Maybe, just maybe we are gonna get the MS monkey off my back within a few years. There isn't anything wrong with the Unix flavor you like, and its stability, and I think SolidWorks deserves S-T-A-B-I-L-I-T-Y.
God knows (no not Billy) that Unix runs fine on the PCs of today.
Tens of millions of people have been schnookered on the concept of following Uncle Billy to the land of a single universal stable proprietary Billy-set operating system.
Bo
FOR RELEASE: Thursday, April 1, 2004
formatting link
UGS PLM Solutions Announces Availability of its Industry Leading Parasolid® Geometric Modeling Software For the Mac
New Parasolid Support Driven By Increasing Customer Demand For State-of-the-Art 3D Applications On Mac OS X
Bo, The Bain acquisition of UG flavors any press releases for the next few months. What you ought to be concerned about is the forced march SW users are about to do to the Catia product.
With 300,000 users in thousands of corporations, I doubt seriously that Dessault would attempt such a 'forced march'.
If Desault did, I predict a lot of SolidWorks users would simply stop cold and maintain their existing version of SolidWorks while they evaluate the future. The disruption that a shift from Swks to Catia would cause would not be taken by most users, by my uneducated guess.
With Parasolid ported to MacOSX (& Unix), that opens up doors for a lot of things to happen which I like. There will probably be more 3D modelers coming to the Mac as a result, and that is good for me.
I think Microsoft is trying to be everything to every electronic device from desktop, laptop, palm, cellphone, pads, servers, grids, games, tv, home appliances. As such, I think their OS is getting to polluted. I have serious doubts they will deliver the 'latest, greatest' in 2006-7. I don't want to risk my work to them any more than I have to do. They will NEVER be my sole OS. I have to keep a backup because I can't trust them.
You should know better than to take a line from your sales pitch against SolidWorks and post it here.
BTW, that is the same JUNK that ADE$K and other CAD/PLM companies have been saying since Dassault bought SW in 1997. You are not going to make any sales in this newsgroup leaving posts like that.
On a more positive note, I am glad to see this move by UGS. A little competition on the OS side of things could help us all. It will be interesting to see what kind of effect it has.
Well Bo, I am not so sure. Catia looks pretty good these days and if they can come up with a palatable migration path it might not be the nightmare you ( and I BTW ) think. I just don't think DSS will be very interested in continuing their current licensing arrangement beyond some point. It will be very interesting to watch the industry continue to consolidate.
If Dassault attempted to try and flex their muscles this way (al-la microsoft) we would simply freeze at a version, and evaluate and purchase a competeing product. How do I know this ?? Well, it would pretty much be my decision, and that's what I'd do.
Even if they offered us a good deal on Catia, I'd still dump em. I have no desire to do business with a company I can't trust. Been there with PTC.
It isn't - you can't sell software that way and we don't. We also do not see SW as a competitor. Different markets. I also wonder why you think SWC is weak enough to be affected by any concerns regarding the viability of their brand. If you aren't interested in this you are also unconcerned about industry trends and directions.
You don't make sales in news groups regardless of what you post. You can OTOH learn something about what people think and why. At least you can if you shut up and listen once in a while rather than blather.
"If you hear that someone is speaking ill of you, instead of trying to defend yourself you should say: 'He obviously does not know me very well, since there are so many other faults he could have mentioned'."
Let's see, someone is discussing the subject of Parasolid on MAC and you, a reseller of another 3D software package, come back with
"What you ought to be concerned about is the forced march SW users are about to do to the Catia product."
This comment is not pertinent to the subject at hand. It seems poised simply to raise doubt about the viability of the SolidWorks product yet you offer not substantiation to the claim.
Then, you are seemingly surprised and offended that someone implies you have an agenda.
Curious.
