These days Jon Hirschtick, the founder and inventor of SolidWorks and PTC Onshape is entitled “evangelist” in PTC. It’s not about the gospel of CAD and PDM on premise, “today sky is the limit,” he says. The cloud, that is. PLM and sub-domains like CAD, PDM, simulation, immersive design, ECAD/electronics, CAM, and whatever you possibly could need for top modern product realization, should be accessable and scalable in one browser in the cloud, under the SaaS model and a dynamic infrastructure (IaaS). That’s Hirschtick’s gospel, and what he’s had to offer over time since the start in 2012 – the ideas and the technical approach – attracted former PTC boss Jim Heppelmann to the point that he 2019 was prepared to spend $472 million to buy Hirschtick’s creation.
“The Cloud is the future,” Heppelmann claimed and few challenge that view today. In fact, every PLM developer with even a little bit of survival instinct is on the same track: You build in the cloud and you build on the SaaS and IaaS models.
But Hirschtick’s usp, unique selling point, is that Onshape was one of the earliest in the PLM business to develop a cloud native, integrated CAD and PDM solution accessible in a browser, while PTC’s Heppelmann came in on a second wave, inspired by Adobe’s success with SaaS and the cloud model. Today, everyone with varying success is working on the same track – Dassault Systemes, Siemens, Aras, Autodesk and pretty much all the other players in the PLM/PDM/CAD arena.
The Early Adopter’s Advantage
But Hirschtick and David Katzman, general manager, claims that Onshape still has the early adopter’s advantage; resulting in a lead position that they believe places Onshape at the forefront of the field.
“The truth is that Onshape is the only solution that is the next generation platform. When you talk about the cloud benefits like real time collaboration, when you talk about one single source of truth, and when you talk about the need to work differently, there’s really no other solution including CAD and PDM you can go to,” says Katzman, and Hirschtick agrees, adding:
“Growth is really awesome, and on all fronts things are going well. The rate of new customer acquisition? We’re not yet the most popular system, but we see several important factors that speak our language. For example, we used to go to partners who build applications and say: ‘Please, work with us.’ Today they come to us, not because we are the largest base, ‘but you have the cool customers, the ones that look at new things, customers with product innovation on the top of their agenda.’ And this is how it is across all segments. For example we’re rocking in consumer, wether it is Trek Bikes, K2, BOA Shoes, or Garmin watches and all of their stuff. But also segments like aerospace, medical devises, machinery, 3D printers, etc things are going well… I feel that some forces in the greater world are working our way right now, like the AI momentum. Obviously, our platform is ideal for AI. We didn’t build it with AI in mind, but cloud native is a huge advantage in this context,” Hirschtick asserts.
An Equivalent to More’s Law
Katzman summed up the big cloud picture elegantly and stated: “Yes, the potential for a cloud native platform with our holistic set up is so great in every way that the sum of the value it adds is hard for any product developer to resist.”
Doubtlessly, he has a major point. Access to all conceivable software in one place, the cloud’s exponentially growing performance to process the growing amounts of data that come with the digitalization of product development processes and the rise of AI, its scaling capacity, the globally connected collaboration platforms via AWS or Microsoft’s Azure, etc., all point to this combination’s unbeatable accessibility, value for money and simplicity.
It is as PLM&ERP News has previously likened the development to: a kind of equivalent to More’s Law, the one that predicted the phenomenon that the number of transistors that fit on a chip grows exponentially with a doubling of the number every 12 months. If one were to formulate an equivalent to today’s key to digital success in product development, it might read: ”What can be done in the cloud will sooner or later be done in the cloud and the volume will double every 12 months.”
Closing a Gap to Reach the Critical Mass
The principle illustrates the potential maximum speed of growth, as both Hirschtick and Katzman point out. All supported by the Onshape team’s high ambitions to broaden domain coverage in recent years. It is clear that the division’s product developers step by step significantly have supplemented and filled gaps in terms of domain coverage and broadened it considerably. PCB Studio is one example, CAM Studio another, just to mention a few.
“Yes, I think that at this point our platform is viewed as powerful and functional. The breadth of it has reached a critical mass. Before we had simulation, rendering, ECAD; but there’s something about having CAM in your CAD package offering which plays well with what all the major players in CAD have. Now we’re more like the other systems; you’re never done but most certainly need to address and develop more areas. This goes for SOLIDWORKS, there are more areas that they could have, there are more areas that CATIA can have, or Creo,” claims PTC Onshape’s evangelist and Katzman supports his thesis:
“Absolutely, CAM Studio is certainly a new interesting part of the Onshape suite. It took a little longer than anticipated to get it out on the market, but now it’s there because we wanted to get it in our customers hands as fast as possible considering the value that it adds. What’s great about the new CAM Studio? We’ve had very positive receptions of the solution among customers, but still it is just the first version of it and what you will see in soon coming releases are significant growth, improvements, and more advanced features and CAM, which will make it very competitive compared to the very top tier products in the industry. This is among other things connected to our frequent and often released updates. It really closes that last gap that we see from a product breadth standpoint.”
