CAD Migration

[SPerman]

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.

[mike miller]

I was wrong. There is NO ambiguity here. They're just doubling down on their bad decisions - again.

https://blogs.solidworks.com/solidworks ... -2022.html

Gian Paolo explained that this is why as a company we are putting all our focus on the 3DEXPERIENCE Works portfolio, because “we think it is the greatest Innovation Platform ever developed. You will learn over the next three days that these solutions deliver capabilities in not just design, but also manufacturing, simulation, data management, and others. After all there’s a lot more involved in product development than design.”

Drum roll..........

[Imics13]

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)

Here is an other news, that DS has lost its position against Siemens: https://www.engineering.com/PLMERP/Arti ... rator.aspx

They try to rebuild their position via cloud based 3DX...

BR,

[Frank_Oostendorp]

Here is an other news, that DS has lost its position against Siemens: https://www.engineering.com/PLMERP/Arti ... rator.aspx

They try to rebuild their position via cloud based 3DX...

BR,

Rebuild their position with hobby licenses of $100 a year Serious companies have started the transition to serious software developers. This will spread out from the big companies to all their suppliers, well done Dassault

[SPerman]

It feels like they're abandoning the professional cad market and chasing the Fusion 360 crowd.

[matt]

I think they are misinterpreting information that they are getting from somewhere. Someone told them "kids use phones, not desktops". So in their minds, they hear "CAD must move to phones". Stats for my site and every product development site I know show 90%+ of traffic comes from "desktops", which I'm sure also includes laptops, very little from tablets, and almost none from phones. I read my own site on a phone, which I'm sure skews my own data in that direction.

DS hears through the social ether "kids don't understand ownership, and just want to pay for stuff when they need it". They interpret that to mean "companies need to be locked in for payment, and data held hostage". What I hear is that I'm getting into the sock business and out of furniture. This must mean that kids will throw away socks when done with them and just get new ones, they don't need anywhere to store socks that they aren't wearing. Why would you keep socks that you aren't wearing right now anyway?

I'm not sure why this needs to be said, but "kids" aren't the same as businesses. Kids will also pour buckets of cold water on their heads or punch random people in the face or explode school toilets if the social ether tells them to. Pop culture kids aren't the ones to follow down some random rabbit hole. Business and professional needs are different from bored, distracted, attention deficit kids.

You've heard it said "information is power". Some idiot with a big hard drive said that. Wisdom is not inherent in numbers. Anybody (should I say Everybody?) can collect piles and piles of information, but we're left with the same decision making process that we had before we had all this information, and we still get things wrong. Information is useless unless you have the wisdom to discern what it means. Information leads you to the wrong conclusions as often as the right ones. I'd take someone with wisdom and no information over an idiot with a big hard drive full of numbers any day of the week. Statistics lie all the time. You can make up any story you want to fit any numbers you collect. Look at the conflicting assertions that all these people with pandemic numbers spew. All of them "leading experts". All of this data collection and targeted marketing, and I'm still not buying it.

Sorry, I'm all worked up about idiots with big hard drives today.

[DennisD]

Sorry, I'm all worked up about idiots with big hard drives today.

As in, "Is that a big hard drive in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?"

Sorry, I couldn't resist.



Your post is spot-on, @matt!!

[matt]

As in, "Is that a big hard drive in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?"

Sorry, I couldn't resist.



Your post is spot-on, @matt!!

I need to add a new text color for </rant> How about red?

[jmongi]

I think we sometimes forget that big companies and small companies can be very similar. Our company just let it's president go (owners are still involved, this is a small company). In my opinion he had quite a depth of knowledge of our industry. He also had hit or miss knowledge of actual production processes. One of the reasons he was let go (imo) is because he did not seem to have the ability to discern the line between what he knew well and what he THOUGHT he knew well.

It seems something similar is going on here. It's a shame that they seem so disconnected from how their business actually makes money. But, at the risk of over generalization, my interactions with Michelin (another French company) is heavily dosed with the "our designs/decisions are obviously the best because we did them and if our users don't like them it is clearly a problem with them and not with us" mentality. I may have posted this in another thread, but, Michelin could have eaten Goodyear's lunch in the farm tire industry (better tire design, better materials, I worked for goodyear...lol) but the "we don't make mistakes and/or do things our way and that's it" mentality (custom tread design for specific soil composition is a common thing in farm tires) kept them from dominating and let Goodyear stay in close 2nd place because of their excellent customer service.

Edit: In a bit of irony, Goodyear used CATIA heavily in their tread design because it integrated well with their 5-axis milling machines. Of course, this was 25 years ago.

