Move from one CAD Package to Another

[ChrisCollinson]

Hi Everyone,

I am looking to get information and data regarding the costs and pain points of moving from one cad package to another for a study I am doing.

If anyone has done this recently and has data that they would be willing to share that would be great.

I'm looking for data about the following: -

User Adoption - how long was it until your users become as efficient as the previous cad package

User Training - How much training

Data Migration - How long did it take for your data sets to be upto data and how large were they

Did you use Professional services

Estimated ROI and Actual ROI (can put as % if $ value not allowed)

Any other relevant information

If any of you are willing to share this information that would be fantastic as the more I can get the more thorough my report will be. If you would rather not post the information then please send it directly to -

If any of you are going to PTC Live next week and would be able to catch up and discuss this then please e-mail me -

Thanks in advance to all

Chris C

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[VladimirN]

Hi,

Maybe some PTC VAR (software reseller) will help you: http://www.ptc.com/appserver/search/resellers.jsp

[ChrisCollinson]

I could do that but you will find they give you a rosey picture where as I am trying to get information with warts and all

[Patriot_1776]

Exactly. I can tell you that using creo and Windchill vs. WF4 and Intralink has slowed us down tremendously. Dwgs take 2-4 times as long to do, at a minimum, and you can probably say 2-10 times as long for windchill to vault files.....IF it decides to work at all. Oh, and did I mention we lose Intralink was a direct vaulting system run through you network. Windchill uses the internet (Dumbest. Idea. EVER!) so now you have all that garbage to deal with. Gee, I have a great idea, lets run a data vaulting system through the most unstable network of all....... You'll get Java script errors, internet explorer errors, maybe Firefox errors. There is such an inbred compatibility that all these different softwares at all different rev levels must work perfectly with each other just for it to work. It's a nightmare because, well, they DON'T.

Caveat emptor......

[IceDog]

Chris,

I looked at doing this about 4 years ago. We had about a 20 product families (each with about 6 discrete products) detailed in Solidworks. We were going to "convert" the data into Pro/E. Basically our business and another business were being consolidated and the management wanted to move forward with one CAD system, so the user training and infrastructure were in place.

We had decided to have a "Low Cost Region" work as a contractor and take our 2D drawings and remodel from scratch in 3D in Pro/E, and create new 2D drawings. I took one of our products and began the process. Ultimately it was a wash and we decided to maintain SolidWorks along side of Pro/E.

The reason it was a wash is, of course, "The Details", both literally and figuratively. I had to upload 2D drawings and 3D models which took time, and needed to create a task for tracking purposes. When they were done creating the 2D drawings and supporting models I had to compare to our originals. I then marked up each drawing which had issues, and resend. We quickly realized that our partner was not capable of the detail level which was required.

Additionally the way they modeled the parts was not capturing our "design intent". It is quite difficult to infer design intent from a 2D drawing, but we had supplied the 3D models as well. Our SolidWorks, tree, sketches, references, etc. were not at all like the Pro/E tree when we reviewed the files. So although the 2D drawings were able to be checked by highlighting dimensions it’s much more difficult to put a check in the checkbox for design intent/similar model tree.

So we decided to sunset new designs in SolidWorks (allowing leveraging legacy designs when it made sense to do so) and do new designs in Pro/E. The money for maintenance of SolidWorks is relatively small compared to what we were paying for Pro/E, and also small compared to the Low Cost Region partner.

I know you were looking for dollars and cents, which I've not been able to help you out with, however I hope you might benefit from some of the pitfalls we encountered, and can perhaps consider our strategy around it.