The CAD Insider

Solid Edge 'Adopt a School' Aims High

HUNTSVILLE, AL (Solid Edge ST4 Launch) - Karsten Newbery, in charge of leading Solid Edge to a place of prominence among MCAD market, knows it’s going to take more than a solid product (pun intended). One impediment to wide acceptance has been the lack of Solid Edge trained candidates. Companies are buying market leading design software sometimes just because they can fill the seats with someone already trained in using it. “There’s just not enough Solid Edge on resumes,” says Karsten. “How do we make the next generation Edgers?”

Solid Edge is launching an ‘Adopt a School’ program that will, if successful, graduate ready-to-hire Solid Edge trained candidates (see press release).

Solid Edge is encouraging its VARS to target local schools and volunteer their services, supplying students with knowledge of technology – with a heaping helping of Solid Edge experience on the side.

Call it seeding the fields or a Trojan horse; it is a page from the Apple playbook. For generations, Apple computers have been a mainstay in elementary schools and higher. Ostensibly to teach computing, generations of kids grew up knowing and growing with Apple products.

Of course, it took an unwavering commitment to an ideal from Apple, plus millions of dollars and an almost infinite patience to wait it out for results. Does Siemens PLM have this sort of resources? The stamina?

Karsten has hired CAD veteran Mike Brown, who, with a team of two others, hope to start a grass roots revolution in CAD education.

Mike's background extends as far back as Computervision, which was acquired by PTC. One CV product was turned into Pro/DESKTOP and was to be the answer to SolidWorks. It wasn’t. Mike is no stranger to the academia, having done bizdev for Edutech,which launched a couple of education initives in the Mideast. If this doesn’t work, it will not be due to Mike’s lack of sales skills. He refers to his home town of Manchester, England, as the best place on Earth, which is sufficient to convince me that he would not be afraid to sell refrigerators to Eskimos.

Mike tells us that Solid Edge is quite popular in the UK where there are more Solid Edge vacancies than for SolidWorks. But Mike is realistic enough to know that breaking into education, at least in the US, will require considerable effort.

“Schools get a lot of software given to them,” he says. “Carpet bombing the schools with CD is not going to help.”

Solid Edge's “call to action” relies on Solid Edge VARs as being welcomed on campus as ambassadors of technology. How hard could this be? Mike reckons teachers, who for the most part have trouble keeping up with technology, will open their doors, as it relieves theri burden.

Mike is upbeat about its potential acceptance. He’s that sort of guy. Ideas and experience are not his problem. Karsten says he has often had to throttle the flow.

Enthusiasm and salesmanship notwithstanding, let us see what sort of commitment Siemens PLM is ready to deliver to ensure the success of Solid Edge in academia.

 

Solid Edge Revives Partner Program

HUNTSVILLE, AL (Solid Edge ST4 Launch) - On the Internet, no one knows you are a dog. Or you can be a cool dude who wears dark shades at all hours. Meet Mark Burhop, who, unlike his avatar persona, is in real life is a down-to-earth CAD guy, nice enough to have as many friends in real life friends as he has followers in his virtual one.

Mark Burhop aims to revive the Solid Edge 3rd party partner program

But Mark needs help. He has been plucked from his comfort zone of FEA (Femap) and put in charge of creating a “app ecosystem” for Solid Edge, or in other words, reviving the partner program so users may have choices of 3rd party programs. He may have to curtail his time on social media.

As Solid Edge is gathers momentum, its executives must have noticed that “ecosystems” for the competitive MCAD products (namely Inventor and SolidWorks) are extensive. In fact, the ubiquitous AutoCAD has so many 3rd party programs -- from LISP routines to full heavy apps -- that the program is often referred to as a design operating system. SolidWorks has a half dozen CAM programs alone that work happily inside its environment.

Meanwhile, the Solid Edge 3rd party program, previously known as Voyager, had simply lapsed into oblivion. I am told it has been folded into the broader Siemens PLM partner program. According to one faithful Edger, “there were a few years where Solid Edge was in the doldrums,” a condition which no doubt had a lethal effect on Voyager.

