SolidWorks World in San Diego in late January showcased a number of big changes in what is becoming a very dynamic industry. The Dassault-owned company that has long been about purely CAD, simulation and PDM is now a dedicated PLM supporter and a cloud supporter. But while tough PLM competitor Autodesk has made an all-in bet on the cloud, SolidWorks is bit more cautious. As you'll see in this video report, SolidWorks is offering a bridge to the cloud with their new concept design tool, Mechanical Conceptual.
The video features first hand interviews with the Solidworks Chairman and Dassault Systèmes CEO Bernard Charles as well as with SolidWorks CEO Bertrand Sicot and Director of Product Management, Kishore Boyalakuntla.
The report also gives you a first look at the application itself, demonstrating the collaborative features of the Mechanical Conceptual concept modeling tool.
The age of experience
"We are positioning SolidWorks to face the age of experience," says Dassault's CEO and President, Bernard Charles to ENGINEERING.com's PLM TV News team. He continued, "But this is only the beginning. We are investing massively in new software", and as we move ahead you're going to see more apps and even SolidWorks' CAD software in the cloud.
The Dassault chief also underscored that SolidWorks today is far from just CAx and PDM. "SolidWorks is a family of different solutions covering much more than that, and all these cool apps are now taking advantage of DS' 3D Experience platform."
He added that the debate about which modeling kernel should be used – Dassault's V6 or Parasolid that is owned by Siemens and currently runs in SolidWorks - has become almost irrelevant. "The 3D Experience platform is open and compatible to most formats, and this makes the issue of the geometry engine end up in a whole new light".
The 3D Experience architecture gives DS SolidWorks users access to the social dimension, the 3D aspect of things, and vast simulation capabilities as well as Big Data and intelligence tools, Bernard claims in this TV-interview.
Bernard's master plan
SolidWorks just took the first step in the, "Bernard masterplan" by releasing Mechanical Conceptual. As previously reported, Mechanical Conceptual was originally presented at SolidWorks World 2013 and was planned to be in "release mode" by October 2013. During the San Diego event DS SolidWorks' CEO, Bertrand Sicot said that the new release date will be April 2, 2014.
"But it is worth waiting for," he continued. "It's a game changer and the things our customers in the Lighthouse program have done with Mechanical Conceptual is amazing." Companies like American manufacturer, Karl W. Schmidt and German machine tool firm J. G. Weisser Söhne have used this solution (the cases are covered in the TV-Report). Sicot claims, "They have saved 20 to 50 percent of development time in their respective early design and sale cycles."
SolidWorks user creates the world's first carbon fiber 3D printer
It's easy to understand the enthusiasm of these early adopters, according to Greg Mark, CEO of 3D printer developer MarkForg3D. MarkForg3D designed and presented the world's first carbon fiber 3D printer. It can produce parts 20 times stiffer and 5 times stronger than the traditional ABS plastic. About Mechanical Conceptual he said, "When I saw their demo on main stage it was one of these "where-have-you-been-all-my-life" moments"!
But is it too expensive?
So is the new SW Mechanical Conceptual a game changer? What can you do with it? Isn't SolidWorks a bit late compared with what their competitors have already done? And what about the pricing of this new product at $249 dollar/month? The pricing has already created controversy in the SW community.
Watch this TV-Report, produced by ENGINEERING.com's and VERKSTADFORUM.se's PLM TV News team to find out the answers.
For this SolidWorks World 2014 TV-Report, Verdi interviewed:
- Bernard Charles, CEO and President of Dassault Systemes
- Bertrand Sicot, DS SolidWorks CEO
- CIMdata analyst, Peter Bilello
- SolidWorks's specialist, Kishore Boyalakuntla
- Greg Mark, CEO and Founder, MarkForg3D (case study)
- Mike Buchli, Karl W Schmidt & Associates /case study)
- Thorsten Rettich, Managing Director Tech. & Engineering, Weisser (case study)