upFront.eZine 1,097: Dassault's Disconnect with Solidworks Users - 2
upFront.eZine 1,097: Dassault's Disconnect with Solidworks Users - 2
Part ii (of ii)
Inside the Business of CAD | 24 May 2021
At 3dexperience World, we didn’t get to hear much about the next release of the star of the show, 3dexperience Solidworks. But then, we didn’t hear about what’s new in any other star of the 3dexperience constellation, except for DraftSight. So I visited the Web site at solidworks.com/product/whats-new to learn what’s in store for this year’s release of Solidworks. (See figure below.)
For 2021, Solidworks gains touch-up functions, like measuring the lengths of chain patterns, resolving lightweight components, and exporting interference reports to Excel. You’ll be able to toggle between full and simplified views of assemblies, and save defeatured models as configurations. File properties now host equations. Weldments can be mitered and non-planar edges can get edge flanges. Sheet metal can be wrapped around assemblies (see figure below).
When it comes to simulation, the new release offers improved meshing, mesh diagnostics, and improved convergence. More editing is permitted in detailing mode, with faster pans and zooms.
Solidworks 2021 in currently in beta, and typically ships in late summer.
What’s New in DraftSight 2021
Dassault offers another desktop-bound CAD program that rarely gets mentioned, so imagine my surprise when it received several dedicated sessions at 3dexperience World. DraftSight is a DWG editor programmed by Germany’s Graebert and enhanced by Dassault programmers for mechanical design. Its purpose is to entice AutoCAD users away from Autodesk, to clean up DWG and PDF files coming in from clients, and do 2D mechanical designs. (See figure below.)
For its first ten years, the largely 2D DraftSight was available at no cost, and during that time gained the reputation of being the most-used DWG editor in the world, second only to AutoCAD. Dassault last year canceled the free-to-use program, and this year renamed the software “3dexperience DraftSight.”
The emphasis in DraftSight 2021 is in making the move from AutoCAD easier, taking into account these dimensions:
People. DraftSight uses the same command names as AutoCAD.
Processes. Version 2021 now runs VisualLISP directly, in addition to other APIs supported earlier like LISP. Collaboration, and file and metadata search through a new connection to an online 3Ddashboard.
Data. Version 2021 now imports, converts, and recognizes vector elements in PDF files. It can create associative arrays (called “patterns”), and a sheet set manager
DraftSight starts at $199/year at solidworks.com/product/draftsight.
Ikea Documentation
The first solid mention of Solidworks came with customer Ikea, who described their use of the solid modeler to design 3,000 3D models a year. The company’s communications department generates catalogs, Web pages, brochures, and the infamously inscrutable assembly instructions.
We got to see how the assembly-instruction process works. Staff first assemble the physical product, such as a bookcase, to see how it goes together. Then they obtain the 3D model from the design department, and use Solidworks Composer to drag parts away from one another (see figure below). Finally, monochrome vector drawings are made from the disassembled model for use in the assembly brochures. The communications department generates 3,500 such assembly instructions annually.
All of the color images of Ikea products you see online and in catalogs are photorealistic renderings generated from high resolution photographs draped over 3D solid models (see figure below), output by banks of computers running 24 hours a day. Be green! The staff also produce video tutorials, and are experimenting with virtual and augmented reality to help customers with the assembling.
What Ralph Grabowski Thinks
Dassault Systemes’ approach to software makes it fundamentally incompatible with Solidworks.
Dassault is upfront about the incompatibility of Catia between major releases. To take advantages of major advances in hardware, Dassault deliberately breaks compatibility from one version to the next. So V4 on Unix (released in 1995) is incompatible with V5 on Windows (1999; still available from Dassault), which is incompatible with V6 on cloud (2006), renamed 3dexperience. This disconnect allows Dassault to do complete rewrites to take advantage of new hardware, without offending existing customers, who are allowed to stay on old releases as long as their projects require them.
By contrast, Solidworks maintains continuity, running on the same Windows class of hardware today as when it was first released in 1995. With the 1.5 million users of Solidworks, however, Dassault found it too difficult to make the break to the cloud. (Another 4.5 million are education users -- or “early engagers,” as Dassault likes to call them.)
