The CAD Insider

PTC Succession Plan was a Succession Episode

In the HBO hit series, Succession, the CEO of a company that WayStar RoyCo was going to acquire, turns the tables, jump over everyone who thought they were next in line to succeed Logan Roy and secures the CEO post for himself.

It was a tale that played out in real life in our industry just last week when it was announced (titled “PTC Announces CEO Succession Plan,” no less) that Neil Barua, CEO of ServiceMax, acquired by PTC, was going to be the company’s next CEO, jumping over many a PTC executive who thought they had the inside track.

Nobody saw either the Succession or the PTC outcome coming. Lukas Matsson, usurper to the WayStar RoyCo throne, admitted his company, GoJo, had “questionable numbers.” It’s subscriptions in key geographies had been wildly inflated. Matsson was a Swede with a dot com. What did he know about America, the business of a media company. Barua, born of Indian parents, has a finance background. What does he know about design and engineering software? ServiceMax’s subscriptions may not be inflated but the last quarterly statements found (September 2021) show quarter after quarter of losses.

Yet, Logan Roy chose to pay a premium for a company that would expand his reach beyond it core businesses. Similarly, Jim Heppelmann, CEO of PTC, paid $1.46 billion for ServiceMax, about 10 times ServiceMax’s estimated annual revenue.

Did Onshape Miss a Golden Opportunity to Make a Community?

Did Onshape miss the opportunity to become the next GrabCAD?

You can be forgiven for not knowing about GrabCAD. The once wildly popular model sharing site (over 5 million users at its height) was sold to Stratasys, a 3D printing machine maker, and appears to have drifted into obscurity.

Founded in 2009 by Hardi Meybaum in Estonia, GrabCAD moved to Cambridge, MA. The charming and handsome Estonian was soon making the rounds with venture capitalists, raising $14 million. He then befriended CAD royalty, including then Autodesk CEO, Carl Bass, SolidWorks top brass, among others. A bidding war may have ensued, with companies more interested in communities than customers. The “winner” being Stratasys who paid an amazing $100 million. Maybe Stratasys thought all the models in GrabCAD needed to be 3D printed?

The next big collection of mechanical designs may have been Onshape’s. Every user of free version of Onshape has to make all their models public. Let’s say a 100,000 users had 10 models each, that is a million models. Its nowhere near the size of GrabCAD, SolidWorks’ 3D ContentCentral or Sketchup’s 3D warehouse, but a good start. We have to think that it would have grown fast, fueled by a fairly robust and modern CAD application that was being given away for free.

But Onshape was more interested in the professional community. The users of free software, many of them makers, were not easily converted to paying customers. Onshape could not spend a lot of time and effort on them, or build a very public library, as it were, like 3D ContentCentral and 3D Warehouse, or a virtual community gathering place like GrabCAD, on their behalf. 

Users may have been considered an expense rather than an asset – and, so, an opportunity to make the next MCAD community was ignored.

Scenes from the Last World

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.

Onshape Ready to Bring Back the Golden Age of CAD Media Relations

John McEleney, co-founder of Onshape, shown here on a recent visit to Shanghai

John McEleney, co-founder of Onshape, ex-CEO of SolidWorks, is having a busy day. He’s been to the Develop3D conference for most of the day, where Onshape is a Bronze sponsor. He went home to read a story to his daughter. He meets me late in the evening for dinner at a Wellesley restaurant.

He is just getting started. John is planning to do more media outreach, the kind SolidWorks was known for in what may have been the Golden Age of media relations in the CAD industry. It was a time you would get a friendly call from a CEO, walk up and shake hands with John (McEleney) or Jon (Hirschtick) and talk like familiar acquaintances. They'd not only remember you be name, they’d be engaged, listening and actually seemed concerned about your work, your world, what you needed. We felt this way as media but we heard the same from resellers and users.

The media reach is back! "There are how many of you guys that matter? Ten? I'll take 5. Jon will take 5," says McEleney, over a chicken Parmesan. 

John reviews for me the vital info, Onshape’s incredible 3 week release cycle, it’s advantage being database vs. files and drops hints of a big customer they are to announce. He fills me in his background, adventures at Raytheon, where he worked as a mechanical engineer, his time at Computervision, from where originators of SolidWorks (Scott Harris, Dave Corcoran) and PTC (Mike Payne) emerged. I hear of “1503” program (1 to 5 users, 0 to 3 months to close) which he created when he was in charge of the SolidWorks sales team.

