SolidWorks Grew on the Strength of its Partners
It used to be that SolidWorks strength was attributed at least in part to the strength of their partner program. In all fairness, I’m a part of the partner program. I get a license of software for writing books and video tutorials. I don’t get any inside information due to my partner status. My partner status had a rocky start, but has kind of leveled out. After I applied for partner status, I noticed that one of my competitors (who is also a SolidWorks employee) was in charge of my application. This was shocking. What wasn’t shocking was that my application was ignored for a year and a half. Since then, I’ve had to compete directly with a SolidWorks employee who is in a position to promote her product while on the clock for SolidWorks. Notice I don’t complain about it a lot. This situation has existed for years, and this is the first time I think I’ve mentioned it here. It’s also why I focus on the areas of the market I focus on, and leave certain areas alone. I don’t expect it will ever be corrected or acknowledged as the conflict of interest that it is. I don’t expect it to be fair.
This is not to say that the “partner program” proper is corrupt. A few years ago they brought in professionals to manage the process, and since then dealing with that part of the organization has been very positive. After the change, my application was processed promptly, and all my questions have been answered to my satisfaction by the “new” management.
Anyway. Partners. When SolidWorks first started, partners really helped round out the product. Companies like Cimlogic, SRAC, DesignSource, SmarTeam, Conisio made it feel more capable. These companies, it just 
so happens, were also among the companies to be bought by SolidWorks to be added directly into the product offerings. Integrating these tools into the software was both good and bad. It was good because the early software needed more capability. It was bad because it squelched the partner program. As a partner, it’s very tough to sell (analysis, data management, libraries) against an integrated solution.
It seemed to take forever to get a decent CNC gold partner. SolidWorks wasn’t buying any companies in this area, and no one was really stepping up to be integrated. For whatever reason, this is a tough market. Although CAD was actually born from the need to create geometry for CAM to cut, CAM/CNC has always seemed like an underfunded, techo-phobic, and extremely change resistant field. I won’t even speculate why that is, but my memory of it was that it was one of the last big fields to put forward a gold partner (integrated into SolidWorks).
There are also reasons against integrating CAM. CAM licenses are typically twice as expensive as CAD licenses, but you generally need fewer of them. A CAM user generally only needs a small corner of CAD, so tying up that extra $4k is usually unnecessary. Another problem is training. If you have full blown SolidWorks connected to a CAM software, you have to be proficient in SolidWorks before you can even get to the CAM. If you’re a CAM operator dealing with live models which might have external references and other unexpected ways for parts to change geometry, that’s not cool. I’ve seen first hand the kind of mess you get when you put untrained CAM users on models from sophisticated SolidWorks users.
Maybe more important was the mindset of SolidWorks themselves. These guys were, among other things, academics. The closer things got to reality – dirty fingernails – the less interested they were. Notice that SolidWorks drawings lagged behind everything else, and that was as close to manufacturing as SolidWorks would get. CAM, and CNC in particular was just a little too blue collar for these guys. I don’t know any of the details, but SolidWorks convinced Geometric Ltd. to develop CAMWorks, the first CAM gold partner software. Geometric did a lot of stuff for SolidWorks, including FeatureWorks, eDrawings, and a lot more.
Alright, so this is a very rambling post. I haven’t even arrived at the main topic yet. I’m just trying to establish that A) the partner program was very important to the growth of SolidWorks, B)that they haven’t always done things that were great for the partner relationships, and C) that SolidWorks relationships with the CAM industry as a whole have always been iffy at best. I’m sure there’s a whole lot more behind this last point.
So where am I going with this. If you’ve been reading the CAD news this week, you already know where I’m going. Of course. I’m headed to the cloud. Jeff Ray’s announcement “when the pain is great enough, they will change” put users into a bit of a tailspin. But imagine what it must have done to partners. Now a partner like me who benefits from chaos is just fine. As long as SolidWorks keeps tangling a web that end users need to have untangled, a guy who writes how-to books will always have a job. And if SolidWorks guts the software every other year, better yet, because there is a constant flow of new and confused users, and there is always a new book to write.