Among its capabilities CAM Studio allows you to generate accurate and reliable G-Code for advanced machines and methods. Toolpath calculations and machine simulation leverage the power of cloud compute, making CAM programming processes faster and more interactive.
The Option of a New Generation
So, according to Katzman and Hirschtick, Onshape got what it takes from a holistic angle, but is the market mature enough for an “exodus” to the cloud? Take the SOLIDWORKS (SW) community, they have been very cautious, a little conservative and sluggish to switch to DS’ cloud solutions on 3DEXPERIENCE.
“Generally, yes people are getting more and more mature and the prospects looks fantastic. A lot of things are happening on the market one of which is that you have a next generation workforce starting to take hold, which creates new ways of working. They are used to the cloud and used to find what they need in the browser. This is a huge factor in our favor which we not always talk about in the promising terms it’s worth,” Katzman explained and continued:
“Now, you can combine that with that people are starting to think about switching platforms, like those working on the 3DEXPERIENCE or other solutions, where they encountered challenges that actually caused them to ask the question: ‘What else is out there?’”
“Then lastly, there’s a lot more word of mouth about Onshape. More and more people are talking to each other rather than us having to do the heavy lifting in bringing them over. They are being brought over from other pro users, from the education systems, etc. Not least the education side is huge for us, we’re soon probably going to be the largest in education. All of these factors matters in this context. As the Onshape platform has matured and we’ve been able to present all of these success stories we see people coming to us from SW, from CATIA and from Siemens NX. It’s no longer the question of ‘can Onshape do it?’ Today they are coming to us and asking ‘how do we do it?’ Which is a totally different question.”
Katzman added that Onshape from a geographical standpoint has been doing great in North America, is approaching a momentum in Europe, and has just started to, “dip the toes in Asia.’
Meeting the Tough Aerospace & Defense Industry’s ITAR and EAR provisions
On the topic of exiting new markets last week’s news on Onshape Government is very interesting. Doubtlessly we’re talking about an extremely challenging area, not least related to the tough and complex issues related to aerospace & defense, trade, and export.
Many countries have regulations to protect their products and capabilities, both in trade and defense. CAD and PDM software for sharing and exchanging data occurs in complex contexts that often concern trade and export of advanced military and civilian products. In general, these are covered by Export Control Regulations, ECR. They are designed to prevent both physical objects and related data, including software and design data, from falling into the “wrong hands”. This protects the country’s, or indeed the company’s, interests.
Notably in this context, it can be really expensive to make a mistake when it comes to, for example, ITAR (International Traffic in Arms Regulations). The penalties for fines imposed for violations of ITAR have varied from $20,000 to as much as almost $80 million. But it doesn’t stop there – anyone who is investigated for a possible ITAR violation is exposed to risks of having their business shut down and prevented from sending or receiving products by the US government.
Generally, ITAR applies to everything that comes from the US and that has a bearing on military applications. This can also include material created outside the US.
A Remarkable Moment
Bottom line; support and expertise to overcome these kind of challenges is of utmost importance, and the fact that Onshape entered this area with a the new purpose-built version of Onshape, designed specifically to help meet the compliance needs of U.S. federal and state agencies, defense contractors, and organizations working on regulated projects, is as noted in the intro, a proof of high ambitions.
Hosted on AWS GovCloud (US), Onshape Government enables compliance with regulations such as ITAR and EAR while offering the same streamlined collaboration and version control and accessibility benefits that make Onshape one of the industry’s fastest-growing CAD and PDM solutions.
“This solution allows us to go into the defense base, yes, but also government contractors and other organizations that work with things that are subject to various types of export control. For example, products like jet engines couldn’t be designed in Onshape before. We’ve talked about it for the last five years, however these are complex areas that takes time to develop. But now we’re ready and as the demands have been overwhelming we decided to go for it as the timing was right,” comments the Onshape GM.
While Jon Hirschtick adds that Onshape Government represents “a remarkable moment” for the movement. “Definitely so,” he says. ”It takes the subject of compliance with government standards to a whole new level where it in the Onshape environment becomes easier, faster and smoother to carry the provisions through in CAD and PDM than in any of our competitor’s solutions.”
Rolling in the Deep
But those are breadth areas that Onshape are expanding; the other side of the R&D story is the depth work. What happens here? Hirschtick again:
“Life in CAD and PDM is a continuous process of enhancement and we’re working hard on areas that are not new areas too; like surfacing, assemblies, performance, and PDM, which is increasingly why we win. We’re adding more and more depth into that. There are new depth of features that are getting to be ahead of competitors, especially in PDM. We can simply do things in PDM that people didn’t understand could be done. So, we’ve added not only breadth, but also depth to the platform, all of which is driven by customer demand. Like for instance in diagnosing a model with errors. Because our PDM is woven into the system and not file-copies we’re able to go back to the last healthy version of a sketch or a feature to fix the problem. We can identify that PDM wise, whereas other systems cannot do that. They can only go back to a file.”
