In essence, Windchill ProductPoint exemplifies social product development: Namely, the convergence of Microsoft's social computing initiative—the utilization of social networking technologies and associated Web 2.0 services for business-related purposes—and product development activities.
The result? A heightened degree of collaboration, productivity and effectiveness in the use and leveraging of CAD data across organisations.
Employing Microsoft SharePoint as a foundation, Windchill ProductPoint offers vaulting, sharing, visualizing and mark-up capabilities for product data through its support for multiple CAD authoring applications—a powerful functionality that yields significant benefits. In addition, the synergy between Windchill ProductPoint and Pro/ENGINEER Wildfire 5.0 renders possible the Web 2.0 two-way/community-structured communication benefits that are inherent in social product development, via tools such as toaster pop-up notifications, presence detection, model notes wikis and collaboration spaces.