The COE Forums
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| Mark Chitjian, IBM Corporation |
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| When one happens to a land in one of the COE Manufacturing forums he never knows what he is bound to come across. There seems to something for everybody, from the most casual observer to the hard core manufacturing guy. Even if you’re not a manufacturing specialist and thinks “NC” means “not cool,” you’ll find a lot of interesting activity going on. |
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| Joy, strife, flaming, whining, banter, etc. It is all there. In fact, did you know that you could learn about different types of mixed drinks from the manufacturing guys? What, you thought we only guzzled beer? Keep reading. In between the frivolity there is a lot of great discussion taking place. Some of the manufacturing guys like to blow off steam and go off on tangents, posting totally unrelated subjects to the initial postings. They call that “hijacking” the threads. They can be fun to follow. |
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| Underneath all this “light” stuff there is a dedicated group of users that are extremely knowledgeable about CATIA manufacturing. What makes the manufacturing forums a great source of information is that most of the users know each other and freely share their experiences and knowledge. The users will often post their problems on the forums and often some very lively spirited discussions will result. These guys are definitely not bashful about expressing their opinions on the software, about their colleagues and whatever else is on their minds. We’ve reserved the member’s-only forum for our really heated debates. If you’re a COE member you’ll witness many discussions and comparisons to competitive products that the users are working with. |
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| There is a thread dedicated solely to enhancement requests. DS routinely monitors the “COE members only” forum, and often will post there themselves. A number of bugs reported by the users have been resolved through the forums, either via DS or by other users’ workarounds. The manufacturing forums are a fine example of how the users can have fun working together and still be able to be heard by DS development. |
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| The forums more than justify the cost of COE membership. Just ask the manufacturing guys. |
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| Mark Chitjian is a PLM Technical Support Specialist at IBM Poughkeepsie, NY. He is Manufacturing Division DPC Manager and Cochair of the Numerical Control DPC. |
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