3D CAD NEWS

The ignoble Pushmi-Pullyu (“push-me pull-you”) is a two-headed beast made famous by the Doctor Doolittle stories of the 19^th Century. The mythical animal is noted for its ability to do either two things at once or struggle to do nothing, and to oscillate between these two extremes. Our 21^st Century CAD equivalent is history-free feature-based 3D modeling. For years a few vendors struggled to gain market share with it (CoCreate and Kubotek come to mind), but suddenly Pushmi-Pullyu CAD has become the rage.

SpaceClaim got way more press than it deserved for its new “natural 3D design system” last year, then PTC embraced its inner pushmi-pullyu by buying CoCreate. Today Siemens PLM Software becomes the latest CAD company to abandon the CAD Reich gospel of parameters uber alles with the introduction of what it calls synchronous technology (as if there is something mysteriously asynchronous about using existing 3D CAD tools; but we digress).

The Pushmi-Pullyu, new mascot of Siemens PLM Solutions

No less an authority on these things than Dr. Ken Versprille, the father of NURBS and resident PLM guru at CPDA, says in a published quote (I’ll bet a dollar he was paid to write), “its ability to recognize current geometry conditions and localize dependencies in real time allows synchronous technology to solve for model changes without the typical replay of the full construction history from the point of edit.”

Ken's quote is a real mouthful, so let us translate for the SolidWorks bloggers among our readership: You don’t have to redraw the damn part to make a single damn change all the damn time anymore. The good doctor goes on to say that “… users will see dramatic performance gains. A 100 times speed improvement could be a conservative estimate.”

Wow! Models 100x faster than with Autodesk Inventor and probably 300x faster than CATIA? Siemens resellers must be doubled over with orgasmic spasms at the mere suggestion of such superior results, especially because this new technology will be added to both NX and Solid Edge. Maybe Solid Edge will actually sell some copies again.

When you get the previous word picture washed out of your mind, let us consider something a bit more serious. CAD pundits (self glamourously included as shown below) refer to the Big Four CAD Vendors: Autodesk, Dassault Systemes, Siemens PLM, and PTC. A year ago not one of these had history-free feature-based modeling; now two do. Not that long ago Autodesk and Dassault entered into a bidding war over Seemage; perhaps SpaceClaim just might survive long enough to be so lucky.

A self-proclaimed Leading CAD Pundit caught in the act of meditating on synchronous technology at COFES 2008.

I always enjoy the part of the annual PTC press/analyst conference when customers take the podium. They tell their story, give honest answers to pointed questions, and seem genuinely happy to be PTC customers. Of course, PTC wouldn't bother to bring in grumpy customers, but that's not my point. A new national study confirms what I see -- customers really like PTC.

The CMO Council, an international organization of marketing executives, issued its annual ranking of customer affinity in the IT industry today. The report, "Customer Affinity Index of the Top 75 IT Brands Ranked by IT Buyer," rates PTC in the top ten. It is the only CAD/PLM company on the list, and PTC outranks such IT leaders as IBM, Microsoft, Dell, and Oracle.

In the research study accompanying the ranking, the CMO Council suggests that customer affinity "surpasses brand awareness as the key predictor of purchasing decisions." The Council says customers seek out companies that best align themselves with the customer's priorities and needs.

The CMO Council conducted qualitative interviews and quantitative surveys of more than 1,500 key stakeholders in all major industries to analyze the interests of IT buyers. The customer affinity index assesses the strength of the customer/vendor relationship based on six key drivers:

• Market understanding and response to needs
• Product or service experience
• Brand perception and reputation
• Communications quality and frequency
• Accessibility and availability of support
• Corporate confidence, trust, and credibility

This blog finds it way too easy at times to have a bit of fun at PTC's expense. It is a company that is willing to be "out there," taking risks and showing a bit of edgyness and personality. It also has more direct competition than any other CAD/PLM company, since their product line scales from one user to 10,000. It is good to see any CAD company be honored by The CMO Council, and not really surprising that PTC is the one they chose.

It is hard for small third-party developers of CAD add-ins to get recognition in the market. Most suffice themselves to be listed in a CAD vendor's directory; some get noticed by resellers or gain sales via word of mouth. To gain attention, they need to be clever and creative. Which may be the right adjectives to describe a new campaign from Etrage, which makes add-in applications for PTC products Pro/ENGINEER Wildfire and Windchill.

