Dassault Systèmes SOLIDWORKS CEO Gian Paolo Bassi rolls up with an Icon motorized sport wheelchair at SOLIDWORKS World 2019 in Dallas. He said he always wanted to be cowboy. Note the boots.
After a brief intro, Dassault Systèmes CEO Bernard Charles took over the stage at SOLIDWORKS World 2019—the biggest gathering of mechanical designers and engineers in the world all using the world’s No. 1 professional MCAD software—and again explained the 3DEXPERIENCE. He had to. They weren’t getting it.
Charles has patiently been explaining it for years. He tried to inspire people with icebergs being towed across oceans as part of the multi-million dollar “If we…” campaign. Monica Menghini, from London’s renowned Saatchi &Saatchi ad agency, was brought on board to convince users it was all about the experience not the product. An oft-quoted example used was that people went to Starbucks for the experience. That’s nice, the users were thinking, but what does coffee have to do with CAD? The users tuned out. There were sessions to pick and, afterwards, buddies to meet. This was their one chance a year to do so.
For years, Dassault Systèmes tried valiantly to get SOLIDWORKS users to see the bigger picture, offering a chance to think big, collaborate across borders, organize their processes like big enterprise (with PLM), embrace the cloud, etc. It’s been a campaign to get users to abandon their small-business mind set and embrace a bigger vision. Why wouldn’t they want to grow and throw away their little products for the big ones, from making the nuts and bolts and brackets to the whole car or the whole airplane? It must have been maddening how users just would not see the light and chose to stay in the dark, pounding away at designs with primitive tools, when they were being offered sophisticated ones.
Dassault Systèmes has been nice about it. It used a soft-sell approach but gradually took more and more time on the main stage to tell its story. In 2019, it tried even harder. In the first general session at SWW19, the heads of ENOVIA, BIOVIA, SIMULIA, and platform and marketplace, took the stage. When it was over, one user said, “Did they talk about SOLIDWORKS? I don’t think so.”
A Tale of Unrequited Love
In 1997, the French company Dassault Systèmes—best known for CATIA, a mainframe-based, advanced and robust 3D modeling program in use at every big automotive and aerospace company—paid a handsome price ($350 million) for a four-year-old American MCAD company with few customers but a fiercely loyal dealer network. It may have been love at first sight for Charles, smitten with the scrappy, young,quintessentially American company. It took six months to convince founder Jon Hirschtick to sell SOLIDWORKS, Charles said.
For years after the acquisition, SOLIDWORKS managed to operate independently of Dassault Systèmes, as if holding an over-anxious paramour at arm’s length. “We call it two markets; two leaders,” said then SOLIDWORKS CEO John McEleney in 2007.
SOLIDWORKS users who have had their own lane on the Dassault Systèmes highway may now be forced to merge. From numerous conversations with SOLIDWORKS staff and the increasing presence and influence exerted at SOLIDWORKS World over recent years, it is pretty clear they really were on a merge lane—and it’s ending.
A creeping corporate presence, as well as a succession of SOLIDWORKS executives, belies a private impatience while the public and press is served a soft sell consisting of smooth talk and smiles. The users are plied with gifts, like a 3DEXPERIENCE bag, or dinners and parties carefully catered to the audience, like beer and bull riding at Gilley’s. It has done little to win the hearts and minds of users who, curiously enough, have much to criticize SOLIDWORKS about.
It’s a love-hate relationship, said a VAR, when asked why SOLIDWORKS users continue with what alternative vendors—both from Dassault Systèmes and competitors—describe as aging software that crashes often (think of feature trees so heavy they fall down), chains users to their desktops and is based on an ancient file-based structure. To Charles and others, SOLIDWORKS users seem to be stuck in dysfunctional relationship that is frustrating yet understandable from the users’ point of view. Think of long married couples bickering. Despite seeming incompatible, they would rather come home every night rather than risk the unknown or start something new.
