Windchill Extensions

[bmüller]

Hi,

just found https://windchill-extensions.ptc.com/

Are these extensions new? Anybody tried with Windchill 11.0?

The idea sounds nice and some coming soon extensions (depending on price) could be helpfull.

br Bernhard

[BrianToussaint]

@bmüller , they introduced this last year at LiveWorx.  No, I have not tried them.  I was going to try the one for Change Analysis, but probably not for another month or so and then for 11.2.  To me it seems a little pricey, especially since it is a subscription rate.

[bmüller]

Looks like they acquired https://www.wincom-plm.com/

Yes, the price could be an "issue"...

[BrianToussaint]

I don't believe that they acquired them, but entered into a partnership.  I do have a custom Windchill program that Wincom made for me a few years ago.  I haven't had any issues with it, but it was custom and we didn't roll it out until it met the requirements.

[TomU]

Definitely didn't acquire them.  They are a completely separate company.  Like @BrianToussaint said, PTC has a partnership with them now.

[dduncan]

Yes, PTC partners with Wincom on the program - PTC didn't acquire Wincom. 

Several of the extensions are free and worth trying out  - www.windchill-extensions.ptc.com .  PDF Quick Access is the most used free extension.  Others are for subscription, but each with a 30-day trial, so you can verify the value to you before subscribing (and trials have no strings attached - no automatic conversions into subscriptions).

For the subscribed extensions, PTC publishes the US pricing for you to evaluate.  Note the guidance under the "#users" input, as most extensions need subscription by a small portion of your Windchill users.   Change Analysis is typically subscribed by a very small percentage of users.  For large customers, there's an alternative site license rate (also indicated on the pricing tab).

[lhoogeveen]

I'm both exited and frustrated by these new 'PTC' Windchill Extensions. Wincom's Windchill Extensions seem great, easy to use, and solve some big and small headaches with Windchill. Plus they can be installed without having to upgrade Windchill. But they are exactly the fixes/enhancements PTC should have added to Windchill over the years from the money we spend on Windchill maintenance/subscription. What are other people's thoughts?

Also, Wincom has a ton more apps available: https://www.wincom-plm.com/app-center/

I might prefer to buy from Wincom rather than reward PTC for not fixing their software.

[dduncan]

Windchill Extensions are either free or subscribed.

For capabilities that would qualify for a general-purpose enhancement (like PDF Quick Access), the extensions are free.

For new capabilities that are either beyond maintenance release expectation (like Watermarking Advanced) or applicable to specialized workflows (like SiliconExpert Connect), the extensions are subscribed.

The development capacity for Windchill Extensions is an added resource that is funded by Windchill Extensions revenues.  It's unrelated to the core Windchill development capacity, but also coordinated.  For example:  we were going to make a BOM-redlining extension, but core development has this in their near-term backlog. 

Effectively, we invest this added Windchill Extension capacity to replace long-term customization and integration needs with extensions. 

[lhoogeveen]

The initial list of what's considered general purpose enhancements (free) is REALLY small. The Change Notice and Promotion Request validate seem like anyone using these in Windchill would want them. One could probably argue the same about the Change Analysis. For the Quick Access, most people would also want to download other representations like STEP, DXF as well - never mind that admins can't push custom Windchill views to their users (related product idea).

According to my PTC rep, the PTC Windchill Extensions are exempt the annual remixing from other PTC PLM licenses (b/c PTC has to pay royalties to Wincom).

Side note: the Wincom Search looks super interesting but probably wouldn't be considered an extension.

[TomU]

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Side note: the Wincom Search looks super interesting but probably wouldn't be considered an extension.

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Correct.  The EAP Search runs on it's own separate web server, so it will need to be installed someplace other than on the Windchill server.  It also requires a Windchill restart to install the 'stuff' that connects the two, and I'm not aware of any easy way to remove it once installed.

[BjoernRueegg]

I do understand your frustration and also not 😂 Perhaps PTC could also provide some of these extensions, but they never can provide all the customer wishes. They are probably happy, when they reach the 80% goal.

I do love the idea about the extensions, but I'm unhappy about how they prefer one partner. They rather should have opened up the extension platform as an "Extension Store" where all the partner's can provide their extensions like the thingworx market place. Today it makes no sense to have just one preferred partner. On the other hand, the extension are cool 😎

Since I'm a programmer I would love to provide some useful tools "worldwide" and not only for my customers...

I understand you're frustration about the usability. Sometimes it's hard to understand why the usability is still no topic at PTC. This would help making Windchill a lot more popular in a company. All these 1000 possibilities are just not useful for users.

Just my thoughts.

[TomU]

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I do love the idea about the extensions, but I'm unhappy about how they prefer one partner. They rather should have opened up the extension platform as an "Extension Store" where all the partner's can provide their extensions like the thingworx market place.

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I think the challenge here is that Windchill doesn't contain a framework that allows extensions to be easily added and removed (on the fly, without restarting) without extensive customization.  Wincom saw this limitation and built their own custom framework.  Once they built the framework, it makes it much easier for them to build and deploy other custom apps.  PTC obviously saw the value of this approach and decided to partner instead of compete.  Is is frustrating that we have to pay more money for functions that should already be in the product.

[BjoernRueegg]

@TomU Why didn't PTC buy this framework? So everyone can benefit from it? 

[TomU]

No idea.  I'm assuming either Wincom isn't interested in selling or PTC isn't interested in paying what they would want.  Wincom is a great company.  We've had one of their custom apps in place since 2014.

[BrianToussaint]

@TomU I agree that it is frustrating to have to pay for some things that should be in the package.  I'm interested in the app to show what is happening in the CN, but in reality that should be functionality so that users that are not in Windchill everyday could decipher what is going on.  Just the quick screen shot almost looks like screen shots I thought I saw from WC 9 and before.  But I could be wrong though.  That one is majorly expensive to incorporate.

The thing that I didn't like from one of the presentations at LiveWorx about this and changes to customization, was that it seemed that anything not on this platform would show up as "deprecated" and not be supported by PTC.  So this means if you have your own customization or have someone other than Wincom customize for you, it will show as bad code.  At least that is how it came across in the presentation and from someone else that I talked to.  I have used Wincom for customization but also have mainly used another company in the past for my programming.

[dduncan]

Good news - our intent is to open up extension participation beyond PTC and Wincom.   We're working through the commercial, technical, and security aspects to ensure we can do this, but it's looking promising for 6-9 months from now (no commitments on this yet).  If anyone on this thread is directly interested in contributing extensions, please contact me a dduncan@ptc.com .  I'd love to hear your thoughts on it, and run some ideas by you.