Understanding SolidWorks Connected: Surprises and Drawbacks

I don’t claim to have kept up with all of the licensing options that have been added or taken away in the last few years, but it seems clear that SW users are being pushed into 3DExperience (3dx).

I decided a couple of months ago to get the Maker version of SW. I needed to have something for new blog posts and other materials, and my old commercial version wasn’t going to cut it. And at $48, even if I never really used it for anything, it wouldn’t be much of a loss.

I have to say that before I purchased, I didn’t really understand what it was. All of these technical writers available to the company, and it seems like they actively choose to not clearly describe the limitations that come with the particular license you are buying. It’s like you have to buy it to know what’s in it. I recall hearing some underhanded congressional dealings not too long ago that sounded like that.

I’ve been accused of being naive, but I expect people to be honorable and do the right thing. Even when I know they won’t. This is one of those things that really annoys me about marketing in general: It seems like they choose to be intentionally ignorant about the bulk of information that is important to customers. This isn’t just an accident – it’s an open secret although people pretend to be surprised when you suggest it. It’s intentional, and it’s why customers tend to not trust companies the bigger they get and the further they get from real human ethics.

Anyway, I bought the Maker version. (I’m sure “bought” turns out to be the wrong word here, but the company will let me use it for a year). To be sure it is Solidworks Connected. What does that mean? Solidworks Connected is 98% old school, locally installed Solidworks. But there are some really odd surprises.

The first surprise I found was that you can’t double click on a local SW file to open the SW application. This has been a staple of Windows files for decades. If you try to do that you get the message to the right. SW Connected must be launched from the 3DX platform, or from the desktop shortcut created by the platform.

If you answer “yes” to the “Do ya wanna piece of candy little girl?” question, you are whisked off in a little saucer to a strange place that lets you open SW Connected, xDesign or xShape. Hold it, is this Siemens or DS? In Siemens, the X after a name means its a cloud component. ie ZelX, NX X, TeamcenterX.

Anyway, I can open xShape and xDesign from here, but these run in the browser.

Now I understand what Maker really is. It’s really just a welcome mat to 3dx. Maybe more than a welcome mat. Maybe a windowless van with candy down by the river would be the better equivalent.

The xShape interface looks familiar, especially in light of the newish desaturated blue and gray icon color palette in Solidworks. (Hold it, Solid Edge got that treatment too, what’s going on?) And now come to think of it, this might also be why Solidworks Maker version doesn’t have the ability to switch the icon color scheme back to the old yellow/green, which now I have to admit looks gharish.

I might come back later and do a little evaluation of xShape, but for today it’s just distracting me from SW Connected. Anyway, it looks like this is the whole goal. To get you running this online stuff. Pretty good bargain for $48. But then I always fell for those “Buy 10 albums for 1 cent” deals back in the ’80s.

Even the new SW icon looks a little odd. First, it has the non-transparent background on it, making it look like a clunky old school Windows icon. Then it has the orange stripe on the left… The attention commanding Pro/ENGINEER reminiscent capitalization problem, and the word Connected, which reminds me of connection to old school mainframe computers. Nothing to complain about, but it’s just a few odd choices that harken back to something less palatable than where we came from.

You’d think with all the “old school” references here, there’d be something to be happy about. But we evolved out of the old school, and not all of it is something to want to go back to. Further, none of this looks intentional. The care that they put into planning certain parts of this “platform” points to the idea that there can’t be so many little pieces that look simply accidental. Or can there?

You’ve seen the cryptic 3dx compass, or whatever they call it, right? This thing at the right? Remember a couple of decades ago when all of the icons looked like they had been encased in a polished dome of acrylic? We seem to be back to that. Or maybe this icon never left that stage of development. Its 2005 all over again.

In any case, it’s just another reminder that 3dx is not a glimpse into the future, it’s a reminder of the past. Centralized computing made sense 50-60 years ago. But with each passing news cycle it makes less and less sense. Especially for small businesses or companies with a lot to lose.

