DEVELOP3D - Technology for the product lifecycle

Carestream Health, a medical and dental imaging, molecular imaging and non-destructive testing product specialist, has selected Aras Innovator suite to replace an “outdated and highly customized implementation of Dassault’s Enovia MatrixOne and a collection of third party and internal legacy systems.” Aras, if you’re unfamiliar with the name, is one of the first vendors to base their business on an open source model in the PLM field.

The new system will provide Carestream Health with “advanced PLM functionality and a modern Microsoft-based platform for global product development and supply chain integration for improved collaboration.” According to the details due tomorrow, Carestream will be implementing Aras’s tools in a phased approach as it’s rolled out to support 3,000 global users and supporting suppliers spread across in the US, Canada, China, Israel and France. The press release which we got an early copy of, has two intriguing quotes from Carestream executives.

“We wanted a single enterprise PLM backbone for engineering, quality and regulatory compliance, tightly integrated with SAP,” said David Sherburne, Leader of Global R&D Effectiveness and champion for this initiative at Carestream Health. “Our legacy platform was built a long time ago and we knew we didn’t have the functionality required for the future; it was time to carefully look at our options. We required a rapidly deployable solution coupled with a sustainable cost model. When compared to other PLM suppliers, Aras offered a solution unique to the industry.”

“We’re a progressive company and we want to work with other forward-thinking companies who can help us eliminate organizational silos and increase collaborative development to achieve a competitive advantage in the marketplace,” said Bruce Leidal, CIO at Carestream Health.  “In switching to Aras we now have a highly capable, global PLM platform that will allow us to consolidate other systems at will, increasing reuse and improving collaboration without continual capital investment in PLM licenses.”

There’s an undercurrent here of a major medical device manufacturer looking at its current PLM system and staring into the distance and the future of its business and seeing that a highly proprietary PLM system that locks it’s user in isn’t in that crystal ball. I’m due to meet the guys from Aras at COFES in April and I’m going to dig into what Aras have to offer and to find out exactly what they mean by Open Source and how it differs from what else is out there on the market.

I remember back in the day before Alias was acquired by Autodesk, the toronto-based company had a tradition of issuing a press release every four years regarding the design of the Olympic Torch. It seems that the Autodesk guys have seen the good PR associated with a global sporting competition and have followed suit. It seems that while the British WInter Olympics hope rest solely with Amy “the Skeleton” Williams and everyone else is greatly amused by the prospect of a Ghanian olympic slalom skiier learning to ski in Milton Keynes hoping that it doesn’t resurrect the ghost of Eddie “the Eagle” Edwards, that the real action is above the spectator’s heads.

StructureCraft Builders, a British Columbian outfit has been using Inventor to develop the rather impressive WoodWave roof for the Richmond Olympic Oval long-track speed skating venue.

Approximately 100 different types of WoodWave panels were involved in the creation of the Olympic Oval roof, each of which is a complex assembly of about 250 parts. Even so, when confronted by the need to change the wave pattern due to a conflict with the sprinkler system, StructureCraft simply altered certain parameters in the model, and each panel automatically adjusted in the Inventor model. “It would have taken weeks to make these types of design changes the old-fashioned way,” said Santiago Diaz, a StructureCraft modeler, “In Inventor software, it took minutes.”

StructureCraft relied on Inventor “to model, detail and build the WoodWave Structural Panel system for the Olympic Oval roof, using a Digital Prototyping process to quickly iterate design options and coordinate the project with subcontractors and project partners. By using Inventor software to clearly communicate the design process to stakeholders, StructureCraft streamlined fabrication of the Olympic Oval roof deck and completed the job on time and on budget.”

For those of us that are looking at the London Olympics with financial horror, I can’t help but wonder if it might be a good idea that those responsible for the inevitable shambles that will be the London event, that they take a look at Inventor and get ‘on budget’ too.

Here’s a video with the team responsible for this quite incredible feat of olympic standard engineering.

As I write this, the final touches are being put to the March edition of DEVELOP3D. The layouts are being tweaked, “it’s” is being changed to “its” and vice versa and it’s looking sweet. What have we got in store for you this month? The answer is a veritable feast.