Enough Is Enough
At the show, where the world’s elite users gather, it is often their big event of the year where they get to hang out, learn and drink with each other—and totally ignore the people from Dassault Systèmes. Why, it was almost rude, so it was time to make a statement. The big show, which for 21 years had SOLIDWORKS in its name, was to be renamed 3DEXPERIENCE World. “Please pick up your knapsack. They are embroidered with the new name.”
The users, many of whom had their head down trying to decide which of the multiple simultaneous sessions they would attend next, looked up at each other. Had they heard it right? “3DX…What?” Many of them have SOLIDWORKS World bags from previous years. They can recall the first and every one they have been to. The number of bags they own is a source of pride, like Super Bowl rings. Not every player gets to be in the Super Bowl. Wearing the bags to work marks them as made people, the chosen, the elite.
Breaking Up Is Hard to Do
If Hollywood has taught you anything, it’s how to break up. You do it in person. Texting or calling is cowardly. You do it in public so no one makes a scene.The couple’s favorite restaurant is a favorite break up venue. You wait until dinner is over and then said, “Honey, I have something very important to tell you.” You deliver the bad news, say a few consoling words, leave some bills on the table and walk out of the scene. You don’t wait for change. You most certainly don’t blurt out the bad news at the beginning of dinner. Who wants to see someone crying while they eat? That would be super awkward.
Dassault Systèmes, however, follows no Hollywood script. It decided to tell the assembled SOLIDWORKS users that their favorite show had been renamed on day one. The script called for news of the next year’s conference to be delivered on the last day. It was eagerly awaited news marked by a final flurry of Tweets as users shared the news.
The SOLIDWORKS users who have long tolerated Dassault Systèmes taking over their conference and thought they could just ignore them now realize they cannot. Rather than excitedly tweet out, “Look where I’ll be next year,” their concern is now, How am I going to explain this? I had just gotten my boss to get used to signing off on SOLIDWORKS World. The next show doesn’t even have SOLIDWORKS in the name. I don’t even know if it will be about SOLIDWORKS.
Indeed, managers always under budget pressure and likely to look at travel as a discretionary expense and perk are likely to use the name change as an excuse to cut the trip.
“We never thought of that,” said one Dassault Systèmes SOLIDWORKS employee who declined to be named.
Onward and Upward
Dassault Systèmes hopes the opposite is true and that 3DEXPERIENCE 2020 will attract even more attendees than SOLIDWORKS World.
“We will include more of the Dassault Systèmes portfolio. We hope to get 30,000 attendees,” said a Dassault Systèmes vice president.
SOLIDWORKS 2019 was the biggest to date, claiming 6,000 attendees. Having 30,000 attendees would make 3DEXPERIENCE the No. 1 CAD show, shooting well over Autodesk University, which pulls in 10,000.
Is Dassault Systèmes planning on rolling up the other user shows into the 3DEXPERIENCE? No, the VP said. Other shows, like the 3DEXPERIENCE FORUMS and other annual user shows, will go on as previously planned.
Eat Your Vegetables
That’s how you play to your audience. John McEleney pulls up on the main stage astride an Orange Country Chopper SOLIDWORKS World 2005. The custom bike is on display at the lobby of SOLIDWORKS headquarters. (Larger picture courtesy of SOLIDWORKS.)
CAD insiders wax nostalgic for what they consider the good old days when “Jon and John” [that’s Jon Hirschtick and John McEleney] were in the saddle. Literally. “Remember when Johnny Mac rode the Orange County chopper onstage?” They recall in their huddles. That was 2005, a different World altogether. It was all about SOLIDWORKS. It was a place to learn and bond, and, afterwards to play.
“Now, I just get the feeling we are being sold to,” one attendee said.
From the Dassault view of the World, play time is over. It’s time to grow up. Sorry, you don’t get to choose your family. Like family, they don’t expect you to appreciate them now but believe eventually you will thank them.