The Future of Solidworks

I have been a Looooong time Solidworks user and a committed follower (and I still am). I was told many years ago to never base my career on a single CAD package. However I did, and each job I changed too always had Solidworks there since its release in 1995. Now we sit on the edge of change yet again. Over the last 2 years we have been getting pieces of how Solidworks and Dassault Systems are going to be blended together. For large companies like ours these kinds of changes are serious concerns.

Yesterday a colleague and I met with some people... no details other than one of them was an ex-Dassault Systems employee and worked with the company up until the beginning of 2012. What was explained to us is what claims are going to happen with Solidworks in the coming years. Hearing this gave us some serious concerns. Over the past couple of years we have been getting a little more info each year about what is coming, but never the entire story, just bits and pieces.

PLM:

There was the mention of how Catia works in the new Enovia environment. Enovia creates a Dynamic file for users to work on much like the Cloud, however the file is not really a tangible file like all of us work with currently. An Enovia still act like Vault , but it’s not a Vault at all. It’s more of Database that resides in a Cloud environment, and each company pays for access to this sort of environment to gain access to this Enovia Cloud. I know Solidworks is not Enovia, but this type of environment is not compatible with EPDM or PDMWorks and the comment was that EPDM and PDMWorks would have to be discontinued products and force everyone into the Clouded Enovia package. But there lies another problem... SolidWorks is not compatible to this sort of environment, at least not yet.

Solidworks:

I was told by Jeff Ray on the Midway last year that they paid for 99 years to use of the Siemens Parasolid Kernel and we had nothing to worry about, but there was a change that was coming in the next 5-7 years.

What we were told yesterday was that Siemens is requesting their Parasolid Kernel back and is going to be kicking Solidworks off the Kernel and they have to find a different one. Catia has their own Kernel, so that is where the Catia\Solidworks version is supposed to take place. Siemens is also supposed to start making adjustments to start targeting Solidworks companies.

Jeff Ray also made the comment that once the new version were to be released then Solidworks would have 2 products running at the same time... the new "V6 Solidworks" version and the normal SW version we are used to today. There would be enhancements in new version of V6\Solidworks, which you just cannot get with the original Solidworks version. Once a company made the conversion there was no coming back. Then over a period of a few years companies would be forced into the new V6 Solidworks.

During our meeting yesterday this person said the conversion process in Catia is never easy, very cumbersome & quite expensive. If any of this is true and everyone keeps getting the comment from Solidworks on "Trust us on this, it will be fine" gives me more concern than comfort.

My Assessment:

The ability to have 2 lines running at the same time and then forcing everyone over to V6 version of Solidworks doesn't sound like the ship I join 17 years ago. To add to that the blending of SW and Catia and the possibility of Siemens pulling the rights for SW to use that Kernel is a tad scary for any large companies that have invested into Solidworks and EPDM (such as our company).

Of course everything this person told us could all be Smoke for their own personal agenda, but I believe most everything people says at least starts out with some truth, how much of that is BS and what is truth remains to be seen, but I would like to know from Solidworks what is really going on. I think all people including large companies that are paying everyone's Salary should have some rights to know where the Future of Solidworks is heading. The Comment of "Trust us" is running out of gas and we as customers need to know what we need to do to protect our business.

My Quesiton is what is the Future of Solidworks?

Best Regards,

Scott