing yourself creatively? Killing the competition? Winning recognition from people you respect? Aristides Poort says that listening to great artists make music with the guitars he makes is his greatest reward. “What better thing can you do on this planet?” he [...] > Read mor [more...]

Let’s get back to the TV show, Tech Toys 360. Last week I showed you the ICON, a personal airplane featured on the show. But before you run out and buy one, I’ve got another aircraft for you to consider. The Robinson R66. The R66 is a turbine helicopter, which was approved by the US [...] > Read mor [more...]

As technology grows, we all take on roles that were once saved for experts.  We all book our own travel, touch up our own photos, and find our way without stopping at the filling station to ask directions. In the world of 3D CAD, new technical developments are also making it easier for designers to [...] > Read mor [more...]

JSC Dneprovagonmash is a company based in the Ukraine that recently celebrated its 85th birthday. Despite years of economic upheaval in the region, the company has emerged as a leading manufacturer of rail cars, with a catalog of more than 150 models of “vagon” (or “?????” in Cyrillic). Worldwide Industrial Strength Rail If you pay [...] > Read mor [more...]

Velocity Discovery has been airing a show called Tech Toys 360 recently. Now in its second season, Tech Toys 360 profiles radical innovations in engineering and design in consumer products. These are heart-racing innovations like high-altitude helicopters and enclosed electric motorcycles. Unfortunately, the show is currently off season, but we’d like to share a few [...] > Read mor [more...]

Hosted by Design World, join Nout van Heumen for a 30-minute discussion on Tuesday, March 26, 2013 11:00 AM – 11:30 AM EDT about the importance of real-time concept design and the tools he uses in the overall innovation and product development process. All Registrants will receive the video & slides. Register here. Nout is a Dutch industrial [...] > Read mor [more...]

Which of the following best describes the reason you became a product designer? a)     I wanted to spend considerable amounts of time looking around for parts that other people created. b)     I hoped to attend week-long conferences in chain hotels learning about metadata and distributed file servers. c)      I enjoy discovering that I’ve just spent [...] > Read mor [more...]

In a perfect world, companies securely move data around and leverage it no matter the systems, suppliers, and in-house teams. They share their 3D models across the company, and at the same time dramatically shorten time to market, improve product quality, and lower development costs. In a less-than-perfect world, product design is full of incompatibilities [...] > Read mor [more...]

If you’re interested in PTC Creo, you should know about our PTC Creo Community. It includes a very active forum, user-submitted documents, news, profiles, and models from our uses. It’s a good place to find out what other users are talking about, get advice on your designs, give advice to someone who’s just starting out, [...] > Read mor [more...]

Almost 10 years ago, I talked to a computer programmer who had worked on one of the early commercial 2D CAD packages. “When we developed it,” he said, “we figured it would be marketable for just a few years. 3D was on the horizon and we thought everyone would switch over to the new technology–once [...] > Read mor [more...]

When several top Italian machinery companies merged in 2005, they created one of the world’s most comprehensive producers of cleaning equipment–Integrated Professional Cleaning, or IPC. It was a smart move for the Italian-based group, and IPC became a powerhouse in its industry. But as with most mergers, there were technical issues. Specifically, the different companies [...] > Read mor [more...]

If you’re thinking about trying PTC Creo for your product design needs, you’ve come to the right place. Below, you’ll find links to the download page as well as answers to a few essential questions, including suggestions for free training and demo videos to get you started. With the PTC Creo free trial, you’ll be [...] > Read mor [more...]

A company that makes artificial limbs can tell emotionally moving stories like no other. Of course, most of us don’t need assistive aids. Plus, we have business to attend to as we make commercial machinery, electrical components, widgets, etc. As such, you might be tempted to scroll past a story about a company in a [...] > Read mor [more...]

Software vendors can be a little difficult to follow, I know. We tend to fall in love with space-saving adjectives and try to pack two pages of a product description into a single bullet point: Comprehensive auto-assisted duplex multi-tonics system Tele-sensitive vendor-oriented and –capacitive output Polyp-neutral terabyte-loaded flow editable and edible! None of that means [...] > Read mor [more...]