Hi Dave,
I share all your points in regards training in Pro/NC and GPost. Two
different beasts, and as such, the quality of both are equally
different. It's easy for me to justify our annual maintenance in GPOST
PPs... my managers get contaminated by my enthusiasm... when it comes to
PTC, it's just us against the wall... no pleasure in paying for a such
bad quality service. However, I admit it improved at least for us,
recently - Not sure if all the noise I've made in social media has
helped though.
Until some months ago, I used to think alike in regards all your
suspicions, but now I have more information to pass along:
1. Limiting training materials and opportunities so that companies
will invest in consulting.
Answer: It's possible you are right, but I strong suspect they don't do
it because they don't have people skilled to do it. It's a side effect
of problem #2 I guess.
2. Clueless about real machining practices with no expertise to
promote and teach it.
Answer: It scares me that what I can do with Pro/NC in regards
customization and toolpath tweaking it's totally unknown by 99% of their
TS guys involved in MFG. Not trying to be arrogant or a smart ass here.
It's just fruit of observation along at least 5 years, two of them in
this company.
If you build a reasonably complex MUDF, you will be the only one to
understand it. Most of their TS don't know how to play with the toolpath
parameters to get results other than the ones in their weak training
materials, that is, real life scenarios. A few months ago I opened a
call to report a bug in volume milling concerning air cuts, and the
Technical support Engineer replied to me a week later providing the most
stupid answer I ever got from PTC. His "solution" was creating even more
air-cuts even though I was clear in the case opening that I was trying
to get rid of the air-cut. I walked the extra mile and created a very
detailed narrated video for them, and the guy comes with that B.S.
Not trying to be harsh here, but people doesn't learn MFG and CNC
Programming at university. It's a hands on thing and PTC is a very
academic company. If you have a degree, you are in, even to support a
complex tool like Pro/NC and its demanding users. I really don't
understand why they keep promoting the "frustration" of their customer and
users about their product by doing all these consecutive and non-sense
stuff. Sometimes, when I put myself in the shoes of the TSE I deal with,
I sorry for them because they don't have a damn idea about what I'm
talking about, and still, they have to be gentle and nice, but the truth
is that they are clueless in a significant part of the time.
All this lack of expertise from support personnel only helps to add more
and more time for the problem resolution, and if you do not follow them
up with a shotgun in an often basis, forget it, your case is just one
more in the pile. With some rare exceptions, their VAR channel also suck
in regards manufacturing... but you can find some good consulting
companies like ColdFire Enterprises, ESC-Spring GmbH, Kent Hanson,
etc...
3. Waiting for Pro/NC to wither and die on the vine... Very little
toolpath development, archaic interface, no promotion, no presence at
user conferences, weak help-desk support, no visible expertise.
Answer: For half year I used social media and PTC blogs to vent my
frustration around the same idea. But visiting EMO show (The biggest MFG
show in the world) this year I met with the NC product manager and I
admit I was surprised to see him there. We're also working with PTC in
the development of new things for upcoming releases (Things we've seen
in other SW since a long time will be in Creo 2.0 and more coming in
Creo 3.0 - Can't give details, please bear with me). However, for the
reasons I mention in the item #2, I agree 1000% that good help desk
support and visible expertise are rare things in the PTC MFG realm. One
guy is an exception: Seth Lolli.
Last but not least, they recently created a training on PTC University
for advanced Turning and MillTurn machining. While it is a good thing
concerning the HUUUUUUUUUUUGE interval between the last training
materials they prepared for Pro/NC (I'm not taking upgrade trainings
into account), again they lost an opportunity to address long standing
problems and lack of information in regards an advanced subject, for
example, toolpath synchronization. Looks like they don't really want to
deal with the hard questions, and they privilege materials where they
can CTRL+C / CTRL+V as much as possible.
Yes, I know I'm not putting what they'd like to hear here, but I'm sure
that as Dave, I'm speaking on behalf of a bunch of frustrated customers.
Considering the serious money our companies invest in their products and
services, we expect much more from PTC, much more.
Some topics on these issues in PTC Planet blogs
http://communities.ptc.com/blogs/markhodges/2010/12/07/welcome-to-the-vo
ice-of-the-customer
http://communities.ptc.com/blogs/markhodges/2011/01/14/ptc-technical-sup
port
http://communities.ptc.com/blogs/markhodges/2011/01/21/ptc-technical-sup
port
http://communities.ptc.com/blogs/markhodges/2011/02/10/surveys-and-techn
ical-committees
http://communities.ptc.com/blogs/markhodges/2011/03/03/the-role-of-the-p
tc-technical-support-engineer
As usual, the blog fever it's slowing down and the blogs above are no
longer being updated... it was more a "let's say something to these
people so they can stop bashing us" (I've my own and I do not update it
often too)
Best,
Daniel
