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Onshape has been acquired by PTC
jon_hirschtick
Onshape Employees Posts: 91 
I am pleased to share with you that Onshape has entered a definitive agreement to be acquired by PTC. This is an exciting next step for Onshape that will help us broaden the scope of what we deliver to you, and broaden our reach in the market to bring Onshape to more users even faster.
I want to first emphasize that our top priority as we become part of PTC is to preserve and enhance what you and I love about Onshape. Our beloved Onshape team remains the same. Our product strategy and roadmap remains the same, with a continued sharp focus on our customer needs. You will still experience the same level of responsive customer support that you have come to expect from us.
As many of you know, PTC is a $1B+/year global company with a long history in the product development market, and more recently, the Augmented Reality (AR) and Internet of Things (IoT) markets.
What you may not know is that PTC shares our bold vision of a cloud/SaaS future for our industry. It’s rare to find this kind of bold vision in a company the size of PTC, and even rarer to see such a large company take such bold action to commit to that vision. This is why I’m excited to be partnering with PTC CEO Jim Heppelmann and the rest of the 6,000 PTC employees to expand the scope and speed of what we are doing with Onshape.
Here are some additional things I want you to know:
There is no change to Onshape’s pricing plans.
There is no change to your points-of-contact at Onshape.
You will continue to enjoy the same level of responsive customer support and partnership that you are receiving now.
You can expect the same frequency of updates to Onshape.
We have not actually been acquired yet -- today’s announcement is that we have entered into an agreement to be acquired. We expect the actual acquisition to close soon.
Thank you all for all the support you have given us so far on the Onshape journey we have been on together, and I look forward to continuing together with you on this next exciting phase of our journey.
Best,
Jon
Jon Hirschtick
CEO and Cofounder, Onshape
P.S. I would imagine that many of you have more questions. For starters, please view this FAQ document or view the press release.
Comments
Although, I have to echo the thoughts by @sam_holland about the VARs. I've never actually worked with one that has actually added any value to me. While I could definitely feel some pressure sales pressure by the Onshape folks when first signing up for a pro account - the conversations were matter-of-fact and fairly straightforward. The whole experience has been awesome, including dealing directly with Onshape for support issues and the straightforward pricing.
I know things will change. I only hope the changes are for the better.
Congrats, again Onshape team!
P.S. @jon_hirschtick - Congrats on exit #2!
The reason why I looked for new cad and found Onshape 5 years back was because Alibre was acquired by 3dsystems with roughly same announcement how they are going to stay independent unit and just get unlimited resources to develop the software to next level. Well, it did go to next level but left customers to previous one.
I guess this was the idea from the beginning. It's just sad that usually big companies development concentrates on branding, feature list and status on the market. No one cares about product quality or customers.
History has rather negative examples on big companies acquiring small innovative groups.
Onshape has proved to be unique bringing cad to cloud with superior team work - I surely hope Onshape proves everyone wrong again and stays awesome under large wings and gets to keep the focus in product quality and customers. And releases new features when they are tested and ready, not when marketing needs something new for their brochure.
All the best,
Rami Rintaluoma
With Creo, we plan to continue our pursuits around real-time simulation, generative design, additive manufacturing, and IoT and AR integration. In parallel, we expect we will inject these same capabilities into Onshape over time so that we have leading products in either deployment model.
@alnis is my personal account. @alnis_ptc is my official PTC account.
I hope this allows Onshape to grow even faster and increase its user base.
Eduardo Magdalena C2i Change 2 improve ☑ ¿Por qué no organizamos una reunión online?
Partner de PTC - Onshape Averigua a quién conocemos en común
Here's the board today with 4 Onshape employees, let's see if Neil hangs on top 3 with ultimate response time to anything even remotely cad related and if Philip still finds more Minions for us to laugh at while he just tries to teach us some best practices on modern cad. Surely hope things won't change.
I hope this means a guarantee over the future of the platform and continued improvements, maybe even improvements at a greater rate. Changes is always a little concerning but looking forward to continuing to see Onshape and most importantly the users flourish.
Twitter: @onshapetricks & @babart1977
Since you are developing the best CAD system it was only a matter of time!