If you enter the new 3dx universe through the SW desktop icon, you really start to feel like you’ve entered a back door. First, you get a pair of DOS or VAX looking black screens with prompts and text. Welcome to 1985 computing. If this is meant to welcome me to a whole new world of online computing, they’ve missed the mark, and not by a little. It doesn’t instill confidence when you see DOS screens flipping by. This one was up long enough to get a screen shot.

Routing users through a desktop icon with extra programming or a web button to start the software isn’t just about licensing, they checked licenses online for years before without all of this. This is 3dx. It must be initializing the platform for you on the 3dx server. Whether you use it or not. It has a very ancient feeling to it, a de-evolution into something far more primitive.

Once you get in the software proper, most of it looks like home – er – like good ol’ Solidworks. With, of course, a couple of exceptions.

The upper right corner of the software window shows you are Connecting to 3dx. And then the 3dx panel on the right starts listing your component name and status. Looks like file management stuff.

This is where I start to get a little nervous. I have a computer full of model data that’s very valuable. I’ve got backups, but I don’t really want to share the data I have. Some of it belongs to my customers and some of it just belongs to me, and I really don’t want to give it to anyone else. When I start making new files, there’s a new symbol in the assembly manager window. The blue M means it’s a Maker file. Just like academic versions have a graduate’s cap. These files are limited, and can’t be opened by a commercial license. So that’s one thing to keep in mind when you pay your $48.

If I open one of my old customer files on my computer and save it in the Maker version, it would be rendered inaccessible by the commercial version, and thus be worthless. I have disk backups, but still, you need to be careful.

The next thing to be careful about is that the File menu has changed somewhat. You have the option to Save to 3dx or Save to this PC. Of course saving it to 3dx means it goes to a big database in the cloud and then someone else owns this data now. Yes, it’s convenient, but no, I don’t want someone else to own data that I’ve been paid to create. Just to be clear, I’m not doing commercial work on the Maker version. That is done, but this data is still on my computer, and I do still refer to it to examine techniques I’ve used. If I’m making new example files, I usually delete them without saving. I’ve saved a few samples just to see what happens.

Also, I’m not back to have another rip at the cloud. If you signed up for the cloud, you presumably know what you’re doing and have a reason for doing that. I just have to be careful not to send my stuff to the cloud (to retain ownership) and not to save it as a Maker file (to retain access in commercial version). So I can’t save anything. Yes, it’s kind of a ridiculous situation, but it suits my needs for now.

(Another subtle but inconvenient change to the File menu is that the Reload command is now gone, but it exists in 3dx. You can’t just bail on a model with problems and reload the last saved version in straight SW anymore in the Maker version. You can ditch a file and reload it from the 3dx database, but you can’t do that with a local file. )

The Save to 3dx window looks very much like PDM. Not SW “PDM”, but generic PDM applications.

I can see if you bought into the whole 3dx universe, this all looks very good. But to get to all of this you’re going to have to abandon the software you’ve put a lot of energy into. It’s ok if you’ve made a conscious choice to move to the cloud. Just don’t get railroaded or gaslighted into doing it.

Most of the rest of using Solidworks Connected is mostly like you expect it to be. Saving files to an unreadable format or to a location where someone else really owns your data are the two big things to watch out for with the Maker version.

Oh, and one little gem here to tack on at the end. One of the benefits of software on the cloud is that you don’t have to worry about updating it – all that happens for you automatically!! Well, that sounds great, especially if I have 50 seats to update. But I don’t have 50 seats, and the surprise is that you can’t use the software while it’s getting updated. They only say that it’s getting updated on October “05th”. So does that mean I can’t use it all day? Do I get a discount for that day? Or maybe access to a different kind of license that doesn’t have this limitation? Or maybe DS is going to pay my boss to give me a day off?

October 05th turns out to be a Saturday, which might be ok, or it might not. The point is that I didn’t get to choose the day. Lots of people work non-traditional schedules, more than ever. I’m glad to get an update, but I wish I had been able to choose when that happened, and know with a little more detail when I should avoid using the software. Do you get a warning? Or do you turn it on for 5 minutes and hose your entire installation? Glad I only paid $48 for this.