[Uncle_Hairball]

I am just as frustrated as the rest of you about the direction Dassault is taking Solidworks. Unfortunately, the move to 3DExperience is unlikely to abate, regardless of their litany of failures with everything web-based. The reason is simple: 'software as a service' (SAAS) has taken over the software industry; every software company is moving in that direction because SAAS is one of the most profitable business segments in the current marketplace. Unless someone finds a way to make software on the hard drive as profitable as SAAS, the future of installed software is very limited. The companies want to maximize their profits, and who can blame them? The problem is not so much the business model, although there are serious negatives for users, the real problem is that Dassault has done such a terrible job creating their SAAS solution.

So, to those who are pushing for a move back to SW desktop, keep trying, but don't get your hopes up. It is very unlikely that we will win this one. The money pushing in the other direction is too big.

[AlexLachance]

I am just as frustrated as the rest of you about the direction Dassault is taking Solidworks. Unfortunately, the move to 3DExperience is unlikely to abate, regardless of their litany of failures with everything web-based. The reason is simple: 'software as a service' (SAAS) has taken over the software industry; every software company is moving in that direction because SAAS is one of the most profitable business segments in the current marketplace. Unless someone finds a way to make software on the hard drive as profitable as SAAS, the future of installed software is very limited. The companies want to maximize their profits, and who can blame them? The problem is not so much the business model, although there are serious negatives for users, the real problem is that Dassault has done such a terrible job creating their SAAS solution.

So, to those who are pushing for a move back to SW desktop, keep trying, but don't get your hopes up. It is very unlikely that we will win this one. The money pushing in the other direction is too big.

Cloud is not a problem, as long as it's not a barrier. I might be wrong but I believe I've read that you can't even use native SolidWorks files over the Cloud, you actually need to recreate them.

There's plenty of advantage to "Cloud computing". For instance, if we were on cloud, we wouldn't need to spend an excess ammount of money on computer hardware such as graphic cards, as that would be covered by the "cloud side", or at least that's how it's been promoted to us.

Being on Cloud, your files are on an "unlimited server", which is not dependant of you, which means you do not need to maintain it, nor to upgrade it.

Being on Cloud, I'm pretty sure would solve a lot of the issues people face of forgetting to transfer their licence after a day's work for home usage.

But, there are also limits to it, which is something that's not being spoken of enough. For instance, having 25 users working on cloud at the same time has got to take up some bandwith, and it's not all companies that have available to them the best connections for this.

I've pretty much accepted that Cloud is inevitable, so I am in the process of figuring out how I can do the switch to 3DXperience without affecting the company, to start the basis of our models on the Cloud, if it does indeed require them to be remodeled. Besides, it most likely would be better, knowing how well Solidworks handles file legacy.

[nordstjernen740]

Cloud is not a problem, as long as it's not a barrier. I might be wrong but I believe I've read that you can't even use native SolidWorks files over the Cloud, you actually need to recreate them.

As far as I can tell this is a true statement. Our rep has not told me otherwise when I have grilled him on this. Supposedly my team is going to hear the real 3dx sales pitch in Boston at some point this year. Needless to say I am extremely skeptical we will be sold.

It looks like (from demos) they have a rough equivalent of "3d interconnect" for solidworks files in the 3dx world, but native solidworks files will need to be edited in native solidworks.
"native solidworks" in the 3dx world is their "cloud connected" solidworks. Which, as far as I can tell is just desktop solidworks with a couple of fancy addins.
Its been verified to me that "cloud connected" solidworks still runs locally and will still need all the expensive hardware. This is conveniently glossed over in the hardware cost savings that supposedly happen with a switch to 3dx.
Also what about assemblies? I have an open question about whether they intend for us to completely rebuild assemblies in 3dx as well.
We are married to 30 years of file based legacy data from which we still support active machines and use these assemblies as source data for new designs.

It seems like if we were to swallow the 3dx pill they are feeding us currently, we would get a more expensive product with less configurable pdm and still end up working almost exclusively locally in native solidworks and having the same old issues. But hey! we'd have access to "XAPPs" or whatever they are currently calling them this month. We'd just be unable to put them to any practical use?

Not to mention rewriting our business rule to support their one size fits all model and undergoing an expensive migration. Also supporting multiple environments if we decide to start creating "new" stuff in XAPPS???

Also from what I've heard lately everyone in the industry has some kind of equivalent to "3d interconnect". If this is true why shouldn't we look elsewhere if we are ultimately convinced somehow that we need to get on the cloud or be left in the dust?

