New SW CEO

[Glenn Schroeder]

Thanks to @Alin I see SW has a new president (https://r1132100503382-eu1-3dswym.3dexp ... hh52A2vq4w). I assume it was announced in the General Session this morning.

Does someone with more insight into the personalities involved have any feel for what this will mean to the users? Or what changes, if any, we can expect as a result of the change?

[Tom G]

I'm deleting my other thread written simultaneously.

News brief:
GPB, SW CEO --> EVP of 3DXW
Manish Kumar, VP R&D --> also SW CEO

I suppose this may have been announced at an opening event. I think this sounds great to me. I'd like to know other more informed opinions.

In their press release (link) they use phrases such as, "user community relationship, and accelerate SOLIDWORKS adoption."

I've personally had enough of their marketspeak in most venues (Example so full of it in more than one way), but somehow this one appears much more appealing to me as a SWx user.
Are we even going to matter as users? Will they stop focusing everything that Solidworks users see towards their other products? Will SWx be a visible priority again, instead of an also-ran side hustle? I've heard good things before about Mr. Kumar, mostly as vague mentions or credits - is he the right guy with the right priorities and experience to revitalize SWx?

Will bad things turn good? Is it too late? Is there any humility present in this personnel move? Is GPB 'out of my way'?

[SPerman]

I can only hope that the new guy will make solidworks a priority again, and will let the old guy continue to flush 3DX down the toilet.

"Manish will be succeeding @Gian Paolo BASSI ​​​​​​​as Gian Paolo will now lead an extensive organization dedicated to the continued growth of 3DEXPERIENCE Works"

[AlexLachance]

Let's be hopeful rather then pessimist and wish him the best in this new challenge. I've spoken a few times with him and I am somewhat delighted to know that he's the one being put in place, as even though he isn't the 'most active', he is a lot closer to the userbase then most SolidWorks employees I've seen over the last year.

[Glenn Schroeder]

Let's be hopeful rather then pessimist and wish him the best in this new challenge. I've spoken a few times with him and I am somewhat delighted to know that he's the one being put in place, as even though he isn't the 'most active', he is a lot closer to the userbase then most SolidWorks employees I've seen over the last year.

I'm trying real hard to do that.

[mike miller]

The language of the press release is a bit ambiguous. I think there are two possibilities:

1) GPB was given a sideways promotion to get him out of the way so Kumar can turn the train around before it's too late. This would be a good thing for SWX users.

2) The push to integrate SWX and 3DX is accelerating. The last sentence makes me lean in that direction: "It is due to the talented work of Gian Paolo and Manish that 3DEXPERIENCE Works has grown so large that it now requires a dedicated executive leading it into 2022 and beyond"


They don't really have any trust credit left with the users, so who knows?

[rumpus]

My hope is that they realize that 3DX isn't going to replace SW, and if they don't put some resources back into SW they will lose that market.

But from what I can tell, they've done nothing but $#!+ on their SW customers for the last few years, so that hope is likely unfounded.

No, GPB is being moved up the train, Manish is being put on the back part of the train, and is going to be cut loose at some point. The SW portfolio is being demoted.

Every SW CEO (after McE) has been chosen by DS for a purpose. Jeff Ray - to put the world on notice, which he fumbled hugely. Bertrand Sicot - who no one remembers - was meant to be a better link to France, and a sign that SW was no longer an American company. Gian Carlo Bassi was brought in because he understood the development of online tools, and to continue the development in that direction, and to cement the NOT American stamp. Manish I imagine has been promoted from the technical ranks to show what a low priority SW is going to get going forward. He is different from all the other CEOs in that he doesn't really have any non-technical executive experience. Plus, if you check out his https://www.linkedin.com/in/matangs/, he was the director of Solidworks V6 development 10 years ago during the first attempt to scuttle Solidworks (V6 is what 3DExperience was called before it was called 3DExperience).

This scuttling of Solidworks has all been in the works for over a decade. The first time they tried it, they (assume the technology) weren't ready and had to back off. This time they are too far down the path to back off.