This month’s cover story centres on Brompton Bicycles, a UK manufacturer with a global market for its legendary folding bicycle. While the story has been expertly crafted by our very own France Corbett, I went along (if you’ll forgive the horrific pun) for the ride. When you’re looking to write a story there are a few things you don’t want to happen. One of them is to walk into a meeting room and the man in charge of design wanders in, somewhat nervously and states “We don’t use much technology.”
But what transpired over the next hour or so is that the Brompton Team not only use 3D CAD (In this case SolidWorks, but they use it in a very holistic manner. Key components of the bike are redesigned to change process, to add strength or new functionality and these are done in SolidWorks. Renderings are done, FEA is conducted, FDM parts are built to verify fit ann function, SLA parts are used for casting prototypes. Jigs and Fixtures are designed in 3D and the same product data is used to generate illustrations for the user and service manuals. For a company that does not use much technology, they certainly know how to ‘not’ use it. Marvellous.

Elsewhere Stephen takes a look at what’s happening on the factory floor with this month’s Product Development Gallery and also visit J Lawson Limited, an expert model maker working on some rather interesting and often highly secretive projects who luckily allowed Stephen into his workshop to show off what he does.

Bob Johnson of DAMT and well known figure on the NAFEMS seminar circuit continues his Engineering Workshop series, continuing on from last month’s peice on unit conversion, with a look at forces, moments and free body diagrams. Personally I love what Bob is doing for us, there’s a wealth of simulation tools out there but many are hesitant to jump on the bandwagon and give it a whirl because they can’t quite correlate the basic fundamentals of engineering and physics with the sometimes cryptic world of simulation. Bob’s here to help.

We’ve also got a few reviews in this issue too. There’s a look at Flownex from Athena-Horizons in the UK which provides a systems level simulation approach for all manner of industries, but one which focusses pretty much on the power generation industry. I get to conclude my three parter looking at Vero Software‘s VISI Series product (VISI for Design and VISI for Manufacture), rounding things out with a look at VISI Flow Finally, there’s a look at Sustainable MInds LCA software which gives you the tools and technology to both discover the environmental impact of your products and redesigns, but can also assist with bringing a greener future for your products when used from the very earliest stage of the development process.
DEVELOP3D for download (either as a PDF or via the iPhone app) and should be mailed out to print subscribers across the globe next week.

News just in courtest of the Core77.com RSS feed, the James Dyson Award for this year has just launched. The Award is an international design award that celebrates, encourages and inspires the next generation of design engineers. It’s run by the James Dyson Foundation, James Dyson’s charitable trust, as part of its mission to inspire young people about design engineering.

What?

Put simply; design something that solves a problem.

The Win?

There will be one International Winner, and one National Winner in each country participating in the James Dyson Award 2010. The prizes the Winners and Finalists will receive include -
International Winner:


• £10,000 for the student or student team

• £10,000 for the student’s university department

• The opportunity to visit the Dyson facilities in either the UK or Malaysia

• A trophy from the James Dyson Foundation

Two International Finalists:


• The opportunity to visit the Dyson facilities in either the UK or Malaysia.

• Certificate of Excellence from James Dyson Foundation

National Winner:


• The opportunity to visit the Dyson facilities in either the UK or Malaysia

• Certificate of Excellence from James Dyson Foundation

Up to nine National Finalists from each country:
Certificate of Excellence from James Dyson Foundation. The James Dyson Award aims to support a large number of students by globally promoting great ideas and recognizing good quality entries.

Who?

The James Dyson Award is open to product design, industrial design and engineering university level students (or graduates within 4 years of graduation) who have studied in the following countries: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Malaysia, New Zealand, Russia, Singapore, Spain, Switzerland, UK and USA.

How?

Entries will be reviewed through a number of stages:

Stage 1: A panel of design and engineering professors and professionals in each of the 17 participating countries.
Stage 2: A panel of Dyson design engineers.
Stage 3: Finally, an international judging panel, comprising high profile designers and engineers, academics and journalists. James Dyson will make the final judgement, informed by the international judges.