The break-it-to-move-forward mentality explains why Dassault had no qualms in introducing the Web-based Solidworks “V6” a decade ago. That it failed (with Dassault executives at one time blaming the failure on misinformation from we in the CAD media) is explained by the different class of customer each company addresses.
Dassault targets Catia at executives of very large corporations who recognize the need to keep ahead of competition by regularly spending vast sums of money on making more efficient designs of new products.
Solidworks sells to one- and two-man shops who see the purchase of design software as a one-time event. These customers upgrade by taking more training, not by buying a different kind of software.
As a result, the lackluster reaction of Solidworks users to V6 was predictable but literally inexplicable to the experience of Dassault executives, who for decades have known how to run a big-iron sales shop, trained as they were by the IBM sales force.
This is an important year for Solidworks: it becomes a billion-dollar brand. This means that all by itself it contributes $1 billion a year towards Dassault’s $5.4 billion in revenues. It is this financial success that keeps Dassault executives from entirely shutting down the aging program.
It needs, however, to be shut down. Solidworks, like Inventor and AutoCAD, is reaching the limits of its capabilities. So much more could be possible were it cloudified.
But “so much more” is not what Solidworks users want, because it is already filled to the brim with capabilities that most users are not taking advantage of. They see no point to adding functions through cloud services that definitely cost more and might be less reliable.
For Dassault, however, Solidworks is a memory from the past serving as an aspiration for tomorrow. The 3dexperience replacement software from Dassault embodies “the Solidworks promise of excellence, value, and ease of use,” Solidworks ceo Gian Paolo Bassi enthuses. In the meantime, he can only hope Solidworks users finally awaken to the enlightenment beaming in from France.
- - -
Last week in part i:
From ‘Product’ to ‘Platform’
3dexperience World 2021
For Education and Startups
3dexperience Works
[This article appeared first in Design Engineering magazine, and is reprinted with permission.]
And in Other News
Here’s a blast from the past for me: Canada’s Matrox used to be one of the big three graphics boards providers to the CAD industry, but they, like ATi (now part of AMD), got clobbered by nVidia.
Now Matrox makes speciality graphics boards, like frame grabbers and encoders, the lastest being a better smart camera. “Paired with flowchart-based Matrox Design Assistant X software, engineers and technicians can quickly configure and deploy machine vision applications to the Matrox Iris GTX smart cameras, which are designed for challenging environments.” matrox.com/en
Letters to the Editor
I know it is picky, but it was “Lockheed Aircraft,” not “Lougheed Aircraft” that created CADAM. Lougheed Aircraft was founded in 1912 by brothers Allan Lougheed (who in 1934 legally changed his name to reflect the way it was pronounced, “Lockheed”) and Malcolm Lougheed.
It went belly up in 1921. In 1926 Allan Lockheed and Jack Northrop founded Lockheed Aircraft and it is that company that survives as part of Lockheed Martin.
CADAM was developed by Lockheed, and was sold to IBM in 1989.
- Scott Taylor, president
Tailor Made Software
The editor replies: I saw both versions of the name, and was pretty sure that Lougheed was correct, but that could be because here in Canada we have a Lougheed Highway (pronounced low-heed). Thanks for the clarification!
Re: When the cursor gets erratic
I was frustrated with the Logitech Bluetooth MX Master 25 mouse not responding well at all with the desktop. It works fine with the laptop but not with the desktop.
Putting the nano receiver on the end of a USB extender lead has worked mostly, but not completely. I have turned off or removed all other Bluetooth devices in the vicinity, so I am concluding that it is the Unifying receiver that could be at fault.
Got to admit, I am a bit cheesed at this. The reason is that one is paying extra cost just to ensure that this sort of thing does not happen. An expensive mouse that does not work as well as an inexpensive one?
- Terry Bits (via WorldCAD Access)
Notable Quotable
“The proper goal of education is not to give people a degree but to create the environment for lifelong learning and self-improvement. True achievement is peer-rated, not conferred by education bureaucrats.”
- Spencer Fernandez
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