They've got ALOT of questions to answer. I'm actually hoping that they can answer them because it looks like we have a rough road ahead even in the most likely scenario of us staying with good old desktopworks.

[Glenn Schroeder]

It's my understanding that if we went with the magical new world of CAD in the cloud all our files would also be in the cloud,
and if we decided at some time in the future to climb down off the cloud our files would go POOF! and disappear. Is that correct?

If yes, that would be a hard sell here.

[nordstjernen740]

I am just as frustrated as the rest of you about the direction Dassault is taking Solidworks. Unfortunately, the move to 3DExperience is unlikely to abate, regardless of their litany of failures with everything web-based. The reason is simple: 'software as a service' (SAAS) has taken over the software industry; every software company is moving in that direction because SAAS is one of the most profitable business segments in the current marketplace. Unless someone finds a way to make software on the hard drive as profitable as SAAS, the future of installed software is very limited. The companies want to maximize their profits, and who can blame them? The problem is not so much the business model, although there are serious negatives for users, the real problem is that Dassault has done such a terrible job creating their SAAS solution.

So, to those who are pushing for a move back to SW desktop, keep trying, but don't get your hopes up. It is very unlikely that we will win this one. The money pushing in the other direction is too big.

I keep hearing that SAAS has taken over the industry, but for how long? and has SAAS matured enough to meet customers needs?
As much as internet speed keeps increasing, so has hardware speed and disc space.
With a renewed push for and more more immersive user experiences, does the bottleneck of the internet need to be artificially inserted into our software for a money grab?
The push will always be for software to be more hardware agnostic, but I'm not sold that cloud alone is the future. hybrid is more likely in my mind.

Terms are constantly being conflated in the SAAS cloud world as well.
When SAAS is used in terms of "licensing" its usually referring to "named user" licensing. the "Named user" model is fine, but there are never enough accommodations for customer needs. Of course "named user" is more profitable if a company is paying for all users at all times even for casual access to the software. Customers have not suddenly changed how they do business, some software companies have just gotten lucky/ taken advantage of customers telling them that "SAAS is the way of the future".
True "Software as a Service" in my mind would be were you pay for actual hours of use of the software. I would hope competition would eventually drive the industry in that direction, but as it stands now, SAAS licensing is a joke in many instances.

[bnemec]

It's my understanding that if we went with the magical new world of CAD in the cloud all our files would also be in the cloud,
and if we decided at some time in the future to climb down off the cloud our files would go POOF! and disappear. Is that correct?

If yes, that would be a hard sell here.

That's not quite correct. I'm not so sure that the platform uses "files" in the way we think of files. I get the feeling it's all database driven. BUT, I've heard VARs say that you can get your data from the platform. Details of how and what it would look like were vague as usual. Keep in mind, your SW files are of little use in the platform, I didn't say "no use", just little use. From what we can find there are no apps in the platform that can use your .sld files as anything more than .prt or .par or .stp etc. Solidworks native files are just geometric data outside Solidworks. The platform version of solidworks cannot open a .sldprt as much more than a dumb solid, only geometric data from what we can understand. How well the other apps such as simulations make use of native SW files I don't know. I can only assume it's a one way street and changes made in the model would require remeshing and redoing any setup work. That's part of the problem with the platform, so many unknowns.

So it would be like switching to another CAD system. For some that's no big deal at all, others its a big chore.

edit:
@Uncle_Hairball I can see your point about SaaS and agree with most of it. But at the end of the day a profitable business lives on suppling what product/service is in demand. When a company goes on a limb to create a supply that has little demand but is suspected to be highly lucrative, they will need to do something to generate demand.
That is when we see things such as manipulating the current supply of alternative product/service as well as creating an illusion to foster demand. This all goes well and good so long as the new supply is effective and meets requirements, even if it ends up being more costly.

What is sometimes forgotten is when demand is left for the old product someone can come in with a product to fulfill that demand. So unless something prevents the existence of affordable desktops with enough computing and graphics power I cannot see how the entire demand for CAD will move to SaaS. BUT, I'm wrong a lot and have very little business sense. I'll leave it for the big dogs to figure out.

[nordstjernen740]

I'm not so sure its a oneway street. At least what I can glean from demos I think it is more like 3d interconnect where (if everything is working correctly) you can edit desktopworks stuff in desktopworks and cloudworks stuff in cloudworks, but the minute you try to edit one with the other and vice versa it becomes a oneway street.

[DennisD]

. . . I'm not so sure that the platform uses "files" in the way we think of files. I get the feeling it's all database driven.

