Recap of PTC Live Global 2014

posted 2014-06-25

Last week I attended PTC Live Global in Boston, MA.  This was my first PTC event, not counting webinars, and besides the increased level of formality compared to AU, SEU, or SWW this was a typical industry conference where I got the latest news about recent and upcoming agendas from PTC.

PTC focused this event on two key messages:

  1. The Internet of Things (IoT), of which PTC's acquisition of ThingWorx is a major part of.
  2. And, the release of Creo 3.0.

I didn't hear very much about Windchill other than its ancillary role with IoT and Creo 3.0, nor did I hear much about MathCAD, which is expected since MathCAD's release cycle isn't aligned with the event.  But, while I was there, PTC did announce the acquisition of Atego, which brings with it some interesting possibilities.

Internet of Things

I still have not completely bought into the entire IoT mantra, but it appears that PTC certainly has and their investment into ThingWorx and their expansion of IoT technologies puts them at the forefront of the evolution.  Maybe it's the conservative engineer in me that prevents me from adopting the bleeding edge methodologies, but I can't deny that PTC is onto something.  Where it goes is worth watching, and trust me, I will be.

Creo 3.0

CAD is more my speed, and hearing of the adoption rates to Creo is reassuring.  Pro/E is still a common reference in the marketplace and my unscientific studies have resulted in a less than stellar adoption of the Creo platform.  I guess third times the charm, as more and more PTC customers are becoming comfortable with the maturity and workflows involved with Creo adoption and have decided that Creo 3.0 is where they make the internal investment.

I still need to dig in more about what's new in Creo 3.0, but the one thing that stands out the most is that PTC is the first to put their money where their mouth is.  While customers clamor for openness and interoperability, PTC is the first company that makes translation of all CAD filetypes available within Creo 3.0 at no additional cost and with no additional software installation.  I may finally be able to uninstall that free Autodesk Inventor viewer that has been on my desktop for years, even though I never use it, but needs to be there just to import Inventor files.