A New Water Sport Takes Off with the Design of the
PowerSki Jet Board from PowerSki International.
The Company’s Early Adoption of Pro/ENGINEER® Wildfire™ is a Key Factor in New JetBoard Success
Friday May 28, 3:38 pm PST

SAN CLEMENTE--May 28, 2004

Powerski International, San Clemente, CA Powerski International was founded in 1995 to bring a new watercraft, the Powerski JetBoard, and the engine technology behind it, to market. PowerSki’s Igniter 330 JetBoard, launched in February 2004, is the world’s first commercial JetBoard and is creating a splash for water sports enthusiasts worldwide. The beta model, the Igniter 2000, was produced in only limited quantities for dealers and distributors to try the board and promote it. But, this quickly propelled JetBoarding as a new phenomenon in water sports. As a result, the Igniter 2000 has been featured in the media hundreds of times and has captivated those on the design side, winning awards from Popular Mechanics, Time Magazine, and Design News. The Challenge: Streamlining the Process After many years of focusing on the development of an entirely new andconceptually different personal watercraft, Bob Montgomery, CEO and founder of Powerski, wanted to produce a commercially viable JetBoard with an engine powerful enough to propel the board and rider, yet small enough to fit inside the JetBoards’ small cross-section. To bring this idea to fruition, Powerski needed product development tools that provided powerful design capabilities as well as collaboration and product data management capabilities.	Bob Montgomery, CEO and founder of PowerSki International and inventor of the Igniter JetBoard, demonstrates his company’s award-winning product.
	“Using Capture3D, we were able to capture the shape of a physical Beta production JetBoard, and use this data to create accurate, smooth, Class-A surfaces using the imported data as a guide. Without the restyle capabilities of Pro/ENGINEER Wildfire, this would have been near impossible. No other design tool can perform like this.” —Leo Greene, Vice President of Engineering, PowerSki International

The Solution: PTC’s Pro/ENGINEER Wildfire
Having already experienced significant results with PTC’s Pro/ENGINEER on prototypes, Powerski decided to upgrade to Pro/ENGINEER Wildfire in April 2003. This upgrade allowed the company to take advantage of the productivity benefits afforded through its simple user interface and intuitive workflow. It would also enable Powerski to employ Pro/ENGINEER Wildfire’s powerful new functionality such as reverse engineering as it looked to convert favorable beta test results into a commercially successful product. Using Pro/ENGINEER as the foundation, Powerski wanted to further streamline additional areas of product development by implementing the remaining components of the PTC® Product Development System, Windchill ProjectLink™, and Windchill PDMLink™.

The Results: Riding the Wave to Productivity
With the new features and functionality of Pro/ENGINEER Wildfire, the design team has seen a 40% increase in productivity over previous versions of Pro/ENGINEER and has gained up to an hour more design time per day. Digital simulation has virtually eliminated the need for prototypes and the restyle capability enabled the team to reverse engineer the new PowerSki boards from millions of extracted data points from the prototype boards. Overall, the team has realized an increase in design speed by 10-15% and up to 60% faster on some key design functionality. And they have been able to collaborate across distance barriers and time boundaries.

A Surfer’s Dream
So, what is a JetBoard? As the name implies, it looks like a surfboard, but is motorized like a jet boat. PowerSki calls it “an entirely new and conceptually different personal water craft featuring the sideways stance, the surfboard contour, ease of operation, performance, and speed.” Its new fans just call it “an awesome ride.” As a professional surfer, Bob Montgomery dreamed up the concept of a motorized surfboard 17 years ago while searching for the perfect wave— and realizing he often needed to get someplace in a hurry in order to catch it. He began doing some research, and when he found there was no such thing out there, he decided to create his own. Montgomery started building fiberglass boards in his garage, and then graduated to his own poured epoxy molds powered by a Mercury® outboard engine. As he refined his concept, he was insistent on finding the right people and tools to create the best product.

Finding the Best
Although Montgomery had no previous engineering training, he researched the best tools to use for product design, and was consistently steered toward PTC’s Pro/ENGINEER. As a result, Pro/ENGINEER is the only design tool that PowerSki International has ever used.

Similarly, Montgomery searched for the best engine designer when he realized that existing engines did not fit with his design concept. Bjorn Elvin, a motorcycle engine designer from Sweden, was hired. Using Pro/ENGINEER, Elvin was able to architect a revolutionary 45-horsepower, low profile, water-cooled engine for marine use, which weighed less than 40 pounds and could fit into the sleek board. This innovative engine design gave life to the new PowerSki JetBoard.

