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BrentDrysdale12-Amethyst
12-Amethyst
June 13, 2012
Question

Licencing nitty grity

  • June 13, 2012
  • 18 replies
  • 10269 views
Hi Folks,
So you possibly saw my accidental post on licencing the other day. We are
presently in discussions regarding our Maintenance/Support contract renewal.

Our ProE (Creo) licences are of the "Concurrent User" type meaning that
they are floating until a user takes them. A user can take more than one
licence. This is the way ProE has always worked for us and as far as I
know it is how most companies use it. Typically companies have more
possible users than they have licences so once all licences are used then
some process has to be used to free up licences for other users. Have no
problems with this.

However our licences for eLearning (transferred from our Coach licences)
are of the type "Registered User" type which means that a licence is locked
onto a particular user ID/password. PTC specifically forbids use of
generic user IDs for multiple person use. As we have more users than
eLearning licences this presents us with a problem. We did not have this
issue with the Coach licences.
The options seem to be:

- Pay up for all existing possible users and add more as required (PTC
would love this but it is not going to happen).
- Set the licences to the users who would seem to most need/use the
training resource and too bad about other users.
- Somehow get generic users registered and dance around the PTC
requirements = possible liability
- Drop eLearning altogether as being an unworkable methodology and at
least save the maintenance cost each year for these eLearning licences.

In my opinion this change in training licencing is flying in the face of
what PTC keeps telling us is the value we get from maintenance.

Thoughts?

Regards,

*Brent Drysdale*
*Senior Design Engineer*
Tait Communications
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18 replies

Show previous replies
J
Jim.Tierney1-Visitor
1-Visitor
June 15, 2012
We use both Pro/E and Solidworks here. I learned Solidworks by using
the INCLUDED tutorial. No, I am not a power user by going through it
but I can at least use the software. I think an intro tutorial should
be included with Pro/E. Sure, for advanced things maybe charge, but for
just figuring out how to use it, SW does have a leg up on Pro/E.



There are many tutorials right on PTC's support website. Those are
included in maintenance (Maybe I shouldn't mention that as they may
start charging additional for that).



Youtube has been a boon. There are thousands of how to's. I haven't
looked, but I'm sure there is intro stuff in there as well. The
explorer or even a general google search solves 90% of my issues.



Jim


J
Jim.Tierney1-Visitor
1-Visitor
June 15, 2012
Very slowly. The only things that are free are very high-level
overviews of the new interface. Click on any of the tutorials and it
asks for your elearning login. Also, there are more in depth videos
available on youtube.



Here is what is available from the help menu form SW:





Step by step instructions included in every seat of SW:





Like I said, this won't make you power user, but at least you can at
least get started. (for the record, I'm not a SW fanboy, I prefer Pro/E
- been using for 16 years)



Jim
A
amedina1-Visitor
1-Visitor
June 15, 2012
Every time I try to teach anything to anyone about pro/e, I simply try to
narrow it down to something that is missing and I teach it my self. I have
never thought of the PTC documentation as a real source of learning for
introducing new employees to intralink/pdmlink/RSD or pro/e. The elearning
is a joke on its own. Free.... Free software has better free documentation
than PTC does. Take a look at Blender.org or Gimp.org or OOO.org or
Scribus or Inkscape..... you get all sort of really cool tutorials for
stuff you didn't even expect the program to be able to do. With PTC
software on the other hand, you get a powerpoint style presentation that my
little 5 year old niece could do on OOO (open office 🙂 ) given the many
available tutorials. But hey some blender users are really young like 10 to
15 years old and they come up with great docs and tutorials.

The take home is this:
1) PTC produces sub par and very expensive software and never corrects
anything for free
2) They would probably sue anyone if they could for any reason
3) I wonder if they would allow an independent tutorials and training
software site. A .org where everyone could add tutorials. A moderated forum
that was completly devoid of sales reps or PTC influence of any kind and
did not require a signup to read posts and see images.

The fact is that the programs I mentioned are successful because they are
free to download, open source and free to add to. PTC will never have such
following so its documentation will always be subpar. That means our jobs
might stay secure for a few more years until IBM improves watson and buys
PTC. When that happens, forget it. We will have thought control of
automatic design. No more cad monkeys required. not even for uh ah
"cabling" or FEA or nothing related.


K
kimndave91-Visitor
1-Visitor
June 15, 2012
Interesting about Watson. While malpractice suits could be an initial
problem for Watson in the medical arena, it's nothing like the suits you
can get if a product manages to kill some people. Maybe medical vs
product design will be a flip of the coin.

Your mention of the niece reminds me of Big Bang Theory where Sheldon
complains his father took him to baseball games from the time he was
seven until he went to college. He said, "Most miserable five years of
my life."

Leo Greene has some nice Pro/E tutorials.

Dave S.

A
amedina1-Visitor
1-Visitor
June 15, 2012
Yeah Leo's tutorials are nice:
S
sandman_viper21-Visitor
1-Visitor
June 19, 2012
" > 3) I wonder if they would allow an independent tutorials and training
> software site"

Kim (and Dave),

There is a website called GrabCAD which offers tutorials from the CAD
community as a whole (SW, ProE, Catia, etc.)
Registered users come up with How-to's and develop CAD models for download,
rendering etc. All free.

Tutorials may not be as structured as PTC's or any of the other ones
mentioned in this discussion, but it is a start.
You can also ask questions about your CAD problems just like here, request
something to be modelled and so on.

Hope that helps.

P.S. I am not affiliated in any manner with GrabCAD other than that I
contribute to their library of parts and (try) to answer some of the
unanswered questions in the Pro/E and Creo sections.


A
amedina1-Visitor
1-Visitor
June 19, 2012
Interesting. One one hand you got the evil, people from commercial cad
systems like the ex CO of solidworks. Also you got an unknown purpose (are
they collecting to later keep and sell? are they selling the challenges?
free labor force as a type of game? you get paid a dollar for 5 hours of
work while they sell the model for 500 bucks?) On the other hand you got
some young entrepreneurs and some open source investors that are making
cutting edge tech for the linux platform like Code ASTER by EDF.

yeah not too horrible I just might join the force.



S
StefanoPaolieri6-Contributor
6-Contributor
June 22, 2012

We appreciate the candid discussion on this subject and want to assure you that we are listening.


PTC’s eLearning strategy is based on identifying an individual’s learning needs, and the belief that learning is an ongoing activity that ties a single user to that learning over an extended period of time. We continue to evolve our eLearning content and delivery applications so that learning is as efficient and effective as possible, while catering for different skill levels and learning styles. The key to this strategy is being able to identify the individual via the single user license and provide them with the tools of Precision LMS to search, track, and manage their learning experience while also providing them quick context sensitive access through tools like LearningConnector. Our experience has been that without this model it is harder to get the value out of eLearning.


We do, however, recognize that customers are looking for flexibility in how they purchase and use our training, and we’re constantly evaluating additional offerings that we can add to our portfolio. The ability to allow for more flexible access while still making sure our eLearning can be effectively used is something we continue to explore. Please know that the issues highlighted in this forum are being taken into account as we have those discussions, and that I would welcome direct communication via my contact information below to anybody who would like to reach out.


Stefano Paolieri
CAD Learning Portfolio Lead, PTC
Tel: +49-89-321 06 538
email: -

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