Generative AI-powered Assistant
An extremely interesting topic is of course AI and David Katzman claims that, “there’s no better platform in the world for AI than Onshape. Both from an architectural standpoint and from a processing ability view.” It’s his job to say so, definitely, but the Onshape chief thinks he’s on his feet with this statement.
“Yes, I do. The cloud native aspects and the fact that we have the large database and also the scalability that comes with the cloud platform for CAD and PDM is uniquely beneficial,” he argued and added that, “it really boosts productivity and innovation.”
So, let’s look at the key features:
- Natural Language Assistance: Users can ask design-related questions in simple, conversational language. AI Advisor understands context and provides accurate, relevant answers, reducing the need to manually search through documentation or contact customer support for assistance.
- Smart Documentation: AI Advisor pulls insights from Onshape’s extensive library of documentation and tutorial videos, offering direct answers along with links to deeper learning resources. These links help verify the findings, reassuring the user the recommendation is properly vetted.
- Context-Aware Recommendations: Based on the user’s conversation history, the AI Advisor suggests best practices, relevant features, or troubleshooting tips, helping to shorten workflows and improve efficiency.
Katzman concludes that Onshape AI Advisor helps users accelerate their design process with expert, AI-powered guidance on CAD workflows, PDM best practices, and platform capabilities. Developed on Amazon Bedrock, Onshape AI Advisor helps teams transition from legacy CAD, optimize designs, and improve efficiency.
Business Took Off with Katzman at the Helm
It is undeniably very interesting to listen to Hirschtick’s and Katzman’s reasoning about the cloud and SaaS. Both have been in the industry for a long time, but while Hirschtick developed the then revolutionary SolidWorks platform in the mid-1990s, Katzman has entered the story a little later. But it is clear that business growth have taken off under his years on the GM chair, a position he took in April 2023.
PLM&ERP News interviewed Hirschtick just over a year ago and was then able to show, with the help of Griffin Securities analyst Jay Vleeschhouwer’s calculations, that during 2023 the Onshape platform at a professional user level was growing more than competing solutions in relative terms. From 2021 to 2023, it went from around 16,000 users to over 27,000. In 2023 alone, the number of professional users increased by around 23 percent, according to Griffin Securities’ software analyst.
Now, if we speculate that PTC managed to keep the growth up at the same level–the background is that PTC does not reveal any broken out user numbers for their solutions–an indication would be that Onshape during 2025 are approaching 35,000 (33,210) pro users. Meaning that Onshape still would be one of the fastest growing solutions on the market, is it still true?
“We do not comment on the numbers, but as a general observation we are still a fast grower,” Hirschtick responded. “It’s even more true than it was when we made the interview 2024. One reason that things are more powerful now is that David Katzman runs the business. He joined us early on as one of the first people to join Onshape. A couple of years ago we made a transition where I became evangelist while David took over as general manager; not only for Onshape but also for significant other parts of PTC’s business segments. He represents the new generation of PTC top rank leaders, as does Greg Payne (senior VP, Corporate Communications), who is with us during this interview. Moreover, a reflection of our growing business is that the number of people working in the Onshape team are dramatically higher than when you interviewed me about a year ago.”
Neil Barua Maintains Jim Heppelmann’s Testament
General manager Katzman confirms the upward business trend:
“Right, the business has accelerated, the product has done it to, and the market is going in our direction. Something that’s pretty cool is that my formal title actually is ‘General Manager of the Velocity Group,’ which is a group where we run Onshape and Arena a little separately from certain parts of the business and the intent is that we can continue to maintain the momentum, the acceleration, the release cycles, and the clock-speed that we were used to from the start up world and bring as much of that as we can to the customers and to PTC. That’s a huge testament to Jim Heppelman’s vision and Neil Barua, his successor on the top executive post, has maintained it in terms of how we continue to invest in Onshape as well as in PTC’s education team so we can run it full steam ahead. It has been a great success for both sides,” the PTC GM says.
“Yes, it’s a healthy and innovative landscape,” Hirschtick added, explaining that “the acquisition PTC made 2019 has worked great. We got together because Jim Heppelmann believed that PTC could grow the Onshape team and business faster and make it more successful than we could on our own. He was right. But what made this deal a win-win was that Onshape coming into PTC proved to be a contributing development force for the other products in PTC through bringing in cloud native thinking and sharing great technology. This is exactly what happened and today we have parts of Onshape technology in the other PTC platforms. It’s a great example of how the Onshape team made a favorable cultural impact and where the other teams across Windchill, Codebeamer, and Creo have all helped make Onshape a better product,” Jon Hirschtick concludes.
Links for more information on the new AI Advisor and Onshape Government features:
- https://www.onshape.com/en/features/ai-advisor
- https://www.onshape.com/en/features/onshape-government
