Bombs Drop in San Francisco: Carl Bass Disses Onshape

Carl Bass, who retired from his CEO post at Autodesk early in 2017, was lured away from his Berkeley workshops to speak at TEC Talk. It meant time away from racing his go-cart with an onboard neural network, an electrified Shelby GT, and a host of other projects. He would only do it if he didn’t have to prepare. It helped that Ron Fritz, CEO of Tech Soft 3D, the company that holds the event, was an old friend (Fritz took over the HOOPS Summit after Bass left for Autodesk) and that this year’s TEK Talk was taking place nearby, on the San Francisco waterfront.

Carl Bass, former CEO of Autodesk (left), and Ron Fritz, CEO of Tech Soft 3D, at TEK Talk in San Francisco. The bombs are about to drop.

The event is usually held in Boston because "that's where our customers are," said Fritz. To be sure, East Coast players are largely absent from the West Coast event. TEC Talk is held before the HOOPS Summit. They should have come because not doing so meant that everyone could talk about them. And they did. Onshape, in particular, took it on the chin.

 

And Here’s Carl…

The headline event, Carl Bass’s talk, was well received. Without Hirschtick, Heppelemann, Bernard, Bassi or a Bentley brother, Bass was the only member of CAD royalty in attendance. Retired but still on the Autodesk board of directors, Bass is freer to talk about his time at the company. It was hard to be a CEO of such a big, sprawling organization, he said. People expected you to be omniscient. “My Australia team could not show up for work for two weeks, and I'd never know about it.”

Bass was critical of the CAD industry for not having done much of anything new in 25 years—though he had led the CAD market leader for 11 of those years. He talked about asking a group of designers what CAD software they use and remarked that their CAD applications were "older than they are. "According to Bass, the last interesting thing that happened to CAD was SOLIDWORKS—and that was 25 years ago.

Could Bass have possibly forgotten about Onshape—and Autodesk's own Fusion 360—both of which are more recent cloud-based CAD applications?

"What about Onshape?" I have to ask.

Big mistake. I shouldn’t provoke Bass. To do so is to risk becoming the story rather than reporting on one. A journalistic no-no.

Basss swings without hesitation. Onshape, according to Bass, is a "half-assed imitation of SOLIDWORKS that happens to run on the cloud and is a classic example of the CAD industry worrying about technical problems rather than the needs of their users. It doesn’t solve a single problem for any customer,” he continued "and therefore, they have had no traction in what...five years?"

Bass has a lot of respect for what the founders (including Hirschtick) did with SOLIDWORKS, offering a big chunk of what Pro/ENGINEER could do at the price of AutoCAD, which ran on $3,000 computers. That mattered. This [Onshape] doesn’t matter.

Bass wants to talk about more interesting things, like machine learning,and said, "Onshape is not one of them."

It was another bombshell from the ever-spontaneous Bass. It was not the first time he has taken on the competition publicly. Perhaps most famous was his anti-PLM rap delivered in 2007 (only to announce Autodesk 360 for PLM four years later). His non scripted remarks and avuncular attitude made him popular with the media, which is accustomed to carefully prepared remarks and marketing-heavy messages. No target is too large for Bass. He has even slammed President Trump on Twitter.

 

Comments from the Industry

Although someone jumps in to defends Onshape, outing himself as a paying customer, other attendees will later fall in line with Bass’s assessment of Onshape’s lack of traction. They don’t think it’s catching on—at least not fast enough. Hats off to the great Jon Hirschtick for trying, though.

Reached for comment was Autodesk present CEO, Andrew Anagnost, who, while choosing not to comment specifically on what Bass had said, seemed to agree in principle. SOLIDWORKS CEO Gian Paulo Bassi, ever the gentleman, declined to comment on the competition. It was a chance for Jon Hirschtick to reveal the actual numbers of paid customers, but Hirschtick chose to say only that he had "thousands of customers."

Well, maybe Hirschtick is waiting for a million customers before Onshape makes the announcement.

 

Patience…

Despite competition and the media’s impatience, Hirschtick gives little sign that he is in any hurry. Perhaps he is biding his time, knowing that in time Onshape will gather up paid users and is using that time. No doubt he is using this time to make Onshape more robust, increase the company’s partners, and make Onshape the easy-to-get/easy-to-use CAD program for every engineer unencumbered by—or bogged down by—traditional CAD systems. It's the same let's-change-habits, profit-can-wait approach used with great success by Jeff Bezos of Amazon. Amazon endured losses for many years, but managed to make itself so convenient, so habit-forming that traditional shopping establishments now all seem at risk.

Comments

[Bob Bean]

Seems to me OnShape is tackling the huge problem of software deployment (non-trivial, a senior exec friend of mine spent almost a year upgrading all installs of Catia and Inventor deployed at their companies - millions of dollars on that alone). The PDM/management issues OnShape solves are very significant as well. Competition is always good for users, new approaches stimulate the market and fuel innovation. Anyone remember Lotus 123?

