RealizeLive2024
It’s been almost a year since I posted. I’ve been actively doing things in the CAD world, but oddly felt like I wasn’t able to talk about what I was doing. I’ll be getting some more of my time back after this event.
Meanwhile, I’ve got some time and some topics. RealizeLive is an interesting event, especially if you’re not stuck in a CAD rut. If you are involved in the overarching engineering technology world, this is a fascinating place. The CAD world is full of younger people, some older ones as well, but the average age is younger. The average number of sport coats and ties is higher at RL, and the number of shorts and sandals at CAD events is obviously higher.
CAD people are fascinated with mastering the software, making geometry, doing design, and manufacturing processes. People at RL are looking to integrate things at a higher level. They’ve already learned the entry level tools and concepts, and are moving on to fry bigger fish. TLAs extend past CAD, CAM, PLM and PDM. Groups tend to be more specialized within the expanded topics. The fact that it only took me attending 4 or 5 of these events is mostly just embarrassing, but I prefer to look at it as my optimistic and fading grasp on youth and idealism.
I knew what it was that drove CAD users because I was one of them. But what drives these people? They aren’t “passionate” in the same way that CAD users were/are. I mean how do you get “passionate” about a Teamcenter integration? Maybe it’s due to the habit of working. Maybe it’s that thrill you get when technology actually works with other technology the way it’s supposed to. Maybe its just staying ahead of the kids. Maybe a big push before feeling like they deserve retirement. But them some don’t retire…
When you see this event in that light, you kind of wonder what happened to the old CAD conferences. They’re really just gone. Dissolved into these higher level events. The Solid Edge portion of this event is small, and the whole RL conference is somewhat smaller than some of the big CAD conferences of the not-so-distant-past. Some of the actors are the same, but they sound different. And I’ve got to admit, look different as well.
Anyway, growing up sucks. And I had to be within spitting distance of 60 to even notice that. I wonder if software is also growing up? I had a nice discussion with Ken Grundy about the cyclical nature of software evolution. Public computing, private computing, public data, private data. Independent, co-dependent. Interface changes, and the fact that software quality continues to be a problem. We keep needing to re-learn the lessons of the past. We don’t even make full use of the tools we have currently.
So we’ll see if I continue to learn new stuff that every body else already knows this week or not.
Yeah, humans definitely have to be in charge, and just because the computer is aiding the design doesn’t make it automatically perfect.
The upper level stuff is plenty complicated on its own. It would be hard to maintain expertise on the CAD and a couple other development processes. There is just so much knowledge required to make the whole system work.
“Spitting distance of 60″… I’ll be 70 this August so some of your awakenings is just old history to me. Now you know why I’ve been such curmudgeon for the past decade. The worst part of all this, is that many of these new young Technology Junkies are not only lacking in passion for Design and Engineering, but lack any basic Design and Engineering skills…
You state: “People at RL are looking to integrate things at a higher level. They’ve already learned the entry level tools and concepts and are moving on to fry bigger fish. TLAs extend past CAD, CAM, PLM and PDM”
But, where I see the problem is these “higher level types” haven’t mastered any of those CAD, CAM, PLM skills well enough to drive these new tools. And more importantly they think they can solve fundamental design flaws with more meetings and new software, but never want to get dirty.
They used to call this the Peter Principle… where they kept promoting the dullards up and out of the way of where the real work was getting done.
The past few years almost all the companies I’ve been designing custom Machines for have these Engineering Manager types that seem to have too much faith in their young Design engineers, and trust CAD as infallible.
I think Boeing is seeing how all these “new tools” are working out.