This week Etrage announced an IWBIWYBI contest. Pronounced "Eebbie-wibbie," IWBIWYBI is short for "If We build It Will You Buy It?"The contest is a challenge to PTC users to suggest new ideas for third-party applications for Wildfire and Windchill. Applications can be in the areas of engineering automation, data integration, triggers or other Pro/TOOLKIT applications. Etrage will turn one or more of the ideas submitted into new products. Unless the development costs are huge, if your suggestion is selected you'll get the resulting product for free.

Etrage’s Ron Zabilski says PTC users are a varied lot, and their need for custom features are diverse. "Examples range from triggers that activate programs based on conditions that exist in the part, assembly or drawing or control how these models are saved in the PDM system to automatically creating plots or viewable files to large scale engineering automations where companies look for optimizations of designs through automatic feature creation, automatic drawing creation and annotation, and downstream feeds to NC controlled manufacturing systems," Zabilski told us via email in a sentence I doubt he would say in real life without taking a breath or two in the middle.

Some PTC shops are large enough to have in-house development teams who can create custom applications. The majority rely on third party developers like Etrage. "In many cases," notes Zabilski, "the development of these types of projects are complex because they require software development skills in C and C++, as well as knowledge in the underlying CAD and PDM API's."

 

Every time I attend a PTC event or talk to someone from the company, I am amazed at the variety of snappy one-line put-downs about their competition. Several months ago a Wall Street analyst commented on it, noting that he loved being on the quarterly PTC conference call so he could hear all the “colorful color” PTC adds to its commentary. Lines like “There is no center in Teamcenter” roll of the tongue of a PTC employee like Bible verses roll of the tongue of a Sunday School scholar.

Recently I was talking to an executive of a CAD company that competes directly with PTC. I told him that a PTC employee referred to his company as a “just a parts company” that will never succeed with a holistic approach to PLM.

“PTC people must have a class in one-liners to bash the opposition,” I told him. “They come up with so many of them.”

“I used to work at PTC for six years,” my interviewee told me. “They do have a class on that, as a matter of fact.”

Imagine that, a class in how to put down the competition with one-line zingers! What a novel idea.

I wonder where you get a curriculum for teaching people the art of the one-liner. The modern masters of the one-liner have recently passed away. I’m thinking first of Jerry Orbach, who played wise-cracking Detective Lennie Brisco for years on Law & Order after a long career on Broadway.

Jerry Orbach, whose character Det. Briscoe once looked at a corpse in a tuxedo and said, “How convenient, he came dressed for his own funeral.”

And we must not forget the great Rodney Dangerfield, who milked his trademark line “I get no respect” into a 40-year career.  The ‘no respect’ bit was all too true. After starring in and/or writing nine successful feature films, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences denied his request for membership.

Then it dawned on me. PTC CEO Dick Harrison didn’t go to business school; he majored in English Literature at Penn. He must have learned the art of witty repartee while pulling all-nighters on Shakespeare and Swift.

    

Rodney Dangerfield (left) and Dick Harrison: Twins separated at birth, or spiritual kinsmen in a common cause?

 

Today PTC published an open letter to CoCreate customers from CEO Richard “Dick” Harrison, welcoming them to the PTC happy family. Sifting the usual marketing drivel from the interesting stuff, the news seems to be that CoCreate will continue as a product line.



As CEO, Harrison gets first dibbs on all new acquisitions.

Harrison said PTC will:

• Maintain, enhance and further develop all CoCreate products indefinitely, including OneSpace Modeling, OneSpace Drafting, OneSpace Model Manager, OneSpace Drawing Manager, OneSpace Live! and OneSpace.net;
• Continue to offer all CoCreate solutions as stand-alone offerings.
• Integrate CoCreate solutions with complementary PTC solutions (such as the earlier acquisitions from MathCAD, ITEDO, and Arbortext, as well as existing PTC products including Windchill).
• Drop the term “dynamic modeling;” from now on, PTC will refer to CoCreate’s history-free approach as “explicit modeling.”

Also today, a note from Ulrich Mahle, VP Marketing and R&D for the CoCreate division, says that OneSpace 2008 will go to product stabilization and QA after Christmas. He promises the 2008 edition will offer a new approach to creating patterns of user-defined form features, such as sets of faces building a boss or a pocket. Once defined, a form feature can be applied to the model repeatedly. For example, Mahle says, a user could position several instances equally in a circular arrangement. It will also be possible to unshare features from the pattern for individual modifications, and a feature can also be modified and the modification used in other features shared in the pattern definition.