There’s more information on the website, found here. And here’s a few details of the project that won last year’s prize:

Right. This is late. Very late. My apologies. The reason for my tardiness is that I’ve been gallivanting about the place the last week or so, but more that that, I’ve been mulling this over for the past two weeks since I left California, adding bits and bobs here and there, wondering how much to speculate (note: much of this is speculation), but I think I’ve got a good handle of what went down in California. I’ve been going to SolidWorks World for the last 11 years apparently. It said so on my badge. I think I missed one in Boston but that was about it. So I’ve been there for all the major announcements, the major shifts, seen the staff change and evolve over the years. But 2010 saw the most dramatic shift for the company in nearly a decade.

SolidWorks have always avoided showing technology too far into the future. That’s always been a good move. When you have 5,000+ people who’s business is based on a core technology, the last thing you want to do is build expectations of things that are a little too far over the horizon. The same is true of users as it is of resellers (SolidWorks World is a bifurcated event, running a reseller conference and user conference in parallel - hence the big attendee numbers).

Bernard comes to play

For 2010, this changed and on the first day of the event, the company took a bold move on two fronts. The first front came when SolidWorks’ CEO, Jeff Ray, after a brief chat with the crowd, moved aside to introduce someone that should have been at the event years ago. Dassault Systems CEO, Bernard Charles. Yup. The mothership landed in Anaheim. For me, this was fundamental shift in how SolidWorks is presenting itself to its community. Since Dassault acquired SolidWorks over a decade ago, there has been a separation of the two organisations. Dassault does its thing with Catia, with Enovia and Delmia (for factory automation and simulation), while SolidWorks does it’s mainstream thing. The two has an incredibly successful relationship based on separation. things started to merge when Dassault acquired Seemage, reinvented the product and integrated it into its 3dvia business line and the SolidWorks channel brought 3dvia Composer to its customers. This was the first public sign that the Dassault and SolidWorks relationship was anything more than a financial one - but it’s clear that this was the starting point.

Bernard talked to the assembled crowd and while I only heard the occasional “Who the **** is this French guy?” it was deemed a success (apparently, some American’s don’t like French people - usually the ones that couldn’t point to France on a map, I’ve found). He discussed the various business groups, how they interacted and what differentiated SolidWorks from Catia. For those used to seeing Bernard present in the context of a Dassault event, the slide stack shown was dramatically reduced. The content was also simplified. As I sat at the back of the auditorium I was trying to work out why - and it quickly became very clear indeed. And this is the second fundamental shift shown at the event.

Following Bernard and over the next few days, SolidWorks showed what they’re working on. Apparently, it’s a three year project that’s been conducted in extreme secrecy. I’ve spoken to someone old friends that now work in development and apparently, this is the team to work on. The guys building out the company’s future products. But what was shown? Let’s deal with that.

The future?

The demonstration was a mix of video and live demo. there were mentions of everything that’s hot at the moment, from Multi-Touch (Josh has some tasty treats on that front), from OS independence (Yup. there was a Mac being used on stage) and that rather hateful phrase “the cloud”. There were demonstrations involving direct modelling mixed up with more traditional modelling methodologies, direct interaction with geometry, live search and reuse for data both within your organisation and out on the web, there was a whole load of things that looked incredible - as you would expect.

But at it’s core, what was shown was that SolidWorks are building their next generation of product using the V6 platform on which Catia, Enovia et al are being built. So what does that mean? Let’s look at it.

The next generation of SolidWorks will use the same underlying base of technology as Dassault’s V6 products. Taking that further, that means the same underlying product design technology as Catia, but alongside this, it means that it’ll also be built on the Enovia platform.

Now. The reactionaries will read this and think “Christ, they’re dumping Parasolid”. Probably. Yes as a core modelling engine. But Parasolid within SolidWorks won’t disappear purely for the sake of being able to read legacy data. But it’s a lot more simply switching kernel and it’s something to embrace and take some time to understand the immense potential for users.

Dassault’s V6 platform is possibly the first time that the data management backbone for a product development system has been so tightly integrated with the authoring tools - not just 3D and 2D design tools, but everything, mechatronics, digital factory, simulation.