DS would have done much better to sell off SW, but they needed that constant revenue stream and thought they could just divert the unsophisticated users to the online product. It looks to me like someone has a personal vendetta against SW. None of this is rational from a business point of view.

My advice to people who really use CAD and value a relationship with a seller is to find another product. Lots of good stuff out there. Creo, NX, Solidedge, Inventor, Keycreator, Ironcad, VX

If you are just a serious SOLIDWORKS fanboy and can't let go, find a version that will let you use it as long as you want, and just use it. Set out pictures of the last Solidworks world event you went to every year between Groundhog Day and Superbowl Sunday. CtrlQ, CtrlQ CtrlQ!!!!

For those of you who took the blue pill, keep smiling regardless what happens. You're going to be living in a world of oblivion until someone around you with more sense sees what's happening to engineering due to blind loyalty to something that was gone before you were involved

Here's the thing. I read something on some blog (https://dezignstuff.com/whats-the-diffe ... orks-2022/) about what's going on, and he got it mostly right. This thing that became worshipped is long gone. Solidworks the phenomenon started to die in ~2010, and has been on a forced death march since. They haven't been able to trick the users to switch, so they are going to slowly make it more and more painful https://develop3d.com/cad/the-death-of-solidworks/

I thought killing the Solidworks user forum was one of the most overtly cynical things I could imagine, but killing the product off over the loud cries of the fanboys is just beyond the pale. I mean it's been laid out for you several times. Anyone who is still surprised that DS is hellbent on destroying this product is blind.

[Jaylin Hochstetler]

Very well stated @rumpus.

Here's the thing. I read something on some blog (https://dezignstuff.com/whats-the-diffe ... orks-2022/) about what's going on, and he got it mostly right. This thing that became worshipped is long gone. Solidworks the phenomenon started to die in ~2010, and has been on a forced death march since.

FYI, the author of that blog is Matt Lombard, @matt, the founder of this forum.

[christian chu]

Thanks to @Alin I see SW has a new president (https://r1132100503382-eu1-3dswym.3dexp ... hh52A2vq4w). I assume it was announced in the General Session this morning.

Does someone with more insight into the personalities involved have any feel for what this will mean to the users? Or what changes, if any, we can expect as a result of the change?

it's a shame as a veteran SW user, I am not aware of a convention today?

[Frank_Oostendorp]

Clearly Manish is rewarded for his job of the SolidWorks Forum Data Migration, with all it's ups and downs. This in combination of Incorporating your valuable UX feedback. He did meet the goals of his superiors. He did this job as Vice President R&D, can you imagine that? When it became a bit hot, Matthew took over, might be next VP R&D?

Get real, titles as a reward only last a few years, you are only closer to the exit. It's sad but it's true.

[rumpus]

The people who work at SW just have a job to do, and they do it. It's just a job. Difficulty arises when some old timers remember why we bought Solidworks instead of Pro/E, and it was because of the freedom, flexibility, and independence it afforded us. Pardon my saying so, but freedom and independence are things that Americans used to be able to relate to in spades. It's understandable that people from other places find that a little obsessive of us. I think the freedom and independence (from centralized computers, from ties to big corporate accounts) is what attracted most users to Solidworks, and why as lombard says there was this social movement. Solidworks was a very American thing. When Dassault puts all of these people in charge meant to assert intentionally other-than-American control over a group of people who in general have very typically American sensibilities, there's going to be a culture clash. Honestly, it would have been easier for Dassault to just sell it off. They aren't going to convert Americans to this brand of globalism.

This is more a philosophical argument than political. I know some people will want to characterize this as something more sinister and divisive, which it is not. It's not an anti-French thing, or anti anyone, it's just the clash of philosophies. The people who bought into SW early on were to some extent drawn in by the philosophy as much as the technology. The switch is asking many of these same people to now buy into exactly the philosophy they rejected by buying SW. This is why Dassault trying to march SW users into 3DE users is doomed to failure. 3DE may well be a beautiful vision, and everything may well be connected, but it requires a different way of looking at things that people who value independence and freedom just can't swallow.

