PDM companies -- Good, Better, and Best?

[mike miller]

We are actively looking to purchase a PDM system of sorts, but as you all know the options can be overwhelming.

What is available from the big names in CAD?
How would you classify them as far as entry level, mid-level, or high-end?
What are approximate price ranges? (careful here not to be to precise and get vendors upset...)
Are small third parties worth checking out?

[zwei]

I am using PTC Windchill at work..

How would you classify them as far as entry level, mid-level, or high-end?
High end i guess? Although all the UI does not give me a high-end feeling haha.

What are approximate price ranges? (careful here not to be to precise and get vendors upset...)
I am not sure but i know it cost a tons

Are small third parties worth checking out?
That depend on your "scale"

Personal experience:
Well, i am more or less stuck at the "use it even though you hate it" phase.

• It is great when it work, but sometimes it get really frustrating when it dont and you try to debug for something. (Eg: I had one user unable to check-in his files for unknown reason, but it was ok after exporting the file and import and check in user another user.)

• It involve a lot of configurations and testing for it to work though.

• The training material by PTC is a bit... meh, hope it can at least be better (Eg: ordinary words used in the training material have two meaning and the reader doesn’t realize that until well after having read a sentence, a paragraph, or an entire chapter),

• Training up user to "properly" use the software is another issue... The software is not user-intuitive at all. (I recently create a onboarding slides for our new hire and that was like 100 pages just to cover the basic stuff and had yet go into change management?)

• We havent gotten into full practice of using WTPart to tie with our PLM yet, so cant comment on that.

[jcapriotti]

We are actively looking to purchase a PDM system of sorts, but as you all know the options can be overwhelming.

What is available from the big names in CAD?
How would you classify them as far as entry level, mid-level, or high-end?
What are approximate price ranges? (careful here not to be to precise and get vendors upset...)
Are small third parties worth checking out?

Mike, This depends on a lot of factors.

1. How many users do you expect will be accessing the system?
2. How much content do you expect to put in the system?
3. Do you have multiple locations? If yes, are they across the globe?
4. Are you just managing SolidWorks files or other CAD files?
5. Do you need functioning BOMs in the PDM system?
6. Will you be including manufacturing in PDM?
7. Do you plan to manage this in house and by who?

[mike miller]

We are actively looking to purchase a PDM system of sorts, but as you all know the options can be overwhelming.

What is available from the big names in CAD?
How would you classify them as far as entry level, mid-level, or high-end?
What are approximate price ranges? (careful here not to be to precise and get vendors upset...)
Are small third parties worth checking out?

Mike, This depends on a lot of factors.

1. How many users do you expect will be accessing the system? 4-6 total
2. How much content do you expect to put in the system? Difficult to quantify....maybe 10,000 CAD files?
3. Do you have multiple locations? If yes, are they across the globe? No
4. Are you just managing SolidWorks files or other CAD files? SWX, Excel, DXFs, Word docs, and possibly Solid Edge.
5. Do you need functioning BOMs in the PDM system? Yes.
6. Will you be including manufacturing in PDM? Yes.
7. Do you plan to manage this in house and by who? Inhouse, probably by me (at least partly).

See my answers in bold^^.

[jcapriotti]

Ok, you definitely would probably steer clear of the biggest players (Windchill, Enovia, Teamcenter). Those systems are huge and expensive and require more effort to implement and maintain.

PDM Pro will do all you need for a group that size. We use it for 500 users in the US but since our company is global across several countries, they have selected Windchill. Very complicated and very expensive and not the most user friendly but has a lot of functionality beyond PDM, for a cost.

There are other 3rd party applications you could consider. DDM (Design Data Manager) comes to mind. https://www.designdatamanager.com. It may have better Solid Edge support than SolidWorks PDM but I've not used it so I can't say. There is also Mechworks and Synergis Adept but it's been a long time since I've looked at those.

[dave.laban]

We use Pulse here, and it sounds like we have a reasonably similar use environment to you.

https://pulseplm.com/

One of the smaller players but they have been very responsive to enhancement and support requests. You can pick and choose which "modules" to use from them (we only use PDM as we have another PLM tool to handle other business needs) and it's very reasonably priced.

[jcapriotti]

We use Pulse here, and it sounds like we have a reasonably similar use environment to you.