At present, there’s a disconnect between the two disciplines across the board. Whether you talk to Dassault about V5, whether it’s SolidWorks and EPDM, whether it’s Siemens and Teamcenter. The 3D tool creates the data, the data system manages those packets of data. Ever linked, but ever separate entities.

Enovia V6 (although having been around for sometime as MatrixOne) is becoming a new wave of tool where that distinction is fundamentally removed. Within V6 everything is managed to a highly granular level. We’re not talking revisions of parts and assemblies, we’re talking live updated and tracking of data to feature and sub-feature level on a massive scale - both in terms ability to handle huge datasets (which are inherent in the granularity), but also in terms of people creating, editing and accessing that data (this was one of the key reasons for the MatrixOne acquisition). Granularity is something I’m going to talk about in coming weeks.. But for now, it’s this granular platform and the way that it interacts is what enable much of what both Dassault are showing with Catia V6 and this past week with the next generation of SolidWorks.

Geometry engine

Alongside this, looking at the demonstrations of the core modelling tools, it’s clear that the SolidWorks R & D team are using the Catia V6 geometry modelling kernel (though I’m not entirely sure it’s a thing that even exists - it’s all mixed together at a very base level). The tools demonstrated for geometry creation and modification, for data search and reuse, match the same shown in V6 demonstrations in terms of capability and focus. What differentiates the two is down to one thing: user experience.

And for me, this is key.

What I believe SolidWorks showed was the next generation of the product and the future for all Dassault products whether that’s Catia, whether that’s SolidWorks. Everything is built on the same core platform, a very powerful platform and one that has huge resources behind it. In the future, what will differentiate the two business groups will be the focus of the business and the user experience.

• The Catia product line will always focus on the strategic user where business process is hand in hand with complexity (relating to product, of teams, of supply chain, etc etc).
• SolidWorks will always continue to focus on the mainstream community, where cost vs functionality reigns supreme.

The user experience will differ between the two. There are different requirements, different tools and capabilities, some of which are unique to each set of users. But for me, the key is that there’s the potential to use technologies from both groups to the benefit of the other. They won’t look or work the same, but they’re converging onto a common technology stack - another key fundamental.

Mixing the tech stack

Take an example discussed this week. Terafugia (we talked about it recently on the blog). These guys are developing a hybrid car/plane (it’s a car AND a plane, not mixing fuel types). The core product, the mechanical design was done with SolidWorks, but when it came time to develop the carbon fibre skins, this was conducted using Catia’s highly specialised tools.

For me, that’s one of the huge reasons that SolidWorks users should be enthused about this shift. Being able to access all of the technologies that exist within the Dassault product range (there’s 190 orso different modules in Catia alone) - whether they’re allowed to remains to be seen, but the potential to make it easy is implement is there.

The Cloud…

I’m trying to avoid the puns. I’m sure there are umpteen of them out there already but in this very instance, the ‘cloud-based’ tools that SolidWorks demonstrated - both in the futures demo and in more immediate tools, ‘the cloud’ was referenced almost to ad naseum. I also believe the definition is something that should be avoided - as should rather hackened analogies with Google Apps.

In this space, “The Cloud” refers to a technology running on a web-server. That’s all. The V6 platform is a server-based architecture.  Your data is stored and served from that server. Whether you’re interacting it with it in a browser-based tool, whether it’s with a thicker client installed on your local workstation (something that might be key for mobile workers or those without higher-bandwidth), or whether you’re doing it through an mobile device. The data is centralised and managed.

The first thing that most people discussed when I asked them about the cloud-based tools shown was “Does that mean I don’t own my own data?” and many seemed uncomfortable with it. No. It doesn’t. Whether you opt for the hosted service (using Amazon’s services for example), whether it’s installed in a privately maintained server from the vendor (Dassault are gearing up for this already) or whether it’s all behind your firewall - it doesn’t really matter. Your organisation will have options. think of it more of “A Cloud”, rather than “The Cloud.” When you do, it becomes far less intimidating.

Pricing?

