Deelip on Mr. Ray’s comment on a Catia-SW translator
Deelip drops the hammer on the non-existence of a Catia translator for SolidWorks. Deelip Menezes is a developer of 3rd party add-ons for several CAD packages, SolidWorks among them. When you work with the inner workings of the software, you become familiar with the tools that make it all happen. SolidWorks is the only CAD company not invited to the Catia party. You tell me, do users have the right to be “fed up” about this? Is Ray also fed up, or is he enabling Dassault in this perpetration?
Deelip’s comments were sparked by Ralph Grabowski’s interview with Jeff Ray:
“Customers are fed up with not being able to share data between Catia and SolidWorks.” At some point, a translator will be delivered.
Of course the implication here is that SolidWorks can’t read Catia files to avoid SolidWorks cannibalizing Catia sales. SolidWorks has always had difficulty reading Catia files, and things didn’t improve a decade ago when Dassault bought SolidWorks. Users have always accused Dassault and SolidWorks management of collusion in the attempt to extort more money from customers by artificially withholding the translators, even though the translators exist and are licensed to competitors. The last time I got riled about this was last December, noting that Inventor could read Catia and SolidWorks couldn’t. SolidWorks has more compatibility with NX, Pro/E and Inventor than it has with Catia. This is of course a business decision, not a technical decision, ratcheting customers toward Catia rather than toward SolidWorks. Just like the version incompatibility ratchet.
Am I wrong or does this show immense disrespect for SolidWorks customers by both Dassault and SolidWorks Management? Or is Jeff Ray just trying to dance a political tight rope by expressing real customer frustration while lighting a small fire under Dassault?
Why is er not an open cad standard?
The cad programs are there so engineers can build machinery and products. It isn’t there to say how he should save his design.
Cad programs are doing stuff they shouldn’t like Microsoft closed there doc format. Now that went well… And all those bullshit about rights and costs, there all bullshit if they would put the customer on first place and where not so afraid of losing them, they would have used an opencad format long time ago.
Why isn’t there one cad vendor that had the balls to make his cad files in an openformat?
)
They could say:
Hey look, our program is so good we are not afraid that you would even start using it on another cad program, but if you need too you always can.
But now there saying, please buy our software and you get addicted to us because even if you don’t like it you still can’t quit us. (CAD-Dealers are in that way a bit the same as drugs dealers
IMO Dassault have strangely confused and misplaced concepts of their whole CAD purpose and the relationship with SW evidenced in their recent rather misguided pursuits:
* 3dvia format + MS rivalling Google + Sketchup – a wantabe non starter with the charisma of a brown Zune. You might ask questions about Collada/Robotics Studio tie ups in SW as well…
* trying to sell mega$ Composer to SW users – a self evident non starter.
* the avatar studio stuff – yet another wantabe non starter and embarassingly bad.
* denying a Catia translator only to SW users – a never starter at any point if it can be possibly be helped, as absurd and ridiculous as it is to all observers.
* I suspect also they strategically cap the geometry/feature capability or delay it so its only just enough of a starter not to be a lesser Catia. Conics anyone?
Really I dont think the decisions, influence or hand-me-downs/shares they bring to SW are sensible or compatible with the healthy development of a comprehensive and integrated mid range solution. The competition will love that to their advantage.
Ideally from the SW users view point Dassault should never have bought into SW and it would still be going places instead of trying to look busy and virile but attracting derision for Claytons UI makeovers and the whole joke marketing culture that is the zombie blogger and twitter regime.
As far as Jeff Ray goes well I think he is another one of those strangely misplaced concepts introduced by Dassault. No offence to him personally but I think he is the wrong guy for CEO, or at least he best fits the Dassault job description but its one that doesnt fit the need. They/we need a technical person not a caretaker with song and dance skills.
Ultimately I see the difficulties evident as being rooted in a mismatch.
Whereas SW lost their focus and direction a few years ago under the previous CEO and quality decayed to an all time low, Dassault has failed to provide direction that isnt compromised by their own self interest and delusions, and also failed to impose a necessary discipline.
Today we have a pretty ‘product’ going nowhere slowly and employees who are supremely confident in their own ability to know better than anyone else regardless.
So there you go some thoughts…
Marijn: “Why isn’t there one cad vendor that had the balls to make his cad files in an openformat?”
McNeel (www.rhino3d.com) started out by opening up their 3DM format. Not surprisingly, their mission statement reads: “To enrich its clients, employees, suppliers, community, and stockholders – in that order.”
@Marijn
CAD companies act like really nasty adolescent girls when they catfight with one another over file formats. Take Autodesk and . CAD users are the clueless boyfriends that generally couldn’t care less what they are arguing about, and don’t even defend themselves when their interests are forgotten. We keep buying software to support stupid lawsuits.
