Once a quarter, corporations owned by shareholders must report their financial results and report on anything that might effect their share price significantly. The corporations hold conference calls with financial analysts, who want to learn more about what the results mean and how the corporation is doing in the marketplace.
These calls used to be held in secret, but then gross financial mismanagement caused governments to demand the calls be made public. You can listen in on them, but I find it easier to read the transcript provided by firms like Seeking Alpha. The transcript is, unfortunately, not always accurate, but good enough to hear executives sometimes telling the analysts things they would never tell customers.
The calls are a tug-of-war between analysts and corporation executives. The analysts want more information, while the executives strive to minimize what they reveal. Often an analyst will ask executives for "a bit more color on this."
Jay Vleeschhouwer is a financial analyst with Griffin Securities and has the rare ability to understand the CAD market; most financial analysts don't. And so his questions are more interesting than most.
On January 23, 2019 PTC held their conference call to report on their Q1 (first quarter of fiscal year 2019) results. During the Q&A portion of the call, Mr Vleeschhouwer asks if PTC is seeing one package of its varied software -- in areas like IoT, AR, PLM, SLM, and CAD -- getting customers to purchase in the other areas.
His question is direct; the response from PTC ceo Jim Heppelmann is nuanced. As a word of explanation, PTC is very proud that BMW licensed some of their software for one specific aspect of automobile design, and so BMW gets mentioned frequently in PTC conference calls.
Read, and enjoy the dance.
Jay Vleeschhouwer: Are you able to discern any influence of the momentum you're seeing in IoT [Internet of things] on the CAD or Windchill [PLM]businesses? I recognize that CAD is doing well, but that could be specific to what's going on in that market.
Are you seeing any direct link to suggest that the lifecycle management strategy that you've articulated is in fact working and generating incremental business by pulling through more Creo [CAD software] or more Windchill or perhaps even more SLM [service lifecycle management software] -- that you're solving broken tool chains and driving business that way?
Jim Heppelmann: I'd say definitely influence, maybe a little softer on cross-sell.
I think that companies, like say BMW, see PTC as the BMW of our marketplace, because we have great products, great technology, and they know they can turn to us for PLM, for IoT, for AR [augmented reality].
In the case of BMW, there is a Vuforia [augmented reality software] project. In parallel, the ThingWorx [IoT software] project is going on, and we're winning PLM deals. So I think that package has positioned us very nicely.
Now, if I said they bought Windchill because of Vuforia or ThingWorx I'm not sure that's true. But I think that they see us as a provider of a very good package of technologies that make sense together.
You know we have a sizable PLM implementation at Huawei and they have begun what fundamentally is an IoT project. Huawei did not really get the connection between PLM and IoT, and of course we went in and sold that hard, and then walked out with a very nice IoT deal with a re-commitment to PLM and to more CAD business. So certainly the package is starting to make a lot of sense to people.
Another thing that's happening is that they're starting to say, "Hey, maybe what I use in the factory and what I use with my products ought to be the same platform. PTC, help me understand the advantages of moving data back and forth and so forth."
I don't think we're really cross-selling, but I think with our major accounts we're positioning ourselves as having a really important and powerful portfolio of technologies.
If you're an industrial company and you want to do digital transformation, we can help you change your products, we can help you change your production and service processes,. We can actually help you change the productivity of your workers in your factories and out on service calls and so forth. That whole digital transformation story I think is one that people are really starting to appreciate.
Australasia BricsCAD Conference, 19 March 2019 in Brisbane, Australia.
It just occurred to me that there may be a need for a book on the history of CADD. You, perhaps in collaboration with your colleagues, might be the best position to preserve this bit of computer history before it slips away forever.
The editor replies: One exists, written by old timer David Weisburg, and is free to read at http://www.cadhistory.net/. He starts in 1969 with M&S Computing but it was last updated in 2008. I could contribute to a version of the history, but I am w-a-y to busy! An entire book alone could be written on my five years at CADalyst magazine, the very first independent magazine in the CAD world.
I recently started a small mechanical design company that develops upgrades and accessories for old woodworking machines. I am currently investigating what 3D CAD system to invest in.
Do you mind sharing your opinion on BricsCAD Mechanical and how it stands compared to more established systems in the mechanical design segment such as Solidworks or Solid Edge? Do you consider it a viable option? Price wise it is roughly 50% compared to the aforementioned, which makes it very attractive for me. The fact that it is available for Linux is also a big plus for me.
Re: What's the price of Catia, really?
[Catia] V5 is excellent, but when Dassault went over to the cloud with Version 6 it became a major pain in terms of moving files out of the Catia system -- as some have noted here. I don't think there is any other software that does NURBS designing like Natural Sketch does.
I really wish I could buy Catia for just BREP modeling, assembly management, and NURBS with a later option for ICEM Surf. I could afford to blow up to $1,500 for just the first three. Alas.
The editor replies: The current trend in CAD features-pricing is that vendors want you to pay a lot of money, for which they will throw in a lot of functions, kind of like buying all of the Full Meal Deals at the fastfood drive-through at once. You end up with a lot of functions you'll never use, unhappily. A la carte is seemingly dead.
Enjoyed reading your article “Three MCAD Programs You've Probably Never Heard Of”. It’s a good reminder of how far we have come.
After transitioning to construction from manufacturing over a decade ago, I haven’t kept tabs on MCAD as much as I had in the past. Do to some recent capital projects in our shop, I recently received a single X_T model exported from Solidworks. I figured I’d need to request a SAT/IGES/DXF tfile to make it usable in our Autodesk-based plant layout. Was pleasantly surprised to see Inventor opened it up, complete with 350 assembly files and 900 part files.
Somewhere we went from file conversion being a major issue to a trivial matter -- likely a result of Autodesk removing their legal team’s protectionist agenda.
PS: Belated congratulations on your 1000th issue. Started in CAD/CAM back in the late 80s/early 90s and your newsletter has spanned most of my career. Your finger on the pulse of the industry has directly contributed to my professional success. Thank you!
Autodesk no longer aggressively changes the DWG format, and so it gave the Open Design Alliance the chance to catch up.
There are numerous private firms working on the 3D file translation problem.
A quick update on last year's developments: a lot has changed in the Shapr3D app's architecture. We are running on Parasolid and D-Cubed now, and licensing HOOPS for data translation.
"I've been going to Apple events since 2001, and have gotten really good at interpreting their invitations. Based on history and the design here, this will be consumer electronics with computational stuff and things made available to the public for purchase at some point."