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Hello everyone,
I am wondering if any one of you have benchmarked Windchill against Teamcenter and/or PLM360 from Autodesk.
I know that there are many aspects to consider and what can be good for one company may not be suitable for another one. However, as I have worked with Windchill for over 8 years now, I would like to stay with this software in my new company and therefore try to ensure we select Windchill.
We will soon consider those 3 solutions. So if you have (not too old) information about those software and why Windchill is better this will help my case 😉
So far we have Inventor with Vault
Thanks a lot
Best regards
We are using Windchill now. I previously used Teamcenter and SolidWorks' PDM. Teamcenter was awful. Very difficult to use. It required a full time IT effort AND a full time CAD-Teamcenter facilitator. I find Windchill is also very difficult to use, but better than Teamcenter.It seems particularly difficult with Windchill tobring in work that was done outside of PDM, and to rev-up files worked on outsided the Windchill system (e.g. by consultants and other external resources).
I far preferred the simplicity of use in SolidWorks' PDM. However, I'm with a PTC-using company now, so I got stuck with Windchill. If I could do it over, I'd be looking very closely at web-based GrabCAD.
Would be interested in hearing from anyone who has experience with Aras Innovator and managing proe/creo files, particularly if previously used Intralink 3.x or Windchill PDMlink.
Hi all,
you can take a look to this http://www.ptc.com/about/news-room/press-releases/2015/ptc-introduces-ptc-plm-cloud for those intereseted on cloud...
Iker Mendiola
Prambanan IT Services
http://www.prambanan-it.com
![]() | Iker Mendiola - Prambanan IT Services |
Note also PTC has a cloud services offering that can run on their servers, or on Amazon AWS cloud servers. We are looking into this at my current employers.
I like the comment about running an app in browser. If you can run a photoshop like app in a browser (see https://pixlr.com/ now aquired by Autodesk). That's an interesting idea at least for simpler stuff. I wonder how it would work memory management and server integration wise based on the constant and ever updating nature of a web browser.
Good discussion.
Chris,
Your PTC (or VAR) sales rep should be able to get you data that you are looking for.
I've heard and have experiences similar to what Steve V. outlined, both as a consultant and an admin.
Another source that I find very useful is TEC (http://www.technologyevaluation.com/). With their site you can go through a questionnaire and place value on functionalities and then it generates comparison reports on how each solution addresses your needs. And, though at some level it's generic answers, they do try pretty hard to get beyond the marketing hype ad actually give points on more than what the sales guys say the software can do.
~Dan
HI Dan
I have used them a few years ago when I was working for another company. It was PDMLink vs SAP PLM. Another story........
Thanks
Late to the party, but interesting discussion here. As PTC insist on charging for Print and View licenses (!!!) I'm investigating other PLM software. GrabCAD doesn't include a release strategy, so currently a no-go, but Aras has crossed my radar and I intend to start investigating in detail over the coming months. It's frustrating me hugely as, quite frankly, it's time I could do with not spending on something that should be a fundamental of such a system. Does anybody else charge for a viewer?
Please let me know what you find. We are struggling with this as well. I would like to begin using Windchill for document management, but the licensing model is prohibitive. I wouldn't mind so much if the View/Print licenses were for concurrent users, but being required to have a named user license for everyone in the company is completely unrealistic. I don't even mind paying for licenses for content creators, but I'm not going to triple the purchase cost and annual maintenance costs just so everyone else can view a PDF stored somewhere in the system.
Will do, Tom. How PTC think that SMEs with a limited pot of cash for these things are going to be able to implement a proper company wide CAD strategy with their model is beyond me. I know that they're currently reviewing this policy and I am expecting a response imminently (I was advised by a PTC exec. of early 2015, but to be fair it's a big decision for a big organisation, so it's no wonder it's taking a while), but I'm not holding out much hope. We shall see...
At a recent local user group event I was made aware of PTC's plan to offer their CAD software and extensions via a subscription model. (Think Office 365) Not sure if this will extend to Windchill or not. The core issue with Windchill is the license type - named user vs. concurrent user on the CAD side. It will be interesting to see what happens.
