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

[BjoernRueegg]

Hi Andy

I feel with you. I'm also not happy with the license model. If somebody from production needs a drawing from Windchill, he needs to have a user. If you export and duplicate the pdf to a shared folder, he doesn't need to have any license... Just remember, there are no access rights.

If you watch the PTC Live presentation about the Windchill Roadmap you also will find some screenshots of the new Print and View app. This looks very interesting. Let's hope that something is also changing in the license model...

[mdebower]

Speaking of PDFs and such...

Lets take a look at Adobe's licensing strategy:

Pay for the content creation software: Adobe Acrobat

But the software to consume that content is free: Adobe Reader

So if I create content in Windchill or Creo or another PTC package I would expect to pay $$$; but if I just want to look at that content or consume it, it should be free.  Seems to work quite well for Adobe:

Adobe:

Annual Sales: $4.13 B

Market CAP: $38.98 B

PTC:

Annual Sales: $1.36 B

Market CAP: $4.78 B

[dschenken]

The problem isn't the free viewing, it's the controlled database access and the ton of dynamically-created content management add-ons that go with it. I don't see a lot of value in dynamically-created content for engineering/manufacturing, but someone must or PTC is wasting a lot of money developing 'visualization'

I don't know how PTC can reasonably license to distinguish between those who can add content and those who will extract content, but I agree that it hurts the adoption of Windchill to have to look at the expense for every employee who might touch the data, when those same employees a short while ago were handed a printed copy or sent an email attachment with no identifiable cost. Further, there's the additional cost of managing access rights and matching licensing to those rights.

[TomU]

I totally agree that someone who is simply viewing content should not need a named user license.  This licensing model is effectively keeping us from extending Windchill out to the rest of our organization.  It's currently way less expensive to use a 3rd party utility to dump the data out of Windchill than it is to give users direct access to it inside of Windchill.

For the new Windchill Access App (for view/print access), PTC is tentatively looking at a subscription based, concurrent licensing model.  Hopefully this will be cost effective enough to justify purchasing.  We'll know more later this year.

[cc-2]

Hello,

Tom, I would personally not count too much on it. in 2008 I had a private meeting with some top executive of PTC during a PTC world in the UK.

We were about 5 selected customers in that room. I was the first to talk about this issue of licences and the 4 others joined me.  In 7 years PTC has not changed anything. Maybe they prefer us using third party software to take docs out and post them in SharePoint or other system. (We developed our own html page to retrieve the documents.  It was very basic. A box to enter the document number and the pdf opened. so the html page took about less than a hour to develop !!!).

I do not understand why PTC do not try to penetrate more the entreprise.  They have the technology to defeat SharePoint

Best regards

[TomU]

I guess I'm still optimistic at this point since a member of the licensing and contracts division at PTC was also part of the discussion. 

[acoates]

Interesting, thanks Tom. I also spoke to PTC exec earlier in the year. He'd been hopeful of a March/April release for information but I guess a big decision takes a long time in such a big company. Hopefully the fact that it is taking so long means that they are having to consider how they roll out and control all of the changes!

[STEVEG]

At this point there is no way PTC would change the licensing to free for the print and view license.  They would take a hit on the income.  But I must admin I don't know how many of them they sell.

[TomU]

PTC seems driven by profit to their detriment.  When customers are already paying maintenance for a product, they shouldn't have to purchase new features that are developed for that same product, especially when these features are going to be bundled with future purchases of the same product anyway (ex. manikin, flexible modeling, etc.)

The whole issue with Creo being able to open non-native CAD data (Unite functionality) when not connected to Windchill, but prohibited from doing so when it is connected to Windchill is a perfect example.  The licensing team was so concerned that people would stop buying the other workgroup managers and instead just use Creo to upload this non-native CAD data into Windchill that they required the Creo team to disable this promised, and paid-for Creo functionality when used in a Windchill environment.  (From what I heard, the Creo team was pretty frustrated.)

Summary:

• Buy Creo ($) = Full Unite functionality
• Buy Creo + Windchill ($$) = Limited Unite functionality
• Buy Creo + Windchill + Extra Workgroup Managers ($$$) = Fully restored Unite functionality

I wish PTC was more interested in developing customers for life instead of extracting as much money as possible at every turn.

[LawrenceS]

Definition of Monopoly (m-w.com): "complete control of the entire supply of goods or of a service in a certain area or market"

PTC comes from the CAD industry where they got customers for life, but not by continuing to please them.  The market situation that has been created/fortified does not seem conducive to innovation or pleasing the customer.  Incompatibility with other CAD software is designed into the system and PTC reps recently said (admitted) that the CAD industry has been "stagnant" for years now because most customers are with who they choose initially...so companies are trying to drum up new business/money elsewhere (and are leaving CAD to minor changes).  If the PLM software stays mostly compatible (I know probably not 100% possible) with each other so companies could switch if they are not doing their job, then the software should never become "stagnant".

That aside, this discussion has posted some interesting solutions within and without PDMLink.  I hope there is more to come.

[cc-2]

Hello Lawrence, and all

Thanks a lot for all your comments. It took some time for the discussion to start but as you said, Lawrence, there are some very interesting point.

