it's being billed as the first international solidworks press event. that's why this is the first press day held outside of the usa, this year in barcelona, spain.
(why all lowercase letters? my computer's capslock is stuck on uppercase, so i'm writing this in openoffice, changing The case to all lowercase, and then copying and pasting into the blog. i figure reading all lowercase is easier than all uppercase.)
ds solidworks likes to have the largest numbers of press at any cad vendor event, and this year breaks all former records: 160 press.
the primary purpose is to show off solidworks 2009.
8:25am -- Remarks by ds solidworks ceo, jeff ray:
the focus is on design, not cad. to bend solidworks to do what the customer wants, not the other way around.
right now they are showing a video on how fender guitars uses solidworks for designing jackson guitars. unlike fenders, which are flat, jackson-brand guitars have curves, thus the need to design in 3d.
8:34 am -- he is mentioning 3dvia composer as part of the solidworks family -- a product from head office in france, dassault systemes. i wonder which other ds products will work their way over to soldiworks, now that the company is officially known as "dassault systemes solidworks."
mr ray says, "this is the first product that solidworks resellers and catia resellers can both sell." so there will be more crossover products.
8:40ａｍ －－ mr ray is emphasizing the amount of time he spends with customers, sometimes being 8 hours to watch what actually happens at a customer -- not what they say they do.
he just mentioned talking to customers about solidworks 2010.
for the future--
1. reduce cad overhead (user interaction, deployment)
2. improve product designs
3. make it easier to find existing designs to reuse them.
4. take products into new markets.
5. do more to exchange data with dassalt systemes products
"when we changed the name to ds solidworks, the reaction was a big yawn. i was happy to hear that. cats didn't start sleeping with dogs."
but this does not mean that sw resellers tomorrow will start to sell catia. he notes that mini (the automobile) showrooms don't have bmw logos. but minis use bmw components. the same will happen with sw and catia and so on.
８：５１ａｍ －－ benard charles, the boss of mr ray, is now chatting about dassault being more like a family-owned company than other cad vendors, who aim to be like a monopoly.
now he's running through a history of working with . $9 million in revenue and losing money; dassault paid $320 million for the company -- "a big bet," he called it.
i hadn't heard that story before, and it is quite shocking. a more "normal" price would have been $10 - $20 million.
he thinks that if dassault hadn't bought sw, ptc would have, and then killed it. "some acquisitions are in the customer's best interest."
(the editor sitting next to me says, "now they can buy ptc!")
ds and solidworks have nearly one million customers -- a number that's important to counter the 800,000 number touted by autodesk for inventor.
９：０６ＡＭ －－ he wants to be the best at virtualization of design, to simmulate. to serve communities. to provide global sourcing, using 3d as a medium to communicate.
vision statement: 3d opens the door to the world we imagine.
now he is talking about plm. three stages, in his view: (1) 3d; (2) plm １.0; and (3) plm 2.0: the plm online for all.
plm 2.0 blends in gaming technology to play with the product virtually. the difference, however, is this: in games, the real world is being faked; in plm2.0, the virtual world is being "faked" as real.
"we're not calling it second life; it is more like first life."
"i believe there is a lot of synergy between solidworks and catia. solidworks is as much dassault as is enovia."
(i had noticed that the email addresses of solidworks employees are changing from @solidworks.com to @3ds.com.)
oh, he just dissed microsoft. "microsoft will be one day -- i don't know when -- online." he notes that microsoft exchange is not accessible "everywhere," unlike google. dassault wants to be like google, not like microsoft. ouch!
9:14am -- q&a session...
future release of sw may be very different, cloud-oriented, so that a corporation can easily share their ip. this is a disruptive, more important than the feature wars of the past. the new cloud-oriented sw software will rely on ds v6.
this will also affect how software is distributed to customer (
"i think a lot of people are frightened by what we plan to do, and they assume the worst." it is apparently already working "in the lab."
９：３２ＡＭ －－ "we are fortunate to have the scientists at simula, who have been working on this problem for several years." simula are already able to simulate what happens to the human body in a car accident.
what number can you use to push your product ahead of competitors. how can your customer benefit financially from your software? unfortunately, mr ray is answering about his company making a profit. mr charles is making the same mistake: he talks about the shock to the customer when a software company goes out of business.
now he describes how former intergraph ceo meadlock wanted to sell solid edge for $120 million to dassault. when mr charles did his due diligence, he couldn't figure out how he would sell the software. months later, he bought solidworks, which had a good idea how to sell it. but then he had to pay $200 million more buying sw with a smaller team!
what will dassault learn from solidworks? (1) the distribution (resellers) has been a learning curve for ds. make plm solutions as affordable a sw. (2) the community concept needs to grow across the brands. (3) there is no one way to approach the market.
(this concludes the keynote address.)
Bonus
Chatter at the breakfast table: Google should buy PTC, then SketchUp would have a companion. Certainly, I could see how CoCreate could create a transition between SketchUp and Pro/E.
[Disclosure: DS SolidWorks provided journalists with airfare, hotel accommodation, some meals, and corporate gifts.]
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