Now It's "DWGseries"

SolidWorks has collected together its DWG-related software and made it into a series: DWGseries (thanks for Bill Fane for the tip).

- DWGgateway (free) for opening and editing any DWG file using any version of AutoCAD. (This is not stand-alone software, like Autodesk's, but runs inside AutoCAD).
- DWGviewer (free) a.k.a. eDrawings Viewer for AutoCAD users, views and emails DWG and DXF files.
- DWGeditor (30-day demo) edits AutoCAD drawings (based on CADopia IntelliCAD).

What interests me is this sentence from SolidWorks: DWGeditor is a standalone editing tool for SolidWorks users and their colleagues, who occasionally need to create, share, and edit native DWG files.

In the past, SolidWorks has been lothe to use the word "create" in conjunction with DWGeditor; they did not want to be seen competing with Autodesk in the 2D world. But now that Autodesk has taken over both sales titles for Inventor (most selling in a year, most selling for all time), SolidWorks is getting more aggressive.

For example, DWGeditor right now is available only for 30 days free on its own, but buying SolidWorks gets you a 3-fer-1 license: "so you can offer DWGeditor to two of your coworkers and save on costs." As the next step, I would expect to see DWGeditor go completely free, except that would clash with the other IntelliCAD consortium members (Cadopia, Bricscad, etc) trying to sell the product.

Here's how badly Autodesk is crushing SolidWorks: Inventor has sold more seats in half the time.

CAD Software - Inventor - SolidWorks
Seats Last Quarter - over 12,000 - 8,005 -- numbers exclude education seats
Total Seats - 511,300 - 452,000 -- numbers include education

Comments

[Jason]

Your numbers are a bit off. That 40,000 includes educational seats. They didn't post commercial only numbers though CadCamNet will later.

So far each quarter, both companies sell about the same seats each quarter with Inventor outselling Solidworks by a small margin.

Also, I'm beginning to question the Inventor numbers a bit. Go to cadtalent.com or monster and search on Inventor jobs, then search on Solidworks. I only see a handful of Inventor jobs but quite a few Solidworks. If there are half a million Inventor seats out there, they aren't seeing much use.

Mech desktop sold like 200,000 seats back in it's day few years ago and since they all get Inventor now as well, looks like Autodesk counts them too. Autocad Mechanical gets tallied in that as well. Even if they aren't using it. A lot of those desktop users jumped ship to Solidworks and other cad platforms.

Of course, none of the Cad companies tell you the whole story. How many seats that are on subscription would tell you the real story.

[Evan Yares]

Depends on how you count, doesn't it?

What really matters is the broad economic impact of the software. This will determine the long-term potential of a program. The Monster index is a good measure of this.

Autodesk and SolidWorks are serious competitors. That makes for some interesting press, but it's not as telling as the deeper story.

[Glen]

Autodesk Inventor is the best selling MCAD system? What a load of b.s. Autodesk's numbers just don't add up. Where are the press releases touting major wins? Where are the companies using it in production? Carol Bartz is reputed to have said last year that only a fraction of Inventor Series users are working in 3D. Well guess what that means...most Inventor users are using AutoCAD - not Inventor. I work at a company that sells both Autodesk and SolidWorks - over 40% of our SolidWorks business so far this year is from companies dumping Inventor for SolidWorks. People are starting to get burned by taking advantage of a $1000 upgrade to Inventor. SolidWorks - stay the course, please!

[Mike]

I have pondered the Inventor and SolidWorks job postings for some time. I have recently changed jobs, going to a company that is using AutoCad 2d and a little AutoCad 3d. We are looking into buying the Inventor upgrade to take advantage of solid modeling in our designs. We won't hire anyone because of using Inventor, just switch over from AutoCad.

This may be one of the reasons you will never see equal job postings for SolidWorks and Inventor. Retasking staff rather than hiring more people.

[John]

I'm glad to see that there are others out there that see through the shell game that Autodesk is playing. Inventor is not why people upgrade / buy the "series", it's AutoCAD obits!

[Jason]

I wonder how "funny" the numbers might actually be. Perhaps they round but Inventor numbers are always even, except for a few quaters.

................IV.......SW
3q 2005= 11,000...8,005
2q 2005= 10,200...9.598
1q 2005= 9,200...8,609
4q 2004= 13,000...8,940
3q 2004= 8,700...6,802
2q 2004= 7,400...7,245
1q 2004= 8,251...6,895

[Mike]

It's not an obit, what we are doing is moving from 2d to 3d. Isn't that Adesk's strategy? And for all that matters, SolidWorks as well?

