Regardless of who first came up with the concept of parametrics in CAD design, it is clear that the mathematician Samuel Geisburg, founder of PTC, was the one behind the 1987 release of the first successful parametric-based modeling solution, Pro/ENGINEER.

Today Pro/ENGINEER has been renamed Creo, and many new capabilities have been added since the first version launched in 2011—but the culture around the groundbreaking parametric technology still plays a role in PTC’s path into the future.

Moving ahead in new groundbreaking directions is simply a part of the company’s DNA, according to PTC’s CEO Jim Heppelmann.

Today, every self-respecting system uses parametric technology. Will the same thing apply to the PTC leader’s new ideas around browser-based CAD and PLM in the cloud, packaged in the Atlas platform and built on the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) model? Will this concept have the same breakthrough force that enabled the parametrics in Pro/ENGINEER to take the market by storm?

To understand where PTC is heading with Onshape, Creo and Atlas, its history is most relevant—particularly Jon Hirschtick’s history where among other things, he was the founder of SOLIDWORKS.

In this article, we are going to dig into PTC’s past that lead to today’s challenges, and examine what the path into the future will look like, based on a discussion between PTC’s Jim Heppelmann; Jon Hirschtick, general manager for Onshape and Atlas; and Steve Dertien, CTO.

This endeavor sees Heppelmann teaming up with one of the CAD world's great innovators in Hirschtick, whose latest idea—Onshape, which launched in 2015—is a capable CAD software that does not require any downloads or on-premise infrastructure. With Onshape, everything is in the cloud including PDM, simulation and more, and users rent the solution according to a SaaS model.
In PTC’s hands, Onshape has achieved significant levels of growth. According to the analyst firm Griffin Securities, since PTC purchased Onshape, it has tripled its professional user base and presently is the CAD market’s fastest growing software. This is an interesting fact in the context of a market that only a few years ago had “staple goods” written all over it.

A Continued Renewal of CAD Technology

Many industry analysts just under a decade ago spoke of 3D CAD as staple goods; a tool that has reached its development maximum and which in the future would mostly be subject to “refinement” in terms of capabilities. Where they right?

“No,” says Heppelmann. “Like many other things, technology tends to develop in unforeseen directions compared to what those who predict the future expected. There is a dynamic with several X factors, which no one could have imagined because they relied too much on the existing knowledge as a basis for assessment. But the advancement of the tools of the new age far exceeds what one could only imagine a few years ago.”

“Of course, we at PTC are very proud of our CAD legacy with the first successful 3D parametric modeler,” he continues. “But we are also pleased with the fact that, all these years later, we are still investing heavily and renewing our CAD technology across a number of fronts. It is a very interesting market with an exciting history and an even more exciting future. Jon Hirschtick usually says, ‘I do not even think we're half done yet,’ and I'm in the same line. This market is far from over, even though it has been around for some time already.”

Today, Development Places Completely New Demands on CAD

Jon Hirschtick agrees, and why not? In several places today there is even talk of a renaissance of digital design and that CAD tools will play a prominent role in this.

With IoT/IIoT, digital twins, generative design, the increasing importance of simulation, integrated electronics and software, augmented and virtual reality (AR/VR), 3D printing and more, today’s design demands are placed on the capabilities and holistic ability of 3D CAD software to connect and integrate with these new technological environments. Products are also being developed with a tilting of the content towards the use of more artificial intelligence (AI).

However, the dynamics have always been there, says Hirschtick.

“It all started in 1963, with Ivan Sutherland's doctoral dissertation, 'Sketchpad.' Sutherland was a person with a vision. He described many concepts, not only for 2D CAD but also for interactive computer use. You and I may think that a limitation-based sketching software is a fairly new idea, but that idea was already in Sutherland's dissertation 60 years ago. Changes in computer systems—just like raw materials in manufacturing—are and will always be new realities. We need to be constantly alert and ready to build a new CAD system related to things such as the development of computer systems. We have done this before; from mainframes to laptops, workstations to computers and now to cloud, web and mobile solutions.”

Hirschtick points out that in this context, PTC's Pro/ENGINEER (Creo) not only used solid 3D modeling and a new paradigm, but was also based on modern computer hardware technology and Unix workstations—at the time, a new landmark in product development.

“I remember that I was very impressed at that time,” Hirschtick says. “Today, all systems in mechanical design use the Pro/E paradigm, so it was used even when we developed SOLIDWORKS.”

The Parameters and An Unbreakable Principle

It is not surprising that Heppelmann emphasizes the enduring strength of the parametric technology over time.

“I believe that even today it is an unbreakable principle,” he says. “If you want to change a parameter, just change your applied load, your material or your dimensions and the tool will recalculate the entire design with a zero-cost association. PTC has a legitimate leadership claim to the modern era of 3D modeling because of the interactive, parametric, associative and function-based 3D modeling, which actually began with us. But even though Pro/E was phenomenal, the solution was far from easy to use. It was also run on enormously expensive workstations, which could cost from $80,000 up to $100,000. In addition, it was all difficult to learn. But as we know, Pro/ENGINEER was incredibly powerful. Then Jon Hirschtick took the concept and built SOLIDWORKS, which was much more democratic and widely available to lots of users.”

“Absolutely!” Hirschtick says. “We built SOLIDWORKS on Windows and delivered easy use, better prices, different support and other distribution.”

From a distance, why is the SOLIDWORKS story so similar to the story of Pro/ENGINEER, he asks. “Because we at SOLIDWORKS also took the lead in doing the right job for the user and we took the challenge very seriously.”

Creo Takes a Big Step Forward in CAD

Notably, PTC did not stop developing Pro/ENGINEER after introducing parametrics. On the contrary, Heppelmann says that development has always been at the forefront.

