How Do You Feel About PTC Acquiring CoCreate?

[John Scheffel]

Based on some bad past experiences with PTC I'm not happy about the news that PTC will acquire CoCreate. I thought it would be interesting to post a poll and see how other CoCreate users feel about this news. Anyone viewing this thread can vote, you don't have to be registered or logged in. Feel free to post comments as well.

[tom kirkman]

I was with PTC a long time ago and switched because of their poor service. They recently acquired MathCad, and their service on that was no better.

Hopefully, they will let CoCreate keep up the service they have with out ruining that also.

If I had my choice now, I would find another package. However; we have too much invested currently to make such a change. If they give us a hard enough time with service and support, that will force our hand.

Tom

[ronl]

I recently left Agilent for a smaller company and was able to convince the new company to buy me a seat of OSD (thanks to some nice promotions). I was just about to convert the other ME and buy another seat of OSD and I have to admit the acquisition is giving me some serious second thoughts!

[May Kung]

I'm not sure how to vote. Strategically, it's a good move for PTC. I suspect it also helps CoCreate gain name recognition. While I have never been a customer of PTC, I have been in customer meetings with them where they demo'd their Windchill product. I was less than impressed with their preparedness and willingness to answer questions. They frequently said," You don't need to know that" when asked things regarding supported OSes, hardware, and other apps. My general impression was a company of great arrogance, with a decided "This is our product and you can take what we give you; you have no say in the matter."

We are "officially" a SolidWorks shop now, though OSD is the de facto software many of us still use for all our early design work. I miss working with CoCreate support. I was always pleased with their willingness and ability to help.

[Thom Ivancso]

Well I have to say the news of this was a major shock to us, it came out of nowhere and no one was in the know but the upper management at CoCreate and PTC. This rubbed us the wrong way since we are one of a couple of CoCreate’s largest US/Global customers.

During my days at VDS we were always competing against PTC, and heard horror stories from many a customer on how PTC treated them, then when I was with Pentagon Engineering and they decided to sell both CoCreate and PTC products, even as I stayed with the CoCreate side I got a really good look at the inner workings at PTC and still was not impressed with the way they handled demos and customer service.

PTC has had a long history of acquiring technology and assimilating it in to the PTC landscape (they are the Borg of the MCAD world).

I feel that acquiring CoCreate has less to do with CAD as it does with the new buzz tech PLM. Everyone is jumping on this bandwagon Dassault has bought MatrixOne, Siemens has bought UGS in order to merge TeamCenter PLM with their manufacturing systems and Oracle has bought Agile Software, so it makes sense in a way that PTC which has Windchill which has had almost no successful implementations that I know of since it hit the market and ProItralink ProE PDM, would want a very flexible product such as Model Manager (remember Model Manager still runs off the WorkManager Server which was originally create and sold as a EPM system, and that functionality has never been really removed from the application code stream, the client interfaces have been changed as to not take advantage of it), so you may see at some time a totally new product to replace Windchill, ProItralink and Model Manager using the best of all three code streams.

Look at the big MCAD players Dassault has Catia and Solidworks, Siemens (which just bought UGS) has NX (combination of Unigraphics and SDRC) and SolidEdge, Autodesk has Inventor and AutoCAD. So I see PTC will probably keep both ProE and Modeling separate, also PTC does not have a standalone Drafting application but now with acquiring CoCreate they have a standalone drafting application to help them pull customers looking to leave AutoCAD 2D for a 3D solution.

These statements are only my opinion and time will tell if I am even in the ballpark on any of this.

Cheers,
Thom

[slimer]

WOW! 60% against the sale... not good for everyone!

Pete

[koninkske]

It's all about the money i guess? Why sell a winning horse?

I think in long term companies will feel it in their pockets...... And i wonder what will happen to transparency. Today it's possible to write your own macro's and add them easy. Tomorrow?

I have a bad feeling and if i had the choice i would change. But i haven't so i have to stick with it and see what happens.

Maybe there will be an improvement concerning drawing management.
I hope.

[clausb]

Originally Posted by koninkske

And i wonder what will happen to transparency. Today it's possible to write your own macro's and add them easy. Tomorrow?

PTC stated explicitly and repeatedly that our current products, in particular OneSpace Modeling, will continue to be available, and will be improved and maintained. You can of course choose not to believe any of the official communication, but I don't really see why this acquisition should have any influence on your macros.

Claus (not an official spokesman, of course)

[clausb]

Originally Posted by slimer

WOW! 60% against the sale... not good for everyone!

Hardly surprising, considering how the question was asked: "... based on some bad past experiences with PTC...", "I'm not happy about the news"...

Claus

[Shaba]

I don't want that OSD became like PRO/E and parametric
OSD work great like it is now..