[Frank_Oostendorp]

Let's be hopeful rather then pessimist and wish him the best in this new challenge. I've spoken a few times with him and I am somewhat delighted to know that he's the one being put in place, as even though he isn't the 'most active', he is a lot closer to the userbase then most SolidWorks employees I've seen over the last year.

Sure, I wish all the best for Manish. But I can predict how this will end......

[Frank_Oostendorp]

See Above

People in Europe like to be independent too, but we couldn't afford the major investment for other 3D CAD software in the year 2000. And to be honest, this was the main reason for many users, and only choice for small companies.
The decisions taken by Dassault aren't typical French schooled, I have seen these approaches before at some very large American companies I worked for. Figures have to be presented every month, but I can't see the big revenue coming from the 3DEXPERIENCE SolidWorks yet.
The basic cause of this politics is they want to tell the customer what he needs, and none of these decision makers has ever been involved in using 3D CAD in a company. They could equally sell boxes with hot air. If you sell mobile phones, fashion, food or music, you can manipulate the market. If you want to keep selling quality tools, you have to deliver quality tools. Selecting the tool for your starting business, for the next 10 years, is a hard thing to do. But competition for SolidWorks is growing every year. And when some users in a certain area of the world can't used the hacked version anymore, they will write their own.

[Tom G]

I think that responses have confirmed that, post DS-schism, I live in Bizarro World where everything is backwards, so that positive messaging of good news clearly indicates impending doom and catastrophe. That's what I thought. I had almost hoped for better.

This is fine.

[rumpus]

People in Europe like to be independent too, but we couldn't afford the major investment for other 3D CAD software in the year 2000. And to be honest, this was the main reason for many users, and only choice for small companies.
The decisions taken by Dassault aren't typical French schooled, I have seen these approaches before at some very large American companies I worked for. Figures have to be presented every month, but I can't see the big revenue coming from the 3DEXPERIENCE SolidWorks yet.
The basic cause of this politics is they want to tell the customer what he needs, and none of these decision makers has ever been involved in using 3D CAD in a company. They could equally sell boxes with hot air. If you sell mobile phones, fashion, food or music, you can manipulate the market. If you want to keep selling quality tools, you have to deliver quality tools. Selecting the tool for your starting business, for the next 10 years, is a hard thing to do. But competition for SolidWorks is growing every year. And when some users in a certain area of the world can't used the hacked version anymore, they will write their own.

Frank,
I'm not trying to diminish anyone else's experience, and I'm not trying to say that all Americans feel the same, I'm just talking about my own experience and that it is shared to some extent. Freedom and independence are on big time display in Canada right now. In the US, it can be taken too far sometimes. I'm not interested in that side of it, I just want to say that the original SW was big on freedom and independence, and that resonates with some people. These people will be hard to move to something that requires more constraints and dependence.

[SPerman]

I think you are confusing freedom and independence with caring about the customer. The old company listened to the customers and responded to the input. The new company doesn't do that.

[mattpeneguy]

I'm deleting my other thread written simultaneously.

News brief:
GPB, SW CEO --> EVP of 3DXW
Manish Kumar, VP R&D --> also SW CEO

I suppose this may have been announced at an opening event. I think this sounds great to me. I'd like to know other more informed opinions.

In their press release (link) they use phrases such as, "user community relationship, and accelerate SOLIDWORKS adoption."

That may be subject to interpretation...Could they mean that they are putting SW up for adoption?

[mp3-250]

SW is a downgraded parasolid engine at an affordable price and they were also very good at over promising and underdelivering IMHO.
If you want extreme flexibility and stability just buy NX from Siemens, but you have to pay an higher price for that.

Now we have Dassault in a not very nice position, as Solidworks uses Parasolid, D-cubed technology and Mentor Graphics simulation tools, under license: the more SW sells the more royalty DS has to pay to its competitor Siemens with its SE and NX CAD already competiting with SW and Catia (I think it still huts them that Daimler replaced it with NX years ago)

[zwei]

Not sure does this belong here but...
I recently saw this on reddit

[AlexLachance]

Not sure does this belong here but...
I recently saw this on reddit
image.png

Color me surprised.