Most of us have a strong interest in the industry and, certainly, anything to do with the future of SolidWorks. You pretty much state it as a known fact that this "forced march" is imminent. If you are not simply raising FUD, and if there is some merit to your claim, why don't you share it with us. If not, you really shouldn't be surprised that people are skeptical about your motives and you really shouldn't insult them for being skeptical.
1) It makes little sense for DSS to continue to pay for a third party kernel when they own two good ones already.
2) UG is the toughest of the DSS competitors and the loss of revenue UG would suffer should DSS move from parasolid would open the market to Catia in ways it currently is not. Ask an SDRC user about the migration path to UG.
3) The Catia product has an exceptional interface. The learning curve buggaboo has dissapeared.
4) Catia has real integration in the manufacturing sense. SW is a kluge, at best, in this regard.
5) End to end manufacturing integration is the future. Anything else is beating a dead horse. The only question is timing.
6) The industry continues to consolidate. This process is not just "weeding out" the weak, it is real consolidation.
7) I was not offended in the least and I have no "agenda" in this group beyond the intelligent discussion of issues that affect the comunity at large with others.
8) The Missler product is not " another 3D package". Were you to suggest to one of my customers that they switch to SW they would want to know how they were going to do the 80 percent of their work SW has no solution for. The question is nonsensical.
9) Who do you think is more familiar with the broad market - a reseller who sees customers and prospects from a large cross section of industry or an end user narrowly focussed on a particular class of job?
Now, Perhaps you could tell me what you think.
-- John R. Carroll Machining Solution Software, Inc. Los Angeles San Francisco Portland
For a big company with terrabytes of legacy data, it can be horrendous. In our case it would only be a minor problem because we wouldn't have to convert everything.
Besides, this hypothetical scenario would require data migration in and of itself. Might as well start fresh with someone new than continue with someone who just stabbed you in the back.
Allot has changed since you last messed with this stuff. The days of the overbearing, overpriced, manipulative CAD company are pretty much over. There's too much competition. Even the big players have reduced their prices from outrageous to unreasonable.
That being said, I think Dassault is smart enough to realize that such a move would cost them at least half of the 300,000 SW seats they now profit from. It wouldn't be a very good business decision at all.
I think that Dassault is more likely to switch the SW kernel from parasolid to ACIS than it is to migrate the customer base to Catia. There are some benefits to keeping a high end and a low end product. On the one hand it allows you to keep one product to appeal to small and midsize customers who could not afford a high product price and annual maintenance. On the other, it allows you to market your high price and high margin product to the really big customers. This model has worked for many years for Dassault, PTC, and UG. The other problem with moving to Catia is that it goes against the entire business model which is based upon having partners for capabilities beyond basic modeling. (Admittedly, SW has recently been trying to control more of this directly.) So I don't believe the SW user base is in any immediate danger of being pushed to Catia.
Of course, I could be way off. I think that some of your opinions are interesting and maybe you are right. I really don't care to get into a debate. What I take some issue with is that you state your interpretations as fact, i.e. "........ the forced march SW users are about to do to the Catia product.". This statement implies that you have specific knowledge of an imminent event. You don't. You have your viewpoint and interpretations and other people have theirs.
Furthermore, I know that many of us in this newsgroup have been at this for a good portion of our careers and are extremely knowledgeable about the CAD industry - and not just one product or small sector of it. For you to classify people here as being "narrowly focused" and to assume that our interpretations are, therefore, inferior to yours is something I find to be distasteful and a bit arrogant.
Why not? You get the best features of all three. Parasolid is still in my opinion, the most stable and mature kernel on the market. Personally, I would be a little upset to see them drop it totally.
I have no information as to what the revenues the UG receives from SW Corp. Unless you have exact numbers, I think this is more speculation than anything. I will admit this is an interesting angle.
From what I have heard and seen, I don't think I would be making that statement. It has been stated in many articles that CATIA has the best GUI of all the "Planes, Trains, and Automobiles" packages such as UG, Catia, IDEAS (not really a factor anymore), and Pro/E. I have seen Catia and have driven it a little bit. The GUI is decent, but not NEAR as clean as SW (for modeling and drawing production.) In order for a package to have "across the board capabilites", in my opinion GUI often takes a hit as a result. I think this is what we see with CATIA. I will say that CATIA's GUI blows Pro/E out of the water.