What I also find interesting is that my original question was more about the technicality/functionalities of Windchill vs competition.

eg PDMLink = Content management + Workflow.

Autodesk equivalent is two system. Vault + PLM 360.   So in my eyes PTC is the winner for that aspect that you can do in one system what Autodesk do in 3 (Vault + PLM360 + the connector that you need to buy)

However, it seems that expert do not complain really about the products from PTC but more about PTC politics and licencing model.

Therefore, should I assume if I put the licences on the side that Windchill (pdmlink, projectlink, mpmlink etc,,,,,) and Creo are the best products on the market ?

I know the answer will be biased but many of us have worked with many different sytems and hae evaluated many of them.

In addition I think it is important to feel safe here and to speak the hard truth, This can only be in the interest of PTC

Best regards

[LawrenceS]

Although there are aspects of WC I like (entire system management) and aspects I don't (UI, lack of basic customization, ambiguous error msgs, bugs, etc), I have not used other CAD database systems so I will let those who have more varied experience continue to add valuable comments.  I too wonder if there is a system that has WC's scope strength while better handling efficiency on the individual company and user level.  That would be excellent software to work with and look forward to hearing more from users. 🙂

[cc-2]

Hi Lawrence,

thanks for your reply. It seems that no one can reply to this one lol

[ChrisPLM]

Hi Tom.

I guess that is the difference between a Not for Profit organisation and the rest. PTC is as many the latter.

Money drives too many decisions in the world but that is a different topic of out scope of this discussion and even this website

Best regards

[ChrisPLM]

I think we reached the maximum sub levels allowed. I wanted to reply to Tom but my post has been inserted at the same level....

[ChrisPLM]

Hi Steve,

maybe but at the moment, I have excluded Print&View from our VAR proposal. He was not happy when I said I prefer buying a 3rd party software to automatically print and delete outside of Windchill. I appreciate that the Print&View also provide Creo View and people can mark up but really the general rules is that production wants to see the drawing so they know what to make nothing else.

I have explained to the VAR and he has to accept I will be paying 10% of his proposal for Print&View and get that 3rd party software which publishing all sort of formats.

I am not the only one doing so, so PTC is losing there and introduce 3rd party software in a so call integrated environment.....

Best regards

[DonSenchuk]

Chris C‌

Well, it would appear sending a private message is so non-intuitive on PTCs version of a message board that I've given up. I mean, being able to click or right-click or name like many other message boards would seem the obvious thing. Even picking the Actions menu at the bottom of posts might make sense. Nope. Can't find it in my profile and can't find it in your profile, so I'll just ask right here.

Could you pass along some of the solutions you found for Print&View outside of Windchill? We're trying to get more people access but the cost is being given the evil eye.

[mdebower]

Don,  have you tried just hovering the mouse over a persons name?

[LawrenceS]

Marc DeBower hmm, I am not sure if that is intuitive or not, but it sure is nice to know and will surely help!  Thanks for sharing!

[DonSenchuk]

Marc,

Tried that, nothing shows up.

[DonSenchuk]

Really?!

I turned off Adblock Plus and the hover-over-name-send-message thing shows up now.

I guess I can mark this off the bucket list: witness message board PM functionality coded as advertisements.

[mdebower]

Don,  you should be able to add the community to a white list in Ad Block Plus to allow the pop ups.

[DonSenchuk]

Marc,

Oh, that I know all about.

It's just, not only do they already have me as a customer, but it's baffling how that could be coded as advertising when literally no other message board I visit has that "feature".

[acoates]

Hi All. A quick nudge, since my search continues until all possibilities have been exhausted and we can make a fully conscious decision on what we purchase (if anything): has anybody heard anything regarding the Windchill Access App, please?

[TomU]

To the best of my knowledge the Access app will be released with Windchill 11.0 in December.  Those with heavy or light Windchill licenses will automatically be licensed for it.  Those with existing view/print licenses will not.  New licenses are being developed for a viewer and possibly a contributor.  I believe these are still planned to be offered as concurrent licenses, but nothing is official yet.  For this reason, we are holding off on purchasing any more view/print licenses until the new Access licenses become available.

[acoates]

Great stuff, thanks Tom. I had a look for a Windchill 11 document or a Windchill roadmap but cannot find one quickly online. Does such a document exist?

[cc-2]

Hi Andy,

I am also look at more information about Windchill 11. Like you, as you know, we are in the process of evaluated solutions

Scott told me he will be asking for documentation internally and post those allowed to go public. One I discuss with him was about document management capability.

[acoates]

The cynic in me wonders how forthcoming they will be with information given they'll want to sell (naturally) P&V licences until the bitter end.

[STEVEG]

What is this Windchill Access App?

And regarding Aras...I came across the attached article on Friday then this post today.  Funny how things work out sometimes.

[acoates]

An advertisement, but relevant nonetheless. I was very impressed with Aras Innovator as a platform during my discussions with them; very impressed. If my organization was larger or had been able to see past the small picture of PDM and into what else it could have streamlined then it would have stood a better chance. They have just released an "entry level" licence pack for smaller organisations that comes with the normally free upgrade as a paid option when required. Ultimately, over ten years, it would just be to expensive for us at this point in time. If I was starting from scratch I would strongly consider basing my business processes on it.