I guess that depends on wich software - I have no experience with their Windchill enterprise PDM software, but their mainstream CAD tool is absolutely first-rate. I used it for 14 years and loved the hell out of it.
I used to hear that the company had bet everything on Windchill to the extent that the CAD development suffered, but they just won a big contract with EADS.
According to PTC sales, their software is the best thing since sliced bread and there isn't anything that it can't do (but strangely enough it never took hold in the auto industry). They also suggest that the sale of PTC is the deal of the century and shouldn't be passed up.
(Yes, I'm being sarcastic. A mild slam against their "aggressive" sales people.)
Their sales people were really obnoxious back in the day, but when Solidworks started stealing food from their plate they lightened up quite a bit.
One of the things they used to do was to hire these macho muscle dudes for their sales force. These guys were friggin' monsters, and yes, the purpose was to intimidate.
As far as their penetration into the automotive market, I had a friend at Ford who says they had 100 seats or so for powertrain development when they went with I-Deas many years ago. Toyota also supposedly still uses it for powertrain.
I'm still curious as to why they would want to sell the business.
The board just raised the golden parachutes for 5 of the top execs if PTC gets bought.
Acciardi, PTC did not initially develop Windchill internally. Windchill Technologies, owned by Jim Heppleman, was financed by Computervision. So, when CV was bought by PTC, along came Heppleman and Windchill. From my unerstanding, PTC wasn't even aware of what Windchill was when they bought CV, other than an entry in the finance books.
Yes, Toyota uses Pro/E for powertrain development and TRD uses it for all their work.
"Wildfires are dangerous, hard to control, and economically catastrophic."
I guess it depends on what you use it for. We tend to make the same kinds of parts over and over again. Castings and plastic parts etc, no freeform or surfacing work at all. Pro is very good at part families and automating common design tasks, and it's ability to duplicate and reuse design data is very impressive - something that is nearly impossible with NX/TcEng.
Have you used the Cloning functionality? It is absolutely dreadful. Even our Seimens contacts have acknowledged that they need to do a lot of work in that area. Save As isn't much better, as it always gets the WAVE parents wrong. And having to fumble through a maze of Load Options, Revision Rules, interop with I-Deas JT files, multi-site issues, etc makes me pull my hair out.
As usual, your mileage may vary. I have no major beefs with the modeling end of NX, but the data manager doesn't manage the data. The user has to.
Ah yes, all valid points which are completely irrelevant to my workflow. I admint I must have killed a whole day trying to re-name a component, and getting blank stares from co-workers. It ultimately proved un-doable without an act of god or governmental budget. I do use cloning regularly, but then the proe equivilent wasnt so much better or worse for my uses.
As much as NX automates, to asist and accelerate the design process, it is perfectly horrid in its slowness. I might truly die of boredom. To be fair, wildfire was trying to emulate that 'feature', which was the primary factor in everyone I knew switching back to 2001.
Then there is the inter-part modeling, an afterthought in nx, a fundemental concept elsewhere in the cad world, for better or worse. And another thing, that nasty sketcher! Oh, I can complain....
All told though, I'm much happier with the modeling freedoms of NX.
I think everyone has horror stories to tell about how CAD nearly drove them out onto the ledge.
I'm so old that I started my career on the drafting board, and I can't believe they built the pyramids, put people on the moon and designed jumbo jets using pretty much the same technology.
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