They unfortunately show very little, almost nothing of their product without requesting info. Google turns up little, no pic, no videos except marketing fluff. I'm interested for my own personal curiosity because I like CAD and data management but I'm not gonna contact them for that reason. Not a good decision on their part IMO to get visibility to their product.

[Jaylin Hochstetler]

Does anyone have any experience with Team Center Rapid Start? Would this be overkill for our company? (I am with the same company as @mike miller so see company stats above.)

[Roasted By John]

All I can Say IS - Don't use ZOHO.COM - if you must make sure it works first.

[mattpeneguy]

@Jaylin Hochstetler and @mike miller,
Do you guys have any seats of SW Pro or Premium? If so, you have access to PDM Standard for free.
And I don't mean to question @jcapriotti, but maybe PDM Standard is all you need? 4-6 users and 10,000 files is definitely doable with Standard. And Standard can manage excel, word, etc., though I don't know about SE files.
I don't know if Standard handles manufacturing, but I do believe the BOMs are accessible within the system.

@jcapriotti what do you think about the difference b/w Standard and Pro for their case?

[mike miller]

@Jaylin Hochstetler and @mike miller,
Do you guys have any seats of SW Pro or Premium? If so, you have access to PDM Standard for free.
And I don't mean to question @jcapriotti, but maybe PDM Standard is all you need? 4-6 users and 10,000 files is definitely doable with Standard. And Standard can manage excel, word, etc., though I don't know about SE files.
I don't know if Standard handles manufacturing, but I do believe the BOMs are accessible within the system.

@jcapriotti what do you think about the difference b/w Standard and Pro for their case?

I have so little confidence in Dassault that I don't want to put any more eggs in that basket.

[mattpeneguy]

I have so little confidence in Dassault that I don't want to put any more eggs in that basket.

Mike,
Check your PMs. I sent you contact info for someone with DDM. We worked with them, and it was close, but we went with PDM Standard over them. If you are really looking at switching to SE, you probably would do better to go with DDM.

[mike miller]

Mike,
Check your PMs. I sent you contact info for someone with DDM. We worked with them, and it was close, but we went with PDM Standard over them. If you are really looking at switching to SE, you probably would do better to go with DDM.

Thanks, Matt. I'll check them out.

Siemens is about the only "big" PDM/PLM company I trust at this point. What's interesting is that they are excited to advertise Teamcenter's capability to handle SWX files......but SWX doesn't advertise as being able to work with SE files. Weird.

[mattpeneguy]

Thanks, Matt. I'll check them out.

Siemens is about the only "big" PDM/PLM company I trust at this point. What's interesting is that they are excited to advertise Teamcenter's capability to handle SWX files......but SWX doesn't advertise as being able to work with SE files. Weird.

I think they have some sort of "quick start" Teamcenter now. Originally when I reached out to them, they wanted a full blown install and config. I asked for a ballpark of what they'd charge and it was like $60k. Things are different now and I think the quick start version is much cheaper. However, I don't know what all it does or how it works.

So, my understanding is that Teamcenter is what the big guys use, and is much more powerful and capable than something like PDM Pro or DDM...But that's going to come with a cost and complexity. My takeaway when we looked into it (and I could be completely wrong) was that we didn't need the complexity, and didn't want to pay for something we didn't need.

Anyone here have experience with Teamcenter? To be fair I've never actually used it, so what I have claimed above is really just speculation.

[mattpeneguy]

Oh, @mike miller,
Something to keep in mind is that SE can use the Windows 10 filesystem as "PDM" to do version control out of the box. Here's a description:
https://solidedge.siemens.com/en/soluti ... anagement/

Hey @matt, I remember when they made the announcement about this, and I think it was when you may have even been working for Siemens. What do you think about this data management that SE utilizes? I'd guess it's like a pared down PDM. Care to give us a quick summary?

[SPerman]

I used Teamcenter with NX at my previous job. I was just a user and didn't have much to do with the administration side, but it was terribly powerful. So much so that the admin almost killed it before it got out of the gates. He setup such a complex security matrix that most of the bosses couldn't find the information they were looking for and it took years for them to fully adopt it.

We used it both as PDM and PLM, and there wasn't much it couldn't do, The bigger problem was the work required creating the links between all the items. Without those, finding the information could be difficult to impossible. (When I started with the company it was small and lean. Getting the project done on extremely tight deadlines was the top priority. Paperwork and databases were secondary. As the company grew so did the need for all of the extra work that happens once the print has been sent to the machine shop. Many of us, myself included, struggled with that change.)

