It’s a year after the pandemic was given the name COVID-19. To say that a lot has changed would be a great understatement. It has affected our personal lives, our work, our travel and our education systems. Business travel has shut down. Conferences have closed their doors. Schools have gone to Zoom.
Where does that leave software companies and their annual user meetings? What can students do when they are separated from classrooms and labs that depended on rows of desktop computers, like design classes? What can makers do without maker faires? Remote work might be fine for engineers who carted their desktop workstation home, but students and makers may have been left in the lurch.
Conferences have attempted to go virtual. The recently concluded 3DEXPERIENCE World, the new name for the annual SOLIDWORKS user group meeting, provides an example of how physical conferences can be adjusted to be virtual. So slick was the move that it had us wondering if a physical conference will ever be necessary. On the virtual stage, CEO Gian Paolo Bassi offered something of an answer to the question of how schools can adapt to remote learning and announced a special offer for students.
3DEXPERIENCE SOLIDWORKS for Students
A new educational package for students was introduced at the conference that will be available in May 2021 (in time for the 2021-2022 school year) for an annual cost of $60. It’s next to nothing, but it lets us allocate resources to its support, like cloud storage, explained Suchit Jain, VP of strategy at Dassault Systèmes SOLIDWORKS, who was reached for more details on the last day of the conference. Suchit was ebullient at the conference registration, projecting that more than 40,000 of the software packages would be sold by the time it’s over. A SOLIDWORKS Student Edition sold for $99 previously. Both current and previous packages connected SOLIDWORKS to the 3DEXPERIENCE platform and allowed storage and sharing of models on the cloud along with collaboration. But more is in the box now. The student package, officially called 3DEXPERIENCE SOLIDWORKS for Students, defines the applications associated with the following Dassault Systèmes as “roles:” 3D Designer Student and Collaborative Business and Industry Innovator.
3D Designer Student, a collection of cloud-based apps that are part of 3DEXPERIENCE designed for the Student role. Roles are Dassault Systèmes’ recently introduced classifications of industry job roles, each loaded with different applications meant to satisfy the particular role. The 3D Designer for Education role (presumed to be the same as 3D Designer Student) includes:
3D Creator—a browser- and cloud-based 3D modeling application that can be used to create solid models. It can work alongside SOLIDWORKS, connecting with part files, or it can work as a stand-alone application. It is clearly next generational, with built-in shape optimization (called computational modeling) and AI that senses your next action. In theory, it could replace SOLIDWORKS as it appears to be as capable a modeler as SOLIDWORKS. (EdItor’s Note: We say this sight unseen. We have not been able to get our hands on 3D Creator despite repeated attempts to obtain a trial version and have not found any reliable independent hands-on reviews of the application. However, as it is fairly new, we can’t expect it to be as robust as Dassault Systèmes “traditional” design tools, CATIA and SOLIDWORKS.)
3D Creator gives users access to xDesign, an online parametric sketcher app that also uses AI for its Design Assistant feature—creating “instantly complete repetitive tasks like sketches, fillets, chamfers and more.”
3D Sculptor—subdivision modeling, or the ability to push and pull on points on the surface of a solid to change its shape—something SOLIDWORKS users have long wished for.
3D Sheet Metal Creator—browser-based sheet metal design with its own Design Assistant feature.
SOLIDWORKS Connector—establishes a two-way connection between SOLIDWORKS on the desktop and the 3DEXPERIENCE platform.
Project Planner—for project management.
Collaborative Business and Industry Innovator—includes access to 3DSwym and 3DDashboard, which can be used by students and educators to collaborate. Educators can also use it to organize classes and collect student projects.
Students will receive access to the online community of other students and educators, as well as with Dassault Systèmes’ global talent acquisition team and professional SOLIDWORKS users.
“Students can use the right tools early on to develop the skills sought after by industry and thrive in the workplace,” said SOLIDWORKS CEO Gian Paolo Bassi introducing the new packages in the company’s press release. “This is a revolutionary offer of our traditional SOLIDWORKS desktop connected to and managed by the 3DEXPERIENCE platform.”
Two industry-recognized certifications are included with the package.
In addition, the Collaborative Business Innovator role, included in the education package, has the following applications:
3DDashboard. Create and share dashboards with a library of customizable widgets.
3DSwym. Social collaboration via communities that can consist of internal and external audiences.
3DPlay. Create and contribute to online communities.
3DSearch. Search by shape and by metadata.
6WTags. Navigation using filters, such as who, what, when, why, where and how.
3DPassport. Use a single sign-on to all Dassault Systèmes apps, either desktop or cloud-based.
3DCompass. Gain access to Dassault Systèmes’ mystical interface to apps. For example, the top of the compass is where you access 3DSwym.
3DDrive. Use this to access your cloud drives, including Dropbox, Box, Google, and others. Includes “light” viewing capability. (At the time of this writing, it was not clear how much online storage, if any, will be provided by Dassault Systèmes.)
3DMessaging. Chat with other users with instant messaging.
That are, indeed, a lot of apps in the box, but having all the apps made by one vendor has one significant benefit. All the apps “work very nicely with each other,” assured Suchit.
The SOLIDWORKS Student Edition is intended for noncommercial (personal) use only and will continue to add a watermark to drawings created with the software to distinguish them from output created with the commercial version of SOLIDWORKS. Otherwise, it’s the same as the commercial version, the one the company charges $2,000 to $3,000 for, noted Suchit.
