SolidWorks Top 10 List and What’s New

I always applaud a CAD company, or any company, really, trying to really understand what their customers want. Forums are a great way to do that indirectly. You set up a nice area for them to talk to one another and listen in on their conversations, answer when relevant, damage control when needed, and mostly try to be humble and learn. SolidWorks has done this, and the Top 10 List is another way they are trying to connect with users. It’s a good thing. Programmers don’t think like CAD users. Product Managers sometimes get confused and need a check from the real world. Real hands-on-the-mouse users have a lot of information they would like to share, and SW would like to hear.

If you haven’t seen the Top 10 List, or haven’t voted, here’s a link. Go check it out.

My favorite stuff to write about is the What’s New list every year. You’d think there would be a direct correlation between the What’s New and the Top 10 List. Maybe there is and maybe there isn’t. We’ve heard from SW before about how new functionality gets into the software. Customer enhancement requests are one way, and I’m assuming that the Top 10 List functions as a weighted enhancement list. They look at the bug list, or reported problems, both internal and external. Competitive issues are another. If they see that Solid Edge has added some cool new feature, SolidWorks is likely to add it too. Items that come from the sales channel, such as a big potential customer really wants wiring, boom, it can get added like that. SolidWorks, like all companies, tries to keep their ear to the ground and be on the front end of the wave for new stuff. They added ScanTo3D 10 years ago or more, even though it was very rough.

One time, quoting Steve Jobs, the execs at SW claimed that a lot of functionality was added to the software on SW’s own initiative. We got stuff we never asked for because “customers don’t know what they want“. There’s a part of me that is extremely offended by this kind of arrogance, but then there’s part of me that recognizes that genius is not always on the customer side of the equation. Arrogance (thinking he could cure pancreatic cancer without doctors) ultimately killed Jobs, but in a way he was right. Would I have known to ask for the Boundary surface when we already had the Lofted surface? Would I have asked for Intersect when we already had trim, mutual trim, cut with surface, and boolean tools? Maybe not.

So sometimes, SolidWorks adds stuff that they come up with on their own. Users tend to focus on solutions to immediate problems, but if we open that up a little, you might be able to come up with something Now if that’s a new color scheme for icons, or another renderer, we all know how we feel about that stuff, but if it would wind up being an answer to Tsplines or Power Surfacing or something like that, well, I’d be pretty happy about that.

If you read through some of the more popular items, there are 2 items related to the problem of SolidWorks flipping things (mates, planes, tangencies, etc), 1 actual geometry creation enhancement (3D sweep), and several admin type requests (infinite undo, service packs, multicore stuff…). They even managed to come up with a couple of ideas that were so misguided that I actually voted against them. There’s no end of complaining about simple things, whining about a couple percentage points when there are such larger gains to be had. Splitting frog’s hair.

What does this say about where SolidWorks is in the lifecycle of the product itself? Is it still a young and growing company, or are they riding this wave until it crashes on the beach? All the first string players went to Onshape or somewhere else. Even most of the second string is gone. The CAD world is full of old companies/products, with a couple of exceptions. The old guard isn’t really doing anything exciting these days. Even Onshape, the one I hoped would bring some exciting stuff, pretty much gave CAD a pass when it came to making a new CAD product, and innovated mostly on the file management side of things. Interesting, but kinda lame.

I’m really surprised that the SW Top 10 List didn’t include things that make history-based modeling and parent/child relations less rigid, or things that allow you to escape those structures altogether. They have added some mesh capabilities, but not really on the creation side. There are several directions CAD can go in the future, and every direction would be away from history-based tools.

I’d argue that the users that are left (or at least the ones making noise) are also not the first string users. Judging from the Top 10 List, they just don’t have much imagination. They seem content with managing the over-the-hill-slide of their pet program.

What surprises me most about returning to SolidWorks users is that more people aren’t fed up with the limitations and frustrations of history-based modeling more than they are. This says to me that people are making simple stuff. Really simple geometry, to the point that they aren’t seeing any of the drawbacks of history-based modeling. These are actually the people who would benefit the most from direct edit or its extension Synchronous Technology.

I wrote about problems with history-based CAD long ago, and SolidWorks did add some things that help manage the history and parent/child stuff. They added the Freeze bar and the Dynamic Reference Visualization.

I don’t really expect SW at their advanced age to suddenly come up with something like Sync Tech (although the Solid Edge product is the same age, and they managed to reinvent their product without killing it), but they could act a little more energetic to come up with ideas that “customers don’t know they need”. There’s just so much maintenance, and messing with outlying areas, CAD has become boring.