JT Open International Conference Report

We’ve addressed open standards a bit on this blog. And is certainly a differentiating point I hear our executives emphasize at every event I attend. One recent event I was not able to attend was our JT Open International Conference. My colleague Andy Swiecki sent me this event report to give you an overview.

Andy works in partner and component marketing. He is responsible for software technology partnerships and is the JT Open program manager.

Here is his report:

We held the 2011 JT Open International Conference in September. Presentation material from the meeting is now available on the JT Open conference website . The conference brought together JT Open Program members and non-members from around the world including JT users from the Americas, Europe and Asia Pacific. Chuck Grindstaff, opened the conference with Siemens PLM Software’s vision for JT.  He highlighted the requirements for open solutions and our commitment to JT and open solutions.  Dr. Martin Eigner, an acknowledged expert in CAD/CAM/PLM with University of Kaiserslautern, provided a keynote speech on JT as the 3D light-weight data format. A lively discussion followed with Martin and Chuck addressing questions from each other and from conference attendees.

A full agenda of speakers followed with presentations on JT use cases within large corporations such as Bosch, TATA, Procter and Gamble, Daimler, Boeing and General Motors. Some highlights include material from Simon Floyd and Craig Rode of Microsoft with thoughts on JT in Office applications and within cloud computing.Most of the presentations are posted on the JT Open conference website. It was interesting to see the extensive use of JT-enabled business processes.

Of most interest to me and many at the event was the continued work around JT standardization.  Mike Zink highlighted that the most recent version of JT file format, V9.5 JT File Format Specification, which is published for download. This specification forms the basis for a proposal that will make JT an International Standard. Steven Vettermann from ProSTEP iViP also presented on standardization work involving JT. The JT version 8.1 file format specification is also available for download from ISO as a PAS.  Stay tuned for more news on the effort underway to bring JT forward as an ISO standard.

As a reminder, everyone is invited to become a member of the JT Open Program. Membership to the program includes access to the JT Open Toolkit. The toolkit provides a comprehensive JT read/write API.

– Andy Swiecki



Please leave any JT, open or standards comments or questions you have for Andy.