[Mark Biasotti]

I think Bass is being unfair. Lightning striking twice is very hard to do, and while Onshape doesn't have the unique opportunity that SW had in '95, it is a bold step forward. If I could attribute the slow growth of Onshape it would, in my mind, be one of two factors; A) the pricing model is not competitive, given that it cost around the same as SW standard over a 5 year period, yet SW has so much more modeling and simulation and documentation functionality (23 yrs. worth) it is not comparable in value... yet. B) as I talk to most of my colleagues in my industry, they come to the same barrier that I have come to; Onshape requires internet connect in order to use it. Onshape seems to be in denial that this is a problem and/or they just admit that if this is an issue, that user is not their customer. It seems odd in the 21st century that we are not always "connected" but even here in the great Silicon Valley, we are not always connected. I do a lot of my work away from our studio and there is more times than just occasional, that I loose or do not have internet connection. Onshape should face this challenge head-on if they want to gain more traction with the industry. I realize it is not in their interest, because of PLM, to create a download, even a small one (like Fusion360) but it would be extremely useful that if loosing connection Onshape would be able to go into a temporary (data-encrypted) syncing state (thru a local app designed only for this purpose) where the user could continue to work until connection was restored.

[Sunith Babu L]

The Future of CAD is not Cloud CAD by AI, how AI will play a significant role in CAD is worth watching and worth the wait.

[Dave Snyder]

Casting Onshape off as just “CAD in the cloud” is very superficial analysis. Data/PDM is really Onshape’s long term play, and having CAD built into the PDM gives the platform a ton of unique potential. It will play well with bigger companies that integrate CAD data to PLM, ERP, etc. because it removes at least one layer of complexity, if not more. And as other business tools are moving to cloud (more quickly than CAD), cloud-to-cloud tool integration will be way cheaper and have more potential than traditional client-server integrations. Not necessarily meat for griseled CAD jockeys, but that will drive major investment decisions. Expecting it will catch on with students and start ups too. Device agnostic, quick to get going, etc.

[Olev]

Onshape seems like the makings of a classic disruptive innovation. "The technological changes that damage established companies are usually not radically new or difficult from a technological point of view. They do, however, have two important characteristics: First, they typically present a different package of performance attributes—ones that, at least at the outset, are not valued by existing customers. Second, the performance attributes that existing customers do value improve at such a rapid rate that the new technology can later invade those established markets."

Having used SW almost daily since 2008, it's clear to me that this market leader is in need of a major cleanup but seems unlikely to initiate one until it's too late. While each annual release boasts of nifty new features, I waste many hours each day working around bugs in its basic functionality (e.g. brittle solver performance due to over- (i.e. 3 planes) or under-constrained (i.e. perpendicular) mates, and ballooning configurations to accommodate product customizations) that have not been addressed in at least a decade.

In contrast, Onshape seems to be starting from a clean slate and can roll out fixes and enhancements in real time. I've seen it attracting mostly users who can't afford SW but want access to 3D printing, but I can't wait for the day that I can stop cursing SW.

[Mark Padmer]

Devon I assume you are more of a hobbyist or maker?

I can give you some perspective. I just attended the latest Onshape Roadshow. Standing room only. It seemed most in attendance were former SolidWorks users, like my company. Seemed to me clear that So Cal SolidWorks users are moving to Onshape. Although, maybe San Diego is different than the rest of So Cal?

I have noticed that Onshape seems to be a product of choice for professional CAD users. We had looked at other tools in the past. Lots of low end tools like Alibre CAD is a good choice, or Inventor Fusion. You can still learn how to model and user 3D CAD. We just found for professional industrial strength reliability they are just not in the same league as Onshape or SolidWorks.

As for the pricing, My company spent far more than that using SolidWorks. All I can tell us is we have not looked back. and the room of other Onshape users seemed very happy to me.

[Bob Konczal]

It is kinda funny reading these comments about Onshape and Jon’s team. This is almost exactly what the Pro/E folks and others said about SolidWorks in 1995. I find that respect is a wiser approach. Just sayin’. I would never bet against Jon and Da Team. No pun intended!

[Devon Sowell]

Here in San Diego, Onshape has no traction whatsoever, and with their recent price increases, Onshape Enterprise $20,000.00!!, they're shooting themselves in the foot.

[Randerobinson]

I really can't argue with him. Other than pricing models, improvement in things like rendering, and 3D tools, little or nothing new has really come out of the major CADD vendors. While some people may consider "on-line" CADD new and groundbreaking I would put it in the category of software delivery, not as some seem to think the next evolution of CADD. That's just one user's humble opinion.

[Miles Archer]

Carl Bass, as always, is a straight shooter.

There are so many customer problems that the CAD industry could tackle. Moving to a subscription model and putting some stuff in the cloud isn't it.