CAD insiders remember John drawing of the "mainstream CAD" for us in in the 90s, singlehandedly making “mainstream CAD” a common term. True to form, he returns to pen and paper, to update the concept, but now with a few tidbits not yet public information. I am sworn to not reveal it.

We share the changes is software use, how youth has embraced it, the inertia of a legacy user base, the competition. McEleney, always the gentleman, talks respectfully and without disdain of competition, though he makes Onshape's advantages apparent.

Connectivity—the Achilles Heel of Onshape

Recent funding could strengthen company against hard-charging Autodesk, but reliance on Internet connection hurts.

Onshape, the CAD world’s richest startup, wants to empower the next generation of CAD users, and could do so, if not for its Achilles heel: reliance on an Internet connection. (Image courtesy of Onshape.)

Onshape, everyone’s favorite CAD startup, got a whopping $105 million round of financing last month. Had it not been for intrepid analyst Monica Schnitger, it might have gone unnoticed. 

The latest round brings the total raised to $169 million, according to CrunchBase, making Onshape the richest startup CAD since … ever.

No one argues that the investments are made on faith. The company has yet to reveal the number of paid seats or revenue figures. But since Onshape contains the entire founding nucleus of SOLIDWORKS, including the highly respected Jon Hirschtick, the last guy to cause a CAD revolution, they have had no trouble getting investors to turn their pockets inside out.

More investment is always good, right? Now Onshape can execute on bigger plans. Or, is it seeing the end of the runway as it tries to take off?

Where Art Thou, Revenue?

As a private company, Onshape does not have to supply revenue figures or paid license counts. But as acknowledged by Onshape, revenue, whatever there may be of it, will come in smaller chunks. CAD programs sold with perpetual licenses had one big advantage—when a company sold a seat, it was an immediate infusion of thousands of dollars. Every time Onshape gets a user to upgrade to a paid license, it gets only a $100—for that month. And how many are paying, considering you can use the exact same product for free? Onshape’s pricing model, based on GitHub, an open-source development platform, has never been attempted in the CAD world.

Betting the House on the Internet Connection

One can imagine Onshape as a company where employees sit on bales of cash and a line of wealthy investors extends out the door. Or is this latest round of funding time for a gut check for Onshape executives? If sales of Onshape have not reached braggable heights, is it time to examine why not. One reason, Internet connectivity—or the lack of it—be Onshape’s Achilles’ heel?

Quite simply, the main reason Onshape is not already ubiquitous could be that the program doesn’t work without an Internet connection. An Onshape user is simply dead in the water unless they are connected to the Internet.

A “full-cloud” CAD program may have seemed like a good idea initially—and sold well to venture capitalists quick to seize absolute connectivity as the very modernization of CAD, especially when it was suggested by guys who were themselves the heart and soul of CAD. It’s not hard to buy into the concept if you are coming from a broadband world, always on, a Starbucks-sipping, airport-hopping, boardroom-dwelling, iPhone-tapping world of the VC investor. But for the potential user with the project due yesterday, the reality of the connection, around the clock, around the world, can be far different and far from ideal.

Who, among the users, is going to bet the house on the reliability of their ISP?

Here Comes Autodesk

Why bet the house if you don’t have to? What if you could have everything Onshape promises, the use-anywhere, almost robust CAD, when you needed it, for however long and at no risk to your credit card limit—and still be able to work when offline?

All this attention on Onshape has stirred up the giant Autodesk—and the giant is grumpy. Autodesk had cloud-based CAD ahead of Onshape, and its Fusion 360 is functionally the equivalent of Onshape—maybe even more functional—and, as some would say, it’s racing ahead.

It’s time to closely examine the value of the one claim for which Onshape is most famous. Onshape is “full cloud.” There is no install on your computer or your tablet. All of its data storage is online.  

CAD did need a facelift, and the cloud was ready to provide it, but having a product that only worked when connected may have been a jump too far.

I’ll Work When I Want

My most loved apps use the cloud but are still functional without it. The rough draft of this article was written in Evernote, before I connected on the airplane WiFi, which I know from experience will work well about 50 percent of the time. I check my landing time on WorldMate while still unconnected. I cross a few items off my to-do list on Wunderlist. When I land or get lucky in flight  I know all my data will sync up. I’ll not have missed a beat. Thanks, apps, for letting me work wherever and whenever on whatever. 

