SolidWorks World: Day 2

The keynote by Seymour & Powell was fabulous -- hit a lot of my buttons on the issues of design and forecasting the future, looking at things differently. They even tackled the difficult subjects of designing a better bra and easier-to-clean toilets. Important thought:

What people say is different from what they do.

And so the job of a designer to watch what people do, rather than listen to people desribe their problem.

I snuck out during the keynote to get my wristbadge for the Las Vegas Speedway event tonight. I was right: the impossibly long lineup was down to just one person. Efficiency strikes again. Apparently the speedway can handle 3,500 people, so we'll see.

It's noon now, and I've already met with Aaron Kelly and Mike Volpe from SolidWorks. Two meetings down, three to go.

I also met Denis Senkinc, a journalist from Slovenia. His company broke away from a larger publisher last year, and produce a 100-page technology magazine, and is close to launching another title. irt3000.si

Later in the Afternoon

An attendee tells me that SolidWorks last year had invoked the "Autodesk" name a few times, but this year they are mum on the competitor. When I ask SW execs about Autodesk's more aggressive anti-SolidWorks marketing, they say they are above it, will not respond to it, and will continue to concentrate on gaining more customers from AutoCAD.

I've been pointing out to SolidWorks execs that marketing to AutoCAD users is probably not productive. CAD users are myopic. They don't particularly care about the fog of competitors. SolidWorks? Is that the same as Solid Edge? Just as, I point out, SolidWorks users ignored the Autodesk publicity stunt.

Met with Kubotek who showed me their new Realyze software. It is one step beyond a translator: it translates 3D models, heals them, and -- here is the added bonus -- allows you to edit the model, before it gets imported into SolidWorks. It reads models from CATIA, STEP, IGES, and others.

Ah, yes. CATIA. The brooding, older stepbrother. When I ask SolidWorks execs about the relationship between them and Dassault, I'm told it's virtually nonexistant. A couple people from both companies meet every so often, and some technology discretely changes hands. In short, it's SolidWorks for CAD and CATIA for PLM.

Which gives companies like Kubotek a niche: to provide the connection between CATIA and SolidWorks that Dassault isn't particularly interested in providing. Secret news: in a couple months Realyze will work inside SolidWorks.

I'm looking forward to tomorrow's keynote, where we see all that's new about SolidWorks 2007. This evening, however, is the night at the Las Vegas Speedway. The tour buses are already lined up, ready to take several thousand people to the track. All bets are off, as it were.