“In 2007 we acquired CoCreate, which was originally HP's SolidDesigner software. We started developing their proactive solutions around direct modeling technology, and from there developed the role-based apps with specific functionality for use within the broad spectrum of people in the companies' extended product development teams with several different stakeholders. We knew that if we could contribute to involving all people in the development teams, we would achieve a commitment during a product's life cycle where it would be easier to sharpen productivity and improve operational efficiency. On the bottom line, this is about our customers being able to get better products on the market faster,” Heppelmann says.

He adds that this new suite of functionalities was another area PTC was first in the industry to establish.

“We noticed this especially with our groundbreaking Creo technology, which was released as the first version in 2011. I do not mind saying that many people thought we took a big risk by moving away from the Pro/E brand. But we knew that the abundance of features in Pro/E was difficult to fully utilize for many users and wanted to offer a more flexible and open solution that would solve this with easily accessible usability, interoperability, management and technology locking issues. The launch of Creo was a huge technological advance in the CAD market,” Heppelmann says.

Solutions That Democratize

That being said, we can state that the dynamics in the CAD and PLM industry have been around for a long time. There are many milestones here, but the interesting thing is that the speed of development of new technologies seems to be accelerating. In recent years, many have spoken of this as a Renaissance. The ways in which the world changed 500 years ago were dramatic—and above all, the art of printing with the printing press meant that thoughts, theories and new ideas suddenly found a platform in an ever-widening world.

Today, it is a new art that is breaking through: the art of digital product development. Technological advances make it easier to bring the virtual and the real worlds closer together. Science is increasingly entwining itself into technology and becoming an integral part of it, while at the same time helping to democratize the dissemination of information and the possibility of using new technologies. There is complexity below the surface, but ease-of-use above it.

Accessibility via the cloud is a significant democratization factor, as are AI solutions such as those used in generative design and simulation, where the software helps the user to achieve optimal solutions within a product design faster than what is manually possible, whether in terms of strength and heat resistance or any standard. Integrated software iterates and takes minutes, instead of days, to reach the optimal design. The tools become part of the daily routine for a much wider audience, which in turn is reflected in the fact that innovative processes are accelerated in a number of different industries.

Equally important is the availability of stakeholders in the extended product development team in distributed environments. Because models and product data are always available via the cloud, things such as collaborative product development become easier to implement. You can easily—and in real time—share data and models, all carefully regulated via availability limits that are set as needed.

This is something that forms the path PTC has chosen for its Atlas/Onshape platform. The cloud and SaaS are what will apply in the future, claims Hirschtick.

“That's how it is,” he says. “We developed Onshape completely in the cloud from the start. I could see the next generation of computer systems coming. Just think of Salesforce, Workday, Zendesk, NetSuite and Asana. I could see my kids using these tools. I saw all the competitors talking about clouds, but no one was dedicated to developing for it, so we started building Onshape and going forward, and it led to us becoming part of PTC.”

Onshape Almost Tripled Its Commercial Userbase in PTC’s Hands

There is no doubt that Heppelmann believed in this solution. PTC opened its wallet and brought nearly half a billion dollars to the table to get hold of Hirschtick’s creation. Onshape was valued at $470 million at the time of the 2019 acquisition.

Hirschtick is careful to define that it was not just software that PTC bought.

“No, Onshape is not just a program,” he says. “It is also a collection of services, some written in Java, some in C ++, Java Script, Web Client and more. We can use some other languages ​​as well. All in all, it's like a symphony orchestra of services—or maybe more like a jazz band working together.”

It is also clear that putting Onshape in PTC's hands was a good idea. This is true for several reasons, including that PTC has the global reach, the financial muscles, the staffing and the technological development and integration know-how required to accelerate growth both commercially and technologically. Among other things, this has resulted in a very strong growth rate.

I spoke about this with Jay Vleeschhouwer, a software researcher with Griffin Securities in New York, who is considered one of the market's most notable experts when it comes to measuring the number of users of CAD software. Among other things, he says that by the end of 2021 Onshape had more than tripled its installation base of professional users since the purchase in November of 2019. In two years, Onshape has gone from "more than 5,000" users to more than 17,000 professional users, making it the market’s fastest growing CAD software. At Griffin Securities, the latter term—professional users—is defined as users who have active commercial licenses with licensees who pay subscription or maintenance costs. 

Onshape User Numbers Boomed During the Pandemic

Part of the context here is also that you can measure things in different ways. Griffin Securities' measurements are rather conservative and do not include, for example, the large but difficult-to-measure number of educational licenses that most PLM and CAD companies spread on the market at extremely low prices—from free distribution to a maximum cost of about 10 percent of what a professional business user may pay.

This means that the largest professional desktop 3D CAD solution, Dassault Systèmes SOLIDWORKS, is said to have almost 6 million users. Here, Vleeschhouwer calculates that by their definition, the number of "professional licenses" is more than 610,000 (as of Q4 2021). This seems to indicate that around a factor of 10 (ten times the number of professional/commercial licenses) appears to apply in the assessment of the professional user base.

Onshape also has a large number of free or education-licensed users, where the factor of 10 assessment also applies.

“We have a really big community nowadays and it has taken on a lot of momentum during the pandemic,” says Hirschtick. “That was unbelievable. The adoption accelerated to over 1,000,000 users within a few months. Students, teachers and professors switched to Onshape. We had about 200,000 users over a period of several years and then we were suddenly at one million. The numbers continue to rise, and we currently have around 1,800,000 users.”

What stands out with Onshape is the growth rate and the large number of total licenses. To a large extent, the growth potential of a solution depends on determining how to succeed at bringing in the new generation of engineers. Those who choose to work in Onshape during their education will want the same solution in their future professional capacity.