But all of that is about to change. Siemens PLM states that there is “renewed vigor” in its Solid Edge business. Its new partner initiative is intended to create a streamlined environment, intended to make it easy for partners to participate and be available to the Solid Edge user base.

If I were a vendor, should I be worried that the Solid Edge population is small?

“Solid Edge licenses grew by 50 percent globally last year,” says Mark.“As for the vendors in our ecosystem, my goal is also to look for those with new and innovative ideas that address our customers technology needs. We want to build a strong community that benefits our partners and customers in a better way than the traditional partner programs in the CAD industry. ”

Mark’s been at this job for three months. Already, he has signed up CADENAS, who does parts management and electronic product catalogs, and Striker Systems, whose sheet metal apps handle nesting, CNC punching and profile cutting machines.

The hallway at the ST4 Launch was crowded with a dozen vendors who Mark probably has on the hook.

 

Siemens PLM Promises Support of Solid Edge... Again

Tony Affuso, CEO of Siemens PLM, flew to Huntsville, Alabama, home of Solid Edge, to deliver the keynote at the ST 4 Launch. To the Solid Edge team, who may have been feeling estranged, it seems to validate not just a separate users’ event for Solid Edge (they had been asked to share the space under the big tent of Siemens PLM World) but much more. It could be seen as an affirmation of the Solid Edge business.

Tony Affuso, CEO of Siemens PLM, rallies the troops at the ST4 Launch -- but one one industry watcher having none of it.

“It’s time to get serious about the midstream business,” says Affuso. He admits to not having done a great job with sales and marketing for Solid Edge and he promises a change. “We know we are #3, behind Autodesk and SolidWorks. How do we get from #3 to #2, #2 to #1?”

Tony’s visit has uplifting effect on the troops and the users. It is picked up in Tweets, and blogs. I expect articles to follow.

The words soon reach Jon Banquer, thousands of miles away in San Diego. For Banquer, Tony’s words appear only as unfulfilled promises. And that’s putting it mildly.

Banquer is quick to remind me of my own post of June 1996 called Solid Edge-- the Best MCAD Program You Won't Buy and Tony’s similar promise to deliver on sales and marketing for Solid Edge. See also Solid Edge in the Spotlight, where Tony promised of an “aggressive marketing campaign” at the Solid Edge user conference in 2005 in Cincinnati.

Banquer makes his point. It looks like I have been repeating myself.

I’ve never met Jon Banquer. His online persona makes him a feared man. He admits to being hated by machinists, SolidWorks users – even though he is one. He calls CAD and CAM users wimps with “no backbone.” He is quick to point out any deficiency, rise to the defense of his favorite products and causes (his current hot button is integrated CAD/CAM), puncture any inflated claims... all in his attempt to keep people honest. It matters not if it is a CAD CEO or some blogger.

Banquer doesn’t get invited to these events. I imagine he sees many of us who do attend as seduced and tamed, wined and dined, ensconced in 5-star hotels, all of which we exchange for favorable prose. That, also, is putting it mildly.

Jon Banquer’s outspoken views, and a penchant for scathing remarks, it would be easy to dismiss him as a hothead. I’m sure a lot of CAD industry professionals do just that. I know those that “manage” the blogosphere for CAD companies who wince under Banquer’s prolific and sharp criticism.

And yet, Banquer makes some important points. Most relevant to this post is that Banquer is actually a champion of Solid Edge, which he sees as a preeminent solid modeler. He is frustrated by its lack of traction against the MCAD applications it competes with, something that even Siemens PLM would concede. He points to a lack of CAM 3rd party apps, more. There’s much more. In fact, once you get Banquer talking, it’s hard for him to stop.

Banquer may never get a chance to tell a CAD CEO what he thinks to their face. By now every event planner has Banquer’s front and side picture on the wall. But I hope the fortifications they build around their leaders are not too thick because, at times, they will need someone like Jon Banquer to tell them they have no clothes.

And, Jon, thanks for keeping me honest as well.

