Keep ’em Separated

SolidWorks software keeps on growing. That’s a good thing for users. The breadth of its capabilities is truly amazing. In addition to just the general geometric modeling, SW can do sheet metal, weldments, plastics functions, mold modeling, animation and motion studies, FEA, wiring/tubing/piping, import a zillion different formats some of them native, parametric rebuild of imported parts, rendering, file management, work with digitized data, and produce complex shapes.

Just to give you an idea of the scope of how much information that is, the 1100 page SW07 Bible only covers the first 3 items mentioned. The 500 page surfacing book covers the last item and partially covers the digitized data. That’s an incredible amount of stuff to have jammed into a single software program. Is there one person who knows all of this stuff inside and out? No way. Is there anyone who uses it all? Probably not. Reseller engineers, tech support and SW Territory Tech Mgrs have to know it all well enough to demonstrate it, but they don’t use it every day like an end user.

Remember my Rings Of Fire graphic? Well, SW is better at some things than at others. The general geometric modeling is the meat and potatoes. If they aren’t good at that, they might as well go home, because it is the basis on which everything else is built. I think SW is also great at sheet metal, but because it is more complex than simple geometric modeling, there are some quirks in sheet metal.

Then there is the plastics design stuff. Swoopy shapes, shells, fillets, draft. It’s a completely different world. The people are different, the skills are different, even the need for 2D drawings is different. The two groups want SW enhanced in different ways. How can we have a single future?

What should SolidWorks do? It seems like trying to stuff all of this functionality into a single CAD package might simply be too much. Should SolidWorks break into two separate packages or modules? One for machinery design and one for product design? One for swoopy surfaces and the other for rectangular stuff? Right now swoopy shape makers are far, far from home in SolidWorks. This is why many swoopy sorts choose Rhino, because it is cost effective, easy to learn and is centered on swoops. You see how far swoops are from the center on the Rings Of Fire? That’s not good news. We work every day in essentially foreign territory. It would be nice to use software where what you do everyday is part of the main focus, not an afterthought, but I’m not sure if SW software as it is today can be equally home turf for both disciplines.

What do you think?