Evan on Engineering Software

Deelip Menezes is a software developer in Goa, India, whose company, Sycode, specializes in CAD related utility programs  -- mostly file format import/export plug-ins.

Deelip has an interesting way of looking at the world.  In his blog, he recently claimed his company is the largest producer of CAD software.  How'd he come to that conclusion?  Because he looked at some other CAD web sites, and figured that, with 101 products, Sycode has more products than any other software company.

Pretty funny, eh? Using Deelip's logic, Mattel could be called the largest producer of cars. (How many Hot Wheels cars do they make every year?)

I've not checked recently, but Dassault likely holds the record for the largest number of CAD-related products.  Add up all the products  offered under the CATIA/DELMIA/ENOVIA/SIMLUIA, SolidWorks, Spatial, and 3D-Via lines, then include all localizations and currently available version numbers, and you probably have over a thousand SKUs (Stock-keeping units.)

Still, Deelip's self-promoting claim does raise the question of what company is the largest producer of CAD software.  Last night, at a press and analyst dinner hosted by SolidWorks (thank you, SolidWorks), I sat next to Jay Vleeschhouwer, a stock analyst who has followed the CAD industry since 1989.  Jay and I were talking about the companies he follows, and the changes over the years that have made comparison difficult.  One example he cited was Unigraphics/UGS, which has changed ownership several times, and is now a part of an operating unit of Siemens. It's unlikely that its CAD-related revenue will be broken out in a way that allows direct comparison with, for example, Autodesk and Dassault.

If you wanted to use tortured logic to figure out the largest producer of CAD software, you might use any number of metrics.  Depending on how you measured, you could come up with Toyota (total revenue) , Microsoft (seats sold), General Electric (market cap), Autodesk (CAD-related revenue), Dassault (SKUs), or Open Design Alliance (total units licensed.)

If you were wondering, yes, I am just a little bit proud that I'm probably the only person -- with the possible exception of Brad Holtz  -- who could have come up with such a tortured list.

Yet, all kidding aside, there are four big dogs in the CAD industry (excluding ECAD): Autodesk, Dassault, Siemens PLM, and PTC.  Iin the last four years, Autodesk has gone from being the least profitable of the big dogs, to the most profitable, with -- by any reasonable measure -- the largest CAD-related revenues.

Autodesk is the biggest CAD company.