RE: [SLUG] Re: OT - CAD vendors advising customers to outsource--outsourcing works, when limited

From: Ken Elliott (kelliott4@tampabay.rr.com)
Date: Fri Oct 29 2004 - 17:49:01 EDT


>>Outsourcing is here. Fighting it does no good.

Fighting it is *exactly* what we should do.
Not by passing laws, of dumb things like that. But through increased
productivity.
We have to earn our higher pay. To say we can't compete means we might as
well roll over.

>>While that _is_ its forte, it is applicable to aspects of _both_ civil
>>and electrical, where appropriate.

Civil engineering on Pro/E? That's pretty funny.

Pro/E is strong in machine design only. That's what it's designed for.
AutoCAD is a joke in that field, compared to Pro/E - Agreed. But Pro/E
would be a joke to a Civil engineer, Architect, and for GIS. AutoCAD can be
a platform for all of these, and that's why it's like a Swiss Army Knife.
But if you compare AutoCAD to ANY specialized app, it loses. Just like a
Swiss Army knife is not as good as a screwdriver. But that doesn't mean
AutoCAD sucks, it means it's a different type of tool. I did CAD/CAM/GIS
consulting for 15 years. Every product has its place.

Example" Compare Pro/E to Rhino for car body design. Rhino blows it away.
Rhino is fantastic - like modeling clay on a PC. Pro/E simply can't do that
class of surfaces. BTW, Rhino is $795, easy to learn, and runs on a PC.
Pro/E is several thousands and takes months to become productive.

http://www.rhino3d.com

>>It's not getting its "butt kicked" by competitors.

I disagree. They've been losing market share for the last 5 or 6 years. But
they are starting to turn it around. They only lost $98 million last year,
and actually show a profit for this year.

 http://www.caddigest.com/subjects/pro_engineer/select/011602_cadreport.htm

>From what I've seen, and dealers I've known, PTC has a habit of treating
their dealers badly. Autodesk has done the same, and worse. I dislike
companies the screw over my friends.

Example:
http://www.caddigest.com/subjects/pro_engineer/select/grabowski_rand_sues.ht
m

>>They used to have another in IntelliCAD until Visio bought them out.

No, Visio _made_ IntelliCAD a competitor. Softdesk started development of
IntelliCAD, but Autodesk bought them. IntelliCAD was sold by Autodesk after
the Justice Department forced them, and then Visio purchased IntelliCAD, and
finished developing it. There was quite a fight between Visio and Autodesk
for a while. After MS purchased Visio, MS pushed the product into their
"shared source" experiment.

>>Then Microsoft bought Visio, resulting in the death of all non-Windows
ports

I don't recall any non-Windows ports.

I'm not here to defend Autodesk - far from it. I knew the founders, but I
don't like what the company turned into, and how they put over 90% of their
hard working dealers out of business (from over 3,000 to about 150). But
PTC has also been a stinker, and a big one. In the industry, it was well
known that PTC would try to take any order direct if it involved 3 seats or
more of Pro/E. That sucked. SolidWorks (when I was a dealer) never took
any order away from a dealer. You were treated with respect while Autodesk
and PTC would crap on you. Most of the dealers I knew dumped Pro/E, and
switched to SolidWorks. That's when PTC started hurting.

Ken Elliott

=====================
-----Original Message-----
From: slug@nks.net [mailto:slug@nks.net] On Behalf Of Bryan J. Smith
Sent: Thursday, October 28, 2004 11:00 PM
To: slug@nks.net
Subject: RE: [SLUG] Re: OT - CAD vendors advising customers to
outsource--outsourcing works, when limited

On Thu, 2004-10-28 at 20:04, Ken Elliott wrote:
> Brian, you might want to re-read my post. I'm afraid you missed the
point.
> "PTC executives boasted to financial analysts that they are advising
> companies to replace $100K/yr American engineers with $20K/yr Indian
> engineers."
> It says PTC is telling their _CUSTOMERS_ to outsource. It's bad
> enough the PTC and other CAD companies outsource, but suggesting to
> customers that they do so is distasteful to me. Thus I referred to this
as "crap".

