Those maintenance dollars will be of little benefit to either of us if we do not survive as a viable company able to not only maintain our products but continue to sell them to new companies and organizations. You mention legacy users, well guess what, we DO HAVE legacy users, which is more than can be said for the dozen or so CAD vendors that there were when I first started in this industry some 36 years ago and how many of them are still around? Only a few. And do you know why? Most of them just couldn't keep-up with the changing technologies, demographics, ability to maintain the quality of their software, able to compete in a global marketplace, etc. Well, we've survived, which means that those "maintenance dollars of the legacy users" have actually gotten something for them, continuous access to world class products supported by a world class organization. And we did this by doing what had to be done to remain an organization selling and supporting world class products, which took more than just maintaining the same user interface, the same keyboard shortcuts, the same menu stuctures, etc. otherwise this is what NX would still look like today:
How many new customers do you think that circa 1978 CAD software would still be able to attract today? But keep in mind that most of the companies that DID make that investment back then and purchased seats of Unigraphics, are still using them today only now it's called NX. And while virtually nothing of what you saw there still exists in terms of hardware, user interface, help files, classroom material, even many of the developers and people who sold and supported the product, even the code itself, has all but been replaced, yet the investment made by those early companies was a good one because more then user interfaces and keyboard shortcuts and workflows was maintained, and that is a continuous environment in which support was given, software was upgraded and modernized, ported to the latest hardware architectures, enhanced to take advantages of new modeling paradigms, expanded to cover not only a few designers and draftsman in some engineering office but to became the core technology used across global enterprises. Yet with all these changes the most important things were protected and maintained. And this included an assurance that those investments would be protected in terms of continuing to make available the latest technology without having to obsolete your 'legacy' data.
For example, I just tested a pre-beta development version of the next full version of NX, which most of you probably won't be installing for a year or more, by opening a Unigraphics part file (an assembly drawing showing how to mount secondary attachments and brackets to an aircraft bulkhead) which was
LAST SAVED TO DISK 21 YEARS AGO! I opened this file directly, WITHOUT even having to first run it through 'refile', and it opened with no problems and I was able to double-click on any of the notes or labels (there were no actual linear dimensions since as I said, it's an assembly showing the positions of various attachments and brackets, but there are at least a hundred notes and labels) and the edit dialog that opened and the on-screen handles which were displayed and were usable, were exactly the same as if that note/label had been created 5 minutes ago. I had all the same options and could perform all the same edits and changes in appearance, font, etc. In fact, I performed a single edit, selecting all of the notes and labels, and changed them all from 'Blockfont' to the truetype 'Arial' font. Now that is that sort of return on your "maintenance dollars" that really counts. I'll put that little 'test' up against any other CAD package in the industry.
Anyway, I hope you see that our investment of the legecy user's "maintenance dollars" has been put to good use and that there is more to support than simply maintaining the status quo.
John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Engineering Software
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Industry Sector
Cypress, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:
To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.
