I had the privilege of presenting at the PTC/USER World Event in Nashville, June 2004. My planning started a year earlier, from the moment I heard it was in Nashville. Being a music lover, I had to go, if only for the experience...
So after getting my boss's approval in Dec, I found out more about the conference. I was interesting in presenting at that point, based on an earlier article for Pro/FILES magazine. By the time I sent in the abstract/summary, I just missed the deadline, but Ted said he'd submit the abstract and see what the selection panel decided.
By February I received the great news that the abstract had been selected, and I needed to start getting ready. [side note: Many PTC/USER event attendees are probably unaware of how much work goes on behind the scenes to set up these large events. Great respect to the board and other people who work so hard to make these things go smoothly.] There were deadlines for rough draft, final draft, plus I had to organise my own flights, accomodation, etc...
Some notes about the conference are included in the CADmin.co.uk Blog, eg: presentation reviews, PLM questions, etc. I also promised some people I'd post a summary of my presentation online after the conference, so here goes.
At least 125 people attended the presentation. 102 of these voted on nTAG - see results below...
To start with, this presentation was loosely based on the article I mentioned. I really wanted to show people what was possible with a bit of creativity and planning. You can stretch your CAD Admin resources (ie: people/money/time) by using automation and scripts. I used two specific examples to illustrate the point:
1 - Distributed Install/Upgrade scripts
2 - Web-based CAD License tracker
It seems the second example was the most impressive to a lot of people. Most larger places have some kind of installation and upgrade scripts in place already (indeed, Jean-Louis' presentation addressed that very issue). But few companies have an accurate way of measuring Pro/E license usage daily or hourly.
I'll look at scripts only briefly, as they're covered elsewhere. Then I'll go on to look at the CAD License tracker...
I talked about installation scripts - to help you work with many client computers. One method involves putting together an intranet page for your users, including links to installation scripts. This allows them to easily click a link and kick off the install process. We have a number of sites, with a couple of designated computers at each site to act as a local 'source'. Any new starts or re-builds can copy the Pro/E and Intralink files quickly from these. This is often known as the PULL method.
The other method, used mainly for upgrades, is to PUSH out the software from the server to the clients. You can use a trigger script to run a few copying commands for each client computer on a list, automating the process and saving you a lot of leg work & CD running with PTC.Setup!!
Script examples are available on the conference CD. To pull files to a single client, you run the copy-single script, which in turn calls the copy-details script. To push to many clients, run the copy-many trigger file to call copy-details for each computer in your list file old.txt... Obviously you'll have to set names of your server and clients in the files, but they give you a basis to work from.
The CAD License Tracker I developed seemed to be the main point of interest for most people... It's certainly what everyone was asking about. Many are running or planning to implement this system, from Texas, New York, Massachusetts, Illinois, France, Germany, South Africa & elsewhere...
Anyway - this is a web tool that enables anyone to view the current usage of CAD licenses across a company, whether you're a CAD admin or a non-techie manager. It parses the data from ptcstatus.bat (you've used that, yes?) and presents it in a more user-friendly format. It also allows you to create some kind of history, pasting together snapshots to build a picture of trends: hourly, daily, weekly, or based on location. You can query the multiple graphs to monitor users, hours used, etc...
I explained how we set up the license tracker, and did a live demo of the setup, including a few musketeers and intergalactic characters as my sample users.
The tracker I supply for free is an old version of what we currently use (sample screenshots were shown at the presentation). It provides plenty basic functionality, but the advanced stuff is not currently available, eg: user listing by hours used, pie charts for user groups, etc... If there was sufficient interest, something could maybe be arranged.
I also mentioned the benefits of a user database in passing. We previously had various spreadsheets, databases and files to keep track of users, machines and usage. I developed a web-based user database, using ASP and based on an Access database file. This allows you to sort, filter, add, edit and remove users from your records. It can provide a read only or read/write interface, for viewing or editing. By keeping this on a web page, everything is in one place, and highly visible to managers and admins. I explain all about the CAD User Database elsewhere, including an example to download and tweak...
This was my first visit to a PTC/USER conference, and I would highly recommend it to CAD Admins, Pro/E users and other CAD people. It was a great experience, with plenty of opportunities to meet people and learn loads. You get to see and hear about techniques that you'd normally have to work hard or pay high to discover. Get planning for October in Germany, or next year in Orlando!... Plus - if you've got a good technique or process, plan to share it with other users - it's well worth it.
PS - I was awarded the Best User Presentation for Administration... made extra-special since it was voted by the people who came along. Going up to receive the award at the final session was a great ending to the conference.
nTAG feedback:
Quality of speaker? - 60% 'Excellent', 31% 'Good'
Relevance of presentation? - 56% 'Excellent', 35% 'Good'
