I spoke yesterday with Fabien Fedida about the massive set of releases Dassault Systemes announced over the last few days. He's the senior director of global offer strategy and business intelligence at Dassault.
One point he emphasized is that "V6 and V5 work together very well. I know there is some FUD [fear, uncertainty, doubt from competitors] out there about this. In this release in particular, just like in all previous releases, you can see evidence of DS ensuring V6 and V5 work together very well."
To make sure V6 works well with V5...
...the two systems use the same geometry kernel.
...CATIA V6 gives customers the complete set of workbenches from V5. (While the V6
interface is changed from V5, the way processes is performs is the same as in V5.)
...upward and downward compatibility between V5 and V6 is like between two releases of V5.
Read the entire interview by persuing upFront.eZine.
Dassault has this little problem when it comes to credibility. They are also overlords of SW and the 3DSWYM and N!Fuse releases this week are bad from the web site interface to the actual program content. John Ellsworth with SW actually asked users for feedback implying that Dassault/SW can't do a web site or program right and they need user feedback to help them out. SW users are up in arms over this and I really doubt a talking heads assurances will do much to correct negative perceptions based on what Dassault has done to date.
At some point in time they are going to have to quit talking and start proving. So far it is a big fail and it is no wonder why many have left with many more soon to. Reading some of the SW related blogs ought to be a wakeup call to somone I would think. Questions for SW and Dassault. How mad do you think you can make your customers before they leave in droves and when they leave how will you ever get them back?
If I was in charge of Siemens I would have a video of Bernard capering across the stage with his stupid IPAD/IPHONE and his social media junk. When I had a tough day I would fire the clip up and remember things could be much worse.
Posted by: Dave Ault | Jul 06, 2011 at 12:01 PM
I think most SoildWorks users actually care very little about all this.
Most SolidWorks users are happy or have decided they can live with SolidWorks. By way of example, purchasing SpaceClaim has made it much easier for me to live with SolidWorks. As a SoildWorks user I'm looking forward to seeing what SolidWorks 2012 does. Some pretty good ideas and helpful tools have been announced. Nothing really radical just what appear to be some very good incremental improvements.
The one SolidWorks blog I've seen discussing the new V6 stuff doesn't attract many new posters and basically has the same old crew rehashing the same old stuff over and over.
I think there are quite a few Solid Edge users who love to focus on Dassault and "the cloud" because the marketing for Solid Edge is so bad and they aren't willing to confront Siemens management on the continuous lack of meaningful action that Solid Edge marketing has seen, lack of third party programs that run inside of Solid Edge compared to SolidWorks, etc. I guess it's easier to criticize another company constantly rather than have the guts to be honest about the serious and continued failing of Siemens to market Solid Edge properly.
In the end it's no big deal. SolidWorks users will only switch if SolidWorks V6 has compelling reasons to switch and Tony Affuso's actions continue to back NX over Solid Edge. I think Tony Affuso is a very smart man and I expect NX to continue to win more accounts. I also believe him when it comes to NX getting a new, easy to use user interface. When that happens I can see more SolidWorks users moving to NX... which I'm sure fits very well with Tony Affuso's plan.
Jon Banquer
San Diego, CA
Posted by: Jon Banquer | Jul 06, 2011 at 03:10 PM