Community Profile: Mike Lockwood
If you spent any time in the PTC community over the past couple decades, you’ve likely found good answers to your software questions from @MikeLockwood especially in the Windchill Community! According to our system, this user has posted 2241 times!
“I’ve carefully read pretty much all postings in my areas of interest daily for all these years – and can reply to many with useful info,” he says.
That explains the 41 community achievement badges!
At the same time, he’s finding answers to his own questions. “I’m grateful that so many people are willing to voluntarily provide such good info. Within a day, I generally receive many good answers to whatever problems I’m facing.”
But just to be sure, he admits that sometimes creates a tech support case in parallel with posting
questions to the community.
Who's behind this prolific account?
Meet Mike Lockwood. Mike earned a BSME in college, and then began a career as a mechanical engineer for various medical device companies, including a startup. He focused on complex automated machines early on, and found that programming those machines awakened his interest in the computer/software side of his profession. As you might guess, it didn’t take long for his career to turn to CAD and PLM work.
“I trained on Pro/E 15 in 1993 and have been using some version of it ever since,” says Mike. “I fell in love with parametric CAD, and by 1998, I accepted the CAD admin role at my company.”
He’s been administering and supporting CAD and Windchill ever since, first for Alcon and, most recently, for Edwards Lifesciences. Plus he’s been a member of the Windchill technical committee for the past 15 years.
When he’s not troubleshooting an Oracle database issue or explaining the nuances of parent/child relationships to new users, Mike enjoys getting outdoors.
Skiing, snowboarding, surfing, and, lately, lots of long walks and exercise.
Then there’s the music. Mike plays piano and can even blast out a saxophone solo (but just for fun, he says).
Lockwood is retiring from his full-time job early next year but plans to remain available for contract projects (and hopefully for community members here).
My Creo wish list
After all these years, Mike knows Creo’s strengths, weaknesses, and workarounds—especially as it relates to Windchill. And since everybody has a wish list, we asked to see his.
“Creo is superb and keeps getting better,” he assured us. “But there are a few things I’d like to see.”
- Modelcheck, when configured from the UI, resets all the tabs and it’s hard to read the text files.
- Modelcheck should make it easy to sort / filter for those configured as Error / Warning / other.
- The naming of the various Creo apps that are not Creo Parametric (e.g., Creo View, Creo Illustrate) is confusing to users, especially when these are used with SolidWorks data.
- Family tables continue to be great for CAD but challenging for CAD in PLM (Windchill). Would like to see more info and recommendation on alternatives (like maybe inheritance).
- Autonumbering with Windchill is the default and works for some. It is of great value to have drawings and the model(s) on them share a root CAD Doc Number / filename.
On behalf of the whole community, thanks Mike for your efforts, insights, and help over the years. We wish you a long, healthy, and invigorating retirement and look forward to your next 2000 posts here on the community!
