Interview with Jeff Ray

The Economic Times interviews Jeff Ray, new CEO of the SolidWorks division of Dassault Systemes on its arrival in India. Highlights from the interview by Chiranjoy Sen:

-- Currently at $380 million; goal is $1 billion in four years by outgrowing the rest of the industry. [That requires a growth of 30% a year!]

-- One way to grow is to add more software products, primarily around CAD.

-- The focus in 2008 is on performance, reliability, and scalability; future focus is on communicating designs. Quote:

To make it easier for engineers to communicate great designs to a broader audience and to help remove barriers for them. And to make every product in the very first phase of design, a perfect product for our customers.

Link.

Comments

[Kartik]

Well, they already had an offshore development center in Geometric Software, Pune, India. Also, they had product support there. So what have they brought in now?

[Jon Banquer]

It will be interesting to see what Siemens / UGS has in store next week and if they remove the barriers that history based solid modeling systems have always had.

I received this e-mail on Monday:

"Want to know how you can thrive in a multi-CAD world? The answer is coming on April 22. In one week, Siemens PLM Software will announce a major technology development that has a far-reaching impact on the entire process of bringing products to market. Want to learn how you can edit CAD data from other systems--faster than they can? Find out about the April 22 global Webcast at http://www.siemens.com/plm/breakthrough/.
Get ready for the next breakthrough in digital product development."

Solidworks 2008 is filled with bells and whistles that many SolidWorks users have little or no interest in. Nothing has been done to fix the core problems that clearly exist in most history based solid modeling systems. Right now it seems like every major CAM vendor is porting their CAM to SolidWorks. Machining job shops that need to modify their customer’s designs and preserve their customers design intent are handcuffed by SolidWorks so what most machining job shops do is toss the parametrics / history in the garbage. I would argue that it shouldn't be this way and that the manufactured model should match the designed model. This is currently not possible with the limitations that products like SolidWorks have.

Jon Banquer
San Diego, CA