One interesting thing that was brought up at the event was that the potential to save money is there when you move to a cloud-based, browser-driven environment. Everything is stored on the server. If your client crashes, it’s just the client that goes pop. Not the data. That is a huge time saver and time means money. Another thing to consider is that if these tools are browser data where you’re essentially interacting with data live, your reliance on workstation technology is lessened.

There’s also huge potential for things like simulation and rendering - compute heavy tasks. If you’re working on a server-farm with 100s of core available, you can generate those types of assets immediately and as you need them. Rendering was demonstrated with Luxology’s Nexus engine (the same one powering PhotoView 360) creating photo real images in realtime, on demand. Again, time is money.

Will the tools get cheaper? I very much doubt it. I’d imagine you’ll see a service-based charging structure become the norm. You want to use them? log-in. Buy a license. Away you go. Want your simulation tasks run over 10, 20, 50, 100 cores? You pay for the speed in which you get your results, not the tools you use to create them. Get a job where you require carbon fibre design tools that aren’t in SolidWorks? Log-in, buy the license for the Catia tools and use them. When you don’t need them, switch them off and stop paying for them. What happens if you’ve got your data locked into one vendor’s service, in their own format, in a remote location and you switch it off - this is an interesting thing, but there’s no clear guidance there. I’d imagine read only access would be the default. Otherwise it’s simply not going to fly for users.

Route to market?

But what about the channel? The group of resellers that have built SolidWorks to the point it’s at today? With this new approach, many have asked what their place will be in the grand scheme of things. For me, it’s obvious. They’ll be going nowhere. Yes, business operations have changed, but a product like SolidWorks needs to be sold to people and supported. For me, a cloud-based approach will mean even more engagement with both existing customers and new alike. The technology changes afoot will mean that now, more than ever, having some local to talk to, a group of people to support your workhorse tools, will be more relevant than ever before. Yes, the delivery mechanism might change, but the need to interact both during investment, implementation and use will be more critical than ever. Some people have rather loudly been questioning the Value-Add part of the VAR acronym, but with everything that’s coming, that value will be more justifiable than ever before and more needed by users.

A few final thoughts - on change and on fear

The things discussed where represent a brave move by the company. And it could have backfired in spectacular fashion. The combination of bringing Bernard of stage, talking about how the companies would be working together more closely - alongside a pretty groundbreaking demo of future technology could have gone horribly wrong and for many other vendors, probably would have.

But as far as I can see, it didn’t - a very difficult job, executed almost perfectly.

Let’s cut to the chase. SolidWorks is now over a decade old. We’ve all seen what happens once software reaches a certain age - it starts to clunk, look clunky and perform in a clunky manner. While fixing that code becomes a herculean task, it’s an even braver decision to build something new, built on new technologies.

That’s what Dassault did with V5 and now with V6. Yes, it causes problems with older generation systems hanging on, something that’s plagued Dassault for nearly a decade, but change has to happen. It’s often painful, but the results can be rewarding.

What you have here is that, finally, after it’s been talked about in hushed tones for years, is that core Dassault team and the SolidWorks team are working together. Both have very different requirements from their users and market and the resultant product will always been different to a larger extent.

Do I see a day where it’s all CatiaWorks or some new product? Probably not. Do I see a day were users in both communities are using tools where the influence of both sides of the fence, the strategic vs the mainstream, feed each other to create a set of tools that suit their use case and benefit from each other? Absolutely.

Can a web-based, served architecture support that cross pollination? Absolutely. Have SolidWorks users got a bunch of tools that, in their shear power, have the potential to blow their minds. I can almost guarantee it. I’ve been covering Dassault and Catia for long enough to know that while they don’t like to talk about product and what Catia can do, the thing is quite simply breathtaking in what it can achieve and the limits it can push in terms of what can be done to capture a product, in a digital, in the most holistic manner.

The coming years are going to be one of transition for SolidWorks and it’s users (as it will for the IT world in general) and I’m sure when it settles, many will be asking all manner of questions and queries about what’s coming. There’s also the fact that change often causes fear, particularly if you’re talking about technology products that are a core part of many many organisations daily processes and workflows. But if you’re a SolidWorks user, don’t be afraid. Be Excited. Because when this stuff comes to market, it’s going to be incredible. But the path between then and now is going to be rocky. But sometimes, rocky is fun.