To the "mixed feelings" crowd: don't worry, we're not going anywhere. I (and many other Onshapers) joined to improve the way everything in the world is designed and that goal hasn't changed and there's more work to do. We will continue developing the potential of the already kick-ass product and stay as customer-focused as we are today!
It will be very interesting to see how this will develop. Imagine Onshape as a CAD and PDM backbone with the maturity of Creo/Windchill, and an integration with other products in the PTC portfolio like real-time simulation, shape generation, IoT, AR, etc., huge potential!
I can't think of anyone or anything that could truly compete with that right now.
We wouldn't have done this if it put at risk this amazing technology, product and community.
The FAQ that PTC put out is not just marketing fluff. I have been in (some) of the meetings and heard Jim (Heppelmann) speak candidly of his excitement to use the Onshape culture as a model for PTC moving forward - nothing is changing. You the community are happy and well supported and we look forward to accelerating our development (and ability to make you even happier) by leveraging the significantly greater resources of PTC. We are reporting to the same managers and are not changing our (agile) development process. Moreover, the FAQ is very detailed about things that WE worried about (staying on Parasolid). We are the same people, same process, same mentality but with deeper pockets and a bigger market footprint. This is a win win. So prognosticate all you want, judge us by what we deliver - and trust me, there is a lot of cool sh*t in the pipeline
Has anyone seen this price creep not occur in cases like this? Almost every acquisition includes price increases (which are indeed planned but undisclosed during the transition) to make the business model work, even though there are no definitive (announced) plans to do so?
I'll bookmark this thread/post and take note when, not if, the first (unplanned) price increase occurs.
Both @ilya_baran and @philip_thomas have said it so very well. Many of us here look at Onshape as a quest. We came here to build something awesome and we aren’t done yet!
Thank you for your support and we will continue working hard to deliver more of this vision every 3 weeks. This community is amazing and I’m proud to be part of it! 👍
This has to happen at some point, whether now or in a few years time simply due to the disruption that Onshape is causing. This is a huge validation for the vision that Onshape has/had.
Similar to other posters above, I am very wary about the future travel of Onshape now. Personal experience is that corporate culture and mentality only flows downwards, and innovative wings tend to be clipped for short term numbers. I think Onshape has tapped into the needs and requirements of a niche SME engineering market due to its ability to listen and respond - which tends to clash with corporate boundaries.
But....I trust Jon and the whole Onshape team to keep a firm grip on the rudder.
After seeing what PTC did to MathCAD I'm cautiously optimistic. In my opinion MathCAD went from an easy to use platform to something rather painful to use with features removed and bugs added in the 'Prime', improved version. I think the latest release actually added some of the removed features.
I saw the transition of Ansoft to Ansys years ago (I'm a EE by education), and the Ansys did it right by keeping the platform the same and slowly making changes over years to make it Ansys like.
This acquisition is probably a different beast, as it's a Saas and not an actual installed program.
My feelings on Onshape pricing:
I have a small business and Onshape pricing is perfect at $1500/year. It's not feature rich like Solidworks or Creo but for solid modeling and drawings, it's just fine. I hardly used any of the advanced features in those tools (sketch, extrude, repeat). I fear I will loose the Onshape Pro features for the Standard price ($1500 vs. $2100) which I was grandfathered into during my first year.
My feelings on the future:
It would be ideal if more Add-Ons were made to support the Augmented Reality, FEA or other simulations which were pay as you go and integrated better with Onshape (stuff PTC knows how to do). I've used SimScale and Reality Server however the integration isn't perfect where each update to my model requires me to redo most of the simulation setup.
I just complained about MathCAD above, but a web based version would be useful with variables integrated into an Onshape tab or within a part studio window like the configuration panel where I could do a calculation and it would adjust the variable automatically.
I hardly post in the forums, but I review them often. I just had to post my feelings on this acquisition today. In stage 1 of change management...
For me, I've come full circle. I've started my CAD career on PTC Pro/ENGINEER 2000i
If the least that this acquisition brings is that I can flip the plane side (two-sided planes were a big thing in Pro/Engineer .. ahem @TimRice & @PeteYodis), then it has already been worth it.