Outsourcing is here. Fighting it does no good. You must reduce the
argument to what outsourcing does work and what does not work. In other
words, you must fight business with business.

Certain types of outsourcing is a risk to business -- especially as you
approach details that are more "client aspects" like support, user
interfaces, business model, accounting features, etc... More in the IT
space, security, ethics, etc... are also key no-nos for outsourcing.

The problem with American businesses is that they tend to only look at 3
year savings and no further. That's why they lock their companies into
Hostageware, finance and other considerations that often result in
businesses failing within 5 years of conception or major change in
direction.

If I can reduce the argument to risk, I can advise companies where risk is
and isn't worth the savings. When it comes to outsourcing,

> "civil engineering application" Hmmm.... That would be inRoads,
> EaglePoint or ArcInfo, right? :-) AutoCAD? I'm confused that you would
> compare the two. Isn't it a bit like comparing PageMaker to Word?

Yes. The problem is that when people say "CAD," they only think of AutoCAD.
The "CAD" space is not only beyond that, but you have to also consider
applications in the "CAM" and even "EDA" space as well.

> AutoCAD is easily the best all around drafting package there is.

For 2D, I agree. But _not_ for 3D, the approach is very, very different.

> It's the Swiss army knife of CAD. It does 3D, but it is not a strength.

Exactly.

> But there are so many plug-ins, you can do almost anything.

Just like MS IE, you can add the capability, but I'd rather use Mozilla
where most of what I need is already built-in. Sure, since MS IE is far
more popular, so there are lots and lots of stuff I can get that I can't
find for Mozilla.

But the reality is that the MS IE + plug-in approach is rather limited,
compared to capabilities inherit to Mozilla. So if you want those
capabilities, you're better off with Mozilla.

I think you pegged this also with the Word Processing (MS Word) v.
Desktop Publishing (PageMaker) comment. The problem is that so many _only_
known Word Processing, and that's why far too many people don't even
consider DTP -- especially when it is far more applicable to solving the
problem.

Just like the in-house Microsoft support at a Fortune 20 company told my
supervisor, "He shouldn't be using MS Word for this documentation, he should
be using Adobe FrameMaker. Even we use FrameMaker to write our MS Office
documentation."

> Pro/E is a solids modeling system purely focused on mechanical design.

Correct, and far better for 3D aspects. But saying it only does mechanical
design is simply not true. While that _is_ its forte, it is applicable to
aspects of _both_ civil and electrical, where appropriate.

But most people don't realize that. They try to stick with AutoCAD because
that's all they know, and throw add-ons at it when Pro/E might be a better
approach.

> It's like comparing a Jaguar F1 car to a Honda Accord. Totally
> different applications.

No, it's like comparing a pickup to a Semi Tractor Trailer. Sometimes the
pickup will do, and you can throw things in the back, but sometimes you
needed the Tractor Trailer in the first place.

> And just like Jaguar in F1, PTC is getting its but kicked by its
> competitors.

It's not getting its "butt kicked" by competitors. It solves the problem
for CAD/CAM in ways AutoCAD cannot -- especially in 3D space.
Because even Microsoft uses Adobe FrameMaker for things that MS Word can't
do (or does not do well).

AutoCAD is _not_ the end-all, be-all, it is just most popular for most 2D
applications. It is severely limited in functionality for more CAD/CAM
applications. And CAD/CAM and EDA are were the "Linux"
deployments are -- largely the mechanical and electrical space. They are
the "CAD" in those environments.

> PTC should be more worried about Catia at the high end and SolidWorks
> at the low end.

And AutoDesk has its competitors as well -- Bentley Systems for one.

They used to have another in IntelliCAD until Visio bought them out.
Then Microsoft bought Visio, resulting in the death of all non-Windows ports
and adoption of VB to replace AutoLisp while IntelliCAD was turned into a
"Shared Source" type project.

[ Ironically there is one licensee, BrisCAD, who makes sure their IntelliCAD
version runs unmodified on the WINE run-time. They state they will release
a native WINELIB version in the future, but I seriously doubt that because
Microsoft would yank their license. ]

-- 
Bryan J. Smith                                  b.j.smith@ieee.org 
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