Summary of my position
I just want to sum up what I believe the future of SolidWorks holds before trying to move off in a different direction with this blog. This blog was really started as a diversion from other kinds of writing, but I haven’t been enjoying it much since I stopped writing technical articles. I just want to say what I believe is the case, and move on. Some of what I have written I didn’t expect to be taken seriously. But some I do. This is all my opinion, but it’s mostly stuff I think there is a lot of evidence to support. There might be some quibbling about semantics here and there, but this is how I look at things:
1. The SolidWorks product as we know it is in end-of-life. It will be like Mechanical Desktop after Inventor came out, meaning, it is obsolete, and will disappear within a few years. When? Who knows, but within a year or two, your SolidWorks reseller is going to try to sell you some Catia-based CAD product, and that will announce the end of life as effectively as anything else. You can continue to use the software you have now, and they might have versions of it for the next few years, but it’s not going to see any significant new development. You might get new versions for 3 years. It might continue to “exist” for maybe up to 6. Remember that Mechanical Desktop died a long, slow, painful death.
2. SolidWorks the company you knew is already dead. This probably happened in 2010, or there abouts, and definitely by the time Hirschtick left at the end of 2011. Some of the people remain, but the original spirit of the company is long gone.
3. The new product is basically Catia-lite, and will be cloud based, possibly with some local component. I would expect it to be aggressively forward looking, with little or nothing connecting it to the SolidWorks software we now know.
4. My business is definitely diversifying. I don’t think it’s healthy at this point to base my entire business on one company, especially one who has shown they have little interest in things that interest me. If you look at the types of companies Dassault Systemmes is acquiring, they don’t relate much to CAD, engineering, or design. You’d see stuff more related to global web-based IT, social media, entertainment. big data manipulation, fashion, raw materials, and other stuff equally obscure. I know right now there’s no room for little guys in the CAD business, but things go in cycles, and the 15 year reign of SolidWorks is about to come to a close. As DS gets bigger, they get further away from the reason I bought the software. They are trying to build a dream of the future, a dream that to me does not hold much reality. It’s a whiplash inducing jerk into the unknown, and unasked-for.
5. It’s unclear to me how DS expects to keep all their SolidWorks customers. This is probably the part that bothers me the most. If the SolidWorks software really does follow the path of Mechanical Desktop, Catia-lite is not going to be an inducement to SW customers. I say this sight unseen, but I have little faith in the current direction of the company to come up with an idea that will be attractive to people who found SolidWorks attractive.
This all has been a long time coming, and for some people out there, it will take a long time yet to come to a similar realization. But I don’t believe that delaying the decision will change the outcome, it will just mean starting that much later to build what’s next.
Here’s another issue that I get emails & phone calls about more & more;
“SolidWorks resellers are still saying Workgroup PDM is to be discontinued, yet 4-5 years later it’s still available.”
Cheers, Devon
As Mattt said in of of the previous posts, SolidWorks had success because it was attractive to users.
All the industry trends that Gian Paolo Bassi underlined are obviously trends that could potentially change the future and influence our lives, but the question to answer is: does my CAD help me to get my job done ? Is it easy to use ?
If SolidWorks won’t give users an alternative choiche to users (I.E.using it desktop and without the cloud, or outside of a PLM database) then many users will be potentially attracted by other solutions.
We will see at SolidWorks World 2013 what is the direction they decided to take.
Maybe it will happen like Catia V6, nobody will shift to the conceptual modeler because SolidWorks V1 will have become so perfect and with few bugs.
Maybe they will have done it right by announcing a conceptual modeler that will work on the cloud AND on the desktop, or that will work on ENOVIA ecosystem or without it (I doubt it).
If the company is really customer focused I hope it will listen to users feedback and change direction. I remember Matt’s campaign when Solidworks wanted to adopt Autodesk policy on expired subscription service maintenance (i.e. For each year you’re out of maintenance you will have to pay the annual subscription service money). That time company listened to us and changed their mind.
Will it work for V6 product as well ?
@qwerty
Comment from “qwerty” is from Boston. You’d think people at SW would have better things to do with their time.
Matt cannot stop talking about Solidworks and Dassault Systemes. Perhaps its because there is money to be made in the Solidworks eco-system. Currently the CAD/PLM company with the best financials is Dassault Systemes.
@matt
“Dassault has done nothing to attract users, and none of their software is attractive to your average SW user.”
