Another Perspective on 3DXWorld Announcement
For those who haven’t seen it, I’d recommend going over to Roopinder’s site and reading what he has to say about 3DXW. He has some quotes from people, general reactions from the crowd, and a lot of analogies. It’s interesting to hear from someone who is involved but doesn’t really care one way or the other about what happens. Most of the CAD press will watch dispassionately as this happens, and maybe chuckle a little to themselves about the fanbois crying in their beer.
From a business point of view, I can see the dilemma that DS finds itself in. A very popular product with 30 year old technology. Do you continue to ride the popularity or follow what all of the best MBA training is telling you? Further, how do you replace one of the most popular CAD packages with a derivative of one of the least popular (from a user’s point of view) packages?
Roopinder is smarter than to offer a projection on how this will go, or if he thinks SolidWorks users will in the end embrace French software where their American software used to live. He did offer some foreshadowing, however, implying, if I can say it out loud, that DS is possibly a little tone deaf to what SW users (customers?) are willing to go along with. Certainly DS as a company has demonstrated at the CEO level as well as the PR level that they really just can’t connect with SW users, and I’d be willing to bet they can’t make a product that SW users will connect with either.
I was looking for Roopinder to use the word “momentum” when he talked about DS’s dream to swap out SWW with 3DXW, and their hope to get 30k attendees (where they currently get 6k). Momentum is really the only thing that will bring SW users forward into what will likely be a very non-SW event. PLMWorld is not about Solid Edge. AU is not about AutoCAD. I don’t see what supports all the optimism. Patience has served them better in the past.
AutoCAD is even older technology and is still alive and kicking. Sure, many companies transitioned up to 3D but that doesn’t make sense in all cases. Maybe DS fears that they will be left behind but I don’t think the cloud is the panacea everyone thinks it is. It’s not like replacing 2D drafting/design with 3D modeling/design where there is a huge design benefit. Collaborating remotely can be done with the existing tools about as easily.
When SolidWorks came on the scene, there was a revolution of sorts. 3D CAD in a Windows environment for a fraction of the cost and running on hardware that was a fraction of the cost. We went from 4 Catia licenses running on $20,000 UNIX boxes to 25 SolidWorks license running on Windows boxes for a few grand. I don’t see this with the cloud. We are getting charged more $$$ for less capable software and few benefits. My opinion of course.
I maintain DS may well go under when the French economy melts down. France is very indebted and heavily exposed to EU zombie banks and derivatives positions and I speculate DS itself is vulnerable in the likely hyper inflation scenario. The world as we have known it is about to change significantly and the outcome is not something that can be steered as a marketing campaign. I suppose DS could use the crisis to axe SW overnight in favour of Catia lite calling it ‘necessary restructuring’ or ‘rationalisation’ and hence finally deliver their wet dream of captive income. Likely that scheme will backfire just at it did before and for all the reasons that users identified to them previously.
Are DS/SW even still working on that modular stuff that people balked at the cost of after they spent 5 years stuffing around to deliver it? Actually I thought it had flat lined – along with Monica’s high energy multilingual career – I admit though I haven’t paid any active attention to DS affairs for some years now. They simply killed the spirit of what attracted me to the SW community and my participation.
You do wonder if they learned anything from their 3dmisadventure with the advent now of 3DXW. Honestly I am not really interested in DS culture or being reprogrammed to fit it. I would rate it as ‘not applicable’. Bernard Charles should have gone quite a while ago voluntarily. SW users have been very patient in explaining that. It just needs to be ‘experienced’.