That is true of cloud-native CAD such as Onshape. SWX has so many offerings that I've asked for a table to compare the features/details/requirements. Probably one of their versions is a cloud-native non-file database system and there is no way to download them/it/your stuff to your computer.

I had a phone call with them (SWX) about this, but still want a table. I think something like that would make their various CAD offerings a lot easier to understand. Maybe it would also scare people away without them to 'splain things and that is why they don't do this. I also want to know what one system can do that others cannot and an indication of compatibility/interoperability between them.
Yeah, I'm waiting.

If they want me to change they have to show me a migration path. More than that, if they want me to change they have to give me a compelling reason to change.


One SWX sycophant (not a direct employee) likes to call me and others like me a dinosaur for not wanting to learn anything new, such as putting in the effort to learn the intricacies of the 3DSwamp. Well, screw him! I want a forum that is easy to navigate, easy to find valuable content, and easy to interact with my compatriots. THIS forum is that. The old Jive forum was that. The new 3DSwamp is far from it. And as far as its fantastic benefits - - they have done a lousy job of showing me (and apparently others) that the benefits are worth the effort.

No, they have not given me a compelling reason to change to their convoluted forum. I visit there out of curiosity and hope for change more than anything else.

I have to admit I'm getting tired of watching that train wreck.

[AlexLachance]

It's my understanding that if we went with the magical new world of CAD in the cloud all our files would also be in the cloud,
and if we decided at some time in the future to climb down off the cloud our files would go POOF! and disappear. Is that correct?

If yes, that would be a hard sell here.

Yes, and as far as I can tell, you would also have to pay some form of subscription to keep access of these files if you were to switch to another program. It's also one of those things that really makes us wonder.

If what @nordstjernen740 says is true about SolidWorks still running locally, then it would be another thing to "swallow" for us, as then the use of Cloud loses much of it's interest, especially for engineers who have to do stress analysis and what not.

I've made it clear to my boss, that even though he spoke about moving to Cloud, if these were to be true, we would not do the switch to cloud. If we were to have to redraw files, it certainly wouldn't be on a new program by a company who convinced us to switch programs 10 years ago, who's to say they won't do the same thing in another ten years and say, well damn, our cloud program sucks let's go back locally but make a new program that is neither 3DX or SW. Illogical decisions seems to be quite the logical way of thinking over there sometimes.

[AlexLachance]

True "Software as a Service" in my mind would be were you pay for actual hours of use of the software.

I honestly have a hard time imagining how that would be viable. Just think how toxic the work environment would get over things like this. I know I'm faster then some of my co-workers, but I wouldn't want the pricing of the program to be imposed on what defines the salary of my co-workers.

It could even go to the extent of "killing companies" from the pricing of the program, rather then the performance of the company, of course that would still be seen as what we actually call "competition", but I think it would be extremely unhealthy.

[mattpeneguy]

That is true of cloud-native CAD such as Onshape. SWX has so many offerings that I've asked for a table to compare the features/details/requirements. Probably one of their versions is a cloud-native non-file database system and there is no way to download them/it/your stuff to your computer.

I had a phone call with them (SWX) about this, but still want a table. I think something like that would make their various CAD offerings a lot easier to understand. Maybe it would also scare people away without them to 'splain things and that is why they don't do this. I also want to know what one system can do that others cannot and an indication of compatibility/interoperability between them.
Yeah, I'm waiting.

This is one of their biggest problems, communication. I was on a phone call and the VAR was telling me that there's a pay as you use type of setup for advanced FEA which sounded very interesting. You could have access to very advanced FEA that maybe you don't use very often, but wouldn't have to spend a lot of money on. Of course there's all the caveats like if you don't use it often, you'll waste a lot of time setting up the constraints, meshes, iterating, etc., and so on. But, has anyone even heard of this? The point I'm making is that there may be some tools/features that may be useful, but DS is doing a HORRIBLE job of even attempting to explain ANY OF IT.

If they want me to change they have to show me a migration path. More than that, if they want me to change they have to give me a compelling reason to change.

That's just it...Leads me to believe it won't work for our needs and we'd be spending inordinate amounts of time working around the system to get the job done. I can't even imagine the trouble we'd have if we need something changed based on the responses to our 3DXP feedback (well, I shouldn't expect too much because I haven't asked for much over there and if I have I haven't been too polite, but some of you should because you've been much more respectful.)

