#SiemensMAC2020
The day that Siemens Digital Industries Software sets aside for we CAD media and analysts is this year online, instead of in-person in Las Vegas. To make it easier to digest, the conference this year is two hours online on each of two days -- a schedule that I greatly appreciate.
The Conference interface in the Web browser
The two days seem mostly about how customers use Siemens software, along with overviews of the Siemens approach to the manufacturing industry. President and CEO Tony Hemmelgarn noted that it is surprising how many his competitors force customers into subscriptions. Siemens, he says, lets customers choose their own path, whether how to implement software or how pay for it. Except: I think that the new X-named cloud-based software is available only through subscription payments.
The primary slide is this one, which is an overview of the approach that Siemens takes towards customers:
Siemens Digital Industries Software's offer to customers
The CAD software from Siemens has one advantage that no competitor can offer: software like NX and Solid Edge are owned by a manufacturing company, giving Siemens an edge in knowing what is needed by customers, because it is its own customer. Siemens in its most recent fiscal year made $89 billion, down 8% from the year before.
Me, I'm mostly interested what's new in software.
New Software Announcements
NX Sketch is new software for 2D sketching -- inside NX -- without pre-defined parameters or relationships. Instead, it infers relationships between tens of thousands of curves, including imported ones. In the figure blow, this means that Sketch figures out that all those small holes in the disc rotor (imported from a DXF file as just lines and arcs) are all the same diameter, and that the arcs are linked to the lines and so applies geometric constraints.
User interface for NX Sketch
Siemens had came out with similar software originally for Android five years ago called Catchbook, but had not updated it in over a year -- I had even paid for it!, In it, you sketched lines and arcs by hand, and Catchbook turned them into basic entities connected by constraints. I suppose Siemens was working on this Windows version instead.
Also new is Teamcenter X PLM [product lifecycle management] software, the SaaS [software as a service] version of regular Teamcenter. (SaaS means cloud-based software paid for by subscriptions.) The new X version of Teamcenter uses modules that customers choose, such as working with BOMs [bills of material], ECM [engineering change management], and release management.
Interface for Teamcenter X
Both are part of the Xcerlator portfolio, Siemens' new (as of last year) name for its collection of CAD software, that includes stalwarts like NX and Solid Edge MCAD, Mentor ECAD, and Polarion ALM [application lifecyle management].
The following slide explains cloud-based Polarion X -- be clear that ALM is totally out of my league.
What ALM entails
Siemens bases its cloud offerings on it Mendix platform (which runs on Amazon cloud or on private servers), which last year made $100 million on its own.
The capabilities of Mendix
More on Teamcenter X SaaS PLM
- Instant-on PLM, because it is runs on Medix cloud and comes with "out-of-the-box best practices"
- Base modules include document management, visualization, workflow, revisions & releases, and basic BOM
- Expandable and personalized with add-ons
- Fixed price
- 30-day free trial available from [to come]
This chart shows the difference between regular Teamcenter and new Teamcenter X:
Teamcenter vs Teamcenter X
Tomorrow we learn about Teamcenter Share, which looks like it runs on smartphones and tablets.
Siemens User Conference
Siemens holds their annual user conference online next week. Realize Live 2020 starts at 8:30am PDT over June 23 and 24, 2020 at https://events.sw.siemens.com/realizelive/teamcenter-plm-conference. Siemens expects ten thousand in attendance online. Hope the ON24 system doesn't buckle!
Comments