[derouser]

I'm reading lots of impending doom speak for "solidworks" as a legacy desktop product...

How soon can we realistically expect to see a proper sunset & burial of Solidworks & the foretold forced migration to cloud products?

I represent just one business & such a change would be earth shattering to our eng team.. It's difficult to expect that every other business that has used & integrated solidworks into their workflows for the last 20 will go willingly over the cliff...

Is it unreasonable to assume solidworks will remain available for 'legacy' businesses in some form as long as it continues to produce revenue?

Also, is it unreasonable to assume that the new cloud-based offerings are meant more to scoop up entirely new business, rather than being a lock stock & barrel replacement for what was?

Dictated, but not read.

[nordstjernen740]

I'm reading lots of impending doom speak for "solidworks" as a legacy desktop product...

How soon can we realistically expect to see a proper sunset & burial of Solidworks & the foretold forced migration to cloud products?

I represent just one business & such a change would be earth shattering to our eng team.. It's difficult to expect that every other business that has used & integrated solidworks into their workflows for the last 20 will go willingly over the cliff...

Is it unreasonable to assume solidworks will remain available for 'legacy' businesses in some form as long as it continues to produce revenue?

Also, is it unreasonable to assume that the new cloud-based offerings are meant more to scoop up entirely new business, rather than being a lock stock & barrel replacement for what was?

Dictated, but not read.

I think that is the million dollar question and the reason this thread and ones like it exist. In my opinion, we are a LONG ways off from Dassualt admitting that they are sunsetting solidworks desktop. Dassault keeps promising that Solidworks isn't going anywhere. One thing is certain. They are doing a horrible job at providing clarity.

I have concerns that instead of a clearly communicated sunset of solidworks, we will instead see price hikes and gradually poorer quality support and service packs for the legacy products. (price hikes for network licenses are already coming April 1st)

I have concerns that 3dx is not currently everything its been promised to be (leaving out the migration portion of the conversation). I have hands on experience with one 3dx branded application (exalead) and I have not been impressed. Oh yeah, and don't forget about the "forum" debacle. Lack of customizability to fit existing data seems to be the theme with 3dx. Currently I also believe there are still some glaring feature omissions from their solidworks focused replacement products as well. I believe that's what the "Xapps" are intended to be?? Did I hear they don't yet have 2d drawings?? This concern is more based on hearsay, but the lack of adoption I think speaks to this concern about the quality of the actual products.

I have concerns that there will not ever be a truly valid and inexpensive migration path from solidworks legacy to 3dx. The abandonment of the parasolid kernel means that in order to provide this, they would need to build an even more complex feature to feature translator for a true migration path to exist. I'm not sure if a true bone fide "translator" of "solidworks to 3dx" is something that Dassault is even attempting to pursue. Its definitely something they "should" be able to do, given their access to the source data models, but I have no doubt that it would be expensive and complex to build. One of the higher ups at our VAR says that solidworks is "working on this", but I'm not sure that he actually knows that or was just saying it to make us feel better.

I have concerns about the business model of "cloud cad" and if our data does ever get "migrated" to 3dx, what is the long term viability of our data retaining useful engineer value in the 3dx world? What if the 3dx ship sinks? What will an export from 3dx look like? How easily can we jump ship and still retain a valuable cad library? How expensive long term will a permanent rental of 3dx cloud space be?

I have an expectation that if the migration path is going to be expensive and complex anyways, we might as will look at the cad competitors. Siemens is sounding more enticing every day. I'm sure there is an element of "The grass is always greener", but the grass is looking pretty sad around here.

[berg_lauritz]

I was working in the trailer industry & I am currently working in the RV industry and I think changing to something that works more with direct editing the geometry does not sound very insane to me.
More complex shapes are probably different - but those are most of the time fairly consistent (i.e. body parts etc.) & there are not very many 'quick' changes.

Most of the time it is more about organizing workflows/BOMs/part numbers/PLM&PDM/Properties/2D Drawings/sheet metal/ECOs....

