Who Needs the CAD Olympics?

Going to Hunsville

Telling people I'm going to Huntsville, Alabama only provokes people to ask why. I tell them it's to see Solid Edge but it never seems to be reason enough. I'm advised to get some good southern cooking. Never mind that most people in Huntsville seem to be transplants and you have to venture farther than the hotels and offices before you hear a drawl. Southern food? Good luck. You're more likely to find salmon than catfish, cursed fast food chains and yuppie eateries than BBQ shacks.

Let's focus. I had been flown in to get a sneak preview of the upcoming release of Solid Edge with Synchronous Technology 3.

Siemens, which had inherited Solid Edge along with NX, seemed to be devoting itself to latter. But for a few weeks now, Solid Edge had been parading editors, journos, bloggers through their offices. The new head of Solid Edge, Karsten Newbury, had called me a while back to introduce himself, and I was looking forward to meeting him. Just a few days ago, they had announced the new VP of marketing, John Fox, who comes from PTC. Something was clearly afoot.

Demo of Solid Edge Impresses but Embargo Gags

We had breakfast with Karsten, Anthony Lockwood (former editor of Desktop Engineering, now consulting for Siemens PLM and now makes his home in Dallas) and Kenneth Wong, who covers all matters of CAD for DE. Afterwards, we were led to a glass and steel office office building Solid Edge shares (nondescript, but way upscale from the pre-modern prebuilts in which they were housed when Intergraph owned them). We were treated to the latest edition of Solid Edge, though a bit stymied by a press embargo that will delay the revelation of choice new features until mid October. Why do companies do that! I have one shot to write this up and that's on the way home on the plane.

Kris Kasprzak, director of marketing for Solid Edge, expounds on a series of improvements while playing canned demos. Kris knows his stuff, and better yet, tolerates all the dumb questions I blurt out. Synchronous Technology showed its growth by being able to handle changes in assemblies, working on SolidWorks parts, Pro/E parts.... it didn't seem to matter. So adept did Solid Edge seem with other CAD models, it made me think that Solid Edge could be sold on that strength alone.

Solid Edge Convinces SolidWorks Expert

But Solid Edge is a full MCAD product. In fact, no less than SolidWorks expert, power user, SolidWorks Bible author Matt Lombard (Solid Edge shrewdly invited him for a demo) has declared it better than SolidWorks (see Solid Edge Gets Ready for ST3). OMG! It's one thing for Solid Edge to be recognized on its merits -- but an endorsement from the enemy camp?

Most CAD insiders believe Solid Edge to possess every technical reason to be a front runner. We wonder why the technology has not brought leadership in the market place for the mid-range, which is dominated by SolidWorks and Inventor. We've wondered for years, actually. After we saw Synchronous Technology, most of us thought this was it, now for sure, people would start buying Solid Edge -- in droves.

ST may have helped. Solid Edge license revenue is up almost 50% over last year, they tell me. But world domination still eludes.

The Idea of a CAD Olympics

Kris and Dan Staples, director of Solid Edge, took me out for dinner. As we were seated outdoors overlooking a moonlit lake, they tell me of their histories as demo jocks and doing benchmarks. Short of being lowered into a pit to collect pythons, there may be no other job more stressful. They tell me of getting handed a stack of drawings and told to make the solid models. Knowing the software is one thing, but a company's design could be sheet metal. Or plastic molds. Each company will have its own conventions, or subscribe to different standards -- 3rd angle projection vs 1st angle, for example. Some leave bad dimensions in... or leave dimensions out altogether. All the time the clock is ticking and the sale depends on whether you can create the finished part faster than your counterpart. No, thanks, not for me. 

"But companies aren't doing that any more," says Kris. You might think Kris is relieved but I think he relished the fights. Solid Edge probably won their fair share of benchmarks. At least he saw some action. Solid Edge had a chance.

If there aren't any benchmarks, how in the hell are companies picking MCAD products? There's no consumer reports or JD Powers to guide the CAD shopper.

Sadly enough, they are not choosing -- they are accepting. Poor Solid Edge does not even get on the short list of MCAD software to buy because... there is no such list. If you have AutoCAD drawings, you buy Inventor. Or you go with SolidWorks because everyone else is. You won't lose your job if you pick SolidWorks, Inventor, or Pro/E. Everyone else is. Safety in numbers. Why go out on a limb?

Am I the only one who thinks this is not fair?

I apologize for my profession. The industry press used to do head to head reviews. But those have disappeared.

I pop the idea of a CAD Olympics.