But look at partners who have to write programming to integrate with SolidWorks. Even if they don’t have to integrate, if they just have to use SolidWorks files, how are they going to do this from the cloud? Are the partners going to have to rewrite everything for cloud delivery? What is the file format going to look like? There was a time when “gold partner” meant something, and was a goal to be attained, but now, it seems to have no value whatsoever. What is the future of a SolidWorks partner, or even of the entire partner program? Between buying one lucky winner, and screwing the rest, and sending it all to the cloud where it may be the case that you can’t compete at all, or the barrier to entry is simply too high, what would you do if you had a program that made most or all of its money due to its status as a SolidWorks partner? The rug was clearly yanked out from under these people.
MoldFlow was a strong independent injection mold analysis software company that also had a free add-in for SolidWorks. SolidWorks users felt betrayed when Autodesk bought MoldFlow. Since then it took SolidWorks a long time to respond, partnering with a French company, Simpoe, to bring out SolidWorks Plastics, which may do what MoldFlow did, but can never equal the stature of MoldFlow in the industry.
Then there was a SolidWorks partner that a lot of us “swoopy” people were interested in – TSplines. They made a great technology that seemed like it would solve some big problems that exist in SolidWorks swoopy surfaces. But Bernard Charles makes a point of saying that Catia has the best surfacing in the world BY FAR. BY FAR. He repeats for emphasis. Whether you believe him or not probably doesn’t matter much, because you probably aren’t going to buy Catia to get that surfacing. TSplines on top of SolidWorks, however, might have been something you would have bought. But TSplines was bought by Autodesk. So that technology is not going into SolidWorks, and I personally would not buy it now, because I doubt Autodesk plans to benefit SW users indefinitely.
One of the golden children of the SolidWorks partner program for the last few years has been HSMWorks, a CAM software company. And not just a CAM software company, but a company that ONLY makes CAM software integrated into SolidWorks. There aren’t that many partner categories left where SolidWorks has not purchased a major player. We now know that Autodesk has purchased HSMWorks as well. Why would Autodesk purchase a company that ONLY makes SolidWorks software? The first thing they did was can all the resellers. You can’t really blame HSMWorks for selling out to Autodesk. SolidWorks was going to run into the cloud, and was probably not giving any guarantees. Plus, Catia has CAM of their own. Maybe there just wasn’t any good news for HSMWorks when they looked into the future of a partnership with SolidWorks.
So SolidWorks partners are getting screwed by two things: the uncertainty of the cloud, and this idea that CAD companies need to do everything. Autodesk says they’re going to continue to support the “Works” side of HSMWorks, but they started by torching all the resellers who know the customers. Most of the resellers are probably also SolidWorks resellers. Even without that, do you really trust Autodesk? If the partners are getting screwed, so are customers, because there are fewer options. To me these are just more symptoms of the crumbling of the empire.
Here’s another DS partner that is worthy of mentioning.
Simpoe
As of April, Simpoe is managing the development and support of the DS/SW SolidWorks Plastic Simulation product.
http://www.simpoe.com/news/latest-news/39-simpoe-signs-major-agreement-with-dassault-systemes-solidworks.html
I mention this because Simpoe also supports software for Pro/E and Solid Edge. So, how does Simpoe manage the agreements with PTC, Siemens PLM and SW if they are now a development provider for DS SolidWorks? I’d like to understand this relationship compared to HMSWorks/Autodesk.
I did post a similar posting on the HSMWorks posting as well but here we go.
Siemens announced that it purchased KINEO CAM which I thought, by looking at the name was a..well..CAM product. My assumption was wrong. KINEO CAM is technology provider for simulation and interferance analysis tools. It would be interesting to find out how many CAM software OEMs use their toolkits for collision detection and path generation. Anyway, this is the type of comanies Siemens strategically purchase- core technologies.
http://www.kineocam.com/news-events.php? id=60
Here’s HSMWorks discussing the uncertain future of DASSAULT/SolidWorks
http://forum.hsmworks.com/index.php?topic=1385.0
Cheers, Devon
I can understand the issue most people on this forum have with Autodesk buying up companies that develop add-in capability for SolidWorks. And it certainly is based upon a strategic plan on the part of Autodesk. Most logically, that plan is to introduce capability into Inventor capabilities that will exceed those in SolidWorks.