 

Two announcements landed in my inbox this morning. They came from two different vendors, but they carried the same underlying message: Despite the catcalls from many in the CAD media, and despite the mocking from Autodesk, product lifecycle management (PLM) software isn’t shuffling off into the sunset anytime soon. So, 3D CAD News finds it necessary to announce that the reports of PLM’s demise are greatly exaggerated. But we do believe the industry could use a little help with its collective image.

First, the reports from the inbox. PTC (a company that could use a little good news) says Samsung SDI, a division of the global electronics conglomerate, has deployed Windchill as its enterprise-wide PLM system. Siemens PLM Software, (nee UGS), announces that Burgmann Industries GmbH, a leading manufacturer of seals, is standardizing on Solid Edge CAD and Teamcenter PLM.

These two announcement, from manufacturers with two very different product lines, and many like them, are a regular reminder to us that manufacturers—particularly firms with more than 100 engineering seats—really do want the “single source for all product and process knowledge,” that PLM offers. The newer solutions, like PTC’s Windchill and the latest version of Teamcenter, use modern technologies and are much simpler to install and maintain than previous generations of PLM. The smaller PLM vendors are starting to sell Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), web-based PLM, and the big guys are hot on their heels. Why is PLM viable? Why is it a multi-billion dollar industry with good growth prospects? Consider is quote from the Siemens press release. “To convert development from 2D to 3D, we considered and tested solutions from several providers,” said Daniel Ketterer, project manager for Global Technology Management at Burgmann Industries. “During the testing phase, we were sold on the simple derivation option from 3D to 2D constructions offered by Solid Edge. We develop our seals in 3D, but most customers want to see the constructions in 2D. With the automatic 2D derivation, we are able to tighten our cycle times and optimise delivery times and costs in order to carry out our development processes more efficiently.”

The boom in mechatronics—the combination of mechanical and electronic design—opens up a particularly vein of opportunity for PLM vendors to mine in the coming years.  The Samsung deal is one such example.

Perhaps PLM suffers from an image problem. After all, it is hard to get warm and fuzzy with a database that offers to give a manufacturing enterprise a single source of truth. So, in the spirit of what we do best here at 3D CAD Blog, we offer a few modest suggestions.

A global firm like Siemens PLM needs an image recognized all over the planet to sell their software as “a single source of truth.” Perhaps Siemens could commission themselves a PLM theme song such as “No PLM No Cry” and license the tune from the Bob Marley estate.  

“In me rasta heart I say, PLM de only true way.”

PTC needs a particularly American image, one that stands for speaking truth to power (a real makeover), such as former slave and abolitionist Sojourner Truth. We doubt her fund-raising motto of “I sell the shadow to support the substance” will go over well as a way to promote Windchill. Consider this one a work in progress.

“Am I not a fellow engineer? Do I not also deserve the efficiencies of PLM as my birthright?”

Only a few miles separate the Venus de Milo from the front door of Dassault Systèmes, which makes this long-standing symbol of one artistic source of truth a possible marketing image for the French PLM vendor.

“The missing parts of our vision of PLM beauty will be along shortly.”

[Editor’s Note: This is about PLM. Please refrain from yawning.]

It is a dog-eat-dog world, they say, so today your economic geography lesson is about the portion of that world known as PLM. Some of the inhabitants are names familiar to CAD users, including Dassault Systèmes, UGS (now Siemens PLM Software), and PTC. There are other inhabitants, like Agile Software which is currently being eaten alive—pardon me, acquired—by Oracle. And there are smaller players like ARAS Software and Arena Solutions (the former BOM.COM). And then there is SAP. (Autodesk is considered by professional analysts as a PLM firm, but in this dog-eat-dog world Autodesk is a cat and refuses to acknowledge the dogs.)

Oracle takes a $495 million liking to Agile.

Look at total revenue and you realize quickly that Oracle and SAP are the true big dogs of the territory. The CAD firms are Chihuahuas nervously treading beneath the feet of Irish Wolf Hounds. Thus we must pause and note when one of these big dogs marks his territory. That’s what SAP did today in announcing its PLM road map.

Over at CADCAMNet I’ll do a more complete (competitive analysis and all that), less doggy explanation of what SAP has in mind, but here we cut to the chase. Here’s what SAP will do to make you sit, roll over, and beg:

2008 (Sit): Simplify the SAP PLM user interface with role-based presentations.