If Fusion 360 can match or surpass Onshape in ease of use, cost and functionality, which many say it has, its ability to operate with no Internet connection is an unbelievable advantage in the battle of next-generation CAD.

Full Cloud: Good or Bad?

Onshape executives may be sporting “full-cloud” tattoos and holding firm in their belief that full-time reliable connections are here—or will be soon. Is Onshape unconcerned about the ones who aren’t connected or the ones who cannot be? They do seem to believe that even the ones who have a full-time reliable connection most of the time will not be at all concerned about the few times they don’t.

I have to think of all the times I’ve heard CAD users state that they absolutely do not want to save their data locally. Hmm … never happened. Or the times they’ve said they can’t tolerate one more install. Zero.

Onshape hanging onto “full cloud” as a unique set of features, when it really exposes a competitive vulnerability, is like Achilles bragging about his heel.

What You Need to Know About Onshape

The Buzz

Onshape is easily the most anticipated CAD program ever, as it has been created by the same people who hit a home run with the very popular and capable SOLIDWORKS, the current market leader among MCAD programs. Investors are betting on a repeat performance, and have invested $64 million in Onshape.

The Team

Jon Hirschtick, a founder of SOLIDWORKS, has brought back John McEleney (CEO), Scott Harris (also a founder of SOLIDWORKS and Onshape VP of User Experience), David Corcoran (VP R&D), Michael Lauer (CTO) and Ilya Mirman (VP Marketing). Dan Shore (CFO) joins Onshape from Harvard University where he was vice president for finance and CFO.

Onshape is a 3D mechanical design application

Onshape can be used to create mechanical parts and assemblies.

• Uses Parasolid kernel.
• History-based and (limited) direct editing.
• Parametric, uses D-Cubed technology.

Key differentiators

Unlike most other MCAD programs:

• Onshape requires no installation, no download. You just sign up for an account and start using it with your Internet browser (anything but Internet Explorer, at the time of this writing).
• Onshape runs on the cloud.
  -User is not tied to a desktop workstation
  -No workstation necessary. Computing, graphics processing and storage are all done on the cloud. Computing cores are assigned as needed.
  -Can be used on most any computer or mobile device, such as iPads and Android tablets. It will work on iPhones and other smart phones, though CAD users are not likely to use small screens for extended periods
  -Updates are handled automatically and are seamless to the user.
• Data is stored on the cloud.
  -Accessible from any location, any device.
  - Users can work together simultaneously on a design.
  -Single shareable document. No versioning, no check-out/check-in. Document management not needed.
  -User can go off a design tangent. Onshape claims it can merge the tangent design with the current one.
• It’s free.
  -Up to 5 “active documents” at one time (see pricing plans below).
• No reseller network.

It is NOT a mature MCAD solution

Onshape cannot match SOLIDWORKS, Inventor, Creo, Solid Edge or similar robust, mature MCAD programs in capabilities and features. These existing solutions have had years to develop. Onshape is only a beta, say its creators. It may have been launched to satisfy a self-imposed deadline. Onshape creators may have realized that coming out with a complete, robust solution would take too long and it was better to show and test viability of its web/cloud/mobile with basic modeling.

What Onshape CAN'T do

• It cannot do complex surfacing or organic shapes, such as used in industrial design and consumer products, and automotive styling
• 2D drafting and documentation is not yet available– so you can’t make drawings
• Sub division modeling
• Stress, thermal or other analyses.

What Onshape CAN do

• Solid modeling
  - It can model 3D parts, as long as they are prismatic. This includes most parts that will be machined.
• It can be used alongside another MCAD program, as it can read their files, either natively or by translation.
• Large assemblies.
• Kinematics.

Online only

Onshape works only with an Internet connection. If you are not online, Onshape is unusable. There is no offline mode.

Latency

Early reports and light use have not had a problem with latency, an annoying characteristic of cloud-based applications. Onshape seems to be snappy, able to keep up with users’ demands. Onshape claims “workstation level performance” and early user reports seem to confirm this.

Competing products

The most directly competing product is Autodesk Fusion 360 about , which also uses the cloud and operates on various devices. Fusion 360 has more modeling tools than Onshape. Fusion 360 installs on the local device, unlike Onshape, which requires no installation. You can only get Fusion 360 for free if you are in school or in a startup, otherwise it will cost a minimum of $40/month (discounted to $25/month with annual contract).

