Conisio

just passing along this little tidbit,

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kb
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This is not surprising at all. SolidWorks is simply responding to a need that has become increasingly more embraced by organizations of all sizes. Data management with enterprise collaboration capabilities is soon to become as common as your office productivity suite; or at least it should be. This move will keep SolidWorks competitive and give them an immediate response to the challenges faced by their customers. Their are so many companies in manufacturing that are struggling to stay competitive while fighting with common inefficiencies in the way they communicate and coordinate.

This is a good thing for the SolidWorks user community that is one step closer to adopting a better way of doing business, more efficiently.

Reply to
bbsherman

...hmmm. you wouldn't be involved in sales, would you?

Reply to
matt

Let's play confuse the customer.

PDMWorks works. It works better now than it did when it came out. It is well supported by SW people (Joy). Smart Team is a dud. So does Conisio fill a void between dud and works well? I don't get it.

Smart Team is the traditional database driven PDM. PDMWorks is driven by proprietary code coupled with an easy to understand folder tree. Conisio comes in tightly coupled to Windoze somewhere in between.

Should SW perhaps work on making it's core product more PDM friendly?

PDMWorks can do Enterprise collaboration and so can SmartTeam. So how will SW market and bundle Conisio? Inquiring minds can't wait to find out.

Reply to
TOP

Not everyone who uses SmarTeam thinks it's a dud. It really can do just about anything if you have the programming expertise and a lot of patience dealing with terrible tech support, don't mind lagging way behind on SolidWorks versions, and have a lot of money you don't need which you are happy to throw at consultants to upgrade you to new releases. You know, there are those kind of people out there.

I don't think anyone on the SW side of things has anything particularly good to say about SmarTeam. The business relationship with IBM and Avatech (big Autodesk reseller) is very anti- the SolidWorks way of doing things. Plus, the product, support and just about anything else you can mention about ST has drifted further and further from SW. SmarTeam has alienated most SW reseller level folks over the years, and selling to SW users if you don't have the support of resellers is extremely dicy.

So, it's possible that Conisio is really meant to be high end PDM for a mid-range CAD product, which would make sense to me.

The one area that I believe Conisio is really meant to address is multi-site, replication. That is one area where PDMW just can't do it. There may be several other issues as well, but I know that's a big gap in PDMW that has been on their mind.

Can't wait to see what the new bundle name (or price) is going to be.

T> Let's play confuse the customer.

Reply to
matt

We have been using Conisio for several years and our question also is if the price is going to go up. However, it just *might* not because of possible bundling, or something. I can see it having more/quicker support for new SW versions, but I also hope it doesn't reduce its support of the ACAD side because both are important here to us. We'll see.

WT

Reply to
Wayne Tiffany

I don't agree that PDM Works can do enterprise collaboration. It is a home made database written by a couple guys on their own. Conisio is bulit on top of a SQL database. PDM Works can not replicate and it sucks when you try to use it with low bandwidth or high latency network connections. We have Smarteam at one division and PDMWorks at another. We have also been and seen demos on Conisio. SmarTeam is hard to implement and PDMWorks does not replicate or work well on a LAN. I agree with the comment that Conisio is somewhere in between. Brad

Reply to
Brad

Wayne, what's the pricing for Conisio look like?

Reply to
Jason

It's that obvious? Honestly, yes. I have been selling competitive products to PDMWorks and Conisio for a few years now and for as much as this news may threaten the marketplace (as well as my own job) I honestly think it's a very good thing for the customers that BOTH Autodesk and Solidworks have adopted EDM\PLM solutions. In my travels I have seen hundreds of companies that suffer from the daily challenges of "getting organized" (to over simplify) and I have been witness to what happens when an organization implements EDM solutions, the turnaround is dramatic in most all cases.

While all of this seems confusing at the time, it is just the beginning of a larger drive for data management. If it hasn't happened already in your organization you will soon hear your accounting and human resources departments clamoring around for a similar solution. I don't say all this because I sell this kind of stuff, I say it because of what I hear in all companies that I visit with. It's only a matter of time.

Reply to
BSherm

PDM Works works only if your vault size stays below a certain limit. We have been using PDM Works actively for a year. We keep all revisions since we are very particular about keeping all points along the design timeline. We do not use working copies. Our vault has grown from the meager 30Gb to 120Gb in just a little over a year's time. We have watched our performance slowly diminish. In discussions with our VAR and others, we are convinced we are pushing the envelope with PDM. Conisio will probably be an adequate solution for mid-size (vault, not corporate) users. We are seriously considering DB Works. Any war stories about this product to share from folks out there?

Reply to
windenergyman

I really don't know since I don't have to deal with the cost of it. You could inquire of your VAR, or I know that Fisher/Unitech (our VAR) sells it

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and they could give you an idea.

WT

Reply to
Wayne Tiffany

um, yeah. Anyone who looks at engineers as "them" and strings together Dilbert vocabulary that doesn't mean anything in specific is a good candidate for sales. I've worked with enough of them that I recognized the glaze that immediately came over my eyes reading your post.

Anyway, I agree that file management is one of those things that modern businesses can't live without anymore. Knowledge Based Engineering is the next big thing, the way PDM was 10 years ago. It takes so long for things/people to change. Can you say which products you represent?

Reply to
matt

It looks to me like they bought a Saab headlight to fit on a Ford truck..

Yep, I'm sure SW will do the same stella job now with this product as with all the others they purchased...

Reply to
jeffery

No need to elaborate any further and I apologize for my soapboxing (it's a disease that I am seeking help to cure). In spite of what this may mean for my own market challenges I do sincerely believe that this is a very good trend. It's what "them" Engineers have been telling me they want for some time. For what it's worth.

Who's Dilbert?

Reply to
BSherm

looks like it's already being offered as part of the solidworks enterprise edition. ;)

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Reply to
kb

Javelin has been selling Conisio for some years now. What they show in the chart is the integration they provide being a SolidWorks VAR and a Conisio re-seller. It will be sometime before these two softwares mesh well. Conisio was initially developed to work with AutoCAD. I like the versatility, user friendliness, and simple user interface of Conisio. Now that SoildWorks has bought it, Conisio is a more compelling choice to replace PDM-Works at our facilities. Brad

Reply to
Brad

Make certain you fully evaluate DBWorks. It's a good product that does what it says without a lot of customization. Saying that, it can be customized to do just about anything you want.

It's also incredibly intrusive and thus the temptation to turn it off is exceedingly high when working on "what-if" type situations. If you have an well disciplined team working on evolutionary types of developments it would probably be a good tool.

If your products all tend to be one-offs with little commonality between them, you might find DBWorks cumbersome. Try it for yourself, you can download a fully working demo (which is more than can be said for the Conisio people).

I'm currently torn between Conisio and Adept, but the acquisition of Conisio by SolidWorks will probably cause me to drift in that direction.

These are my opinions and definitely worth what you paid for them! =========================================================================== Chris

Reply to
Chris Dubea

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