Keep it in Your Pants – Pet Peeve #1

I’ve probably sat through hundreds of presentations given by excited CAD executives. So many times has one of them pulled out his iPhone to make a point that I am sick of it. I can see it coming as they reach in. Then they pull it out. It's followed by something clever, like:

"10 years ago, it took a roomful of computers to do what this little thing does."

"I don’t need a user manual to operate this."

Hey, look, just cause you have an iPhone, it doesn’t mean we all do. We might secretly want one, but that only makes us resentful.

And stop porting all your software to every damn Apple product. Have any of you tried to look at E-size drawings on an iPhone for more than a few seconds? Yeah, it’s stupidly small. How about CFD on an MacBook Air?

I don’t have any Apple computers. Nor am I yearning for one. My daughter is. She is way cooler than me. But when I look around, I don’t see any engineer using them. Not for production work. Just writing this will ensure that I will be pelted by Mac enthusiasts, but like mysterious forces others insist upon, I still deny their existence without visual proof.

And while I’m at it, can you guys stop trying to relate with us common folk. It’s not coming off. Your experiences are not our experiences. We are not jetting around the world. A few of us lucky bastards may come to your annual user conferences. We don’t mind that you have to go all over the world, that’s ok, you run multinational companies. But even if your tools of the trade are Smartphones and iPads, ours are still workstations with big hulking monitors, usually two of them. You can keep issuing news that this and that is now running on a laptop. Means nothing to us.

Oh, and another thing. We all might all have wives and drive cars in common, so we might let you get away with a little good old fashitioned wife/driving humor. But when the wife is driving a Mercedes...not cool.

Anybody else got any pet peeves? Besides bloggers going on rants, I mean.

 

Solid Edge Coming Out From the Shadows

HUNTSVILLE, AL (Solid Edge ST4 Launch) – The enhancements are coming fast and furious at the Solid Edge ST 4 Launch event. I cannot keep up.*  I’m catching a few highlights, especially the ones that are applauded by the attendees. Like Range Offset Value, no more picking on empty space, prevention of assembly  relationship loops, shadows that appear correctly even on photo backgrounds (done with an invisible plane)… The cynical and those with the competition might say some enhancements are fixes for problems Solid Edge itself has created. Yeah, that happens. But many are bona fide and welcome improvements. If I was a Solid Edge customer I’d be doing cartwheels.

As Dan Staples, Director of Solid Edge development (aka Papa Edge) lists even more improvements, I realize I am witnessing a genuine and concerted effort to improve the product – an effort contrary to the growing belief in the industry that design software is as good as it can be, that all CAD software can basically do everything, all the features needed have already been added, that CAD software has have achieved parity, that it is more or less a commodity.

Bull.

Thank you, Solid Edge, for not giving up, for recognizing that, yes, even with one of the most robust and easy to use MCAD software applications in existence, there is still room for improvement, that users’ lives can still be made easier -- and there are still customers to be won.

At 250, the attendance at the ST4 Launch may seem small compared to the big annual CAD conferences. Autodesk and  SolidWorks measure attendance at their annual events by the thousands.  Still, this “launch” is significant in other ways. A gathering of Solid Edge users is a somewhat of a break from the mother ship. Siemens PLM has for several years attempted to lump Solid Edge users with UG users under the PLMWorld umbrella. There was only one problem: Solid Edge users stayed away in droves. The few that did attend PLM Worlds regretted it, telling tales of snooty UG users, being unable to find others like themselves (often cited as the single most valuable benefit of user conferences) and a conference program almost completely filled with UG classes. “We were the red-headed step child,” says one Solid Edge user.

Insiders I spoke with credit Karsten Newberry, Sr VP of Solid Edge for Siemens PLM, as the main reason for Solid Edge coming out from the shadows. Karsten gave the job of creating the ST4 Launch in only a few months to John Fox, formerly from PTC, who with a small but hardworking staff, engineered the entire show, complete with keynotes, a dual track of classes, meals, social events, even 3^rd party vendors (my favorite:  a cappuccino machine that dispensed coffee --for free!). Though small in scale, Solid Edge now has a scalable template for future events – something that Edgers (as Solid Edge users are often referred to) will no doubt welcome.