Availability

Onshape has been available since Monday, March 9, 2015. Company says it is a beta release, but product is usable. Official release date has not been announced.

Pricing

• Free
  -Only five active private documents at one time.
  -Unlimited public documents.
  -You can manage an unlimited amount of private documents by controlling their active/inactive status, keeping most of them inactive, and making them active when needed
  -5GB storage.
• Professional, $100/month
  - Unlimited private active documents.
  -100GB storage
• Enterprise, for large deployments in one company (price TBD).

CAD users will wonder what active, private documents are. Some definitions are in order:

A document can be an assembly with many parts. The free plan lets users create any number of documents. Documents can be private (only you can use them) or public (shared with all Onshape users).

For more information

• Onshape.com
• Coverage of Onshape by TenLinks - growing list of articles, analysis and reviews

Jon Hirschtick Opens Up About Onshape, Why It was Created, What It Does, What It Doesn't

In the CAD world, Jon Hirschtick, chairman of the board at Onshape, hardly needs an introduction. One of the original founders of SOLIDWORKS, he led a team that came out of nowhere in the 1990s and taught a lesson in performance, ease of use and value to reigning market leaders, notably PTC and Autodesk. Dassault bought SOLIDWORKS in 1997 for $318M. But Jon was not done. He left Dassault and reunited many of the original SOLIDWORKS team to create Onshape, raised over $60M, hired sixty people and is again ready to take on the CAD powers — which now includes his old company. On the eve of the much anticipated public unveiling of Onshape, Jon was kind enough to make time for TenLinks.

Do you really need to work? You were having a pretty good life after you sold SOLIDWORKS and left Dassault Systemes.

I was having a pretty good life [laughs]. But I like the CAD business, and I like creating new things. I saw an opportunity that was being shaped by the needs and challenges that modern designers had trying to use traditional CAD in the context of modern distributed design work. These days teams are fragmented and global and changing all the time. I thought that cloud, web and mobile technologies would be exciting technologies to work with. If you build airplanes and someone hands you a carbon fiber part, you say “Wow!” If you are making software and someone hands you cloud-web-mobile you say “Wow! This could solve a lot of problems.” I felt an obligation. Someone had to try! The time was right. It looked like it would be fun. It looked like it would be important.

How long were you at SOLIDWORKS and Dassault Systemes?

I started SOLIDWORKS in 1993 and left Dassault in 2011, so 18 years.

Did you feel like you had to leave Dassault to make this product? Was this product in your head at that time?

I felt like I wanted to create something new again. I can't say I wanted to build exactly what we are building here at Onshape, but I wanted to build something new. As great a company as SOLIDWORKS had become, it wasn't really an environment — like most big companies — where I could build something new with a clean sheet, the way we had built SOLIDWORKS. I felt the best environment for me would be a small new operation. And I wanted to learn new things, too.

SOLIDWORKS is a pretty well-liked and successful popular product. Are you in the strange position of going up against your own success?

It’s a little awkward. But we’re not just setting up our lemonade stand next to SOLIDWORKS. We are offering a new story based on the trends in the world and the waves of change. We didn’t create these waves of change, we’re just surfing them. We didn't create cloud-web-mobile. We didn't create the problems people are having with file-based CAD. SOLIDWORKS is a great product. They have a great product and they have been rewarded with tremendous business success. I'm proud of that. SOLIDWORKS is not going away. It will be around for a long time. We offer an alternative for the future. We are coming to market with something different that we think needs to be offered. Some users are going to say, “Wow, this is better for me!” and others are going to say, “I’m going to stay with what I have” and some users are going to say, “I'll put both tools in my toolbox and use them both.”

My obligation is to do good things for users. Users are highest in the hierarchy if who I serve. Yeah, SOLIDWORKS may be in among the competitors, but this kind of competition is ultimately good for all users.

Our success will be based on our ability to get in the market and solve enough problems for enough users.

Who is the target user for Onshape?

I see three scenarios. The first is people who need CAD and don't have it. This could be someone who has just graduated or someone starting a new business. They need professional CAD but are asking if they have to buy a high-end computer and $5,000 worth of software. Wouldn’t they like to take the iMac they have at home and start using Onshape? I think for a lot of those people, Onshape is going to be the choice. We already have paying customers who fit this scenario and I expect many more. Another scenario is where they already have CAD and they are collaborating with other people using traditional CAD (could be SOLIDWORKS or another brand) for product A but they have a new product, product B. They will try Onshape because they can collaborate. They can have document management built in. They can use the free version very easily. There’s no hassle. The third scenario is when someone has traditional CAD but they have parts of the project that they can use Onshape for. We have one customer doing a very complex product with traditional CAD but they are using Onshape for the packaging. We’re going to see those three scenarios.

