The CAD Insider

News or Hype? Company Ditches XYZ CAD, Switches to ABC CAD.

Is this news? I call them conversions. As news editor of TenLinks, I had included such items as news in our newsletter. To me, a company switching CAD systems was important. It signified that a company had found an advantage of one CAD system over another. The hope was that the company had made a serious comparison of the two systems and found their present one lacking. It must have been a gut wrenching decision, as so much is invested in a CAD system: the training, legacy data, the procedures, not to mention the dreaded conversion that is about to ensue. From such anguish, a lesson learned. Maybe for those with similar products, or similar companies.

And as such, a conversion would be worthwhile, interesting, maybe useful... in other words news.

Not so fast, oh smug news editor, says one CAD insider. He works in one leading CAD company, which NEVER boasts of conversions. I tell him a rival has converted a dozen seat from his company's product to those of his rival.  Ho hum, he says. We get this all the time. It's routine for us to take fifty or sixty seats at a time from our competitors. We don't brag,

It actually made sense. A market leader, even one who is not taking a high road, would only have achieved their position and be able to maintain it by constantly converting users of other CAD systems. They would tire of such claims. They would be common place, expected. An editor would soon tire of receiving such claims.

For all the conversions that are going on, it just might be possible that most of it is going in the direction favorable to the market leaders. And if they are not publicizing it, such conversions go unreported. Whereas, stragglers, also-rans, start-ups and upstarts would report joyously on each and every seat wrested from any one, as few and infrequent as they might be. Then don't I risk spreading the unsubstantiated and skewed belief that market leaders are losing market share to their competition, though it may be far from the truth?

 

How NOT to do Social Media

Social media has transformed the world, from finding high school friends on Facebook to overthrowing governments with Twitter. So why is it that our industry seems to have failed to capitalize on it? After observing one great success and a few dismal failures, I offer these rules for those seeking to use social media:

1. Don’t dismiss it.

By now, everyone is aware of blogs, tweets and Facebook. But if you think it’s something that your wife does, or how the kids waste their time, that it has no place in your business, a fad that you can safely ignore… then prepare for the world to pass you by.

2. Don’t question it. 

How many times have I heard “I don’t get Twitter…or Facebook..or blogging…” Guess what? It doesn’t matter if you get it. The fact is everyone is using it. It’s a fact of life. An entire generation has grown up texting, googling, living their lives on Facebook pages. It's like the air they breathe. No questions.

Maybe you think LinkedIn is better, the adult version of Facebook. That seems to be a reasonable excuse. But even LinkedIn establishes a generation gap. Kids use Facebook. Old fogeys use LinkedIn. Kinda like skis and snowboards. Remember one thing: who are your future customers?

3. Don’t misuse it.

Let’s say you are convinced of the importance of social medial. You see all the kids are all in the pool. So you jump in. Except you can’t swim. Your toupee comes off. You’re flailing. 

Watching some companies trying to use social media makes me squirm. For one big CAD company, social media meant mandating employees get a Twitter account. But they had nothing to say. Twitter use lapsed into lavish praise of each others' mediocre accomplishments and of their products. The cheerleading reached a crescendo during a national user meeting with endless retweets of every lame joke the CEO made. Oh, by the way, ease up on the 'great white paper' or salesy webinar. That stuff is on your site, right. We’ll get it if we need it. Thanks. 

More recently, another big CAD company abruptly declared mid-conference that all tweeting and photos were to stop… shortly after trying to impress us how media savvy, hip and online they were. 

SolidWorks was the last CAD company to become successful without using social media only because back in 1995, it didn’t exist. But SolidWorks did a masterful job of using the existing media, notably print magazines and trade shows. The web seems to have left both print media and trade shows in shambles, however. Since then, no company has been able to master the the media of the day -- online media. No company has risen to the top, either. Coincidence?