How is 3DX on that end?
What about competitors?

Edit:
To clarify further: I think working with 'dumb solids' for a year just to switch would entirely be possible!

[nordstjernen740]

I can't see a way around explicit constraints in many of our key components. Some of our models literally could not be have designed without construction sketches or an alternative form of explicit constraints. (unless we were to do it through trial and error) I don't care how advanced implied constraints are. They won't know that "the tip of this wedge shaped extrusion needs to be exactly located tangent to a nested pattern of 66.3mm diameter cylinders as they move tangent to a plane at a 12 degree angle."
We don't allow external references in production, but we DO use explicate constraints as some of our most important design tools. (this usually means sketches with construction geometry in feature sketches or dummy sketches, but it can also mean nonproduction "design assemblies" that allow external references for the purpose of generating calculated production parts.

just thinking back to my school days, 4 bar and other "bar linkages" are another example where some kind of explicit "calculator" is an absolute requirement for a meaningful design. complex mechanisms become unintuitive rather quickly. possibly you could design a four bar linkage without explicit references, but you would certainly need to build a separate linear algebra "calculator" to determine the exact link lengths and ground locations based on the equations that drive the precise lengths. (basically reinventing the wheel of what a parametric solver gives us)
Explicit geometric references allow engineers that don't remember a day of linear algebra to built pretty complex "math-based" models without even cracking a linear algebra text book. That is nothing to look down at or "overestimate"

Again I don't doubt that this type of work can be done in SE using other non solidworky forms graphical explicit constraints, and I do believe there is a time and a place for "implied constraints" but I do doubt that our SW models will be nearly as valuable to us as they are now if we were to migrate especially some of our key components.

[berg_lauritz]

Yes, I've tried twice, but I'm on my phone. I'm going to have to wait until I get on my other computer.

Let me make a golden bridge for all of you regarding the new CEO:

• Many here agree that SolidWorks as a desktop product is not going to be pushed forward much more
• Due to 'legacy' (let's just call it that with no bad intentions) support that still needs to happen they won't abandon it either
• At the same time it seems that they want to push you over to the new 3DX platform to get away from the parasolid kernel & the alimony they have to pay Siemens for every license
• In contrast to the previous point they do NOT offer a customizable PDM/PLM system on their platform yet

What do you think will change regarding SolidWorks? Will they start 'fixing' more instead of pushing new features? What can we actually expect?

My 2 cents:

• SolidWorks is bad when it comes to designing in context. Anyone who has seen somebody working in Blender/Rhino to change parts (esp. imported geometry) to their gusto in LIGHTNING SPEED can see the benefits of this approach. There is NO WAY around this design approach for the future (but it will take time until the dinosaurs are done!).
• From what I have seen SolidWorks is concentrating on upgrading their strengths and just doing the bare minimum in other regards:
  If you disregard PDM (which is imho painfully integrated - did they just buy a company & rebranded it to SolidWorks PDM?) it's strengths imho are clearly patterns (you can even edit them now in LDR) in combination with design tables. This is where history based 3D design shines & adds great value!
• If you disregard PDM - Weldments seem to work for specific applications insanely well & fast. Combine this again with configurations & you can change whole structures in a breeze!
• Also their partner products sometimes are incredibly well done for their specific applications. This binds you their eco system (you invest in 2+ programs that depend on SWX) & that is one of the key things, I think, why SolidWorks is often slow to integrate features that were done by some other company already.
• They push/ed hard to get their foot into 3D printing & they did a fairly good job - it's a strong growing sector & many optimizations are clearly made for this. This sector is also not as dependent on PDM - many 3D printing applications are basically job shops & you do not need much history there

I'll ask the 'why do you need so much more than dumb solids on fairly old & outdated parts?' question in the new thread.

[matt]

The "New SW CEO" thread has been split into 3 threads:
- New SW CEO
- CAD in the Cloud/CloudWorks
- CAD Migration

If you come across a post that seems to be in the wrong place, pleas use the Report functionality (exclamation point at the top of post) and write a little message where you think it should be.

Future posts should go in the appropriate thread.