Also note, as I said at the outset. Much of this is speculation, particularly the geometry engine parts. SolidWorks’ team wouldn’t be drawn on the subject and with this being a futures project, things could change. But I think I’m about there with what’s happening, why and how. The only questions are these. When? And are you ready?

Jim Heppelmann, President & COO

PTC just held their Annual Media and Analyst day in a rather chilly Boston. It’s something I’ve been hopping over the pond for, for a couple of years and while many of the other press don’t seem to find much value in what they hear, there’s always something of value to bring back and talk about - as well as getting an insight into what’s coming in the next twelve months. So. What was discussed? In short, one thing. PLM. And how PTC seem to be rather annoyed that they’re not being given the credit as the leader of the industry. With the event’s tagline being “Conquering PLM,” I should have expected it, but the force of conviction with which the executives seem more than a little aggrieved was quite surprising

Conquering PLM means “getting credit for being the clear leader” - in Q1 2010, PTC saw 137% license growth in PLM versus last year with 30% growth over the full year as a projection (it should be noted that the previous year saw PTC’s PLM revenues had been down by 25% a year earlier, making for a relatively easy basis of comparison and hence the strong growth).

The key points discussed were that PLM has ‘come of age’ with a greater number of companies looking at building their infrastructure for the future, which has the knock on effect of building up PTC’s license growth. What’s interesting is that the trend appears to be design platform agnostic - there seems to be a lot of companies adopting Windchill-based products that aren’t initially part of the existing PTC user community - As Jim Heppelmann, Chairman and Chief Operating Officer at PTC said at the event “These aren’t existing customers that we sold more stuff to” quoting EADS, Nokia, GE, IKEA. He continued that “People that started with somebody else’s product and switched to ours somewhere along the way. Every time we announce that a big customer switched, it makes it easier to convince the next big customer to switch.” Heppelmann refers to this as the domino effect and keeps this separate from sales into existing customers (citing the John Deere deal).

I also got to sit down briefly with heppelmann and talk through both some of the subjects and product directions discussed at the event and also how he views his competition. There’s one thing to realise with PTC and it’s executives. They rarely ever pull their punches, so here’s a straight transcript of what we discussed. Enjoy. Then we’ll get back to what we discussed with regards PTC’s plans for the year ahead.

On Dassault

I think Dassault has two mistakes and Siemens might have another couple. One mistake that Dassault keeps making is that they keep switching strategies. Every time they switch strategies they piss off customers and start over. They keep starting over and every time they do, we’re years farther ahead. If they’d stayed committed to SmarTeam, they probably would have been more competitive. They put years of development into SmarTeam and they threw that all away. And now they’re picking up MatrixOne and that’s an old tired product and they have to do a lot of development to make that competitive. I’m not even sure they know how to do this.

So the second thing is that Dassault are very arrogant. People used to say PTC was arrogant in the 1990s. I made the joke today, “How do you get rid of a PTC sales rep? Buy something.” But Dassault is very arrogant right now and they’re treating their customers badly at a time when customers are starting to question if Dassault is a worthy partner. So there are a lot of customers that are exasperated with Dassault, they’re saying “Your technology doesn’t work, you make huge promises and never deliver on them and in the meantime, you’re pushing us around.” They’ve forcing them to use V6, use a closed system. Customers don’t like it.

On Siemens PLM

Siemens I think is a better quality company but they to shifted strategy, when they put Metaphase and iMan together they declared it Teamcenter. Our CEO likes to say “On Friday afternoon, it was Metaphase and iMan, on monday morning, it became Teamcenter Enterprise and Teamcenter Engineering” and they pretended for years that this was OK, we used to say to customers “There’s no centre in Teamcenter” and sure enough, they’d look and realise we were right. The name implies there’s a centre and it turns out there isn’t one. Now there is with Teamcenter Unified. Think about that name. A Teamcenter shouldn’t have to be Unified, should it? Think about it.

