Entries in SWW10 (4)

"SolidWorks V6": The ChromeOS of CAD?

DateMonday, January 17, 2011 at 12:55PM
I've been thinking a lot about State-less computing since I recorded Episode 312 on State-less CAD, especially since I have been living in Google Apps, Chrome Browser and Google's Chrome OS for over a year now.  One of the parallels in the CAD market is Cloud-based CAD, which has gotten more press than it deserves at this point in the technology stage but there is an aspect I believe seems to be overlooked.

Let's take Google for example.  They launch a browser that is limited at first but very fast and grows it into a huge player in the browser market.  On the success of the Chrome desktop browser Google announces a new operating system called ChromeOS, which builds on the speed aspect of it's desktop counterpart and positioned as a fast, secure and state-less system that complements your computing needs.  That is the part that some seem to miss, complement.  Google is not trying to get you to ditch your desktop in hopes to only use ChromeOS. I believe they understand there are situations where you will still need the desktop and through sync they can move your settings from ChromeOS to the desktop's Chrome browser and vice versa.  This provides a cheap, lightweight, portable solution to access your data from anywhere you have a connection.  Now this is not to say that 5 years from now when connection speeds are 5 times what they are today and connectivity is ubiquitous that people won't ditch their attachment to desktop applications, although less likely for the masses.  This type of shift will probably be more a generational position as opposed to technological limitation.

Now think about what SolidWorks announced last year at SolidWorks World 2010.  That was a peek of what everyone has collectively nicknamed "SolidWorks V6" which showed a CAD application delivered via the Internet (SaaS).  After first glance the consensus was that this was going to be replacing SolidWorks as we knew it, ditching the locally installed desktop application.  In response, the following week in a blog post, SolidWorks outlined the technology that was previewed and ensured customers that the desktop version of SolidWorks was here to stay for the long haul and there was now two solutions for customers to choose from. 

Personally I think "SolidWorks V6" could follow a roadmap similar to the one Google is taking with ChromeOS. Let's say that SWV6 ships and is offered as a complementary product to the desktop version at first, allowing the early adopters to take hold and see where they need to draw the line for usage. SolidWorks on the desktop can continue to be the place were a majority of time is spent but when collaboration or mobile design is necessary, data could be then accessible from SWV6 for those operations.  This would obviously require the files to be bi-directional or use the same file format so data translation is not an issue for this symbiotic relationship.  As releases go by, features are added to both systems, growing their capability as technology allows and elevating SWV6 to a product that could replace the desktop version of SolidWorks as we know it today.  Jeff Ray had said that "If anyone is going to kill SolidWorks, we should be the ones to do it!"

There are a number of options/features/speculations to how the two platforms could work together for the near term and as connection speeds, performance technology and cloud-based user adoption increases, a decision could be made to pick one platform over another.  Personally this is how I use Microsoft Office and Google Docs.  They both work with each other but I do about 95% of my office documents on Google now and only a very few situations require me to use the desktop versions of Microsoft Office today.  The benefits of having my data centrally located, easily sharable and have the ability to collaborate or publish my content has made the hosted solution a more attraction option for my use case.

Since there seems to still be so many unknowns to all the questions that users will have to the hosted offering, one thing is certain, SolidWorks is not going to throw one platform out to replace it with another.  However, maybe there will come a day when the desktop version is no longer as appealing to the masses and no longer worth supporting but I believe that will also be generational. I am anxious to hear more details outlining "SolidWorks V6" at this year's SolidWorks World 2011. ~Lou
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SolidWorks Product Data Sharing

DateMonday, February 8, 2010 at 12:30PM

SolidWorks World Conference is never without excitement and new announcements. The General Sessions are always used as the platform to announce exciting future offerings and spark conversation among attendees. This year, SolidWorks ramped up the excitement by kicking off day one with the cloud-based, platform-agnostic SolidWorks version (unsure of the official name or release date), day two with James Cameron and day 3 with the sneak peak of SolidWorks 2011. A final announcement of a new SolidWorks PLM tool called SolidWorks PDS which stands for Product Data Sharing was also debuted with a promise delivery around the time of the 2011 product line.

