Using Pro/Engineer, Rosenbauer was able to reduce assembly and production costs for its chassis attachments by approximately 50%.

Pro/Engineer provided valuable integration capabilities with finite element analysis, computational fluid dynamics, and optimization codes, allowing engineers from NREL's Center for Transportation Technologies & Systems to optimize its automotive gas turbine's geometry.

The mechanical design solutions of Pro/ENGINEER enable engineers to create and manage any product design or assembly accurately, no matter how large or complex, while capturing detailed model information such as tooling, vendor, release level, and material cost. This flexibility allows engineers to make changes to their designs easily, encouraging rapid exploration of multiple alternatives. By enabling design for multiple product generations and configurations, the software allows engineers to reduce design time significantly. In addition, engineers can leverage the existing legacy data with the assurance that the work they have invested in previous designs can be reused to accelerate new product development.

Pro/ENGINEER's simulation solutions enable engineers to evaluate, understand, and improve the functional performance of their designs early in the development process, reducing time-to-market and cost. This simulation tool enables engineers to leverage a single, easy-to-use interface and one associative product model for form, fit, and function.

The software provides for accurate machining of designed parts while documenting the manufacturing and assembly processes. It ensures that machining occurs directly on the solid model, increasing accuracy and minimizing rework. Pro/ENGINEER integrates NC programming, tooling design, process planning, verification, and inspection directly with the design model. By starting production activities well before product design is complete, engineers are able to optimize the manufacturing processes, dramatically reducing cycle time.

Model information can be communicated easily throughout the company, allowing concurrent product development across the entire organization. Pro/ENGINEER creates a personal work area, allowing engineers to maintain all local design changes, while a shared workspace lets each user simultaneously modify product models, notify others of changes, and manage product data and development processes. The software provides company-wide deployment of product development information — from complete geometric representation, product structure, relationships, revision history, and change auth-orization, to vendor source, manufacturing process, and characteristics such as cost, weight, and material. The accuracy of these data and unique open architecture of these Web-based solutions reduces the maintenance of applications, requiring less custom integration, and resulting in easier real-time deployment throughout the enterprise.

The newest release of Pro/ENGINEER (Release 20) includes a new user interface, sketching environment, and 3D Notes communication tool, as well as a series of improvements to assembly design functionality, drawing creation, and graphics performance. The user interface has a completely new look and feel — combining the familiarity of common desktop applications with Pro/ENGINEER's advanced functionality.

With this latest release, a menu bar at the top of the screen consolidates all top-level commands into logical, industry-standard, drop-down menus. A new graphical tool-bar, located below the menu bar, provides quick and easy access to common commands such as repaint, zoom, and shade — eliminating the need for many user-defined 'mapkeys.' A new message window, which is part of the main Pro/ENGINEER window, has a lighter background, making commands easier to read. An enhanced model tree provides the user with design hierarchy, parameter information such as material properties, and quick access to more design information through mouse-button shortcuts.

Important product information can be listed within the context of the 3D model using 3D Notes. Each note can reference a URL for additional information provided by an intranet/Internet site.

Release 20's new sketcher, called Intent Manager, allows engineers to capture ideas quickly without interrupting the creative process by combining the freedom of a free-hand sketching environment with the benefits of fully constrained design. As users sketch, the software makes smart assumptions, constraining the sketch and providing dimensions automatically — with instant graphical feedback. Software users can stop, delete, add, or change the provided constraints to reflect their particular design intent.

For production machining, the new release provides advances in low-level toolpath control, hole making, face milling, and surface retracting. Its NC Sketcher function allows programmers to control the entire toolpath down to the most minute detail, including visualizing and dimensioning to the tool kerf while viewing the resulting cutter location data.

With the new user interface, programming holes has been simplified. The new rule-based hole selection, automatic depth control, and automatic countersinking have significantly increased programming speed. To simplify things further, the toolpath has been optimized to create the most efficient travel motion between hole locations automatically, eliminating manual programming and reducing cycle times.

Recent advances in cutting tools and machine capabilities have spurred the development of new manufacturing strategies, such as plunge milling and high-speed machining. In Release 20 plunge milling, the roughing sequence takes advantage of the efficiencies created by the new tools to remove large quantities of metal quickly. To enhance support of high-speed machining, new Z-level roughing and finishing algorithms and high-speed, friendly connections have been added for greater spindle speeds and improved machining efficiency.