Windchill vs competition

[cc-2]

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

[efleischer]

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.

[SteveVinyard]

A lot of this conversation comes down to what your company wants to do as an enterprise.


1- If all you want is a CAD dumping ground

a. Typically the native vault for whatever tool you are using works well. Though not always

2- If you want to do PLM now or in the future, you need a headline PLM tool. Here are the opinions I’ve gathered over the years

a. Teamcenter – very hard and awful to use. Powerful. Very strong but tailored for automotive exclusively. Strong config management. Its been an odd time for them as they completely switched platforms and its not just an upgrade. Expensive

b. Windchill – nice on the eyes. Sometimes difficult to use but not awful. A nice middle ground. Good price. Somewhat generic across the various industries. No explicit verticals though industrial is a strong spot for PTC.

i. Newer versions have vastly improved 3rd Party CAD support regarding SW, NX etc and ECAD.

c. Enovia – newer interface that I’m told looks very good (new versions). Was told that its pretty buggy and only good for native CAD at the moment.

d. Agile – decent interface. Good in high-tech/med device. Doesn’t manage CAD natively. xPLM has a thirdparty app to manage CAN called Agile EC but it has traditionally been very very rough. CAD is just hard to manage, especially with family tables/configurations etc. Expensive


None of these systems are MS Word with the utmost ease-of-use but they can handle enterprise PLM and integrate into your ERP/MES/Sales Configurator/Manufacturing etc and there is a BIG value to that. All of the hard hard work done in engineering actually gets automatically leveraged downstream.

Sometimes the real value isn’t readily apparent until a few unique things are done or a few gaps are closed in the software. We’ve seen huge gains through leveraging some quick “Apps” a la cart that extend Windchill without making upgrades awkward etc.


1- Export Tools – Right Click on a top level ASM or WTPart and download all additional content (PDF, STEP IGES) into a nice zip file. Quick and easy handoff of data outside of the system. No more work for engineering to create all of this.

2- Google style search portal – google search for Windchill – also includes the abilities above

3- ERP Portal – launch a Windchill search and view portal inside of ERP. You can quickly see ERP data, create PR/ECR, download the PDF, STEP, IGES stuff all without leaving ERP. Great for purchasing.

4- Cheap bi-directional ERP integrations – pull data from multiple sources and do whatever you want with it. E.g. Change Impact Report on ECR that shows Cost and Inventory info for Affected Objects. Pulls the info from ERP.

5- Change Analysis – a new interactive tab on ECNs. Shows you in a graphical way, exactly what changed via that ecn and allows you to export out for Cont. Manuf. I love this one. Seeing which partd are new to a BOM, or which are new revs. Parent-Child alterations all right there.

6- Part Familys – now manage finish, color and material in Windchill at the BOM level. Multiple WTParts all linked to a single CAD ASM. Configurator via RBM.

7- Ect - (if you want to see what these look like just ping me).

When you close a few of these high value gaps on a PLM system you can really have a nice business flow. As implementers, it really helps us drive the ROI and keep the complaints down without blowing up the budget. The bigger the job the more complexities you have to deal with. No tool just covers them all or in a way a company may need them too either so these certainly help.



Regards,
[cid:image001.gif@01CFCB30.A000F600]

Stephen Vinyard
Director of Customer Success

[SteveVinyard]

Also as a note regarding importing external data into Windchill. There is a right way and a wrong way to do this. Using the import Wizard from the workspace helps A LOT. This is underused. Sure if CAD models have dependencies missing you’ll still have to clean them up but being able to pick and choose which items are truly “new” and which ones to reuse from Windchill is huge for me when I do it (a lot). The revision stuff has really improved too. There are “import” preferences that you can set. These preferences will ONLY be read upon IMPORT and then no further which is nice. You can specify a external revision parameter or naming/numbering parameter so when you import it in, it all gets set automatically. Its certainly not drag and drop though it is MUCH better than simply open-save stuff which can be really brutal.


Regards,
[cid:image001.gif@01CFCB30.A000F600]

Stephen Vinyard
Director of Customer Success

[avillanueva]

Consider your audience on this board. I bet you will find the 100% opposite on a Siemens board. If they benchmarked TC and it won, they would no longer be subscribing here.

[ddemay]

Same on Aras PLM lol...
On Feb 12, 2015 4:15 PM, "Villanueva, Antonio UTAS" <
-> wrote:

> Consider your audience on this board. I bet you will find the 100%
> opposite on a Siemens board. If they benchmarked TC and it won, they would
> no longer be subscribing here.
>
>
>
> *From:* NacNac MOTT [

[avillanueva]

How is Aras? Looks promising but stopped following it.

[ehowanice]

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.

[SteveVinyard]

To an extent this is true. PLM eco-system is pretty small within the OEM/Parnter industry. The opinions I laid out were straight from OEM Siemans/Agile people as well as customers running RFP’s from multiple vendors. Most people aren’t that much of a homer these days.


Regards,
[cid:image001.gif@01CFCB30.A000F600]

Stephen Vinyard
Director of Customer Success

[cc-2]

David,

Not a particular fan of the cloud for security reasons but I must say that I do share your view.
my new company has some history with autodesk so I must learn more about there product. While no plm solutions has been selected yet and that WC will def be on the evaluation list. I must say that autodesk products such as plm 360 and fusion 360 are very flexible.
i can have a fully operational test server straight away with plm 360. With traditional plm solutions i must get recommendations on the servers, buy them configure them, configure wc, test everything is working ok before i can implement business processes.
it is quite appealing to be able to configure straight away without worrying about servers, cost, replication etc etc.

Re fusion 360, surely not as powerfull as creo onventor or nx but really this is a very young product, so as you said in 10years the landscape will be entirely different.

I will go and tease the siemens board, does anyone know the url ?

Thanks all for your views

[imendiola]

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

[JimTVancouverCa]

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.

[Dan_Harlan]

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

[cc-2]

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

[acoates]

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?

[TomU]

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.

[acoates]

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...

[TomU]

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.

[cc-2]

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

[TomU]

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.

[DonSenchuk]

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.

[cc-2]

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

[cc-2]

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

[acoates]

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!

[cc-2]

Hi Andy,

thanks for your comment.

If  I may ask, what software you currently use for PLM and CAD ?

[acoates]

Hi Chris: Creo 2.0 and Windchill 10.1.

[cc-2]

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 ?

[acoates]

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.

[BjoernRueegg]

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.

[acoates]

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).