SolidWorks PDS aims to address a group of users that fall into the category "Version-management challenged", which in my approximation would be about 70% or more of the user base. SolidWorks currently has two products in the PDM space, Workgroup and Enterprise PDM, that give small to large groups a good spread of document and process centric control of engineering project data. I have talked about the importance of data management with parametric CAD before but there are still a very large number of users whose companies do not have a system in place that addresses the issues of references and associativity within the CAD data.

SolidWorks PDS is built on the Enovia V6 cloud framework and brings the benefits of centralized storage, workspace control, sharing access levels, as well as 3 main platforms (SolidWorks TaskPane, web-client, and mobile platforms). PDS utilizes the essential aspects of PDM, simplifing deployment by not requiring any IT infrastructure setup and focuses on automatic version control and data sharing. Files are worked on locally and uploaded/shared to the cloud, enabling users to comment and share files as easy as sharing photos on FaceBook. Users would then have the power to create their own engineering communities, share data quickly and ensure that versions are maintained and backed up off site.

I see this as a tool for those users without a PDM system in place, however SolidWorks PDS might act as the collaboration mechanism for SolidWorks PDM packages in the future. This might be the first step for SolidWorks enterinig back to the 3D TeamWorks days of hosted services (SaaS) and I believe the time is right. ~Lou

 

AuthorLou | CommentPost a Comment |
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SolidWorks World Live Notes in Wave

DateTuesday, February 2, 2010 at 12:35PM

Unlike most services that were created to solve a specific problem/problems, Google Wave seems to be searching for a problem to solve. In the past few months I have been reading a multitude of sources to see how others have found problems to solve with Google Wave. This year at SolidWorks World, I have been taking notes with my friends and colleagues in order to ensure that the detail accuracy is high. Collaborative notes seems to be one of the many use cases that I think everyone could benefit from.

One of the major problems early on with a public-facing wave was the lack of control a wave creator had for access to the participants. Now that Google has rolled out the abiltiy to control Read/Write acess, now public waves can be controlled and the mess of too many editors can be avoided.

For those of you on Google Wave and want to get some of the notes you can go to the search and type in "with:public + tag:sww10" and see the waves I have started that are public. Finding the waves, as you can see, are not friendly but we are all engineers and so are the designers of Wave. Here are the short links for the waves I have started:

- SolidWorks World 2010 - What Sheet Metal Manufacturers Wish You Knew:

- SolidWorks World 2010 - 10 Administration Essentials for all SolidWorks Users:

- SWW10: SolidWorks 2011 Sneak Peak: (will be only on the notes for 2011 on Wednesday)

- SolidWorks World 2010 - SolidWorks Graphics Performance Analysis & Tuning:

There will be about 5 or 6 of us taking notes and you will all be able to see the notes come together live or come back after and see the results of our madness! ~Lou

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Stump the Chumps - Take Two

DateFriday, December 11, 2009 at 12:45PM

After a one year hiatus, the Stump the Chumps breakout session is back in the agenda for SolidWorks World 2010. For those of you that did not have the pleasure to attend the debut session back in 2008, this session is about answering the tough questions. We all run across challenges when using SolidWorks and this is your chance to ask the best of the best to give you the answer, or in many cases "answers".

This year's panel has expanded to include a few of SolidWorks' own as well as the blogger/super users of the previous session two years ago and a few new faces. Jeff Mirisola, an original Chump, is the mastermind behind bringing the session out of retirement and has details on his blog about all the Chumps, including yours truly, on the 2010 panel.

The session layout will also change a bit by including questions from not only the audience but also from those of you willing to submit your tough questions and/or vote on submitted ones. We have put together a site where you can submit these questions and vote on others to get them into the session, even if you can't attend. If you could visit the question submission site and add or vote for the questions you would like to get answers for, we would all appreciate it. This is a community session and the Chumps want to help solve as many problems as we can.

Many of us will becovering the event live and possibly including ways for you to participate online while the session is going on. The official session details are here on the SolidWorks World site. This session was a blast last time and we were not stumped so I ask you all to BRING IT! ~Lou

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