Meeting with Siemens PLM

Earlier this year I had contacted Siemens PLM about getting an evaluation copy of Solid Edge with the goal of exploring the possibility of writing a book on it. I checked some of the Amazon stats, and it seemed that the current Solid Edge books were again mostly step-by-step tutorials for beginners written by educators. The book sales for Solid Edge books were in general well below those for SW books, presumably because there are fewer users.

Siemens PLM marketing people got back to me, seeming somewhat more guarded than the Autodesk folks who just sent me a copy of Inventor with little if any discussion. Siemens told me that they were just about to release a new version of the software, and that any effort should be postponed until after the new software was out. This was before news of Synchronous Technology hit the web.

Once the ST hype started hitting, and it was clear that this was at least going to try to compete with both SolidWorks and the likes of Spaceclaim, a firestorm of speculation was set off. There was precious little real information. All that existed were some overblown marketing statements, and a whole lot of copies of the marketing materials from everyone’s favorite (and unnamed) CAD terrorist. If this was really new, I wanted to know what it was. As time passed, there were few people who had really used the software stepping up to say anything beyond the marketing hype.

So in my curiosity, there seemed to be only one way to draw out people who actually knew what was going on. Of course. I posted my own ridiculous conjecture. Looking back most of it was factually incorrect, because I had no facts to go on, but as time went on, people from Siemens started to comment, and they started to give some actual information.

In the end, I still didn’t have a very good idea about the details of what ST was or how it worked. I couldn’t answer the question about if users would like it or find it useable because those are the kinds of things you can only tell by actually using the software. CAD terrorists and self proclaimed really smart guys were saying similar things, as far as I could tell based solely on marketing materials. Sounded like a bad idea to me.

After the release of the software when actual users had the software installed, things seemed to get quiet. It didn’t seem to be a good sign for the software when users have it in their hands and they aren’t saying anything about it.

A couple of weeks ago, I got a call back from the Siemens marketing people. They wanted me to come down to Huntsville and talk to them about the software, get some training, and take the software back with me. It seems they contacted a few other SW bloggers as well, but I was the only one who accepted. One of the benefits of being independent is schedule flexibility. A separate event was held for members of the press.

Part of the “problem” is that Solid Edge doesn’t have more than a few bloggers that cover the product. This blog seems to have given SEwST more exposure than any other. Most of my coverage was simply out of curiosity. Another part of the problem is that many people have the perception that Solid Edge has not been marketed with much conviction, possibly because if its seemingly jealous relationship with NX. So now that Solid Edge users have something to crow about, they want to crow.

My visit to Huntsville involved a number of people. Most of the time was spent with Mark and Doug, internal corporate training guys who usually train reseller AEs. To begin and end the day, there were as many as 8 of us around the big conference table. Dora Smith of marketing was my main contact. Kris Kasprzak of marketing was also there. Bruce Bose also of marketing was a fellow Rochesterian and RIT alumn. Dan Staples is the director of development for Solid Edge and has commented on this blog a few times. Mark Thompson and Doug Stainbrook were the internal trainers. Mark Burhop, keeps a blog. Mark and Dora can be seen on Twitter.

The questions went back and forth. They had as many for me as I had for them. In the end, they did a great job of showing me the software and answering my conceptual questions as well as they could.

I’ve got a magazine article in the works, and if it gets published, most of the content about the software is in that article. The logistics on the article may fall through, or another venue may open up, so I’m not going to get into the software in depth right here right now.

One thing is clear, though. The guys from Siemens really believe that this product is going to replace history-based modeling. There is none of the Spaceclaim equivocation where the two technologies can coexist side by side. Dan Staples said “Ten years from now history based modeling will not exist”.