Hi Tom
Windchill is already available on the cloud but does not have the same capabilities yet as the On Premise.
I do not know about CAD.
Regards
I was more under the impression that the software wasn't changing but rather PTC would provide the option to purchase time limited licenses. Purchase Creo for 1 year, or maybe purchase Advanced Assembly for 1 month. Something like that.
I just talked to our VAR about some issues unrelated to this. The conversation eventually moved around (as conversations do) to the new subscription model. My impression from him was that the subscriptions were more for companies who would hire a bunch of contractors for a small project (say 6 months) but don't want to go all in on buying licenses for the entire year. Sounds like your impression is spot on.
Yes and this would be good so because if like Autodesk they force all users to move to subscription then after about 3 years subscription becomes a lot more expensive.
At least if PTC stays with the model. Software purchase + maintenance for long term use and subscription for short term and leave the customer the choice what type they need. then this is perfect
Hi Andy
Print&View licences were introduced around 2008 at the time where I did my first PDMLink implementation. While the price per unit of the licence was not that high when you have hundreds of users.......
I recall having a lot of discussions with the VAR and PTC. I lost battle that I never got those licences for free but they lost too as I have never bought them. All I wanted was that users who are just consumer could enter a drawing number and view it.
So my solution has been to implement a third party software which will monitor PDMLink for new released and create a pdf outside of PDMLink. That software also did for MS Office document and deleted the pdf when the PDMLink data were set to Obsolete.
The software costed about 10000USD at the time and 1000USD maintenance a year. It was running in the background so most users did not even know it was there.
Autodesk provide free access for search and view.
7 years later PTC still have the same strategy regarding users who only need to view drawings or documents. They do not add value to the system or the data into the system. Why should we have to pay ?
So in the company I am in today, as mentioned above. if we end up selecting PTC and PTC still wants to charge me (estimate would be about $250k for the print&view licences). You know what I will be doing.........
What is the rational in charging for such users ? This sounds like money grabbers
Best regards
Interesting to read, thanks Chris. With the size of my company, rather than spending $10k on third party I'd look to replace the whole PLM solution and reduce ongoing maintenance costs while providing free print and view capability for the rest of the company. Who knows, if something good comes up then I might even replace the CAD software, too!
Hi Andy,
thanks for your comment.
If I may ask, what software you currently use for PLM and CAD ?
Hi Chris: Creo 2.0 and Windchill 10.1.
Hello Andy
if I understand a previous comment you are planning to replace Windchill and Creo by a different system to reduce ongoing maintenance costs while providing free print and view capability for the rest of your company ?
Are you so dissatisfied with PTC solution, or is it only a question of cost and not technology and service PTC provide ?
The cost is the main driver. It would take significant further investment just to give P&V capability, and that, in my (and many others') opinion should be free. It is in plenty of other software.
Having said that, Creo is pretty clunky and has many idiosyncrasies that have never been addressed, despite repeated requests. I'm struggling to see PTC making any moves to address these things, still. I was also left very unimpressed when, at the Creo 3.0 launch, great things about multi-CAD integration were promised and then they didn't come out until M030/040 and were also not as they had been described. Not even close, in fact. I don't have confidence in PTC as a business partner and thus Creo as a CAD platform for the future.
Hi Andy
I'm also not 100% happy with PTC. There are many things to improve. But tell me just one competitor where the customer satisfaction is 100%! Do you know how many lines of programming code is written for Creo and Windchill? I have no clue but there are millions of it. It's just not possible to rewrite everything. It's always a question of money. Also you know how that works, the marketing is showing some nice Powerpoints and the programmers need to realize it....
Have a look at Dassault. They are still struggling with Enovia and CatiaV6.
Have fun and get happy with other software.
Hi Bjorn. It's a fair point, perhaps I was feeling particularly irked by it yesterday! I expect to have bugs and minor annoyances in a software of this size and I'm aware of the complexity of it, believe me! The bits that annoy me most are their licensing policy some of the features that I believe should be core and simple to use (and are in other programs).