Yes, there is no direct mfg program inside SW. Guess what, there isn't supposed to be! That is not their focus. I will say that some of the MasterCAM, SurfCAM, and GibbsCAM integrations I have seen look pretty slick to me! (I do not program CNC code for a living, so I can speak from experience in this area.) I do know alot of machine shops that use these integrations and are very successful.
Not every company requires this. If that is your opinion, that is fine. I don't really agree with this due to the fact that not everyone needs manufactures what they design. I will agree that the industry trend is leaning towards this.
Then why post a message like that? Especially when it doesn't even fit the subject matter. If your first post had looked like your second one, I think it would be received in this group better. To just state that SW users will be forced to go to CATIA as a FACT is just flat out WRONG!
You may be in a slightly different "market" as you say, but are you going to tell me that you never go up against a SolidWorks/MasterCAM, or SolidWorks/SurfCAM solution for a sale?
I would watch what you assume here. First of all, I have followed the industry closely for the past 6 years and have studied the history of it as well. I also have worked as Application Engineer for a SolidWorks reseller. I have had the "advantage" of "seeing customers and prospects from a large cross section of the industry".
The point of my post was not to flame you. I will say I should have elaborated a little more on my message, which is: If you are going to post something as a FACT, present some FACTS to back it up. If you are going to post and OPINION, then hey that is great! We all live in a free country and I'm always interested in a lively debate. :-)
Cheers!
Ricky Jordan not just a "narrowly focussed" end user
Not a small task even for small firms IMHO. I've seen the complaints (some of them, anyway ) from folks trying to import data TO SW from other systems. One part at a time.
Just junk the data, eh?
Sort of required for a serious migration to a new system IMHO. Unless you consider your work product to be dead sheets of paper in someone else's files.
Seems to me it's not the vendor considering the stabbing.
I'm amused by the problems .... you need to buy X packages form other third party vendors at price Y, have all sorts of issues (you cannot do it) because it's so "easy to learn" or "easy to use," poor jb wets his pants hearing of a new buzzword for a new feature that CADDS-III or AD-2000 had 20+ years ago ...
Then there's the issue of exactly what your end goal is. For all too many (IMHO) it seems to be more 2D pieces of paper that, with any luck, some other poor suckers will end up having to create 3D models from later.
With any thought they would be adding features and making changes in the database for years to assure a later smooth transition IF desired. Any such vendor supplies data porting and migration tools to ease the tasks faced by their customers.
BTW, The "I'm going to stay at version ABC" arguments don't work very well. Later you will be using new hardware and a new OS. That old software may not run on it and old systems are hard and expensive to maintain I suspect. Parts ..... In addition, can you use legacy data NOW from version 1 or 2 of SW? Probably not. Usually only 1 or 2 version levels are supported for automatic updates of the database format. Your customers on later versions would be unable to read your data and perish the thought that you would need to read data in release Z from release Z+3.
i sure as hell hope you're wrong about this. We sometimes go years between accessing a file, and if I can't open my SW2004 files in SW2007 I'm going to be sorely pissed off.
Don't worry about this plonk-fodder post. IIRC, the sample hardware parts that are installed in the palette parts folder are ancient. They open fine. Just to be sure, I went and dug up a model from the subscription site that was created in June of 98 (grinder). No problem. Just the usual notice that the files will be updated when saved.
Notice the "probably not" and "version 1 or 2 of SW". He's typing out of his backside.
I think there's some merit to what J.R said because Catia and UG are already running on Unix. I'm assuming that the port to Mac from unix isn't that difficult. Since SWX is a windows only program it's logical that DSS would keep it that way and offer Catia as their Mac solution.
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