3DEXPERIENCE SOLIDWORKS for Makers
A similar offer will be going out to another less affluent (compared to engineers, that is) community: makers. Makers is a name with broad meaning. Coined by Dale Dougherty, the founder and CEO of Maker Media, and applied to anyone who preserves food, makes cakes—as well as those who weld together fire-breathing monsters that roam maker faires and Burning Man festivals. Makers was meant to make a community for anyone who creates—as opposed to those who simply consume. Dassault Systèmes would like to assign a role to the makers in the hope that one day, makers will mature into to designers, engineers and real-world problem solvers.
It is a long play, not without precedent—and a story that bears retelling. Maker faires were wildly popular and successful in unifying diverse groups of creative people who reveled in their new identity as makers. The flagship Maker Faire, held in San Mateo, Calif., south of San Francisco, attracted more than a hundred thousand attendees, joining an elite club of conferences (MWC, South by Southwest, Hannover Messe, for example). Its success spawned maker faires all over the world. Big corporate sponsors took notice, perhaps envious that their own annual user meetings attracted far fewer attendees. The biggest conference in the design software world, Autodesk University, managed to break 12,000 attendees in Las Vegas in 2019. Intel, Microsoft, Google and Autodesk, rushed in, sponsoring the faires, eager to see their brands associated with a creative, often youthful, movement. So did venture capitalists, who pumped in $10 million. However, after Autodesk and Microsoft lost interest and withdrew their sponsorship for the main Maker Faire, and the venture capital was spent, Dougherty had to close shop in 2019. (Full disclosure: Engineering.com is currently in a joint venture with Dougherty with Make: Community, an online community for makers and their projects.)
Enter Dassault Systèmes as the latest design software firm to offer the maker community discounted software. Sometime in the second half of 2021—the maker community will be able to take advantage of SOLIDWORKS for a slightly higher charge ($90/year) than the education community—but they will also get a slightly more capable version: SOLIDWORKS Professional. Similar to the student offer, the maker package will also include an annual license to 3D Creator, 3D Sculptor. In addition, users will also have another venue to share their achievements: Madein3D, a Dassault Systèmes’ version of an online maker community.
Education, Interrupted
The tiny Education Division of Dassault Systèmes SOLIDWORKS counts 4.5 million students as users. Led by the indefatigable champion of education, and an educator/engineer/author herself, Marie Planchard, SOLIDWORKS has managed to secure a lock of educational institutions, from STEM students to universities.
As SOLIDWORKS became the standard of mechanical design software, often a prerequisite for a job, it became irresponsible for schools to teach their students with anything but SOLIDWORKS.
Then, a year ago, the ground shook. Students learning side by side, peering at others’ screens, was no longer a thing. Students were at home, with all the distractions of home life and without adequate computing resources to run engineering software.
The creation of a new student package, with 3D Creator and a host of other cloud-based apps that can be accessed through a browser, would negate the need for expensive and powerful workstations to run SOLIDWORKS as well as the need to wrangle a license for its use. Though positioning the SOLIDWORKS brand prominently in the education package, the desktop-dependent SOLIDWORKS end up left in the box in many post-pandemic education scenarios as students reach for totally cloud-based applications.
We reached out to Dassault Systèmes to see if the new student package was a reaction to the pandemic, losing ground to competitors in the education market, or was it a planned strategy that would have occurred regardless of these factors. Or was it a reaction to PTC having just announced in its last quarter earnings call that it gained half a million educational users for Onshape 3 months after offering Onshape Premium at no cost to schools and a total of 1 million additional Onshape users.
“We don’t hear anything about Onshape,” said Suchit, dismissing the idea that Onshape is encroaching on Dassault’s turf. “If anything, we hear about [Autodesk’s] Fusion 360.”
Suchit points to a conversation with Leon Reitman, a senior engineer at BAE Systems in the Boston area and a First Robotics mentor, that may have provided the inspiration for the latest education package. It would have been easy enough for him to grant Reitman a SOLIDWORKS license, explained Suchit, but I realized there were a hundred thousand like him. Not the makers into arts and crafts, he added, suggesting that SOLIDWORKS is used for meaningful pursuits.
“We are seeing Fusion making inroads. We are hearing how Autodesk has lowered the barriers and how they can freely download it. But I like SOLIDWORKS because SOLIDWORKS will get me a job,” said Suchit.
Examples abounded in our conversation, including Purdue, Virginia Tech, Ohio State. The SOLIDWORKS student version comes with certifications of SOLIDWORKS skills, a valid credential that may distinguish one graduate from another.
“There’s 10,000 seats of SOLIDWORKS at Ohio State,” noted Planchard.
Will SOLIDWORKS be useful during the pandemic? Absolutely, she says, even before the pandemic, we were there for students, and now that’s even more so the case. She mentions that MySolidWorks is full of tutorials.
“If a student or teacher is using SOLIDWORKS at 2 a.m. in the morning, we want to be there for them,” said Planchard.
YouTube and LinkedIn are full of tutorials for SOLIDWORKS, chimed in Suchit.
Also, a source of information for SOLIDWORKS users, including some of the most detailed written tutorials anywhere, is EngineersRule.com. (Full disclosure: EngineersRule.com is owned by engineering.com, sponsored by Dassault Systèmes SOLIDWORKS, and edited by the author.)
Indeed, there is a wealth of information about using SOLIDWORKS—far more than exists for any other CAD software, due to not only its widespread use but also the fervent adherence of its community of users and resellers. Nowhere else is the devotion to a particular design software more apparent.