Tsplines for SolidWorks may not be a dead deal
Monica Schnitger, from the Schnitger Corporation, a PLM market analyst, has posted some interesting information about Tsplines. The first was an interview with Autodesk with the typical non-answers that you get to questions that matter.
[pullquote]Q: Will the SolidWorks and Rhino plug-ins from T-Splines (the company) continue to be supported?
A: Autodesk is still evaluating its plans regarding support for the T-Splines plug-ins.[/pullquote]
In a later article, Monica catches up with Carl White, Autodesk’s director of digital design products for manufacturing. Carl seems positive that the Tsplines plug ins for Rhino and SolidWorks will continue to exist.
[pullquote]Autodesk has no intention of doing away with the plug-ins for Rhino and SolidWorks; in fact, links to trial versions of the plugins are back on the tsplines.com site.
-Carl White
as long they keep buying them, we’ll keep making them.[/pullquote]
You need to go over to the Schnitger blog and read the entire statement. One thing we need to keep in mind is that the entire Tsplines company was not sold, so there is something left after Autodesk pillaged it. But Matt Sederberg did tell me he was headed to Autodesk as a product manager. Still, Matt’s father Tom was the brains behind the technology, while Matt seemed to be the public face of the company.
Because there doent seem to be an official statement coming out from any party saying what’s happening I’m beginning to wonder if there is some legal wrangle going on behind the scenes re TsElements and whatever was being worked on….
I suppose a court case could take some time like the scrap over dwg. Regardless of the outcome the effect of say a year long delay on SW at this stage might be much the same as not having access to TsElements at all.
As we roll toward 3 weeks after the initial announcement I am sure all Tsplines customers would like to hear something more has been said so far 😉
Hmmm….. I’d assume these will be kept around mainly as ‘teasers’ to get users to switch to Autodesk products for the full features/functionality. At least in the case of the SW plug-in.
I can’t see Autodesk going out of their way to help SW out. There is some sense in continuing to sell to Rhino users for a while though. Unless Tsplines went out of their way to protect existing SW interests in the terms and conditions I am sure Autodesk would have liked to shut them out asap. Really I think one way or another TsElements has only a short life ahead of it. I will be very surprised to see anything new arrive at SWW. Given SW probably only has a while to run anyway if Tsplines is no longer available I don’t expect DS will develop anything of their own to replace it.
I think the transition of ownership has been pretty poorly handled. A link to a short interview on a random website isn’t fronting up to customers legitimate questions and concerns. It still leaves important detail out.
This is good in the beginning, but eventually it will become absorbed and any competing plug-ins put on development stop. Just look at COSMOS, when it became part of SolidWorks it wasn’t from day one but it wasn’t that long before there was no more Microstation integrated product (yes i cheated to look up what other software it was fully embedded in)