So it seems Onshape will be comfortable in existing with other CAD programs. It can read native MCAD file formats and translate if needed?

Yup. And I would say most of our users do that. It's the rare user who doesn't start with something imported as part of what they are doing.

Onshape will not recognize features or history, correct? Imported parts will be dumb solids?

Yes, and for that we have built in some very powerful direct editing tools. From the beginning we’ve tried to create an artful blend of parametric and direct modeling. It can be subtle. There's really only four direct editing commands, but boy, can you do stuff with them! You have to be fairly skilled with Onshape. You may not be able to use them on your first day. But if you watch the videos, or visit the forums, you will be stunned what they can do.

Onshape is an online application. What happens when a user is not connected? Is Onshape even functional offline?

No. We've built Onshape for online. We don't do offline. There are basically two concerns about connections. One is you don't have a good connection. If so, there is a simple answer: you need to stick with traditional CAD. We’re not trying to help people who don’t have a good Internet connection. The second concern is people who have good Internet connection and are worried about availability. That answer is really easy: we will actually be the most available system. Compared to traditional CAD, we are going to be way more available. If you were to evaluate the percentage of time a CAD system is available to the user, we are going to win that by a landslide. CAD availability is disrupted all the time. Hard drives crash. Electricity goes out. The OS needs reconfiguring. You need to install a service pack. One traditional CAD user couldn’t show me what he was working on because he was reinstalling Windows and asked me to come back in three hours. It’s possible your Internet will go down. Your computer could hang. With Onshape, you can move to different computer. You can use your friend’s computer, or your spouse’s.

Onshape can actually increase availability. We had one user use Onshape on an airplane. His flight had Internet [which is getting more common] but he was most impressed by being able to do CAD on a MacBook Air — not possible with his traditional CAD.

Is there a threshold speed for Onshape’s Internet connection?

We don't recommend an airplane’s Internet connection. That's not going to be the best experience. We run well on cable, fiber or even 4G mobile internet service. Airplanes, dial-ups and DSL are hardly optimum. You can do it. If you are over the Pacific heading to China where they are ready to cut metal and you realize a fillet radius needs to change, you might not be concerned that it takes a few more seconds to open your model. But if you are able to do email and web browsing on a standard connection, you should be fine using Onshape. That’s what we have designed it for.

The big problem with web-based CAD has been latency. How did you guys handle that?

The world hasn’t seen a full cloud CAD system before. So far, there have been semi-cloud systems, which are traditional installed software plus online file storage and various schemes to try to use the cloud. They’re not bad but it reminds me of the early attempts at electric vehicles. They are a little weird. We built from the beginning our systems to a completely different design. We built it from the beginning that it would be full-cloud like Google Maps or Gmail. So we can offer an overall performance experience that is comparable to desktop CAD. Certain kinds of activity we don’t perform as well. Certain kinds of activity we perform better. It depends on what you are doing. It’s not an apple to apples comparison. Many of our users are startled how fast the experience is. Unless you don’t have a high end workstation and are using some old computer, then we are definitely faster [laughs].

Were you thinking of Autodesk Fusion 360 when you said "semi-cloud?"

Not in particular. Autodesk, and other CAD companies, have semi-cloud solutions. SOLIDWORKS users are using Dropbox. They are not bad things but they are different than what we’ve done. I’ll let your readers draw their own conclusions. Many users are better off with those solutions than without them. We just that we have something different, and, I think, better.

Judging by the examples provided of models created, Onshape seems to do a fairly good job with prismatic shapes common to machine parts. How about surfacing and organic shapes?

We support surfaces. I had just carved a part into pieces using surfaces for a customer. Onshape can extrude up to a surface. You can make swept surfaces. But at this moment, we are not the best system to choose for generating organic shapes. Customers who need organic shapes can use Rhino, which is super for organic shapes. We had one user who did part of their job in CATIA that couldn’t be done in Onshape. Organic shapes are something we don't currently address, but remember, we are still in beta. I would say in the future we expect to add more kinds of tools people would need for organic shapes.

I see all the major browsers supported but not Internet Explorer. Why?