[jcapriotti]

@Jaylin Hochstetler and @mike miller,
Do you guys have any seats of SW Pro or Premium? If so, you have access to PDM Standard for free.
And I don't mean to question @jcapriotti, but maybe PDM Standard is all you need? 4-6 users and 10,000 files is definitely doable with Standard. And Standard can manage excel, word, etc., though I don't know about SE files.
I don't know if Standard handles manufacturing, but I do believe the BOMs are accessible within the system.

@jcapriotti what do you think about the difference b/w Standard and Pro for their case?

It would probably work for most of their use cases except the Solid Edge one, that would require Pro.

@mike miller If you have SolidWorks Pro you could install PDM Standard and SQL express free to try it out.

[mike miller]

Oh, @mike miller,
Something to keep in mind is that SE can use the Windows 10 filesystem as "PDM" to do version control out of the box. Here's a description:
https://solidedge.siemens.com/en/soluti ... anagement/

Hey @matt, I remember when they made the announcement about this, and I think it was when you may have even been working for Siemens. What do you think about this data management that SE utilizes? I'd guess it's like a pared down PDM. Care to give us a quick summary?

Yeah, I was impressed with that. If we only had SE files to manage, it would be the way to go.

We did get a quote from Siemens for Teamcenter Rapid Start. If it is bundled with Solid Edge, author seats are between $800-1000 per year, consumer seats are $400-500 per year. I have the exact numbers but I don't want to get in trouble. How does that compare with DDM or Pulse?

[mattpeneguy]

@mike miller,
That seems close to the price for DDM, IIRC. I tried to find a quote in my previous emails and didn't see it. DDM was significantly cheaper than PDM Pro. IIRC PDM Pro is like $1500/seat for a CAD seat, right?

The biggest problem with all this is that you don't know what you are dealing with until you've rolled it out. Once you actually start using it you find the good and the bad. It is really difficult getting that information from any canned demos they'll show you.

[matt]

@mike miller,
That seems close to the price for DDM, IIRC. I tried to find a quote in my previous emails and didn't see it. DDM was significantly cheaper than PDM Pro. IIRC PDM Pro is like $1500/seat for a CAD seat, right?

The biggest problem with all this is that you don't know what you are dealing with until you've rolled it out. Once you actually start using it you find the good and the bad. It is really difficult getting that information from any canned demos they'll show you.

When I bought PDM we sent a couple people to training on a couple of systems. Training is a lot less expensive than rolling out a product that you don't like.

[jcapriotti]

@mike miller You'll need to identify and define in detail all use cases you have and ask the vendors to demonstrate that use case in their software. don't forget the administrative side in your use cases. We have Windchill and it does a lot of things but making changes in the system is extremely complex compared to SolidWorks PDM.

Couple of references I found:
https://www.trilogic.com/uploads/2020/0 ... s-faqs.pdf

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[Jaylin Hochstetler]

Just had a demo of Design Data Manager. Super impressed with what I saw! The software is super powerful! And it only requires SQL Express server for 5-10 users. Teamcenter Rapid Start requires SQL Standard or Premium which is lots of $$$$ plus the DDM software is cheaper than Teamcenter Rapid Start software!
They also seemed very accommodating.

[mattpeneguy]

Just had a demo of Design Data Manager. Super impressed with what I saw! The software is super powerful! And it only requires SQL Express server for 5-10 users. Teamcenter Rapid Start requires SQL Standard or Premium which is lots of $$$$ plus the DDM software is cheaper than Teamcenter Rapid Start software!
They also seemed very accommodating.

I think they'll give you a trial period. Definitely use that time to test things out.
And yes, they're a small company so they can "pivot" and add functionality much more quickly than you may see from one of the big players. DDM has been around for something like 25 years now, though. So, don't necessarily let it scare you that they're a small company.

[Jaylin Hochstetler]

I think they'll give you a trial period. Definitely use that time to test things out.
And yes, they're a small company so they can "pivot" and add functionality much more quickly than you may see from one of the big players. DDM has been around for something like 25 years now, though. So, don't necessarily let it scare you that they're a small company.

Yes, we definitely will!
He said they have been around for 26 years now.
I am fairly confident in them as last year they installed DDM for a company w/ 12,000+ users all over the world! (We will have 4 CAD users.) It took them 7 months.