Dassault already owns this technology, but it is embedded into Catia. DS doesn’t even own the kernal that SW is based upon. Not sure if they own the Catia kernal? But if they don’t own the kernal, the basic technology, why would they want to spend money to develop that when they could just port SW over to the Catia kernal? And if they can master the file translation issue, I think most SW users would be very agreeable with that. Just don’t put it on the cloud so that we have to pay user fees monthly, and they have an even greater grip on our wallets.
But Dassault has been trying to achieve this goal for the past five or more years and still do not have a viable solution for the SW customer base. Even if they gave the new SW 98% of Catia functionality, the file translation issue would be huge for most users.
Perhaps it is time for Dassault to consider selling SW, or merging them with Autodesk. If AD likes SW add-ins, they would really like SW. This is just a chess game, and DS is about to be trumped. The way things are going, DS will have to sell it’s Queen, SW to AD or it will have to open up Catia technology to SW customers at a huge price discount.
In the end, we will all have advanced surfacing tools, mold tools and CAM at an ever decreasing price level. Just get happy……………..
An interesting part of the HMSWorks CEO’s open letter to customers for cloud watchers to contemplate…
See the full letter here http://forum.hsmworks.com/index.php?topic=1385.0
Thanks to JB for posting this link on the SW forum 😉
————
>10. Did we sell out?
Yes, we did.
We sold out because we were offered a unique opportunity to significantly influence the future of CAM – the very reason we started HSMWorks to begin with.
This was a unanimous decision by all employees and shareholders.
There were two key elements that factored into our decision.
1. The future of SolidWorks
Ever since news of V6 was first announced and speculation began to grow about the future of SolidWorks within Dassault Systèmes, we went through all available channels to get the best information we could regarding the direction of SolidWorks, V6, the SolidWorks Partner Program, and the SolidWorks OEM Program.
We reached out to people as recent as last month in an effort to get any information that might shed some light on the future direction of SolidWorks, the SolidWorks Partner program, or the SolidWorks OEM program. No one could tell us anything.
No company can or should be expected to base their future on such uncertainty.
—————
> ..’last month’..’no one could tell us anything’…
Absolutely staggering! and yet Dassault turn around and spitefully axe them immediately as Gold Partners.
Funny how the general pitch of Autodesk offering a future/vision/resources etc is in line with what was said by Tsplines…probably wont be the last time we hear it either.
Anyone still confident about what is going to happen come May next year??
Bernard, buddy, if you are out there, this is a monumental crisis for your corporation. You had better get off your backside and do something about it now while you still can. This is *the* turning point. Its here, right now. Dont wimp out…
Matt,
I have not used the free form push pull surface feature. I like the quality of the blend surface and the conic surface. The C2 surface is very smooth but tricky in the corners. Conic curves and surfaces are much more versatile than the new SW2013 conic curve. The geodesic mapping of a surface to a plane is neat.
The surfaces function like any other Solidworks surface. It is not necessary to have GW3D to work with a model that contains some of these surfaces.
Support is excellent. I just call and get real time answers. The selection and highlighting of curves and edges is a bit clunky but the results are worth it.
@Rick McWilliams
That product has been around for a long time. Maybe 10 years. I remember fiddling with it a long time ago and being impressed with its capabilities. Maybe I should look at it again. Does it seem to have capabilities with more freeform organic shapes?
I continue to get some fine surfaces from GW3D add in. I am especially fond of the conic surface feature. It is just the thing for very fair airplane fuselage surfaces. They handle the singularity of a three sided conic surface excellently. No ripples, wrinkles, hogbacks, butt cracks, tits or curls. CadCamComponents is a little known Solidworks partner.
@Kevin Quigley
Maybe you should lay off the sauce while making the rounds on the internet. Nobody likes a snarky drunk.
I didn’t really see Matts post as a rant. I wouldn’t describe the whole blog as a rant either. I did notice Kevins post was a rant about rants but there is lot of good educational SW content here going back years if he cared to look and not just reporting of recent Dassault gaffes related to their cloud initiative. I do agree there have been too many of those to report lately and too little to get excited about in respect of SW itself but thats largely up to SW themselves to correct.
