From the article: "...the function of machines is still fundamentally mechanical. Often machines are designed on two tracks-one the province of the mechanical engineer, and the other of the electrical. So you have a mechanical design and an electrical design. Somewhere the twain must meet."

PTC rocked the cabling world with the release of Pro/ENGINEER Wildfire 5.0 and its new Cabling extension. After many years of being 'out in the cold' with the menu manager PTC have implemented a Wildfire interface for both the Cabling and Piping extensions.

For Cabling especially PTC spent a lot of time in design and usability testing to improve the overall routing experience and to provide a quick 'ramp-up' for new users. The interface is slick and fast and provides great preview and editing facilities to ensure that what you get is what you want.

Cabling was even available for usability testing at the 2009 edition of PTC/User World Event.

PTC has released Pro/ENGINEER Routed Systems Designer 9.0 pre-production. Find out about it here and download it here.

This latest RSD (a.k.a. RSDesigner) release introduces some highly anticipated features:

• New and improved import and export formats - CGM and PDF have been added, PDF supports multiple pages. DXF and DWG have been brought up to date
• Inline connectors - create and manipulate inline connectors that can now have ports on either side to propagate properties (parameters) through signal networks
• Support for TrueType fonts - add your own fonts to a design, including extra languages
• Move to sheet - a reliable way of breaking a design up across sheets has been provided that maintains the connectivity and inserts the cross-sheet reference graphics automatically
• Ability to create "draft groups" containing a range of sheet elements they can even be created on the fly from items placed on the sheet

• Enhanced ability to route fibers and highways across sheets that greatly reduces the number of clicks
• Label support for highways
• Ability for fibers and cables to be added to and removed from highways

RSDesigner.net has been an invaluable independent source of information for users of Routed Systems Designer  since 2002. Mike Sanders, the original webmaster, recently sold the site to CeDeL Solutions to maintain its presence on the web. Our intention is to maintain its independence and continue to provide a forum for users to seek assistance or post useful information about Routed Systems Designer.

Since taking possession of the site we have upgraded the forum to provide more functionality and also prevent spammers. We've also added some extra sections to cover new functionality added at RSD 7.0 and 8.0: PDMLink, Central Catalog and Pro/DIAGRAM import.

The forum can be accessed here.