It's a graphics issue. But honestly, I haven’t heard a lot of protest from users. We will support IE, but once again, we are still in beta. That is an issue we will fix and are getting closer and closer.

Onshape is free. Is this too good to be true?

Yeah, we’re pretty excited about Onshape for free. This is the first time there has been a true, good, free CAD strategy in this market. This is not a promotion. You don’t have to have a student ID, be in the military, and have it free for only 90 days . . . this is a real deal! It’s the whole product, too. We’re borrowing from leaders in other fields, like GitHub and Dropbox. You can use Onshape for free forever. You get all the CAD features, version control, everything. The only limit is the number of private, or non-shared, documents that are active at one time. With the beta, we set the limit to five. That number may change, but the idea is that you have a limited amount of private documents. Having more than five private, active documents requires the Pro plan.

Private documents are designs that I don’t want to share or make public? How will this work?

Yes, those are designs that no one else can see. You can create a thousand designs of your own for free and you are willing to share them with the rest of our community. If you are willing to contribute intellectual property to the community, you never pay us a nickel.

Onshape introduced the concept of active private documents, which are limited to five with this beta version. That is the number of documents that are “turned on” right now. If you want to use the sixth one, you have to turn off one of the first five. You don’t lose it. It doesn’t get deleted. You don’t lose access to it. You have to manage what you have active at one time, like a library card. It is our scheme that lets Onshape be really useful for not only students and makers, who are the obvious audience, but also for professionals who would use it lightly.

Here’s an example. I send an Onshape part to a machine shop. If this machine shop works on one document a month that I send them, they don’t have to pay anything for Onshape. Now, let’s say the machine shop has 20 customers and each sends them a document a month. Now they ought to pay.

We also wanted to make it so that you can turn off the Pro account and turn it back on. A customer may have two or three slow months and shouldn’t have to pay. When things pick up, they can turn the Pro plan back on and everything will be exactly how they left it. Even if you are on the free plan, you have all your documents . . . you just cannot edit a lot of them at once.

So Onshape is either free, or pay-as-you-go, pay-as-you-need?

If you will be a heavy user with documents you want to keep private — which is the core market for CAD — pay us as you go and as you use Onshape. If you are an occasional user, a student, a maker, the guy in marketing who needs to look at a model, you don’t pay anything. And if I am a paying Onshape user, I can share my model with you. You won’t have to give your credit card number, sign up for a seven-day trial, or any of that nonsense. It will be free and simple for you.

Can I use Onshape freely as a viewer for Onshape files and files from other MCAD applications?

Correct.

Is the $100/month the top tier of pricing?

We have an Enterprise plan.

It doesn’t have any more modeling features than our Free or Pro plans, but there are capabilities that will appeal to large firms. If you have a large deployment of Onshape, Enterprise gives you tools to manage and monitor it as a group. For example, you can see a map of where your data is being accessed in the world on a map. You can get a report across a group of employees as to who has exported data and to what format, or if they have exported the files outside the company. Enterprise also provides a better service level.

For more information

Onshape.com

Flatter Files, CETOL, Smap3D, HandyScan3D Nominated for SOLIDWORKS 2015 Best of Show

by TenLinks Judge, Alin Vargatu

Flatter Files

PHOENIX, AZ (SOLIDWORKS World 2015) — Great cloud-based application offering controlled access of your company files for suppliers, customers and even other departments in your company (CNC, purchasing, planning) that need to see or use your models and drawings. Flatter Files is amazingly simple and can work in conjunction with or without a PDM product. 

The files can be released to Flatter Files automatically or manually as part of a PDM workflow. Once they are in the cloud, you can provide various levels of access to other parties: viewing only or even downloading files in SOLIDWORKS, DWG, DXF, PDF, STEP, IGES, STL, Parasolid and other formats, including custom properties from the SOLIDWORKS files. Moreover, Flatter Files remembers that is connected to the SOLIDWORKS data, so if a revision is performed on the original SOLIDWORKS file, the corresponding entity on Flatter Files is updated to the same revision level, while still storing the previous revisions in the database. Even more impressive, it is capable of analyzing and highlighting the differences between one revision and the next when viewing drawings in PDF format!

The data can be accessed on any platform: Windows, Mac, iOS, Android. Basically you just need a browser to access the client. The search is Google-like fast, regardless of the size of the database. The pricing is based on the number of SOLIDWORKS licenses a company owns.

