4 Big Takeaways from PTC/USER Global Summit 2025

PTC/USER Global Summit 2025 brought together our customers, partners, and some of the best insights on the future of product innovation for discrete manufacturers. In this post, I’ll recap what I heard including:

• The next frontier for integrated CAD and PLM value
• How 3D PDF powers better technical data exchange
• The connections between model-based definition (MBD), model-based enterprise (MBE), and digital thread traceability
• Where AI will deliver the first real value in the PLM industry

And of course, I can’t write a recap of an event like this without mentioning our customers. A lot of the summary below comes directly from conversations with our customers at the event. Let's get started.

CAD and PLM data drives Manufacturing and Quality improvements

CAD data management and change management are still the core use cases for Windchill product lifecycle management (PLM) customers. These PLM fundamentals are necessary to take advantage of extended CAD and PLM value. And PTC continues to improve both areas with a renewed emphasis on 3D model-based value and user experience.

Manufacturing and Quality are two strategic areas to extend PLM’s digital thread value. Manufacturing work instructions and quality inspection plans that leverage the complete set of product manufacturing information (PMI) and control characteristics will deliver the biggest value. The best solutions need to normalize engineering product data so it’s easy for the manufacturing and quality teams to re-use. This enables all the right people to get involved earlier to collaboratively create visual instructions for training, assembly, test and inspection. 

Anark’s product innovation platform integrates with Windchill to extend the value of CAD and PLM to the broader enterprise. Anark can even connect into your Integrated Digital Environment (IDE) to securely deliver unified data access, interoperability, and collaboration for the model-based enterprise (MBE).

3D PDF is in the spotlight

Everyone wanted to talk about 3D PDFs. And Anark has the solution. Whether you need 3D PDFs for sending engineering product data to manufacturing and your suppliers, or if you need to deliver MIL-STD-31000B compliant PDFs to your customers, Anark has you covered.

Anark has been doing this for over 15 years since the time we were hired by the very people that started MIL-STD-31000 to create the early PTC Model-Based 3D PDF solutions. Best of all, we just updated the Creo Advanced MBD Adaptor to increase performance by 2X-8X as documented by our long-time customers who were at the event.

Anark 3D PDFs are considered best-in-class because they provide high-fidelity, interactive, and secure engineering data in a lightweight, universally accessible format and can be generated individually or automated via the Anark Windchill Reference Integration.

The Digital Thread will be model-based

The root phrase “model-based” can mean a lot of things to a lot of different people. In the context of a CAD and PLM event like PTC/USER Global Summit, “model-based” is most often associated with model-based definition (MBD) and model-based enterprise (MBE). These two model-based terms were a clear priority for many of the attendees. In one survey of the keynote audience, 40% of the 189 respondents shared that they have an MBD / MBE strategy underway. These strategies are anchored by effective CAD data management and engineering design practices and can lead to accelerated innovation well beyond the engineering teams that are at the start of the MBE value chain. To get the most from these efforts, collaborative and interoperable data exchanges must be put in place to turn MBD practices into MBE value.

And model-based value goes well beyond 3D CAD models. Model-based Systems Engineering (MBSE) ties in requirements, system models, and many other engineering product data artifacts and models that offer huge potential efficiency and quality gains via next-generation traceability like the Digital Data Package outlines.

All these concepts came together in the Wednesday session: “A Platform Approach to Digital Engineering Collaboration” where representatives from Raytheon, Action Engineering, and Edwards Lifesciences discussed:

• Which digital engineering collaboration use cases offer value
• What lessons are there from model-based journeys
• Does the digital thread drive better collaboration across the extended enterprise

Be sure to look up this session when it is posted to the PTC/USER site soon.

AI for product data management remains best suited to advanced indexed search

Artificial intelligence (AI) is everywhere. The most fitting use cases for AI in the CAD and PLM industry resemble advanced indexed search capabilities, where classification structures and content search filters could come together in a way that you could deliver a more “google like” search for engineering product data. If done well, this would be a great application of AI to simplify the way people find what they need in a vast sea of data.

There is also a lot of interesting talk about copilot features that could connect you with product expertise, answers to questions, reasons why engineering changes were implemented, and more. While this idea is the big idea that will transform digital engineering collaboration, it remains a future vision for most manufacturers. That because to do this right, you need data to train the “copilot”, a ton of data. And most companies don’t have enough “collaboration data” to train these models.

Engineering product data attributes and part classification data is plentiful, but person-to-person conversations happening in a product data management or product lifecycle management system are few and far between. These still happen in largely untraced systems, creating a collaboration data gap. Anark integrates with Windchill and other PLM systems to bridge the gap between engineering product data management, data exchange, and person-to-person collaboration. Getting your collaborative digital engineering processes right opens the door to future AI value.

It’s all about the customers

The event is always a great gathering of Anark customers, and this was no exception. We saw customers from TE Connectivity, BAE Systems, NASA, Solar Turbines, Collins Aerospace, Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics, U.S. Army, and more. Anark puts the customer first, so it was great to hear so much positive feedback about our products and learn about where they want to go next. Much like the above takeaways, our customers want to see our 3D PDF solutions continue to be best in class for their flexibility, extensibility and MBD / PMI support. At the same time, they are making progress with our technical data exchange and collaboration solutions that integrate with their existing business processes, extending their digital engineering product data to manufacturing, quality, suppliers, customers, and more. With innovative customers like ours, the future is bright for Anark.

And specific to our customers in the Aerospace and Defense industry, we continue to work with them to lead the conversation on DOD Instruction 5000.97 on Digital Engineering, 5200.48 for Control of Unclassified Information, and MIL-STD-31000B for technical data packages (TDP) remain central to their success in the industry. We expect 2025 to be a breakthrough year for digital engineering collaboration.

To all our friends and colleagues in the PTC/USER community, thank you for another great year, and let’s do it again in 2026!