One SWX sycophant (not a direct employee) likes to call me and others like me a dinosaur for not wanting to learn anything new, such as putting in the effort to learn the intricacies of the 3DSwamp. Well, screw him! I want a forum that is easy to navigate, easy to find valuable content, and easy to interact with my compatriots. THIS forum is that. The old Jive forum was that. The new 3DSwamp is far from it. And as far as its fantastic benefits - - they have done a lousy job of showing me (and apparently others) that the benefits are worth the effort.

No, they have not given me a compelling reason to change to their convoluted forum. I visit there out of curiosity and hope for change more than anything else.

I have to admit I'm getting tired of watching that train wreck.

Y'all are probably getting sick of me mentioning Bluebeam Revu. But, when we saw what it could do versus what we trying to get Acrobat to do, we were sold. EVERYONE here we showed it to except our real estate people were sold (real estate deals with legal and such documents, not engineering drawings, different audience.) It's a little cliche, but Dassault needs to "Show me the money!"

If their game plan is just to pull the rug out from under people, why would those people move to their platform? Seems at that point considering incompatible files, why wouldn't they just jump ship and go with someone else who hasn't done this to them? If compatible files are important to you SE (from what I understand) does a wonderful job of opening and editing SW files...Again, from what I understand, better than Dassault's cloud software. It stands to reason as Seimens owns the kernel.

[SPerman]

I honestly have a hard time imagining how that would be viable. Just think how toxic the work environment would get over things like this. I know I'm faster then some of my co-workers, but I wouldn't want the pricing of the program to be imposed on what defines the salary of my co-workers.

It could even go to the extent of "killing companies" from the pricing of the program, rather then the performance of the company, of course that would still be seen as what we actually call "competition", but I think it would be extremely unhealthy.

From what I understand, Fusion 360 is already doing this with some of the add on features (simulation and generative design.)

And while searching for that, I came across this.

https://www.autodesk.com/benefits/flex

[AlexLachance]

From what I understand, Fusion 360 is already doing this with some of the add on features (simulation and generative design.)

And while searching for that, I came across this.

https://www.autodesk.com/benefits/flex

image.png

Sounds like forcing a form of gambling onto users rather then having then pay for a service.

[nordstjernen740]

I honestly have a hard time imagining how that would be viable. Just think how toxic the work environment would get over things like this. I know I'm faster then some of my co-workers, but I wouldn't want the pricing of the program to be imposed on what defines the salary of my co-workers.

It could even go to the extent of "killing companies" from the pricing of the program, rather then the performance of the company, of course that would still be seen as what we actually call "competition", but I think it would be extremely unhealthy.

Sure, but an engineer should be more or less considered "full time" so at some point the price strategy should level off and the number of hours would be moot for "full time" users. what the named user model has done in many instances is dropped the concept of "floating licenses" and forced companies to choose rigid "roles" for every employee that match the one size fits all concepts of what a company/employee looks like in the eyes of Dassault /Microsoft/whoever . (ignoring the need for casual and/or temporary access to software and other scenarios that have been built in to traditional license models for years via floating licenses perpetual options etc etc.
Again, the companies haven't really changed, the license models have. There is not a technical limitation that says the named user model can't accommodate more scenarios. Its just that software companies are "getting" away with providing less use of software for more money in the name of "progress".

[SPerman]

The more I think about it, I don't think the problem with DSS is that they are moving in the wrong direction. Others are in this space already and having success. To me it shows just how ineffective DSS is at implementing that vision and communicating it to their customers.

The fact that they are willing to kill their current customer base to stop paying parasolid royalties is just icing on the cake. If they can't make a tool to import a parasolid in the new software, they can certainly create a tool to export a solidworks file in a format that the new software can read. But that's asking a lot from a company who can't create a forum.

All of this screams incompetence to me. Incompetence from the top level leaders. Incompetence from the middle management that is in charge of implementing these ideas, and incompetence from the marketing department.

[matt]

The more I think about it, I don't think the problem with DSS is that they are moving in the wrong direction. Others are in this space already and having success. To me it shows just how ineffective DSS is at implementing that vision and communicating it to their customers.

The fact that they are willing to kill their current customer base to stop paying parasolid royalties is just icing on the cake. If they can't make a tool to import a parasolid in the new software, they can certainly create a tool to export a solidworks file in a format that the new software can read. But that's asking a lot from a company who can't create a forum.

All of this screams incompetence to me. Incompetence from the top level leaders. Incompetence from the middle management that is in charge of implementing these ideas, and incompetence from the marketing department.

I think they're used to Catia type users and think all CAD users are like that - so huge planes, trains and automobiles. They have no idea what to do with people who make toasters, automation equipment and kitchen utensils. They don't understand converting one to the other is more than flipping a switch.