This solution is perfect for all teams, big or small, with or without a PDM system, that need to collaborate with suppliers, customers and other stakeholders while maintaining full control of the type of data that would be made available to third parties.

 

CETOL 6σ Tolerance Analysis Software by Sigmetrix

Makes SOLIDWORKS' own TolAnalyst look like an Xpress add-in. Compared to TolAnalyst, CETOL is really a 3Dimensional tolerance analysis software that can be used on complex assemblies.

Things that impressed me:

• The software pulls the necessary geometry features directly from the CAD system model, so moving to the analysis phase is quick and painless.
• There is an Analyser tool that allows you to interrogate the results in order to quickly identify the top contributors to quality and, as a result, make tolerance adjustments to understand the impact on assembly quality.
• Embedded sensitivity animation, both statistical and worst-case, shows you how a single variable is impacted throughout the tolerance range on both assembly position and measurements.
• You can instantly see and adjust measurements and tolerances by using key contributor analysis.

 

Smap3D: Intelligent 2D/3D Plant and Piping Design

This is like SOLIDWORKS Electrical 2D and 3D for piping: Smap3D P&ID, Smap3D Piping and Smap3D Isometric. If you like SOLIDWORKS Electrical, imagine having the same power for quickly designing 2D piping schematics and parametrically generating 3D models. Really impressive tool.

 

 

 

HandyScan3D from Adaptive Corporation

They had an optical scanner and a laser one, both handheld. The most impressive feature of these scanners was the self-positioning and the speed with which it acquired the data.

 

For more information

TenLinks Best of Show

About Alin Vargatu

Alin is an Elite AE and an avid contributor to the SolidWorks Community. He has presented at SolidWorks Worlds, Technical Summits, and SWUG meetings, while being very active on the SolidWorks Forum. More...

New SOLIDWORKS CEO Introduces New Industrial Design Software

PHOENIX, AZ (SOLIDWORKS World 2015) — SOLIDWORKS' annual user meeting in January was Gian Paolo Bassi's first public appearance as CEO. The former CTO replaces Bertrand Sicot as the head of SOLIDWORKS and now gives the most popular MCAD program an Italian accent. The largely American users (5,500 of them assemble in Phoenix in the wake of the Super Bowl) have had a few years to get used to accents — first French and now Italian — since their beloved American leaders left the stage. They might still be missing founder Jon Hirschtick and chief dynamo John McEleney (both engineers, both American), but they don’t say it. I doubt if it's any big deal. The users are here to learn how to use SOLIDWORKS products better — and drink beer.

CEO	Length in office
Jon McEleney	11 yrs 7 months
Jeff Ray	3 yrs 6 months
Bertrand Sicot	4 yrs 1 month

What does the latest CEO bring to an office where the doors now revolve about every presidential election? After operation-centric Jeff Ray, and charming and ever-positive salesman Bertrand Sicot, Dassault's force-to-be-reckoned-with and chief visionary, Bernard Charlès, now sees fit to install a developer. And each successor seems to more embrace Dassault Systèmes.

The hugely likable, ever-approachable Gian Paolo impresses once again with his secure grasp of SOLIDWORKS, its products and its strategy. Deference to Dassault’s leader, Bernard Charlès, is provided. Gian Paolo does not even step on the stage until the avuncular Bernard has stamped his presence and allowed his almost-too-creative marketer, Monica Menghini, to again attempt to prove the importance of "experience" over product to an audience that, for the most part, continues to love the product.

Gian Paolo  is just the guy to bring the SOLIDWORKS user to the new kernel, into the cloud, onto mobile devices — or whatever else the chief visionary desires. Gone is any real opposition to defend the userbase, to keep the status quo.

Enter SOLIDWORKS Industrial Design

The latest announcement, Industrial Design not only doesn't save in SOLIDWORKS format, it doesn't save on your computer. The program and the data are held by Dassault.

Can the users in the audience relate to Industrial Design? Gian Paolo tells us that Industrial Design must be considered as part of a mechanical designer's purview. Shape sells. The old software (SOLIDWORKS desktop) didn't do sexy shapes. Good luck making anything curvy, unless you were a top-notch surface guy, unless you poured in blood and sweat.