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*Get all that I missed at What’s New in Solid Edge ST4, by Siemens PLM (PDF)

 

PTC's Heppelmann Makes A Gutsy Move with Creo

LAS VEGAS, NV (PlanetPTC 2011), June 14, 2011 – A chance to address your top customers is not an opportunity to be missed. CEO Jim Heppelmann has taken the main stage during the annual PTC user group meeting. He wastes no time. He talks fast.

“I’m an engineer,” Heppelmann tells us.  He has already been introduced as a tinkerer, someone with a “big workshop” who “loves to visit customers.” It’s a tough sell.  The crowd has been rather reserved. It is their second or third day in Las Vegas. By now people are moving a bit slower in hallways of the mega-complex that is Caesar’s Palace casino. I’ve had to go around them.  I guess even engineers just wanna have fun. It is Las Vegas, after all. Don’t ask; don’t tell. During breakfast, the coffee runs out.

Heppelmann has been in the top position for 9 months. He replaced Dick Harrison, who is nowhere to be seen. 

So what does Heppelmann bring to the show, his first big public user gig as CEO? A boundless energy, for one thing.  His words come quick, like a machine gun. Only once did he stumble and that was over which one of the new PTC products does what. But who isn’t confused?

PTC has blown up the old brands Pro/E and CoCreate in favor of a myriad of Creo products. Why would PTC throw a grenade in its own house? One might argue CoCreate, a MCAD also-ran, might have needed a boost. But why mess with the venerable Pro/ENGINEER? Why “abandon a name that's synonymous with 3D?”* If anything, change the company name. The “Parametric” in PTC no longer tells the whole story.

Heppelmann tells how sales had been stagnant for years. A high level meeting was called. Hard questions were asked. Those who suggested the status quo was due to a mature market were challenged with the question: “Have all the problems been solved?”

But it was a rhetorical question.  A trap.

“No, they have not,” he answers himself. “These products are fundamentally hard to use! It was the elephant in the room.”

He is not done. The problem was deeper.

“Once upon a time, we were the innovators.  We had a great product. We had the only product. Somewhere along the way we became complacent."

“We have the best parametric modeler in Pro/E,” he said. “We have CoCreate.” He lists other PTC applications. “Why don’t we think outside the box, put all them in the blender and see what frappe comes out?”

Those that didn’t share the vision may no longer be in PTC’s employ. Heppelmann had climbed to the his vaunted position to wait for consensus. “Only 2 of our executive staff were there 2 years ago.” I'm thinking if you don’t agree with Heppelmann, you don’t stick get to stick around too long.

Heppelmann is on a roll. He is taking a shot at the term CAD itself.

“We don’t call it CAD anymore. I think we can assume that all design is now computer aided.  It’s not 1970.”

Elephants. Frappes. Questioning “CAD” itself.  Amidst the distraction of wildly clashing metaphors, a lapse into subjects that usually put me to sleep (PDM, ERP), shaking the bedrock of TenLinks (a CAD site) and typical CEO bombast (“We are the leader and we’re opening our lead”), I have to mentally withdraw to preserve my sanity. But I think I’ve got what I need.

Basically, PTC, under Heppelmann, has put all its wood behind the new products. For better or worse, the old brands are going away. The new programs (apps) are smaller, lighter...modern!  It’s a move that ought to be applauded.  Sure, the hard core Pro/E users will bitch. However, most CAD insiders have been saying for many years that PTC needed to wake up and react to its shrinking influence in the market it once owned. PTC was the frog in the pot of water slowly heating, but never summoning the will to jump.

Well, the frog has jumped. We can guess how it will land, to be sure, but credit must go to Jim Heppelmann for not only recognizing the need to adjust course, but also being able to push it through the organization.

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See entire keynote, PTC Corporate Strategy & Customer Executive Panel Discussion

*Sean Dotson, on Twitter

SmartGeometry: What Exactly is It?

