Hey! Are Bentley & SolidWorks Collaborating?

Both Bentley Systems and SolidWorks have their CAD eye on the AutoCAD guy as a rich source of new customer. Earlier in the year, Bently had a marketing campaign that tried to convince AutoCAD users to switch to MicroStation instead of upgrading to AutoCAD 2006. The idea was, instead of being forced to upgrade by Autodesk, willingly crossgrade to us.

I don't know how successful it was, but now I'm reading similar words from SolidWorks. In promoting their updated DWGgateway software (which now exports AutoCAD .dwg drawing files in PDF format), the press release coyly suggests:

the DWGgateway software tool fosters open collaboration and saves users the time and money of unnecessarily implementing new products

That's code for "no need to upgrade to AutoCAD 2004 or 2005 or 2006." Not that AutoCAD users seem to be listening, or even hearing; record numbers are upgrading, giving Autodesk potentially $1.5 billion in revenues this year.

DWGgateway has been downloaded 150,000 times.

Comments

[lunatick]

Looking at year to year numbers on upgrades is not a real good indication in this instance.

Autocad is just getting its customer base to adopt to the Annual Maintenance Model for licensing upgrades which Bentley has had in place for years.

Also i am suspecting much of the increase in upgrades and new license sales had more to do with the new registration models Acad and other memembers of the BSA is employing these days.

I will say that my utilization of software these days has less to do with my own preference versus the prevailance of a certain companies file format.

It is said that so many industries are restricted by the knowledge they are creating and storing in this data model.