Today PowerSki International employs less than 40 people, and with its propensity for innovation, the company holds 63 patents and has over 40 more patents pending worldwide.

Pro/ENGINEER Wildfire Ignites the Igniter
From the early boards and engines built by Montgomery and Elvin, the Igniter 2000 JetBoard was born. About 100 of these models were made and shipped worldwide to be tested by dealers and distributors, as well as for promotion and marketing purposes.

After receiving valuable feedback on the prototype JetBoards from its dealers and distributors, the company moved quickly to creating its production version JetBoard, the PowerSki Igniter 330. At the beginning of the design cycle for the production model JetBoard, the company upgraded to Pro/ENGINEER Wildfire in order to take advantage of its simple-to-use User Interface, powerful new capabilities, and ability to connect to Web-based resources such as the virtual project workspaces found in Windchill ProjectLink.

Leo Greene, vice president of engineering, is a Pro/ENGINEER pro, with over 10 years of experience using the software. Working in a cuttingedge company, it was an easy choice for him to become an early adopter of Pro/ENGINEER Wildfire. “The learning curve for Pro/ENGINEER Wildfire was not much of a big deal,” says Greene. “It took me two to three days to become proficient at Pro/ENGINEER Wildfire,” says Greene. “And proficiency for me is a pretty high level of skill.”

The other designers at PowerSki International had never used Pro/ENGINEER before, and came from backgrounds using SolidWorks®, AutoCAD®, and UG®. Greene reports that while learning Pro/ENGINEER Wildfire, they would exclaim, “This stuff is unbelievable.” The design team liked the intuitive workflow and the availability of context-sensitive right mouse options. Using Pro/ENGINEER Wildfire was faster, easier, and required less mouse travel than any tool they had used before.

Greene estimates that, overall, he designs 10% to 15% faster using Pro/ENGINEER Wildfire, and on some functions—such as surface blend boundaries, variable section sweeps, and creating rounds, chamfers, and holes—he is up to 60% faster. Overall, Greene feels that with Pro/ENGINEER Wildfire, his productivity has increased about 40% over previous versions of Pro/ENGINEER.

Competitively, the combination of Pro/ENGINEER Wildfire and Intel processors on HP® workstations helps PowerSki International make parts better and cheaper, get information to manufacturing about quality needs, and explore design alternatives rapidly and efficiently. These advantages are important today, and will become even more so as other competitors enter the JetBoard market.

A Million Points of Data
In the process of moving from beta to commercial production of the Igniter JetBoard, Greene’s starting point was a hand-shaped board with a lot of imperfections. Pro/ENGINEER Wildfire allowed Greene’s Engineering team to reverse engineer the original board by using the Restyle capability to read a captured data set and create a smooth, defined board.

Greene explains, “We were able to use this data to create accurate, smooth, Class-A surfaces using the imported data as a guide. Without the Restyle capabilities of Pro/ENGINEER Wildfire, this would have been near impossible. No other program would have allowed me to restyle the hull with such accurate and smooth surfaces. No other design tool can perform like this.”

Realizing the Benefits of a Product Development System
In addition to enjoying the benefits of Pro/ENGINEER Wildfire, Greene and his team are using Windchill ProjectLink, and are beginning to implement Windchill PDMLink. All three solutions from PTC are key to building an effective product development system that enables companies to create digital product models, collaborate on them, and control the product development data and surrounding process.

A good example of this was during the design of the Igniter 330 when PowerSki’s geographically dispersed design team was able to effectively collaborate across distance and time boundaries using Windchill ProjectLink to share notes, images, design changes, and document revisions. PowerSki also used a virtual definition of the Igniter 330 to identify vendors and manufacturing suppliers worldwide and provide them with a complete and unambiguous digital model definition of the various components of the JetBoard. “We were able to quickly gain common ground with prospective suppliers,” states Greene.

With proven product development system components in place to create digital product model definitions, and collaborate on the data for efficient communication, the next step for PowerSki is to control the product data and processes through Windchill PDMLink.

The Future for PowerSki
The PowerSki Igniter 330, priced at $6,000, is now completely designed, manufactured, and poised for commercial introduction. The promotion and interest around JetBoarding has been fantastic. As Greene says, “The phone rings and someone else wants to use our JetBoard in their TV show.”

So it seems PowerSki’s next challenge will be producing enough Igniter 330’s to keep up with the demand. And, with its multiple design patents, the company hopes to keep competitors at bay for now. However, Greene and the design team will continue their quest for superior product innovation using Pro/ENGINEER Wildfire while building a solid infrastructure for sustained future growth with the PTC Product Development System.