Do you think it is possible Dassault (this may apply to Autodesk too) see no “$future” in small users and are using attrition brought on by uncertanianty to refine their customer base more to their liking?
@asdf
Here’s what’s wrong with Catia: nothing.
IF, that is, Catia is what you want.
There is nothing that links Catia and SolidWorks. And the users and businesses that use Catia and SolidWorks are generally even more disconnected. I don’t believe there is any reason to believe that SolidWorks users can just automatically be convinced to buy Catia, especially when the terms of use are going to be so different. There’s no philosophical connection between the two softwares. It would be like saying that SolidWorks is going to turn into Think3 tomorrow. Or Rhino. Or SolidThinking. Or VX. Or CAD Lab. Or ComputerVision. Or any other random CAD package you can imagine. There is just no philosophical reason for SolidWorks users to change. The most likely candidates are Inventor, Pro/E (Creo) or Solid Edge. And in the course of the next 3 years, I think that’s where the bulk of SolidWorks users are going to go. I’d be willing to bet that of the companies that change away from SolidWorks, most of them are NOT going to move to another Dassault product. Dassault has done nothing to attract users, and none of their software is attractive to your average SW user.
what exactly is wrong with the catia?
i have only used v5, which can be clumsy compared to the mainstream modellers, but it gets the job done.
so if the new swx will be a polished (from the usability perspective that v5 lacks from swx) catia and would even have some advanced features of it (better surfaces for example) although i must say that SE is very bad in this field for instance due to its parent nx.
if it will be available as a standard dvd installation without any cloud-related stuff i see no reason not to at least try it out.
rick
the fact that catia files don’t work well with siemens teamcenter is a very well known and logically expected “bug” in the latter software.
I learned something interesting. Northrop changed over to Catia v5. A friend has been working there for a couple of years manually converting from v4. The files do not work well with Siemens team center. There is talk about dumping Catia and going to NX. My friend will have lifetime employment bringing the design intent across to the new platform. Will the lofted shapes stay the same?
The DSS CEO speak is sickening. I guess the audience is very tame and does not point out the lack of content.
Well luckily there are other options out there. I may even dust off my Pro/E license, but I know PTC will want me to back pay them for some reason. Good to see all the info relating to SE now.
Reading the stuff Alex quotes. Isn’t it clear by now there are driving considerations being made by Dassault to fundamentaly change how they operate and for who? Dassault started in 1981. Google 1998. Facebook launched 2004. These two social media giants have sailed multiples of times in value past Dassault in a fraction of the time. They have done so in my opinion with stuff that is not so demanding to create compared to creating accurate design data to design rockets and Nuclear Reactors and airplanes.
I read the links above and all I see is social media and cloud and I have to think Dassault has made the decision to leave pure CAD behind for some social mish-mash. They are counting the dollars potential and you who design for a living and don’t care to do it with an iPhone/pad, crowd sourcing, gamification, group think and have design tools that work autonomous from the cloud don’t represent enough $$$ potential anymore.
Individuals who merely want to design on their own desktop with their own seat and no ISP required are not the target market now even though Dassault did take your sub money to use in helping to develop this mess. The other lesson Dassault is going to teach those who remain is this. OK, they understand that you can stop paying them when you have a permanent seat, you are unhappy with them or merely decide not to spend more and continue to make money off the software. They don’t like that. The way you solve that problem is to switch to the cloud and make your monthly/quarterly or whatever subscription model the new way.
Follow the money I have been told and pay to play + social media (big letters) cad (small letters) appears to be the way of the future for Dassault. I hear them talk a lot about how things will continue for SW like they always have but I see them putting their money and time some where else. FUD is not the purview of Dassault detractors but rather by design from Dassault and the safe warm fuzzy socially dynamic subscription cloud is their “solution”.
How is SW? The churn rate..
Hello, hello, I can’t hear you….
So when the banks ask everything is up but the result is mysteriously down. CEO speak for ‘I can’t believe my constant growth plan is failing to deliver. I had better give BS answers until I work something out’
Keep reading those newspapers for guidance every day Bernard.
Don’t know about you but I always flick over to the horoscopes – just for fun of course.
Of course if you read here you will find out that the worlds economy is being sucked backwards down the derivatives black hole and that customers are realising SW is a dead end. Doesn’t really matter how you set about companion selling stuff for SW the outlook isn’t good is it? Not really.
