Skip to main content
C
cc-21-Visitor
1-Visitor
February 11, 2015
Question

Windchill vs competition

  • February 11, 2015
  • 14 replies
  • 31517 views

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


    14 replies

    E
    efleischer1-Visitor
    1-Visitor
    February 12, 2015

    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.

    S
    SteveVinyard1-Visitor
    1-Visitor
    February 12, 2015
    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
      S
      SteveVinyard1-Visitor
      1-Visitor
      February 12, 2015
      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
        23-Emerald I
        avillanueva23-Emerald I
        23-Emerald I
        February 12, 2015
        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.
        D
        ddemay1-Visitor
        1-Visitor
        February 12, 2015
        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
        23-Emerald I
        avillanueva23-Emerald I
        23-Emerald I
        February 12, 2015
        How is Aras? Looks promising but stopped following it.
        E
        ehowanice12-Amethyst
        12-Amethyst
        May 8, 2015

        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.

        S
        SteveVinyard1-Visitor
        1-Visitor
        February 12, 2015
        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
        C
        cc-21-VisitorAuthor
        1-Visitor
        February 13, 2015
        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
        I
        imendiola13-Aquamarine
        13-Aquamarine
        February 13, 2015

        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



        J
        JimTVancouverCa1-Visitor
        1-Visitor
        February 13, 2015

        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.

        Show more replies
        Terms & ConditionsCookie settingsAccessibility statement