Solid Edge needs to be in a contest in which it can be fairly judged against its competition. Sure, they can fly in a bunch of us CAD insiders and tell us how great Solid Edge is. Most of us are fairly easy to convince and quite a number of us will glorify the product in print or online. We will bestow our editors choice awards (doesn't everyone get one of those?), gladly accept big ad campaigns in our publications and web sites, but nothing will get the bang of a head-to-head, very public contest.

And if Solid Edge is as good as they it is...it might even win.

 

Comments

[power balance wristband]

n order for a CAD Olympics to be a success, it will have to be fair, honest and transparent. Previous contests may have been marred by failing at one or more of these criteria.

[Matt]

Roopinder,

The idea of a CAD Olympics is cool. I think inviting vendors would cause a circus, but how do you keep zealots and partisans out? I would hope the goal of this would be to help people making decisions make the best informed decision, not the most influenced decision. The CAD press has let CAD vendors run wild to the point that users can't trust anything the CAD press says anymore.

Anyway. Use a a moderator and maybe a panel on each side. Lay some ground rules, and let users vote to determine the winner. You get disqualified for avoiding the question, extra points for admitting you can't do something, and demerits for using pre-defined buzzwords like "collaboration", "PLM", or other marketing hogwash. Each answer ranked on believability and technical merit.

Yes, that sounds subjective because it is. Any "objective" system will be subjective on some level, and thus flawed. So you should probably go for honesty and simplicity over complexity and failure.

[Ken]

Comparisons and shootouts of the past were never impartial. They were always slanted towards whatever CAD system was used by the person who orchestrated the site or event. And now that PLM seems to be the topic of the day, where do you stop, because managing the mountain of data created by the CAD system is just as important as creating the data, if not more so.

[Rachael Taggart]

This reminds me in some ways of Brad Holtz' CAD Buyers' Guide of years past. Sadly, there is no such up-to-date version of that now.

An event, or benchmark, would be as good although there are several issues this that would have to be overcome such as: getting all the vendors represented, getting the 'recipe' right (what things should CAD products be good/fastest at and what's 'gravy'?), getting each CAD product represented at its best, being transparent about funding, being realistically unbiased.

Given all of those, CAD Society (of which I am president) would be an ideal vehicle. We have connections to many CAD vendors, industry experts and analysts and so on. However, the organization lacks funds. Any ideas on that one, anyone??

[Roopinder Tara]

Matt, in all fairness to your comparison, you did point out that SolidWorks is better in some aspects (surfacing), so I don't mean to say Solid Edge won in EVERY category. Also, I agree a complete evaluation would be hard: time consuming, long. Also, to try to cover all aspects of a general purpose CAD software may be too much for the readers/customers. How about a CAD Olympics with several events? One for each industry (automotive, aircraft, electronics...) for example? Or for each type of part (machined, molded, sheet metal?)

Wouldn't you rather judge that as opposed to writing a 10,000 word review?

[Mark Burhop]

I hope this doesn't sound like I'm marketing (although I'm sure it does - sorry ) but the "CAD olympics" thing reminded me of design competitions that happen in the schools.

The kids deserve the real credit and we are probably lucky our software fell into the hands of some bright students but its interesting to note both the American SkillsUSA and Candadian WorldSkills competitions were won with Solid Edge.

Mark

[Roopinder Tara]

Re. established vendors not participating: I would think they'd all want to step up to the plate to show how good they are and add credibility to their marketing claims as only a fair contest would allow. There is a parallel in the political world, as in the US the leading presidential candidate often has to be cajoled into accepting a debate with his opponent. But in the end, he does. Now all the CAD Olympics has to do is find fair arbiter to organize such a contest, as the League of Women Voters did for for presidential debates.

[Roopinder Tara]

In order for a CAD Olympics to be a success, it will have to be fair, honest and transparent. Previous contests may have been marred by failing at one or more of these criteria.

[matt lombard]

CAD shootouts that I've seen have been shams. No matter who does it or how objective they try to be, someone is gonna cry foul. My intention is to do a real comparison between SW and SE, and I'm already taking hits from SW salesmen.

Just to clarify, my intention in the blog post you linked to was to compare a few areas, not pass judgment on the entire software. A complete eval would be huge and take a long time. Also, it's hard comparing software in detail when you can't even talk about the best feature of one of them.

[ralphg]

It'll never work, because these days CAD vendors want total control over the messaging (c.f. Siemens and their SE ST3 roll-out). This is why AU, BE, et al exist, instead of generic fairs, like the good ol' AEC Systems.

An indie CAD olympics is threatening to the big vendors. You'd probably only get smaller vendors attending, those wanting an edge in attention.