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Before I get too stuck into the day, and while my coffee is still warm, a few thoughts on #3DXW21 which was on this week, for the first time, virtually and free. The context of these thoughts is upcoming bills to pay for maintenance renewals and my ability to sniff out BS.
Firstly the event itself. As these things go it was OK. I'm comparing directly to Autodesk University and others of that scale. The keynote sessions were as dull as last year - total sales pitches. Honestly SolidWorks/Dassault should be ashamed regurgitating the same content
#3DXW21 is something I wouldn't have bothered with usually. It is very USA centric and I know the market and typical user profile there is very different to here. I know a lot of Solidworks users in the USA and they love the product. I come at it from a different perspective
Firstly in all markets outside the USA the cost is substantially more per seat. Secondly I pay for these seats (we have two). It comes out my bottom line. It was a substantial investment for a micro business, and a significant ongoing cost. Employed users don't see that issue.
Aside from that though, the event itself was, I thought, a bit flat. There were no big announcements, apart from a student and maker deal (but without the necessary detail needed). The quality of keynote presentation (compared to other events), aside from the host, was poor.
The guts of these events are the interactions and the technical sessions though, and the few I've looked at were good. I'll dip into more when they come online as a recording (I just can't take days out to watch this stuff and in the evenings, I go home)
The one event I did do "live" was the Fireside Chat with the Executives" where attendees posted questions and they were voted up. The highest votes were asked. I asked the question "should 3DX be included in existing customer maintenance plans? If not why not?" It was answered!
It was answered by three execs, the first two obviously uncomfortable with doing so, and waffled the usual nonsense. But the answer by @gpbassi was the one that bothered me. It made me realise that Solidworks doesn't care about the little guys and what they actually need.
He said (I'm paraphrasing) we offer fantastic value with the platform, the cost to migrate to it is minimal. That is what stuck in my throat. You see I don't know a single business in the UK that is "migrating" to it. I know many who have come off maintenance.
Furthermore the cost is not "minimal". I know. I've been involved in two customer benchmarks recently. I've looked into the actual costs to migrate to the platform in the UK. I've looked at the actual apps available and had cost "estimates" from Dassault (more on that)
Reality is, list price, Solidworks Professional maintenance is £1445 a year. The Migrate to the 3DX platform equivalent package costs £2189 a year. But that's not all. These licenses come with only 25GB of file space per license. For context, our current project server is at 3TB
You see what Dassault want is for you to do everything in the platform - so all those DWGs/PDFs/images files etc you accumulate in a project go into the platform, and take up file space. So to recap, 25GB per user. So we'd get 50GB included. That leaves 2,950 GB shortfall.
Solidworks/Dassault currently sell additional storage at the eye watering rate of £72 per 25GB block. So to"migrate" my projects to the platform, my 3TB of data, would cost £8,496 - per year. I'd likely get a discount for this, but our usage is not uncommon.
So to recap, for us to migrate to the platform, based on list prices, we go from paying £2890 a year to £4378 a year for just the software. For file storage we go from £300 for a 5TB Dropbox business package to £8640 a year for a 3DX 3TB package. So £3190 vs £13,018
So I say to @gpbassi how is this possibly "minimal"? In another presentation we were told "companies who already have PDM systems in place are not really the target audience for 3DX right now, it is a small companies, startups, micro design businesses".
So this leads me to believe three things.
1. Solidworks has lost touch with the users who helped make the product what it is now - the small guys.
2. There is no real product improvement going into core Solidworks any longer.
3. The masterplan is to get is using x apps only
1. Solidworks has lost touch with the users who helped make the product what it is now - the small guys.
2. There is no real product improvement going into core Solidworks any longer.
3. The masterplan is to get is using x apps only
Finally, coming back to that Dassault comment. I attended a webinar a few months back showing 3D sculptor, 3D creator and a 3DX module for doing surface patterning which was very similar to Grasshopper in Rhino. Incidentally the same content was regurgitated in #3DXW21
After the evnt I was contacted by Dassault directly trying to sell me the module (which was "around £2000" - a year - extra). I chatted to the guy from France and he told me the plan was we buy the core Soldiworks modules then buy "what we need directly". No VAR in sight.
That may or may not have been accurate, but it is what I was told, it it puts into context what I witnessed at #3DXW21
Here's the thing. I've used Solidworks since 1997. I've used it for 80% of the output of this company. But what is happening now reminds me of a ThinkDesign
Here's the thing. I've used Solidworks since 1997. I've used it for 80% of the output of this company. But what is happening now reminds me of a ThinkDesign
ThinkDesign was a CAD system much hyped in the early 2000s. Hyped because it was actually very good and way ahead of the market in many areas. It was subscription only (we paid £1800 a year per seat), all training was free and delivered via WebEX - one to one/workshops etc.
After using it for 3 years with minor updates in that time, they were lauching their "new platform". I had a call from the European Sales Director "offering" me the new platform for 5500 Euros - a year - per seat, or we stay on £1800 a year for the same functionality we had
We declined, and dropped the product. The other question I asked during the Fireside Chat at #3DXW21 was "how many licenses of 3D EXPERIENCE SOLIDWORKS have you actually sold, commercially, in the last 12 months?" It was also voted up, but not answered.
Solidworks is a great product. It has an amazingly loyal user and customer base. It delivered a quality product for a good value price. But now that product is in slow decline, and the revenue from customers is driving the development of the xApps.
As they stand, the xApps are simply not fit for commercial use. They have some nice features but nice features does not mean efficient use in a production setting. 3D Sculptor, for example, is a toy compared to competitve products available at a fraction of the cost.
What Solidworks, Dassault and indeed all the CAD vendors forget is that users are judged on the outputs. Those outputs, in this market, are physical products. Not CAD models. The "experience" is the end product, not the process to deliver it.
I don't need a "design experience".
I don't need a "design experience".