And then you have to read stuff like this:
http://seekingalpha.com/article/952741-dassault-systemes-ceo-discusses-q3-2012-results-europe-call-earnings-call-transcript?source=yahoo
They admit that they get more money for v6 than for v5 for the same functionality, and that it’s not really a software update, but rather a “mandatory platform” (lock-in).
SolidWorks is apparently not doing as well as anyone hopes.
sounds like 1st gen ‘matrice’ (matrix), soon after all the evil fossil fueled power plants have been shut down, you can power your mobile device when the battery is drained, while you are having your 3D experience, by walking around, and sticking the motion generated power module up your ‘u know what’ to recharge the battery and power it. 🙂
>you can’t plan the future of a company if you don’t first take into consideration its past.
=thats right. to move ahead as fast as possible we need to axe the past, ie make it incompatible with the future and give our customers Hobsons choice – problem solved.
> it has always been a 100 % customer focused company
=a marketing myth. at SW we pretend to listen to you, gather opinions, make surveys and have focus groups and then either persist with our own ideas or do something completely different and then triumphantly deliver something half assed. we rarely engage in meaningful dialogue with users especially when we are in trouble and need to do so the most. its just too dangerous to be honest according to our accountants. if this customer statement were true we would get out and focus 100 % on our customers discontent over the direction Dassault is going in and the total and deliberate neglect to supply information however instead we’re 100% focused looking the other way and 0% engaged in action. it really is just too dangerous.
>Product Managers + experts in behavioral science.
=pencil pushers and navel gazers but a notable absence of seat of the pants users.
>Solidworks world is like a rock concert
=the people on the stage are tone deaf to the discord of their own music and ready to crowd surf like Steve Ballmer whether the audience wants it or not.
Dassault! Dassault! Dassault! Cloud! Cloud! Cloud! Wooooo! COME ON!
>we supply schools and universities with certification programs to prepare young generations
=we try to capture and indoctrinate our potential market ahead of Autodesk and as early as possible – moving into kindergartens soon with Cosmic Blobs ipad/cloud editions. No android though, open source are not a target audience.
>Our goal is building long term relationships with our customers to deliver them tools of increasing value
=we are treading very softly so we can lock them in to increasing revenue for us but little actual worth for them.
>Since we’re committed with our customers we owe them giving new tools and technologies for the future.
=but instead we decided to give them what suits us best and follow industry fashion.
since CAD is a done subject the tools we are incorporating are about ways to chat and daydream until its time to go home.
>When looking at the future there’s only one thing that inspires us
=money
>CAD is not anymore central: what’s at the center of our way of thinking is data
=when we have your data weve got you by the balls
>Currently there are very few design tools that have searching as a central theme. We are willing to change this trend
=no other company made this mistake but were pigheadedly forging ahead anyway. we also spent $120 million on a mediocre search engine so we had better do something with it.
> if we can have such great improvements it means then there’s still a lot more to do
=our code is a mess after all these years so we may as well tidy it up, gain some performance and make it look like something useful is going on especially seeing as how we arent willing to put any effort into new features/capability
>We shouldn’t forget that we need to create geometry at the end
=yeah our employees spend so much time social networking and searching for non existent data they often dont produce anything useful. better draw a circle before we go home.
>During SolidWorks 2013 beta testing period there were three times the number of activations we had last year
=we really messed up somewhere – only 13 people actually participated and they spent most of their time trying to install it.
>We’re very happy about these results with quality of the software because we want to revolution that field as well
=we stopped adding new stuff a while ago so quality is going up by default. soon SW will have no bugs at all and then to reward ourselves and our users for attaining perfection we will kill it off.
>in the future products won’t be conceived anymore during company boards, but they will be conceived in living rooms
=were trying to introduce some romance to CAD, its a marketing angle we havent tried yet. eventually we want our brainchild to be conceived in the bedroom even if they turn out to be illegitimate.
>I think that there shouldn’t be an “or” choice, you should get an “also” choice
=right, the market isnt going to decide if SW or* v6 is to prevail, we will, also we know whats best. you’ll love it.
>We’re too much obsessed by making manufacturable objects
=yeah we outsourced all our manufacturing to China so now we just try to distract ourselves and fill in our time doing virtual work in virtual worlds
>These limitations are being lifted off, since the American government is going to issue a new standard where manufacturing information will be integrated in the 3d model. This is a very important trend for us
=the key to freedom and creativity is that all aspects of life are to be tightly regulated and run by US politicians and bureaucrats by central decree. all objects, persons and electronic information will have identifying tags embedded in it. surfdom and totalitarianism is coming to you.