[John]

The issue is claiming that Inventor in "crushing" SolidWorks. The majority of late adopters that Autodesk is catering to aren't using 3D, they are using AutoCAD. By getting Inventor shelfware into the account, Autodesk can keep the competitors out. If IV series purchasers only dabble with IV, they won't see it's shortcomings, and won't look for alternatives.

I also find the round numbers interesting.

[Mike]

The numbers are what they are. I suspect a little rounding on there part. But then again doesn't everyone do it to some extent?

As far as shortcomings, doesn't every software have shortcomings? If they were all perfect Ralph would be out of a job.

[John]

The issue with the numbers, is the claim that Inventor is the #1 selling MCAD application. If only 10% of Autodesk's customers are working in 3D (per Carol Bartz), then that equates to ~50,000 Inventor users. Given over 50% are educational licenses, that means less than 25,000 are using Inventor. SolidWorks has over 200,000 commercial users working in 3D!

[Jason]

Rounding? The kind of number spikes shown here seem suspect. Where are the press releases stating hundreds or thousands of seats of IV implemented?

Job searches tell the real story or at least something closer. Search Monster for "Inventor" and get around 350 hits. Of course the word "Inventor" may be hitting other things not cad related too. Type in "Solidworks" and you get around 900 hits, about 3x the amount. That's not counting the 300 hits I got for searching ("Solid works") (make sure to put it in quotes to search that string in that order).

I don't buy Mike's reasoning on Autocad upgrade companies not posting jobs. Thoses same kind of companies that choose Solidworks instead are in the same boat. Neither product is similar to Acad enough that no training is needed.

Solidworks doesn't claim to ship the most seats but this statement from there website is likely true "SolidWorks leads the market in number of users in production, customer satisfaction, and revenue."

[John]

To narrow the search a little more, use "Autodesk Inventor". You will get 85 hits nationally vs. over 1,000 for "SolidWorks".

Note: some of the jobs include both products in their keywords, but "Autodesk Inventor" is included much less.

[Jason]

Yeah, there is some cross over on the job hits. Like a company saying Pro/E or Solidworks, even though they only use one meaning they will train.

Anyway, other job websites show the same results with about 3 times the Solidworks jobs out there.

It appears that Brad Holtz from Cyon Research beat me to the information on the seat accountability, see "Oops:Inventor vs. Soliworks". And the adjusted verbage above.

I just did a search for SolidWorks and Inventor positions on Careerbuilder. Using only Engineering and design positions I counted around 700 position for Solidworks and around 400 for Inventor. Doing a search for "Autodesk Inventor" is like searching for "Dassault SolidWorks".

I presented what my company is planning to do in upgrading our software. In doing so, offered a reason for perhaps some of the lack of Inventor job postings on the web. But these questions remain.
1. Why are there almost twice as many SolidWorks positions available than Inventor?
-- That number used to 5-6 times as many as late as 3 years ago. So I guess, Inventor is cutting into those numbers.

2. Of all of the positions posted, why are so many for temp positions?
-- You want to do the "ours vs theirs" software comparison, spend some time creating a report on the direct vs. indirect proportion.

3. Which software is better?
-- I have used both softwares extensively. Both have pluses and minuses. Both companies will tell you one thing and sell you another. No software is perfect!

I used to work for a company that used both of the softwares in question. One division of the company used one exclusively. They always reported huge successes, our division never made any success claims because it just didn't seem plausible. We had our problems, we knew they had theirs.

Yet despite all the successes that division closed. A year and half later our division changed exclusively to that software as well. To this day, they have 2 support guys for the software for 10-14 users (some occasional temps). The company struggles to this day to stay open.

Do I have my preferance? Yes I do.

Competition is good between both companies; they drive each other. Enhancements would probably come a lot slower without it.

[Jim Zink]

This is a false statement. Autodesk claimed to have sold over 225,000 commercial Mechanical Desktop seats before Inventor was released. These sales go back to 1992. When the Autodesk Inventor Series was released, 100,000 current MDT subsscriptions were automatically converted to AIS. Autodesk may have more installations that SolidWorks, but they have been selling their mechanical product for four years longer.

The REAL question is what happened to those 125,000 MDT licenses that were not on subscription??? Is Autodesk still losing 60% of their installed base every four years????

[Mike]

I guess the real point is that both SolidWorks and Inventor have a lot of people that got the software in the mail or as part of a package, so if you are thinking about 3D CAD, you should give both of them a look. My experience is that I know a lot more people actively using SolidWorks in production, not just playing around with it, and most people seem to really like it.

[Mike]

Also, when I search for "solidworks file" in Google I get 686,000 results, but searching for "autodesk inventor file" you get only 357,000 results.