After seeing wondrous projects at Smart Geometry 2011 in Copenhagen, I wanted to know more about how GenerativeComponents worked so I tracked down Huw Roberts, Bentley’s Global Marketing Director, to answer a few questions. As you might guess from Huw’s title, GenerativeComponents is just a small piece of Huw’s world “but an important one.”  

Bentley's Huw Roberts champions GenerativeComponents in annual conference in Copenhagen

Even after the conference was over, I had trouble categorizing GenerativeComponents. Was it a technology? A module? An application? A programming language? A development kit? What?

It’s an application, says Huw. It’s also an environment. Luckily, he was able to explain.

“You can elect to work with GenerativeComponents is three ways. One is in a graphical environment, with models. Like a CAD program. Or you can work with just the script. GenerativeComponents also generates a graph or flow chart, which is the third way. Each can drive the other. A change in the model will change the flow chart. You can drive the model by changing the script.”

Changing the script to change the model somewhat similar to parametric modeling.  Any comparison between GenerativeComponents and parametric modelers, such as Revit?

“Oh, it’s so much more, “says Huw. Sure programs like Revit have rules and constraints, but GenerativeComponents scripting is far more versatile. “For example, try to put a window in a roof in Revit and call it a skylight. Good luck.”  GenerativeComponents allow you to be much freer in your design, more creative. Certainly those sorts of applications are great for floor plans, basic layouts, BIM, but with GenerativeComponents you can do things like size your windows to the results of a thermal analysis.

GenerativeComponents is offered free to one and all. You don’t even have to be a Bentley subscriber. What’s in it for Bentley? Why would a for-profit company be so generous, not only in the distribution of the software, but also sponsoring annual conferences, schools, etc.?

“We feel that getting GenerativeComponents out to a wide audience will result in a better technology,” says Huw. “Of course, Bentley does benefit in using the technology in its applications.”

I have to ask about Grasshopper, very much in evidence at the GenerativeComponents conference, even though it appears to compete with GenerativeComponents. “A lot of people do use Grasshopper,” concedes Huw. “It is also free.  However, it only works with Rhino, which you have to buy. Also, many Grasshopper users will find limits and then use GenerativeComponents. They find it more robust and it works better with professional applications.” So GenerativeComponents is positioned more as industrial strength solution that users graduate to? “You could say that,” says Huw.

Bentley’s largesse is also apparent in their decision to make GenerativeComponents stand alone, allowing it to work with not only Bentley apps, but Autodesk apps by virtue of DWG output. 

For more information and to download GenerativeComponents, go to www.generativecomponents.com.

 

Up-Front CAE - Autodesk Scores

Under three teeny icons lies a whopper of an idea – one that promises to bring simulation into the early stages of the product cycle.

BOSTON, MA, May 25, 2011 (NAFEMS World Congress) – By now, we’ve all heard that we should be analyzing earlier in the product development cycle, about how the majority of lifecycle costs are determined during concept and early design phases. We’ve heard the scary stories how if only FEA had been done, the rework would not have happened, the tooling would have been correct, that millions of dollars would have been saved, the factory wouldn’t have had to close, and so on. Duly sobered, we may have sworn that, yes, indeed, we would do the analysis early. What else can you do? It’s like world peace. A damn good idea. You can’t argue against it.

But good intentions cannot withstand “I need this on my desk tomorrow-- if you want to keep your job.”

The solution may come from Autodesk, who has an implementation of the early-analysis concept that is simply brilliant. I have to credit their newly formed SIM Squad for showing it to me at NAFEMS World Congress recently held in Boston.

(click for larger image)

The Autodesk MoldFlow Adviser Design plug-in’s three little icons promise a revolution in up-front CAE, providing instant readouts of manufacturability, cost and environmental impact. Note the wiper at different levels on each icon – an indication an analyis is being done in the background.