Despite all initial and continued success as a market leader, SolidWorks itself finds itself with many of the same challenges as the others: trying to figure out where to go from here. Its once mighty legion of bloggers was the envy of the industry. Users and resellers by day, they pecked away on their keyboards til late at night creating volumes of dialog, tutorials, tips and tricks, etc. But now, many blogs grow cobwebs, having lost momentum and fervor. Some may write again as their annual user event approaches. One notable blogger has all but defected, often writing positively about rival products.

Autodesk – the undisputed business leader of our industry, is arguably also the leader in social media. It’s leading evangelist, Lynn Allen (aka, the Queen of CAD) has artfully combined live appearances and print articles with tweets and blog posts. Shaan Hurley, first on the blogging CAD scene with Between the Lines has continued to produce online since 2003. Then there is Scott Sheppard, a one-man PR staff who keeps all up to date on cool new products from Autodesk Labs. Kean Walmsley, Heidi Hewitt, Kate Morrical, and more… who despite working full time jobs at Autodesk are also prolific bloggers, roiling their areas of cyberspace with useful and interesting content.

Want to be successful in social media? Study Autodesk. As they are all over the Web. You can't miss them.

And spare the excuses, chief among them would be “we don’t have Autodesk resources.” Guess what? Social media participation is NOT expensive. It used to take a princely ransom to introduce and promote a product. SolidWorks spent millions. That was when guys in suits with expense accounts ruled the media, selling print ads and show booths. The new crowd works a lot cheaper. It’s just that someone has to figure out how it can all work out.

 

Fuel Cells Power Globe Trotting Autos

BOSTON, MA (Siemens PLM Analyst Event), Sep 8, 2011 - For those who think Big Auto and Big Oil are hopelessly intertwined, here is a jolt. Daimler and Ford have formed a company whose sole purpose is to create a commercial automotive powerplant based on fuel cells. Fuel cells don’t use fossil fuels. They combine hydrogen and oxygen to release energy twice as efficiently as internal combustion engines.

Automotive Fuel Cell Cooperation (AFCC), a Siemens PLM customer and user of Teamcenter, presented this technology at the press event. AFCC is owned by Daimler (50.1%) and Ford (30%). The company is pretty far along the road to commercialization of their product and has already achieved a significant milestone. A trio of B-series Mercedes (you don’t see these in the US) have circumnavigated the world – with nary a mechanical failure.

(image courtesy of AFCC)

The radical engines are due to be commercially available in 2015, having satisfied most criteria (power, range, reliability) except one big one – cost.

Though details of cost were not provided, so I am free to imagine that it would cost at least an order of magnitude above conventional engines, as the Prius driving/tree hugging/compost/organic eating/community gardening demographic would be certainly be within reach even at a 2X price differential. 

Having demonstrated its fuel cells ability to function, job one at AFCC is now to bring down the cost. Achieving that, what’s not to like? Hydrogen fuel cells byproducts are water and heat. There are no carbon emissions. It would reduce our dependence on foreign energy sources. 

Am I missing something? Or are fuel cells a serious game changer?

 

CAD Market -- Life’s Not Fair

If you are not a leader in the CAD market, then you probably perceive the world as not fair.In a perfect world, a product is picked on its merits. And every so often, a product would be reevaluated, compared to its competition. And so, in a perfect world, companies would be guaranteed the best tools. Incumbency would be devalued.

Certainly, we do this with our politicians. With each election, the incumbents are evaluated against the challengers, and if found wanting, they are shown the door.

Hmm… a similar methodoly would also get rid of fat cops. But I digress.

For products like SpaceClaim, who just know they are better than the market leaders, a lack of fair evaluation has them tearing their hair out.  What the hell do you do when most of the seats are taken? When new users nowadays just follow the leader, like sheep. They could hope for a leader to emerge from somewhere.. someone who has kwowledge, wisdom and who is beyond rapproach, who would show the way, point them to the rightful choice....

Wait, I was dreaming again. Back to reality. Without a leader, a CAD Olympics might help determine what CAD program to choose... Oh, don’t get me started.

