Solution Reviews

Walking into the Monday morning general session at Solidworks World 2013 in Orlando FL, I admit that I was expecting something. After the openly discussing the move of Solidworks to the cloud years earlier, and the subsequent backtracking and sidestepping because of customer outrage, rumors had it that this was the year. This was the time when Solidworks would unveil something big. Ultimately, I think the announcement of Solidworks Mechanical Conceptual falls into that category. I think that it just wasn’t what people were expecting.

Do you use an engineering notebook? If I asked that question to engineers 15 years ago, the answer would be an unequivocal YES. Today, however, I don’t think it would be an easy question for engineers to answer. As I wrote in a series of posts (link to first post) on the modern equivalent to the engineering notebook, there are lots of tools out there that each do some aspect of it. But there’s no single tool that does it all anymore.

Surprise! When Carl Bass announced that Autodesk had launched a reinvented version of their Fusion CAD product for the cloud, it did certainly feel like a surprise. For all the angst, anger and concern over CAD in the cloud over the past couple of years, Autodesk dropped a bomb this last Tuesday. In this post, we’ll take a look at the background of the announcement, the capabilities of the Fusion 360 product and my own commentary and analysis. Strap in, because this is a big deal.

Well, regardless of whatever else you have to say about Dassault Systèmes, you have to admit: they have vision. Last week, Dassault Systèmes invited their customers as well as many media and analyst folks down to Orlando for something called the 3DEXPERIENCE Forum. There are a few really well written summaries of the event and the message from DS, but in short, it was this: an experience is what occurs during the development of a product. And that experience needs to be supported across many different software systems and applications like ENOVIA, CATIA, SIMULIA and the like.

System engineering: it seems like recently that’s been the hot topic. Attend a user conference of one of the PLM software providers and you’ll see its been added to the buzzword bingo game. But every software provider offers the same capabilities to manage requirements, right? Well, actually, that’s not quite the case, as I found out when I talked to the folks at Dassault Systèmes. However, before we talk about the requirements management capabilities of ENOVIA, let’s look at what capabilities the industry needs.

[See the story “The 360&deg View: Siemens PLM to get LMS Worldwide” on Storify]

The 360&deg View: Siemens PLM to get LMS Worldwide

My expectation is the fact that Imagine.Lab programs is going to be stand alone choices, while Virtual.Lab and SamTech programs will probably be folded into NX. I additionally expect the exam choices to continue being stand alone choices.

Storified by Chad Jackson &middot Thu, November 08 2012 10:33:26 The State Word Today, Siemens PLM introduced their in…

Remember when Direct Modeling was rare. Seriously, more than five years ago, the modeling approach was pretty much relegated to being delivered to market by much smaller software providers. I’ll never forget a conversation I had with a head of product management at one of the largest CAD software providers. “That war was fought, and feature-based modeling won a long time ago”, he had said to me.

Back in June, I attended PLM Connections, the user event for Siemens PLM, in Las Vegas. Of course, there were a lot of product updates and announcements over the course of the conference. But there was one that caught my eye. The mainstream engineering folks at Siemens PLM (formerly Velocity Series) made some announcements about Insight XT, a PDM-like system that sits on top of SharePoint. They talked about numerous new enhancements to the product.

Was anyone surprised that Autodesk acquired Inforbix? Well, actually, I was. Not that I didn’t think that Inforbix would be acquired. They seemed to be gaining traction in the market. And frankly, with Oleg as a loud and prominent evangelist, the concept and message behind Inforbix was getting out.