>Until now, the obstacle that didn’t allow having photorealistic graphics on virtual machines was not having GPU virtualization. It’s happening now and I’m sure we will see it in the next months.
=we could have had that 3 years ago for SW on desktop if we hadnt pursued larrabee multi cpu instead of gpu. we missed the play despite what Neil said at the time but were trying to catchup. of course we still havent grasped the significance of gpu for simulation but hey renders are pretty and the UI is pretty. we might even redo materials again.
>We should give you possibility of explaining and putting in customers hands products even before they are created
=this is something we are putting into practice ourselves but not until we have v6 locked and loaded.
>your products should be functional but should also induce an emotion
We want to give you 3D experience, we want to keep alive the fire of passion that you feel when you’re designing an object
= we know our bugs and our attitude p*ss you off but we want to redirect your thoughts to notions that your 3d experience is completely benign, even orgasmic. hell why not give your boss a love bite.
>We will never forget about the care for the pure geometry creation
=its just that we are over that phase and looking for a way to conceive in the living room. of course we care, dont be silly. have I ever forgotten our anniversary?
>A final word: all that we do for the future is in the respect of what has been done so far and customers’ investments. We planned high investments in the current generation of the products, and investments of the same level for the future generation of our products. We will be ready for the future as soon as you will be ready for it.
=we know we stuffed our customers investment by killing SW off but we are going to make a killing from killing it. its coming as soon as we can force feed it to you.
“We want to give you 3D experience” that’s dassaultville, population: who?
To be honest it is very forward thinking, and maybe it will turn out to be a good thing, maybe not. time will tell.
@Alex
Alex, wow. I have to say that I’m not even vaguely interested in the future he paints. PLM takes all of the fun out of CAD. Everything will be mobile. Where will we be going? There is apparently no difference between “consumer” and “professional”. There is no creation, only consumption. It’s a grand vision where the Chinese use pirated autocad to design stuff, and americans mobile around and have “3d experiences” on our Apple products.
I’m just going to find someone who is a little more connected to reality.
Devon had the right idea. Retire and work at restoring vintage radios. Maybe I’ll go into tying flies. CAD and design used to be an inspiring place to work. Now the tools think they are the focus instead of what you create with them. Screw it. 1970’s vision of technology with a heavy dose of cult consumerism. Not interested.
Wow, Alex! Enlightening. Thanks for posting that piece.
@matt
Hi Matt,
finished and ready here:
http://solidworkseducation.blogspot.it/2012/10/gian-paolo-bassi-on-future-of.html
Going to bed. Have a good reading.
@matt
Hi, here’s the first part of the speech.
http://solidworkseducation.blogspot.it/2012/10/gian-paolo-bassi-on-future-of.html
I’m working on the second part (which contains most of the pieces of information about the technological trends that Dassault Systèmes SolidWorks is looking into.
As soon as I’m finished I will drop you a line here.
@Dylan
Of course, my mistake 😉
@Ken
Its not Solid Edge’s technical dreams its Solid Edge technical reality.
@Alex
Alex, looking forward to it. Post a link here once you get it up. I think at this point the most damning news we can hear about SolidWorks will be direct quotes from someone with plans about something other than the current product. They don’t need any help sinking the ship, it looks like.
Hi Matt,
Yesterday the main SolidWorks 2013 launch event for Italy took place in Bologna.
There were 1000 Italian customers and guess who talked to them a out the future of SolidWorks ? Gian Paolo Bassi.
It was quite an interesting speech about his vision of the future of SolidWorks.
I will post asap a summary of what he said on my Blog.
I will anticipate some of the words that he used:
-data management
– there are too many tools that help designers in making their parts manufacturable: we now need new tools to help people turn their ideas into reality
– we will give you powerful tools that will allow you direct modeling and parametric modeling, unlike other systems where you have to choose between direct or parametric
– the cloud
– using you system anywhere from any device
– there’s a lot more to improve in performance
– the concept of social CAD, using the web to share ideas and projects
I’ll be more precise and specific later in my post.
Alex
Matt good Idea to put this topic to rest and get one with something enjoyable.
My prediction is that once dASSAULT is happy with V6 and convinced it will take over the world they will release SolidWorks as open source. It will create lots of excitement and panic until everyone figures out there won’t be any new releases without paying for the Parasolid license. However, the last version will live on with life support provided by volunteers for partners and customers not in the cloud.
any job offers for me?
