3DMojo

Many people are familiar with this illusion of the "old lady, young lady" image. This old/new paradigm seems to be all the rage lately. On American television, we witness countless new reality shows featuring celebrities from the 80s and 90s, desperately trying to find new fame. While sometimes entertaining, there is also an embarrassing undertone to the shows, like watching a train wreck in slow motion.

It's very similar to how PTC is reviving old Itedo Isodraw references and massaging them into wonderfully new Abortext Isodraw references. These retreads from the past, pure 2D technical illustration references, are being re-framed and re-branded as great new references that are fully leveraging 3D in new and innovative ways. While these references are sometimes entertaining, they are also incredibly misleading -- they are still "old ladies".

3DVIA Composer is faster, easier to use, and far more flexible than anything else on the market, and we continue to prove that in benchmark after benchmark. Don't be fooled the next time you hear some propaganda from the competition, and be sure to put them to the test. It is the new architecture of 3DVIA Composer that is the only "young lady" in the picture.

You've heard us rant about the exceptional qualities of 3DVIA Composer, and how we make better reuse of CAD data than other competitive products such as Isodraw. I've shown 3DVIA Composer to people hundreds of times, and I never grow tired of the look of amazement on peoples' faces when they see what we can do. But what really amazes me is how quickly our customers can go from purchasing our product to being productive and generating positive returns: it's a tribute to our architecture and ease of use.

It's why we win benchmark after benchmark, why customers continually choose 3DVIA Composer over other products, and why customers actually turn off those products in favor of 3DVIA Composer.

But don't take it from me... take it directly from one of our newest customers, Miller Formless. When I heard that they recently purchased 3DVIA Composer to replace Isodraw, I wanted to learn more. This mid-week Podcast is the unedited conversation I had with their VP of Manufacturing and Engineering, Jim Szamlewski. This call was not rehearsed; I had no idea what Jim would say about 3DVIA Composer. My initial plan was to pull some sound bites and quotes from the call, but there are so many good points made by Jim -- and in the interests of bringing you truly authentic content -- here is the full 9 minutes of audio. [Editor's note in the interests of full disclosure: there are 3 edits to clean up audio not related to this particular conversation]

What may surprise you most about this conversation is the enthusiam of the customer only 2 weeks after installing the software, and how the users actually enjoy using it. Imagine your employees using a product that makes them exceptionally efficient, and one that they actually like to use: what would that do for your productivity?

Not only are we faster, easier to use, and more flexible, but our users are passionate about our product. Talk about the ultimate knock out punch to the competition.

 

 Podcast Video [9:08m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (956)

 

 Online Video [9:08m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (388)

In any video program -- podcast or network television -- there's occasionally a "can't miss" episode. Number 57 -- this episode -- is one of those must see episodes.

In just about five minutes, this episode really puts it all together for you. Watch it over and over again to see the subtleties of what is going on and you'll get the full understanding of what we mean by product information everyware.

In just a few minutes, Jonathan Riondet shows content creation, creating several deliverables so easily that it looks like one smooth motion. Then he shows how those deliverables can be automatically updated when the underlying product definition changes, such as when the CAD information changes. Of course, this data can be managed by a PLM system. And remember, we mean any 3D CAD data managed by any PLM system.

In less than five minutes, you see how the 3DVIA Composer system can work with any CAD and/or PLM system to completely free the production of product deliverables from the problems of late changes in the design process. It's what 3DVIA Composer is all about.

Note to subscribers: this is my last post as the editor of 3DMojo. I want to thank our thousands of readers and subscribers who have made this one of the more popular blogs in the product development world. I know my RSS aggregator will be looking for the next update to this blog, and I hope you will continue to participate as well in the ongoing community that has formed around 3DVIA Composer.

 

 3DVIA your iPod #57: "Using 3DVIA Composer Sync to automatically update product deliverables" [5:48m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (940)

 

 3DVIA your iPod #57: "Using 3DVIA Composer Sync to automatically update product deliverables": Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (145)

3DVIA Composer's US offices are in the Boston area. The whole New England area -- with the exception of some lost souls in Connecticut -- is in the grips of a kind of mania about the New England Patriots football team, which so far is undefeated. (For our non-US readers, this is American football we are talking about here, not what we Americans call "soccer.")

Anyway, the big news today is that a member of the opponents the Patriots played yesterday "guaranteed" that his team, the Pittsburgh Steelers, would beat the Patriots yesterday. While the game was close for a little while on Sunday, at the end the Patriots won big.

I mention this because I've been reading a white paper from PTC detailing a customer success in Austria with Arbortext IsoDraw.

(I would happily link to PTC's collateral to make it easy for you to compare them to us, but apparently everything on their system is behind a sign-in and some of the stuff I was looking at I couldn't find a second time. So, we have links to our stuff, but not theirs.)

It's pretty clear that whoever wrote this has been watching 3DVIA Composer pretty carefully -- carefully enough to feel confident in talking about PTC's solution with as much bravado as that Steeler's safety who misspoke so disastrously about his team's chances.

For example, PTC makes a big deal in the white paper about using the "magnifier" in 10 seconds. Then then it lists 10 steps. Sure.....you could do each step in a second...right.

In 3DVIA Composer? One step: press the spacebar.

No matter how much PTC wants the magnifier to duplicate the amazing functionality of 3DVIA Composer's Digger, it just can't. Any more than the Steelers can guarantee victory against a football team many are calling the greatest in history.

Arbortext IsoDraw can't ensure that it will revolutionize your product documentation processes because no matter how you slice the feature cake, Arbortext IsoDraw is saddled with its 2D heritage. 3DVIA Composer was conceived, designed and implemented as a 3D system.

This might seem subtle to some, but it's very important. If you watch the PTC video demo of Arbortext IsoDraw, you'll notice that animations are produced in the context of technical illustrations. They feel "tacked on."

Now watch the 3DVIA Composer video. In 3DVIA Composer, technical illustrations are a module -- among many modules, like BOM and high resolution images -- that are integrated into the content creator's experience. In 3DVIA Composer, these modules aren't extending a technical illustration package, they are functionality built on top of an XML-based property editor.

Like the Patriots yesterday, on the actual field of play, the real talent is pretty clear to see.

So, first off I want to apologize to our regular readers and subscribers that we didn't post a podcast episode last Friday as is our habit. We had FTP server problems. We'll be back with some killer new episodes starting week after next (this is a holiday week in the US).

I was in France for the last two weeks working with our new colleagues to re-brand and re-package the former Seemage as 3DVIA Composer. That work has gone spectacularly. Our new name is just the beginning of what we intend to do to extend our vision of product information everyware in some fascinating ways.

In short, we have achieved escape velocity as an important part of DS's global efforts. And customers are already taking notice.

Consider this snippet of an email thread I saw the other day:

We have been able to stall an IsoDraw purchase and from the [removed customer name] presentation they have identified areas that IsoDraw does not address fully.

Our new DS reseller partners are helping us get the message out that 3DVIA Composer is the right solution for more and more companies.

So, if you were us, you'd feel like we had a lot more momentum than the "mere" 11.186 km/s you need to simply escape Earth's orbit.