Evan on Engineering Software

Matt Lombard, a SolidWorks user, author, and blogger, wrote a piece called Selling CAD when you should be Selling Productivity

Here's a small excerpt:

What’s the difference between CAD and Productivity? CAD is just a tool. In the same way that a hammer sitting on a bench isn’t putting a new roof on your house, CAD itself is just a static tool. Productivity is the combination of a tool and the ability to use it. It’s like a two part epoxy - either part on its own is just a sticky mess that you can’t do anything with, but put them together, and you’ve got something of value. If I buy a CAD product and have no idea how to use it, the software itself has no value to me. Ironically, the value is created by the customer, not the vendor, when the customer learns how to use the tool. So often, the customer has to pay extra for training on the tool. It is only when the abilities confered by the training are combined with the software that you have something of value - productivity.

Matt actually wrote this article a year ago.  But I don't know that the subject will ever be stale.

Here's my thought:  Advanced capabilities do far less to help make typical CAD users productive than do improvements in baseline usability. 

 In an interview at Franco Folini's Novedge Blog, I made this comment:

I think what is more interesting than software subscription is software as a service (SaaS). Done right, it can have real benefits for users, particularly in shifting maintenance and procurement costs to vendors, and in converting front-ended loaded overhead costs into scalable variable costs. Yet, I don’t know that any of today’s major CAD vendors are anywhere near the point of being able to deliver serious SaaS solutions. And I don’t know that the current SaaS platform vendors are anywhere near providing the kind of capabilities demanded by such solutions.

Ben Kepes, who writes about Software as a Service, had this comment:

• It uses SharePoint Server as a repository for DWG files,
• It finds and uploads all Xrefs associated with a DWG, detecting and maintaining path information,
• It allows you to download all associated files, as a group,
• It keeps all revisions, and allows easy rollback.

 

• CATIA and NX are the big players in the aerospace and automotive businesses, and particularly in airframe, auto body, and aero turbines.
• Pro/E has meaningful parts of the aerospace and automotive businesses (for example, it's historically strong in auto powertrain), and a strong presence in capital equipment.
  
• SolidWorks and Solid Edge are strong throughout a range of sectors.
• Inventor seems to be strongest in the manufacturing equipment sector.

"I suppose it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail."

- Abraham Maslow

Once upon a time, between when I graduated from High School and went to college, I worked in construction, setting concrete forms for basements of tract houses. The job required more muscles than tools, but one of my most important tools was a hammer.

My hammer of choice for form-setting was an Estwing, with a smooth face 22 ounce head, rip-claws, one-piece forged head and shaft, 16” overall length, and a molded nylon grip. You can buy nearly the same hammer today.

I didn’t choose that particular hammer by accident. I chose it because it was perfectly suited for the type of work that I was doing. Had I been doing framing, I might have used a Vaughn framing hammer with a milled face, or possibly a TrueTemper rig axe. (Today, I’d also use a pneumatic nail gun.) But for form-setting, the Estwing was nearly perfect.

Choosing a CAD tool is a lot more complicated than choosing a hammer. But CAD tools, like hammers, vary in their suitability for particular types of work.

For the last 20 years, the vast majority of popular CAD tools for mechanical design have been more similar than different. Inventor, SolidWorks, and Solid Edge are all based on a concept pioneered by Pro/E: parametric feature-based modeling.

Parametric feature-based modeling was such a powerful concept that it helped PTC take the CAD market by storm, and essentially forced every other significant player in the MCAD market to follow suit.

Despite its strengths, there are two problems with parametric feature-based modeling that are inherent to the technology, and that can’t be fixed:

• It doesn’t work well for most people, and
• It doesn’t work well with most data.

While I can back-up these points with peer-reviewed research, I’m going to save that for another time. For now, I want to talk about a CAD technology that overcomes these two limitations: feature inference modeling.

Let me put a definition to that term: Feature inference modeling is a technology combining feature recognition and direct editing. It allows a user to intelligently edit a solid model, irrespective of its source or underlying construction history.

Feature inference modeling is available today in products such as SpaceClaim, KeyCreator, CoCreate, and IronCAD. It will be available soon in Solid Edge and NX. I expect that, within the next several years, most major MCAD tools will incorporate some level of the technology.

Feature inference modeling is not a simple "check-box" item on a spec sheet. Different CAD tools implement it differently, and to different extents. There are two characteristics common to all implementations of the technology:

• Intelligent editing. This means the software is smart, so the person using it doesn’t have to be.
• Dumb data. This means the software can work with any boundary representation solid model data (the kind created by all modern 3D MCAD programs), no matter how it was created, or where it came from.

There may be some argument about which company actually pioneered feature inference modeling, however all the players I’ve talked to agree that they have Siemens PLM to thank for legitimizing the technology, by its announcement and promotion of Synchronous Technology (which incorporates feature inference modeling, combined with 3D constraint management.)

Feature inference modeling is a really big thing. No kidding. For 25 years, I’ve watched mainstream CAD tools get increasingly more complicated and insular. This is the first technology I’ve seen that really changes the game.

I've been in the CAD business for about 25 years now. Most people who know me think I'm pretty smart. I have a confession to make: CAD makes me feel dumb.

My feelings of inadequacy started a very long time ago. AutoCAD version 1.4 was the last CAD program I can honestly say that I mastered completely – and only because the program did so little to start with. Over time, I've worked on a whole lot of CAD programs. I'm guessing maybe 50 or so. Though I've been able to use many of them sufficiently for my purposes, I've never really mastered any of them.

I remember in the late '80s, watching a customer of mine, Brett Graffin, moving so quickly with AutoCAD that I couldn't even follow the commands he was using. (To be fair, Brett was a two time national champion in the VICA drafting competition.) In '96, I remember Rick Chin doing the same thing with SolidWorks. In both cases, I felt like a beginning guitarist going to see Jimi Hendrix play for the first time. For a few moments, I felt like I ought to give up, and walk away. (For what it's worth, I've heard stories to the effect that guitarists such as Pete Townshend and Eric Clapton felt the same way when they first saw Hendrix play.)

Ultimately, I recognise that I'm not all that dumb. There are other people who are in the same situation that I am. One in particular comes to mind: A mentor of mine named Bob Attarian.

Bob is an engineer's engineer. He's had quite a career, ranging from working on the SR-71 Blackbird, to the Corona spy satellites. He even studies theoretical physics in his spare time (though he has yet to solve the grand unification problem.) Yet, when he uses CAD software, he finds himself more frustrated than satisfied.

The closest thing I've heard to an explanation of the problem with CAD was something Bob said to me at least 10 years ago: "you've gotta be too smart to use this stuff."

So, what do you think?