All true but the alternatives are few and not all that great. It’s wait and see for me.
Frankly I am disgusted by Dassaults inability to talk to their customers about something so important. Obviously some folks think crushing their customers goodwill is inconsequential.
Not a lot of polite things left to say about the situation other than a lot of good SW employees are being made to look bad by association and default, which is a shame really.
If I was to stray into saying what I *really* think about things and the performance of certain individuals Matt wouldn’t want it on his blog.
As for the silent majority well they get what they deserve. Its one thing to say your honest opinion and another to carry the cross for the too lazy/apathetic/spineless. If the future matters to them they need to do something constructive to help themselves rather than just spectate on the outspoken comments from others IMHO. 😉
@David Paulson
Matt has become distracted by Solid Edge technical dreams 😉
http://ontheedge.dezignstuff.com/
@David Paulson
My words exactly David
Matt,
I agree with all the positions that you just stated, and have stated for some time now. Watching SolidWorks self destruct is not worth having a blog about. Certainly not if they are not likely to crash for 3-8 years, by my guestimate. Whatever rabbit they have in the hat with V6 has not been shared with us users, and we can only assume that is because they know we will not like the delivery platform which will be cloud based. And SW files may (probably) will not translate directly into the new kernal architecture. But from DSS standpoint, licensing Parasolid from Siemens really makes no sense.
But that being said, we would all welcome your return to more technical issues that improve our knowledge of the software. We respect your knowledge of SW as being at a higher level than the VAR’s and your documentation is superior to that provided by DSS/SW. The only issue is that most of the followers of your blog are already experts in the use of SW. And while I am sure they have all the abilities to have the same expertise with any other 3D CAD program, doing so is at the least an inconvenience, and a significant retro cost.
Many of us on this forum are more interested in our time and money investment in SW, which the uncertainty of changing horses is not pleasant. But you have given us all a forum for discussing our concerns about our “investment” in SW.
So, if you are being distracted from your technical dreams, I understand. But you have become SolidWork’s Rush Limbaugh, like it or not. Maybe you should take this opportunity more seriously?
I think that is a great summary of where an industry leading product is going, and why the big gorilla in the room DS does not care.
Every industry is cyclical, if you look at the early days of IT with IBM and Micro Channel Architecture to replace Intel and Token Ring to replace Ethernet, the big players think they can control the market, and the little guys like Compaq at the time win out.
There are some very good 3D CAD tools on the market today like SpaceClaim (Mike Payne knows his stuff) to replace Solidworks if a user is inclined to look at alternatives.
The market will stagnate as it always does when the big guy is floundering, but like all industries CAD will get stronger when a replacement to Solidworks establishes itself.
DS/IBM/Autodesk/SAP/Oracle they all have the same model, control the market, control the price (The Harvard way) in Mechanical CAD at the moment new seats are a premium, especially to cross sell, people will carry on using SW but will not pay their Subscriptions/Maintenance once this is recognised by DS as an issue they will do one of 2 things, bribe people over to CATIA Light or stop OS support for Windows 9 forcing an issue.
It will be an interesting 3 years….
Matt,
I think that 3D CAD is stagnating like printed circuit board CAD did a decade ago. The big players hold the market and keep prices high. Nothing really gets improved. The companies just work out more archane forms of copy protection and licensing.
Solidworks may be dead. To me, it is progressing as I learn to use more of the add ins. I am excited about design. I wish Solidworks was excited about design. I hope that they fix a few more bugs before they bury Solidworks. Idiots, they do not know what they are losing.
Agree with Devon.. nice status summary, Matt!
…oh,.. I’ll buy the beer! 8^)
Matt, if you want something else to write about what about this? I know you like fish…
BTW I still would like to know what your opinions are based on, 2013 is a great release, and I still cant see solidworks ending anytime soon….
http://www.dreamaquarium.com/main.php?ref=2677
Well written Matt, I agree with all you have to say. The analogy to Mechanical Desktop, and it’s slow death, is spot on.
Online interest in SolidWorks seems to be at an all time low. Although I’ve cut back significantly on the amount of CAD work I do, I’m amazed to find that most of my clients no longer upgrade to the latest version of SolidWorks, many remain on 2009-2010 for example.
Good luck on your new direction and if you make it out to California look me up and dinner’s on me.
Cheers, Devon