Sure enough, top-notch surface guys are presented to us who swear by the new product. At the booth where Industrial Design is being shown, a beleaguered product manager, two months on the job, is trying to explain how Industrial Design will help them make the shapes they always wanted to make, that they should be making. A fair number come by, attracted by the leadup from the main stage. One is a from IntegrityWare, maker of Power Surfacing (Best of Show 2014), which has made a business adding subD modeling to SOLIDWORKS, which Industrial Design now offers. Will Industrial Design eat her lunch? I ask. She says not. Industrial Design does not even save to a SOLIDWORKS file. The models are not entirely compatible with SOLIDWORKS, she says. They have to undergo a translation or conversion.

Another user wonders about the cost, which the product manager does not know. It had only just been announced in a press Q&A. When they found out it costs $190/month, they all pause to reflect. Someone figured out that the total is $2,280 a year, every year. Their SOLIDWORKS software costs $4,000, but that is for ever.

It seems like Industrial Design will be a tough sell to the existing users, if this crowd at SOLIDWORKS is any indication. But then, what would you expect? Users, especially power users, tend to favor their current tools in which they have gained expertise. What remains to be seen is how well Industrial Design will be embraced by new users, or users of rival software, or if it will encourage those who still haven’t left the 2D world to use what, at first glance, appears to be much easier to use than SOLIDWORKS for surfaces.

It's probably too early to expect Industrial Designer to as capable as SOLIDWORKS with a surfacing add-on but it may easily justify its higher annual cost if it is able to make the creation of complex surfaces not so complex for the typical design engineer, rather than have to rely on a surfacing expert or hand off a design to an industrial engineer. 

Sigmetrix Cetol 6 Tolerance Stack-Up

by TenLinks Judge, Joe Medieros

PHOENIX, AZ (SOLIDWORKS World 2015) — Sigmetrix Cetol 6 Tolerance Stack-Up answers a need for accurate tolerance stack-up in order to avoid manufacturing errors. Sigmetrix has the only tolerance stack program that is fully integrated into SOLIDWORKS, so there is no need for exporting data from SOLIDWORKS. Changes to tolerances are pushed back to SOLIDWORKS and modeling changes in SOLIDWORKS are flagged in Sigmetrix. Due to this integration, design changes are quicker and less painful

See Also

Sigmetrix website

Crashing a Perfectly Good Car

LAS VEGAS (3DEXPERIENCE 2014) — Does it bother anyone that a brand new car has to be run into a concrete barrier? I am watching an Acura SUV ramming into a barrier in an offset frontal crash test. In slow motion, carefully-styled fenders, bumpers, never-used wheels, brakes and other parts become an explosion of debris. There goes a $40,000 vehicle.

 

The dummy is barely hurt. What really hurts is the actual cost of such a test. Dassault puts the cost of a crash test at one million dollars, give or take — a cost they claim to be able to cut by seventy-five percent with their simulation software.

Physical crashes may never go away, as we seem to be most assured with a real car crash, rather than electrons. Electrons can lie. But simulating even a few crashes could save a lot of money.

Dassault has succeeded in making crash testing about as real looking as you can get — or better. Watching a sequence onscreen at the show, I had to constantly ask if it was real or simulation. I am told to look for debris flying around, which is a telltale sign of the real thing. The RTT software (acquired by Dassault, now renamed 3DEXCITE) and the underlying analysis software (LS-DYNA) is not able to model disintegrating parts. But it is amazing what it can do. RTT used to create pretty pictures that auto companies could put on their brochures and websites. You’ve seen them. Super sexy stuff. Now it has been pressed into service for crash tests and has transformed how crash tests can be seen, in ways you could never do with simulation tools and certainly in ways you could never do in real life.

Simulation software allows you to see what is happening to the frame during a crash, unobscured by the sheet metal exterior.

For example, you can remove the concrete barrier for an unobscured view of the front end crumpling. You can remove the fenders and hood to see how the engine and components move during a crash. You can isolate the fuel system to see how it is being compromised. From automotive safety engineers to automotive executives and even the general public, 3DEXCITE offers a fascinating look at what is happening during the 150 milliseconds of a crash. It is clear and obvious and needs no explanation, unlike FEA tools.

Can You Believe What You See?

The graphics are scarily good. However, we should be on guard, for visual realism is no substitute for physics. It may look real, but it may not necessarily be true behavior. Analysts know how wrong analyses can go. A wrong assumption, an extra zero and incorrect material may still yield believable graphics but will not correlate with physical results. This is of particular importance in cases where our intuition is of no help. We have no frame of reference for materials and systems during impact. We are likely to believe what we see.