Windchill factor

IBM and UGS have been grabbing the PLM headlines recently to such an extent that you could be forgiven for thinking there was no-one else in the game.

But based on the size and vintage of its customer base, US company PTC has equal claim to the PLM high ground. Indeed, Windchill, PTC’s enterprise data management solution, was the forerunner of many of the formative PLM implementations.

The main architect of Windchill at PTC is James Heppleman the man responsible for software developer SDRC’s Metaphase PDM product, which is a significant constituent of UGS’s Teamcentre.

Globally, PTC’s customers and suppliers have worked wonders with Windchill, perhaps the most notable example being the Airbus A380 whose success owes a great deal to the system.

Very few close to CAD/CAM and PLM are neutral about PTC — they either love it or hate it. But PTC is no longer the company that engendered these responses in the late 1980s and early 1990s. In fact, from the purist’s standpoint the company is responsible for CAD/CAM’s ‘modern movement’ as most of the CAD software we use today is based on the constructive 2D paradigm approach to solid modelling introduced by the company back in 1985.