To call it Unified is to finally admit five years of wrong doing because you said it was one product when it wasn’t - this time they’re saying “Ok. Really. NOW it’s Unified.” So they lost years and now half their customer base is screwed and they’re mad.

The other thing is that it’s not an advantage to be part of Siemens. It’s not an advantage for a PLM software company to be part of a 100 billion dollar german manufacturing company. It sinks. When was the last time you saw a press release? That’s because to get one out, you need to get up the management chain. And the people at the top of the chain don’t want to waste their press release on CAD and PLM deals. They want to talk about winning nuclear power plant contracts. It’s like having one hand behind your back. They don’t want to invest in the business and I’d say the reason they did the acquisition in the first place was bullshit.

Think about it.

Why did Siemens Automation buy UGS? I’ll tell you the theory. The Siemens Automation guys sell Factory Automation, PLC, Controllers, that kind of thing and they said “We’ll be able to link these two things together. If you own Unigraphics CAD PLM, then you’ll want to buy Siemens Factory Automation and vice versa.” The day I heard that, I thought “What are they talking about? It’s ridiculous.” Because in fact what customers what to do is snip that link. They want to design anywhere, build anywhere. They want to be able to move development and production, from in house to outsourcing. They don’t want that at all. And Siemens had this different story that made no sense, so because it made no sense, it hasn’t been working. Have you ever heard of a company that bought Unigraphics because they’re a Siemens Automation customer? Of course not. They paid a lot of money to buy a company on a premise that I thought was absurd to begin with and its proved to be. They’re now in a situation where Siemens doesn’t even know why it bought UGS - they bought it for a reason, the reason proved to be untrue - now they don’t have a lot of passion about it. Does Siemens’ CEO wake up in the morning worrying about PLM and CAE? He’s can’t even remember what it means. At PTC it’s our lifeblood and we worry about this stuff all day long, we’re passionate about it, we’re competing like hell.

On Cloud Computing

Clouds are made of vapour. People have spinned it out of control. It’s just another way to deliver software. If it works they’ll buy it. If it doesn’t work, they won’t buy it. That’s why most people aren’t buying it.Part of it’s emotional, part of its technical but people are saying “It would be great if I didn’t have to install any software or worry about and I was instantly in production but if it means it takes an extra 30 minutes to download an assembly I want nothing to do with it. If it means there’s a chance my data might get compromised by my competitor, I want nothing to do with it.” Those are real problems.

If you’re in a big company and you have 50 applications in your data centre and you put one in the cloud - nothing changes. It’s not like suddenly your whole IT department is super productive, because you’ve got the other 49 applications - can you put those on the cloud? No. Probably not. I just think this whole cloud thing is blow so out of control. It’s like SaaS, SOA - It’s all magic pixie dust to solve all of our problems when it’s really just… tools. Sometimes they work, sometimes they don’t.

On Arbortext and Service Information Solutions

I think we have an opportunity to reinvent how after market service is done and I’m very excited and personally drove this change to start thinking about more efficient ways to create manuals. And to start thinking about more efficient ways to do service processes. We realised that manuals aren’t efficient in the first place. If you develop something to make something more efficient that’s not efficient in the first place, what do you gain?

Note: It’s clear from the event that PTC are working on something new for the technical publications space. The developments centre around taking PTC’s existing Arbotext and Isodraw products and combining them to a web-based delivery mechanism which they’re referring to as Service Information Solutions. Alongside this, there’s also work on a new product that combines the companies expertise in the field with Isodraw (which targets technical illustration) and PTC’s ProductView lightweight visualisation technology into a new product, codenamed Galaxy. I’m guessing that there will be more details at the PTC/User in June.

On ProductPoint

Last year’s event was all about the release of PTC’s ProductPoint system which takes lessons learned with Windchill, combines it with SharePoint to create a data management and collaboration environment - or to use PTC’s words, Social Product Development. I asked Heppelmann about how ProductPoint was performing in the year since it’s launch.

