Teamcenter

Pros: From a CAE user/client perspective it is an extremely powerful and versatile software. Works with any CAD system and supports many file types. Data management, revision control, security, and the ability to integrate across teams is excellent. From CAD & engineering to manufacturing to quality, purchasing, etc. it can manage live data across all areas of your company. But...........

Cons: Configuration, administration, and support are horrible.

Overall: If you don't have a team of top level computer programmers, flexlm license experts, highly skilled IT professionals, and LOTS of money, I would stay away from this software. Teamcenter is an absolute nightmare to set up and administer, and Siemens training and support are completely worthless. There is ZERO useful documentation. You will find nothing but documents containing general overviews of every topic and no examples. It literally seems as though they don't want you to understand or have the ability to administer their software. I'm convinced they scrub the internet of any useful information so they can charge you thousands of dollars for their useless training that will leave you with more questions than answers. The admin training I attended consisted of cramming what takes years to learn into one week. My company has spent millions on Seimens software over the last ten years and we are still in PLM limbo. For nine years our Teamcenter was nothing but a glorified CAD vault. We are only now starting to scratch the surface with a few simple workflows. The only companies I have ever known to successfully use this software are giants like General Motors and Boeing. If you are a small to medium size company, forget it. It will be the costliest mistake you will ever make.

Pros: $ Extreamly powerful software, endless customizations , secure & reliable, works great with NX $

Cons: Needlessly complex to administer. You will need to hire several highly skilled IT/Teamcenter administrators with programming backgrounds, or spend tens of thousands, and months of time, getting existing IT people trained.

This software was created for General Motors and companies of simmilar size. If you are a small to medium size company forget it. We were pushed into using it by our parent company, we do not have the resources to properly impliment or administer it, so for us it is an extreamely expensive CAD vault. We don't even scratch the surface of it's capabilities and we are going broke paying for NX and Teamcenter licenses.

Overall: If you are a very large company, and have unlimited funds to pour into a plm system, Teamcenter is for you.

Recommendations to other buyers: Things to think about with this software: Implimentation, administration, hardware/license server & volume server(s), license cost - initial, then yearly maintainence fee's, updates requiring license & client re-instalation every 2 to 3 years, training, training, and more training. Multiple administrators specializing in different areas within the software (yes it is that large and complex). And if you think you will be able to search the internet for help or info on administration, think again. Seimens scrubs the internet of almost all info, forcing you to pay them if you want any help.

Pros: Keeps your CAD, analysis, and all data organized. Everything from CAD files to PDF's can be stored and saved on your network. Revisions ensure the latest data is always available. Personal folder structure is possible, so the company may have its structure, but one can still create their folders to organize the same information. The software can be tuned to your company's needs, enabling and disabling functions and also creating rules. It's fast to log in and the latest version has some browser based capability. If data is deleted by accident, it can be quickly restored. Highly secure, controlling access to data to only certain employees, or read-only rights.

Cons: It is complex, which I'm not sure is a Con, because of all the features, but somebody in the company has to work full-time with Teamcenter, so it does require significant investment. There is a lot of maintenance, organization, structuring, etc to manage your data. More needs to be browser based, phone/tablet app based. Operating software on a PC is quickly becoming a thing of the past.

Overall: Stayed organized. Stored data efficiently. Never lost data. Easily shared data. Recovered data mistakenly deleted.

Pros: The most impressive side of the software is that you don't have limits. You can create a progress that includes every step you want. And this provides the user to create it's own control and approval system. This is an effective way to control all your work.

Cons: The processes, sometimes, might get stuck in the system and it requires a admin to fix it every time. I is kind of annoying.

Overall: The control of the processes and importance of this is what this software contributes to my life.

Pros: flexible, easy to learn yet powerful, never crushed (working 5 years with it).

Cons: it's pretty slow and the appearance is outdated.

Overall: great tool, but a bit too slow

Pros: Very detailed oriented software and some of the features that are useful to us while working. I like that how it provides a detailed description of an object. The quick access toolbar is very helpful for me.

Cons: The least thing that this software lacks is shortcuts. Now a day people use shortcuts to save more time at work. The current look or design of the software is classic for me. They should upgrade or give options to change the design of the software.

Pros: TeamCenter allows you to hide content between different users.

Cons: TeamCenter does not recognize every file extension to alloy upload.

Pros: Ability to control documents, designs and all other configuration items for Aerospace and Defense industry.

Lot of modules to expand for others uses: Manufacturing, EWI, Scheduling, etc

Cons: Very configurable, but requires constant admin ability to understand tables and behind the scenes functions.

Pros: The software keeps all our product data in one place, correctly linked and without the risk of information loss. The ability to quickly create new revisions of products without breaking links and creating complex new structures is awesome and so needed!

Cons: The learning curve is really steep for a newbie to Product Lifecycle Management (PLM), with little forgiveness for mistakes (e.g. deleting objects is a nightmare, even for admins). The fact that the software is so configurable is both the biggest Pro and biggest Con as no one manual will give you answers you seek to your own organisational questions.

Pros: It's very comprehensive. There are many options, on how and what you can search, what you can do with the results of your search. It has great compatibility with other pieces of software (NX, CATIA, also Visualization Mockup). It has an integrated 3D viewer that is enough for 90% of what one would need a 3D Viewer for.

Cons: It is not very intuitive, and thus takes some time of getting used to it, and there aren't many free resources online.

Overall: It's a comprehensive PLM software. Complete control over product and its lifetime, as well as great great connection to other pieces of software.

Pros: Great tool for centralizing design data and keeping configuration management as a design is iterated and evolved. Also used for CAD design drawing repository and very easy to index complex design packages.

Cons: It is not very intuitive. The tool requires significant training and use before a user is comfortable enough to use independently.

Overall: Design data package configuration control

Single data nexus for engineering data that can be tied to PLM project databases for cost tracking.

Comments: We use Teamcenter to manage our CAD models and drawings as well as the production release workflow. I have a feeling that we are just at the tip of the iceberg as far as using its full capabilities. It has definitely been created by engineers and for engineers, at takes some time to master if you aren't familiar with PLM systems.

Pros: Easy to use and powerful software to control CAD data and controlled documents. Easy to communicate with multiple users and work sites.

Overall: Increased control of CAD data and easier to communicate with many users and work sites.