All in all I think Matt does a good job of writing up things of interest to the SW user community. He writes here as he does in his books with a degree of openness and genuine concern about the software as a user and for other users. Honestly I dont see whats wrong with a newsy post about the loss of HMSWorks following on from a few other conspicuous departures. Aside from some predictably scathing comments from regular contributors about the generally woeful state of Dassault affairs and how we wish it was different it is a rather friendly response in comparison to comment at the HMSWorks forum. Clearly there are people out there who are not happy with the way things are progressing on a few fronts. Those people are acquiring their attitude independant of this blog. They are having it done to them.
Sometimes I wonder what motivates Kevin to take the stance he does but if he is more comfortable reading and posting elsewhere then that’s OK by me.
Personally I admire someone who is willing to talk about the reality of using any product rather than operate as undeclared marketing space or have a blind/mindless appreciation regardless.
I hope Matt keeps producing valuable CAD books and topical blog content no matter which program or programs he chooses to explore/use.
Matt a few months back you accused me if being a hypocrite. I read this further rant yet you continue to take the benefits that partner status offers. Free software etc. If you feel that strongly just decline your partner status, stop writing SolidWorks books and start writing SolidEdge ones instead.
From an outsiders point of view your blog is becoming a tedious rant with the same people saying the same things.
I have removed it as a bookmark now.
@chad
If customers keep buying 3rd party products, then yes, they are needed.
Does Dassault Systemes really need these companies?. Just because a company chooses to innovate instead of acquiring points to a difference in management philosophy. Dassault Systemes might be burning bridges but I haven’t seen anything impressive come out of Autodesk from all these acquisitions other than layoffs.
@Neil
😉
Maybe it just seems quickly. Remember they made some fundamental business decisions about 7 years ago. Since then I think we have actually been on one long dive although it is only really becoming apparent to everyone now that its too steep to keep their tray in front of them. Classy* passengers will probably want to ask a hostess at this point for some Blu-Tack or if there is a search engine available via the in-flight entertainment system…
The pilots have been very very professional in keeping their silence except for the odd cryptic announcement like ‘You will be landing in a May day in 2013’ or ‘This is by far the worlds most advanced plane, by FAR, it has a Conceptual Vector Thrust System. It even flies level while pitched down 45 degrees and gives us a cockpit voice message “look ma, no hands!” ‘.
However, when you spot through the cloud that some of the crew have bailed out already its probably a good idea to make your way in an orderly fashion to the rear of the plane with your own parachute in hand. Try not to say out loud ‘I can’t recall anything like this before, well I can as a matter of fact…’ as you go because some folks will be engrossed in watching the movie and won’t want to be disturbed. Its a good one I hear. Titanic.
@Neil
Neil I just browsed the HSMWorks Forum, whoa! 🙂 DASSAULT SYSTEMES now has another group pissed off at them.
DASSAULT SYSTEMES/SolidWorks has been quickly transformed into a completely different kind of company, I can’t recall anything like this before.
Well I can as a matter of fact: General Motors 1980’s, Hewlett Packard 2000’s, Kodak currently.
Devon
THE best example I saw for the use of SolidWorks & CAM/CNC was when I assisted a SW Reseller implementing EPDM. The customer was a 1 man machine shop. He wrote his own G code CNC program(using SW 3D models files) for each part he manufactured. He designed & built his own material handling & feed system so all his machines could run unattended 24hrs/day 7days/week!
We helped him implement EPDM to store and manage the models files. The G code files were linked directly to each model file and specific revision of that part file in the EPDM Vault.
Truly amazing.
Cheers, Devon
The hsmworks forum is an interesting read… its like someone threw in a stink bomb…
You know it really must be quite rankling to Dassault to have their territory invaded and occupied like this.
Well it would be if they had any management clues at all. In the case of Dassault it doesn’t really matter a lot whether they get their arses handed to them repeatedly because obviously no one has their incompetence recognised for what it is and they can just borrow a bit more from Catia to make up the difference and then cut it down here and there to fit. There, no worries people, thats by far the best cut and shut job you can get. By far. BY FAR. In *the* cosmos!
