Techsoft Model Search

We are using it and I do recommend it.  For me it is still a little premature to say if we highly recommend it or mildly recommend it.  It does some things very well, and other things not so well.  Overall though I would say it is good software. 

Positive:

• Excellent integration into BOTH Creo and Windchill.
• Very easy to use for basic similarity searches.
• Great to quickly model (in Creo) or modify an existing part to see if there is something else in your database.
• Good support, even though there is a significant time difference for US customers.
• Continuously improving the software
• An excellent semi-automatic compare function for different models.  This is good even if you are not trying to search my similar model.

Negative:

• Poor filtering options (they are currently pretty clunky) if you want to refine your search.  I very much hope they improve the attribute searches for filtering down results.  In my estimation this is one of the biggest weaknesses, but oddly enough seemingly not hard to fix because they could use out of the box windchill functionality to further filter down the results.
• No way to export the search results to excel or something similar (we paid them a reasonable cost to do something custom for us...but this should really be part of the software).
• Certain controls are given to the admin which should be controlled by the user.  Based on my feedback, they will be changing some of this.
• If your tolerances are very tight there can be some rounding errors that are introduced going from metric to English units.  They might be correcting this in the next version.

I looked at many different software packages to do 3D Searching and according to our criteria this one was the winner.  It was actually the winner without considering that it was actually significantly less less expensive then other similar software.

My recommendation is if you thinking about the software and one of these is a deal breaker, let them know.  They actually improved the software in order to help win our business, and both them and we benefited from it.

I agree and in addition to @LawrenceS  comments:

The software once installed and configured works well, it does take a little getting used to.   The biggest negative for me is in the administration of it.   It is clunky and not intuitive at all.

We have been using ModelSearch for around 9 months and have yet to take full advantage of it.  Some of the engineers like it and use it, others ignore it.

Hi Natem,

you can check our Youtube channel.

We have a playlist there which show some of the functionalities:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0gNhbCypwR8&list=PL39unfPJfbuPNZzHiMVZl68ZDENAXVZBT

Let me know if you need additional information.

Just send my an email to

Hi Natem,

Our Engineers have experience and would be happy to provide a demonstration of the software. Do you think you're at that point yet or are you still exploring the benefits and capabilities?