We had a goal to sell it to 100 companies in the first year. We did 140. Our goal is 300 for this year. In the first quarter of this year we did about a 100, so we’re headed for that goal and probably tracking at 400. So I think it’s doing well and we’re selling it to small and medium sized companies, so the orders are much smaller than with Windchill. So from an activity and pipeline standpoint it’s doing very well. From a revenue standpoint, it’s not yet that important because it tends to be small deals because that’s what we designed it for.So I think it becomes important as we get much bigger volumes and as we penetrate the SolidWorks and Inventor base with it. I think the SolidWorks base would be pretty interested to have a SharePoint-based simple sexy product for doing PLM - as opposed to Dassault telling them they’ve got to use MatrixOne which is a very old technology. V6? It’s like V32. It’s an old product and it’s a failed product.

What about Pro/Engineer?

There was very little discussion of Pro/Engineer. With the Pro/E release cycle now around the 24 month period and last year’s activity around the release of WIldfire 5.0, this was to be expected. I did manage to catch up with Brian Shepherd who heads up the development effort and we quickly discussed the Wildfire 6.0 release. While there will be the usual enhancements, the key feature set that people are interested in comes from the merging of the CoCreate direct modelling technology within Pro/Engineer. While Brian admitted that CoCreate users are a loyal bunch, the team is looking to combine the toolsets to offer them a compelling reason to make the leap. What I also found interesting was his comments about the benefits of using Pro/Engineer geometry kernel as the basis for direct modelling. Products like CoCreate operate within very specific topological limits (ie: it doesn’t handle them well). According to Shepherd Pro/Engineer’s geometry kernel handles topology changes in a much more robust manner - looks interesting and I’m sure we’ll learn more later this year.

Few final thoughts

PLM is a business concept that’s gaining traction. We know this from talking to our readers. Products are increasingly complex, processes are increasingly complex, supply chains are increasingly complex - across all industry sectors. In the last few months PTC has announced some pretty major deals for Windchill that has seen their revenues swell in that sector - I seem to recall that last year’s poorer financial results were the result of delayed orders so they’ve now moved into this financial period (hence the massive growth).

But alongside all of the posturing around PLM, for me, the most interesting news out of the event was the work the company is doing in the technical service information field. Most other vendors seem to ignore it or have point solutions (Dassault/SolidWorks has 3DVia Composer and Autodesk is previewing it’s technical publications technology) that focus on the illustration side of things. But the facts are that the illustration portion is a small component of a very complex process. At the event, a gentleman from Komatsu, a mining and construction equipment manufacturer, went through the result of their transition from FrameMaker based process to an Arbortext and Isodraw-based approach. They’re expecting to save 50% saving in translation costs (bear in mind that the addition of Spanish translations of their manuals cost in excess of $1 million), removing outsourced illustrations (which cost over $120,000 per year) and a reduction in cycle time across the board and repetition of work. That’s a pretty compelling pitch to management to invest in a technology that fits a need, reduces a serious financial outlay and adds value. For me, that’s were the action will be in the coming year. Let’s see what comes of it.

“Cocoon” - winner of Electrolux Design Lab 2009, by Rickard Hederstierna, Sweden

Electrolux, always keen to foster greater interest in industrial design, has just launched it’s design competition for this year. Here’s the skinny:

The Brief

Electrolux Design Lab 2010 invites global undergraduate and graduate industrial design students to create home appliances that consider shrinking domestic spaces. Your ideas will shape how people prepare and store food, wash clothes, and do dishes in the homes of 2050 when 74% (according to the UN) of the world’s population are predicted to live in an urban environment.  Growing populations living in concentrated areas dictate a need for greater space efficiency. This year, special consideration will be given to designers that submit a design within the context of a range or suite of solutions/appliances. Your design ideas should address key consumer requirements; being green, adaptive to time and space, and allowing for individualization.

What’s the prize?

1st prize: €5,000 + 6 months’ paid internship at an Electrolux global design center.
2nd prize: €3,000

3rd prize: €2,000

Where?

Here - http://www.electroluxdesignlab.com/category/design-lab-2010-competition/

When?

Applicant registration and submissions will be accepted through May 1, 2010

Any more?

Yeah - Video of the Design Brief below and there’s more details here.