I imagine nonleaders in the CAD industry gathering to cry in their beers as they size up the unfair successes:

“Autodesk just rode the PC wave with AutoCAD” 

“SolidWorks only had to compete against Pro/E”

But each lament ignores the marketing skills current leaders have used to arrive at their vaunted spots. Autodesk rose to be a billion dollar company but it was not with brilliant technology. To us in the press, all we saw were marketing, marketing and more marketing. For all we knew, a handful of programmers toiled in the bowels of the company. Their mere existence was a rumor. SolidWorks may have paled next to Pro/E technically but that was a low hurdle for the marketing genius of John McEleney (VP of marketing who would later become its CEO). 

“But things were different then,” I can hear the contenders claim. “All SolidWorks had to do was swing a couple of magazines, go to a couple of trade shows…”

Yes, back then there were only a few influential CAD magazines. At one time, users looking for someone to believe could have believed them. And people were shopping at tradeshows. But both venues have been marginalized by the Web. Instead of a fearless leader, we have loud voices, some knowledgeable, some credible… others, not so much. And new voices are heard every day.

The old guard had better get off their barstools and figure this out. Because the next AutoCAD or SolidWorks will come from someone understands and can harness the potential of social media.

 

SpaceClaim

“First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.”
Mohandas Gandhi.
(tacked up on the refrigerator at SpaceClaim HQ)

Blake Coulter, co-founder of SpaceClaim*, was rushing off to catch a flight to Burning Man. My first thought was to warn him he would be heading into a free-spirited art event in the California desert, that he risked being the only CAD veteran in attendance. But then it occurred to me that Blake knew this, and maybe this was even the reason he was going.  For most of the year, Blake immerses himself in CAD. If you have uttered a CAD-related word online, Blake knows you. He is active on Twitter and is a voracious reader of the blogs. 

But despite his artistic leanings, he had held off until he was able to welcome me to the company headquarters in Concord, MA (across the street from SolidWorks, actually) and have me see the latest release of SpaceClaim -- as well as discuss what appeared to be some new company positioning.  I saw a variety of improvements in SpaceClaim, most of which will be welcomed by their user base. I hope to use the software soon so I can reveal more details.  

But  back to the positioning…

SpaceClaim, as far as I can tell, is a fully functional solid modeling program. Its champions say it is the easiest to learn and use. It does direct modeling, which is all the rage. Yet, all of the above have been insufficient to gain huge market penetration in a market dominated by Autodesk and SolidWorks.

SpaceClaim, having sensed an unexpected resistance, had sought what may have been an unguarded side door. The first was modeling analyses, notably with a robust partnership with ANSYS,  plus other CAE players. By SpaceClaim accounts, FEA users were only too happy to abandon their clumsy modeling front ends with a “real” modeling program.This strategy seems to have had some measure of success. A recent customer survey showed over 40% of SpaceClaim users use it for FEA model preparation¹.

Buoyed by this, SpaceClaim now declares they will try another side door: preparing models for manufacturing, such as sheet metal fabrication, tooling and fixturing, mold design and CNC machining. For both analysis and manufacturing, the reasons for using SpaceClaim are the same: ease of use and a large variety of formats that can be read. But with SpaceClaim 2011+, a lot of additional sheet metal capability has been added. Through a partnership with TRUMPF, a leading manufacturer of sheet metal fabrication machinery and industrial lasers, SpaceClaim now has added much sheet metal ability, such as folding hinges, hems, etc. 

Still, I had questioned the oblique strategy. Even if SpaceClaim owned pre-analysis and pre-manufacturing modeling, will it be enough? What good is owning niches? Given the advantages they say they have,  should they have been going after something more -- like world domination?

But now, it appears as if SpaceClaim is back in the fight. SpaceClaim is now talking of “displacing” existing MCAD software. Apparently, SpaceClaim has been successful in landing a few manufacturers who may have been using other MCAD programs.  

But does a few wins signify a trend? Is this a just a small company talking big? Does SpaceClaim really have a chance? Stay tuned for more discussion.

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*Blake Coulter official title: Director of Customer Development

1. 60% of SpaceClaim's customers use it for conceptual modeling, an 30% use it for NC model preparation, as found on same customer survey.