Imagine though if HP woke up one morning and found Canon were now the providers of inks for their printers and all the packaging was now to say Canon HP consumables, or planes had Airbus Boeing 7X7 written on them because the paintshop got taken over by a strategic acquisition.
Perhaps we could have a ‘guess the next partner to go’ competition following along from the ‘name the software’ one?
@Rick McWilliams
Rick, I’m listed in one area and not in another. Obviously, there is someone with a grudge. I don’t “meet the requirements”, but there are no requirements. you just have to be buddies with the right person to get free trips. They have links to blogs that have given up their domains, links to blogs that only post press releases, and links to blogs that rarely write.
@Lou Gallo
Partner program is an R&D incubator, and means less and less as the software gets bigger.
Partners are either hoping for acquisition by Sw or a competitor. It seems as platforms mature, the only partners are the niche ones. The rest get absorbed.
Matt, your partner status must still be rocky. Solidworks does not list your blog on their website. Other blogs with half a dozen posts a year are listed.
I find the idea that Geometric was the first to integrate CAM with SW and now will be the first with SE interesting. Now we see HSM jumping ship. Wonder what data they have that made this choice for them?
My main reason to comment on here was integrated CAD and CAM. I worked with VX which was that way and it is nice for things to have commonality and one or two mouse clicks takes you to file editing. It is not just a matter of changing the part itself for whatever reason also but repositioning the part for XYZ zero and being able to save this part oriented into various positions because you have more than one side to cut. There are times where you have to impose a surface to cover a hole or be able to draw wireframe geometry or points to use in tool paths. The CAM user has to either have design capabilities in hand or he has to throw it over the wall back to design and wait for the edits. Just the way it is.
If both CAD and CAM are from the same company I would feel better about the future. I mean the whole company can be sold off as it was for me with ZW but at least the two halves stayed together and that is a big deal. I can buy ZW and use just CAD and buy another CAM program if I wish. If SE does this integration and even if they ended up buying something outright I can still buy just CAD and another independent CAM software if I choose to. If SW were to have brought CAM inhouse the same would be true here. But no delays on version compatabilities will exist when a single company owns both sides.
The down side of this would be if the company you prefer to use has both your CAD and CAM and they decide to do something stupid like force you to the cloud then you have to replace TWO programs.
In the end however CAD exists solely to feed manufacturing at some point in time. I am for whatever makes this process most efficient as I do both. What I am worried about most right now is without the CAM program being owned outright by the CAD program what can happen? I can quite easily see Autodesk offering to Geometric enough money to buy them out. Autodesk has been very smart here and not only do they get into their competitors pockets with customer sniping they now have total control over a top flight CAM program. No one can take this away from them. I don’t know about other users but part of what I most want with my software is stability and the idea that I only have to buy something one time and Autodesk has just purchased this guarantee in CAM. Well, at least as good a guarantee as you can have in this world anyway if you discount the fact Autodesk is going to go cloud stupid.
My hat is off to Autodesk for being the first of the three big midrange MCAD companies to acknowledge that manufacturing is the primary reason for CAD and to do something about it in a way that can’t be interfered with.
Maybe Autodesk will buy Sw V1 off Dissault. Dissault then then nicely slide out of any compatibly issues between V1 & 6.
So Autodesk have sawn another leg off the SW death bed in their usual helpful manner….I wonder if they send Bernard a bunch of flowers after each ‘kinetic action’.
These guys have to be into derivatives trading after hours dont they?. Perhaps squeezing the last pennies out of Greece has lost its amusement…
While it is yet another low blow to the esteem of SW I think this betrays the reality that there actually is no ongoing future for SW, just as we have anticipated here for a few years.
After all if partners are cashing up their remaining chips then its pretty hard to sit here as a user and not feel threatened by the pending extinction of SW itself no matter what assurances are given about SW in 2020.
If SW were to lose a few more partners before next May, and you would suspect Autodesk will be knocking on some more doors with their wallets at the ready before then, it would be become almost impossible to convince even the most die-hard SW consumer it has even a short term future.
A crumbling empire indeed. The fascade even has a disconcerting lean now…