2009 (Roll Over): Offer a “new enhancement package” for the bean-counters to ram down engineering’s throat.

2010 (Beg): Assimilation of real-world information such as RFID data.

[Editor’s Note: The prohibition against yawning is now lifted.]

We tried to get everybody together for a portrait, but only SAP and Dassault Systemes showed up.

Yesterday we told you that GE Leasing has filed a federal civil suit based on RICO anti-racketeering laws against PTC, alleging years of fraudulent software sales in Japan that cost GE $47 million. (See GE Capital Accuses PTC of Mobster Behavior in Japan.) Today PTC issued a statement denying it all.

The statement says PTC “intends to defend itself vigorously against claims made by GE Capital Leasing Corporation (“GELC”) in a lawsuit filed August 2, 2007. PTC’s review has found no basis for GELC’s claims.”

Speaking for the company, CFO Neil Moses says, "We deny that PTC is somehow responsible for GELC’s alleged losses. We are surprised that GELC has brought this claim against PTC and believe GELC’s claims are without merit."

Neil Moses goes on the offensive for his beloved PTC

GELC claims that an employee of Toshiba Corporation fraudulently induced GELC to provide over $60 million in financing for purchases of third party products, including PTC software, during the period from 2003 to 2006. All of these alleged transactions occurred in Japan. GELC alleges that PTC was involved. GELC claims damages of $47 million and is seeking three times that amount ($141 million).

GE Leasing intends to put some serious firepower behind its accusations.

This is a case of really big guns (GE Leasing) against your ordinary everyday big guns (PTC). If it were up to the lawyers for each side, the dispute would drag on for years until they could all buy Aruba and retire. But now that GE Leasing has made a federal case out of it, things will get settled pretty quickly. Federal court judges, by and large, don’t want stuff like this clogging up the docket.

“RICO, Smeeko. I want this settled now!”

It seems the axiom “when it rains, it pours” also applies to acid rain—at least for PTC. We reported recently on their missteps in the marketplace and the resulting spanking at the hands of the stock market. Now it seems PTC is accused of faking sales in Japan.

GE Capital Leasing Corp. is suing PTC for $141 million, alleging fraudulent purchases and deliveries of software in Japan. The complaint alleges that PTC committed fraud, made negligent misrepresentations, and violated the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act. That’s the same body of law used to put mobsters behind bars. Pretty serious stuff.

When RICO calls, you always listen.  

As the Boston Globe reports:

The saga allegedly began in 2003, when GE Capital Leasing agreed to finance electronics company Toshiba's purchase of software made by a company called Japan Novel, according to the complaint. An employee at Toshiba returned the software and used the money to pay for an earlier software purchase from PTC that had been made without his company's approval, the complaint said. Fraudulent transactions allegedly occurred 10 other times, ending in April 2006.

"For more than three years PTC participated in a scheme to defraud GELC by faking numerous large sales and deliveries of its CAD software to Toshiba while knowing and concealing from GELC that Toshiba had not authorized any of these large purchases," the lawsuit stated.

“PTC pretended to sell a lot of valuable equipment to Toshiba and induced GE to send the money for it," [said John Markham, lawyer for GE Capital Leasing.] "It turns out many of these supposed sales—according to the complaint—were not actually made, but GE paid the money."

PTC President "Rocco" Harrison
carefully ponders the company's next move.  

Full details on Thursday in CADCAMNet

Related items in 3D CAD News:

PTC: Execution Begins at Home

PTC: Thin Skins, Soft Hearts

 

I got a call a few minutes ago from a kindly PTC employee. She was concerned by our recent coverage of PTC's most recent financial report. (See "PTC: Execution Begins at Home.") While she could not fault our facts, our conclusions were troublesome. And she thought that perhaps we were blaming the rank-and-file employees at PTC for the company's current weak performance.

So, for the record, let's be clear about our haughty contempt. The Editorial We blame senior management and only senior mangement for neglecting to see what went wrong until it was too late to do anything about it. It's a chain of command thing, as my nephew the deputy sheriff likes to say. If you think we are cranky here, just wait until you read CADCAMNet's coverage of PTC's quarterly report ("PTC Responds to Lackluster Quarter with 200 Layoffs and a Tax Maneuver.")

And since those few individuals are too important to read drivel like this, we close with today's news photo.

PTC CEO Dick Harrison finally notices things aren't going so well.