The Autodesk Moldflow Adviser Design plug-in puts 3 little icons on the screen of Autodesk Inventor, which the SIM Squad calls gauges. The user creates a plastic part in Inventor as they normally would. But as he is doing so, the “gauges” reflect the quality of the part, measuring manufacturability, cost, and environmental impact issues. The add-in is evaluating draft angle – or lack of it. Adequate undercuts. Wall thickness. Maybe a dozen other criteria of good plastic part design. You can use it to see sink marks. A whole lot of information can be found by clicking on the little warning marks that appear when inside the icons. They’ll even turn red if you’ve really screwed up. Look closely and you’ll see a little wiper that goes up and down over each icon. The SIM Squad tells me that indicates a full Moldflow analysis is occurring. A real analysis. In real time. Practically as the part is being created.

An Inventor user can click on one of the Autodesk Moldflow Adviser Design plug-In icons to see a list of potential problems. Each problem can be isolated onscreen. In this case undercuts are shown directly on an Inventor part model.

How is this even possible? Ok, I may be old enough to remember having to come back the next day to get the paper printout of an analysis, but I have conceded that today’s tools can spit out results during coffee breaks. But real-time analysis – that is just unreal.

No supercomputer was hidden under the demo table. I looked.

The SIM Squad tells me that the Moldflow Adviser plug-in (which also works in Pro/ENGINEER) is a precursor to similar implementations. So expect to see similar gauges for stress analysis (using Algor technology). And maybe even fluids, as Autodesk has also acquired Blue Ridge Numerics.

Should this be the case, Autodesk will have succeeded in eliminating just about every excuse you might have had for not doing an early analysis. Those three little icons are a huge advance for the cause of up-front CAE.

Maybe Autodesk should now tackle world peace.

Autodesk Hints of a CAE Office

A $500 million shopping spree has left the biggest CAD vendor in the world with a wealth of  CAE tools. Autodesk, known for design software such as AutoCAD and assorted vertical apps (Inventor, Revit, Civil3D and the like) now also has to figure out what to do with Algor (general purpose FEA), Moldflow (mold flow analysis) PlassoTech (FEA, again), Solid Dynamics (kinematics) and Blue Ridge Numerics (fluid dynamics). It is as motley a collection of CAE tools as there ever was. Each product has brought with it a unique interface, developers and code base…and user base.

While PlassoTech and Solid Dynamics will not go forward as products (Autodesk says their technology will find its way in other applications), faithful adherents of Moldflow, Algor and Blue Ridge products need not fear that their trusted apps will die of neglect, lost in a huge company.

In fact, there is a formula for each product’s future, says Autodesk’s Bob Williams, who is representing Autodesk’s newly assembled SIM Squad, a loosely linked group whose purpose seems to be to evangelicize CAE products, individually and collectively, to the public and internally to the company. Such a group within a larger company seems like the way to go, in contrast to a monolithic leadership which may not have the necessary time and energy to assure the ongoing success of varied and various products despite the initial commitment of money and effort expended in their acquisition.

Remember Visio? Yeah, that’s my point. Swallowed by Microsoft, never to be heard of again.

But along with the full attention of Autodesk will come changes.

In the first stage, the various CAE products will exist with their previous identity intact, says Bob. In the second stage, they will share the same interface – including the ribbon toolbar. Ok, maybe they will all look kind of like Inventor, Bob concedes. I suppose you have to start somewhere. Finally, they will share the same code base.

Bob also tells me the SIM products will be CAD-agnostic.

Hmm. How CAD-agnostic would they be, exactly? Moldflow was in use as an add-in not just for Inventor, but also for Pro/E. Bob vows to they will not be cutting off support of competitive products.

If done properly, Autodesk’s clout could make the CAE products as ubiquitous for analysis as MS Office is for general use. I can see a CAE suite just over the horizon. It won’t matter if each application is best of breed. They will work similarly. They will share data. They will be bundled at a price too low to ignore. Maybe a few ANSYS devotees may eventually do a last stand. Remember Lotus before Microsoft rolled over them?

ANSYS may be best equipped to make the last stand, itself having built up a coterie of varied CAE tools and covering so many types of analyses that they now refer to themselves as purveyors of multi-physics – a term that would seem to encompass all everything under the sun and beyond.

But I am getting ahead of the story. For now, I’d have to say don’t bet against Autodesk as it seeks to establish itself in the world of CAE.