PTC Pro Engineer company for sale? Yours for $2Bn!

The news is that for only 2.4 billion dollars you can buy Pro E - not just the software but the whole company. They have hired Goldman Sachs to help find a big company with the cash. Why would the Needham, MA USA based PLM company be looking for a buyer after all these years? Less than two years ago, PTC acquired a $230 million credit facility from a bank syndicate for buying other companies themselves. As with many things, timing could be a factor. The news conveniently broke just as PTC is set to announce their largest sales figure ever, one billion dollars for the year making it the largest selling MCAD still based in the USA. PTC also was also awarded the large EADS PLM contract in July. Good news now could mean a good selling price - especially in the face of a looming decline in MCAD sales for the industry in general. And who knows? Maybe PTC CEO C. Richard Harrison really does want to collect the total 15.5million now promised him since July should the company sell.

The proposed sale of PTC follows a wave of major corporate consolidation in the CAD CAM software industry. Autodesk recently bought Moldflow. German company Siemens bought UGS who bought EDS who then owned the Unigraphics brand. Cimatron merged with GibbsCAM. And the list goes on.

Who, if anyone, buys the company could greatly influence the future direction of the Pro Engineer product line, Linux support, etc. There are many reasons for this. SolidWorks and Solid Edge are examples of software with feature limits to prevent those products from directly competing with their owners' flagship products (CATIA and Unigraphics). Some platforms, like SDRC I-DEAS (now "merged" as part of Unigraphics NX) are slowly disappearing completely.

As useful as CAD standards are, they always change. And over time, even the most naive of design engineers understand that their "CAD standard" of today is only standard for as long as the corporate "powers that be" say it is.

3D Industrial CAD Software Upgrades Free For Two Years

CADDIT CAD CAM Australia is pleased to announce a special promotion for engineers looking for affordable 3D industrial engineering software. Buy VariCAD for Windows or Linux right now until September 30, and receive two years of free upgrades. What makes this offer especially exciting are some major product enhancements planned for the product during the free two year upgrade period which include advances in 3D parametric design and simulation. To further encourage Australia and New Zealand engineers to buy before October, CADDIT is offering special online pricing. The total savings of this special offer total to over 50% the normal price.

VariCAD is affordable 3D industrial design CAD software for practical engineers. It offers robust 3D mechanical design tools and associative 2D ANSI, ISO or DIN drafting layouts. VariCAD includes several applications for sheet metal, fit-out and profile construction, interference checking in assemblies and extensive libraries of standard parts which can be included in any design. Sharing designs with external systems is made easy through extensive ISO STEP, IGES, Autodesk DWG and DXF support. For those new to VariCAD, it can be downloaded and used free for 30 days, but this free upgrade offer will still end on September 30 2008. There are also videos, tutorials and other resources on the CADDIT website.

VariCAD has been meeting the needs of mechanical and design engineers for over a decade. This latest special offer includes two years of completely free product upgrades and technical support. There will probably never be a more affordable offer to buy this product. More information about VariCAD is available from CADDIT CAD CAM Australia.

Economy: progeCAD users enjoy savings against high price of AutoCAD

Once resorted to only by smaller businesses needing basic DWG CAD compatibility and AutoCAD commands for 2D technical drawing, progeCAD is now making gentle inroads to larger companies. "Great! This (progeCAD) delivers just the right level of features for a fractional price of what one copy of (AutoCAD) LT costs us..." wrote one office in Australia. "I sorted all our guys with progeCAD without capital expenditure" laughed another.

A downturn in the economy and the rising cost of new licenses for corporate brands like AutoCAD and Microstation have some department heads scrambling to find affordable CAD software that still gets support. Still, the new trend of larger companies toward progeCAD surprises some. It was only a few years ago that the program still suffered issues to edit large files (in excess of three megabytes) and snap to points within nested AutoCAD blocks. As progeSOFT continues to improve their flagship product, end users are enjoying the benefits of what many now consider to be their CAD of choice for money.

Schools benefit the most. They get theirs free. When CADDIT first announced the progeSOFT educational program in Australia, it was quiet. Then slowly interest started calling - TAFE, universities, public and private high schools. Now CADDIT.net receives new educational requests on pretty much a weekly basis.

CADDIT is an international partner of progeSOFT, Italy, specializing in the English or German language product sales and support. Users and companies from any country can download free or register progeCAD and choice of support plans directly online. For full corporate progeCAD site license requirements, the best options is to contact CADDIT directly. Current progeCAD 2008 Professional users can expect at least one, if not two more free minor support upgrades this year. These minor upgrades are mostly patches to enhance and sometimes fix existing functions. progeCAD 2009 is still many months away.

FREE eBOOK for Migrating Board Drafting and Hand Sketch Designs to CAD

Are you an engineer, draftsman, architect, landscape artist, surveyor, sheet metal wood or plastics designer that does all drawings using a t-square and triangle? Are you thinking about using CAD but worried about the cost involved? CADDIT is happy to release a new, complete free eBook entitled "CADDIT Guide: From Board Drafting and Hand Sketch Designs to CAD" to answer these questions and more. Even if you are a CAD designer with several years experience, the reference information given in this free publication is well worth having. This free eBook is available now from http://www.caddit.net/auto-cad/AutoCAD.php and discussion is held on the CADDIT forum at http://www.caddit.net/forum/ .

This eBook includes the first section of a CAD tutorial that demonstrates opening and editing AutoCAD files without AutoCAD software, using progeCAD Professional CAD software. More information about progeCAD is at http://www.caddit.net/store/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=1