As I understand it, the STEP format was supposed to be a standardized translation to deliver a lot of intelligence along with the model, but the vendors couldn’t get past their petty format wars trying to lock customers in to a particular product. Evan Yares is one of the industry wonks who has beat the interoperability drum. No big vendor will play nice in this area, there is too much money to be made in keeping customer’s data hostage. As long as the big CAD companies keep getting bigger and they keep inventing mantras like PLM to justify their existence, this situation will not improve.
I second what Deelip says. If you want a CAD company with a cool attitude centered on technical competence, check out Rhino. They have a free version that allows 25 saves regardless of time, an open format, and software that believes that users can actually use advanced tools. They focus on what they are good at and leave the other crap alone. They are not focused on being the biggest, just delivering great direct nurbs surface modeling tools.
SolidWorks started out that kind of attitude, but things change as a company grows beyond a certain point.
Astonishing. Thanks, Deelip (great article/post, by the way!) and Matt!
Hey, SolidWorks. Maybe hire some more marketers and such. Perhaps add a VP of customer service. Gonna need a bit more damage control or spin or something coming up soon. Any word on that more flexible set of options for subscription? That might help. Or don’t—that seems to be working well for you.
Matt thats an excuse for bad leadership IMO – what is actually needed is a right minded person of no compromise to reassert those worthy values and purpose again.
When crap becomes the norm it is because good men (and women) do nothing or it is so long since virtue was last practised it isnt recognised by anyone any more.
SW really needs a CEO with different attributes from the present one and also less constructive interference from Dassault.
Could it be that the good people within the inner circle of SWX are doing nothing for the fear of retribution or losing their jobs? They say silence is golden but I say, sometimes silence is just plain yellow!
Sometimes business is primarily about the craft and sometimes it is primarily about the money. When the vision driving a product switches from one to the other, people frequently feel let down. The two sets of priorities are very different.
I believe that when a company stops using the same values an individual would use to make decisions, that kind of change rarely leads to good things.
Maybe the next episode of 3Dudes Gone 3D could have them try importing a Catia model.
We popped over 80k for a seat of Delmia. One of the reasons we chose SW was it’s supposed ability to work with it. But Delmia doesn’t work with 2009, only 08, and the latest edition they are working on wont support it, either. We had to buy seats of Inventor to talk to it. The SW disconnect is across the entire Dassault lineup.
@Deelip Menezes
And Alibre uses the Alibre step format. It’s basically the neutral step format with the unique Alibre wrapper in order to maintain features. Not quite open, but definitely a step in that direction.
@neil
Taking the files hostage is a nice way of saying it! I btw followed the dwg discussion with autodesk scratching my head a lot and thinking don’t they have anything usefull to do?
@Scott Wertel
A unique Alibre wrapper? If it is opensourced other cad programs could adapt to it.
Alibre’s “wrapper” is akin to Autodesk’s “proxy objects”. Unless you have the application used to “unwrap” the wrapper, the data is not accesible.
In my 12+ years working with SW, I’ve only run into a few situations where Catia interoperability was needed. Don’t get me wrong, I’d love to have Catia interoperability.
Is really a big issue, or just an opportunity to blast Dassault/Jeff Ray?
As noted on my site, I’m so cynical that I’ve grown cynical of the cynicism. Corporations just aren’t organized well, and that’s pretty much it in my mind.
I can understand fcsupers cynicism. I visited his site. He showed an example part, that he then did a delete face, followed by a fill surface to patch a hole. The fill surface was typical solidworks weird wavy shape. He then openened and saved the part in SW2010. The fill surface changed shape!
Wow! Solidworks not only produces surface fills is some irrational manner, if the model is updated to the new version of Solidworks the surface fill changes shape. The shape still sucks but it sucks faster.
This is terrible for any model that uses surfacing. We must now use the classic matching version of solidworks or our shapes may change. It is also an opportunity for Solidworks to fix lofts to make much more stable and useful shapes rather than the usual twisted disaster that does not even follow the shape of profiles.
Rick,
I’m not sure where you are getting the connection between this topic and that, but anyway, my example is from a feature recreation, not the feature changing just by bring it into 2010. I think it is clear in my posting, just thought I’d correct any misunderstanding.
Some great posts here. I don’t need to add anything accept… AMEN!
The more i use NX the more it impresses me. Sure its only code, it’ll have its flaws. But damn… it is a PROFESSIONAL tool not trying to turn Soccer Mum’s into ‘Designers’ by letting them make pretty pictures to impress the ignorant! Yes its high end and SW is mid. But that doesnt mean squat! They are both meant to be professional tools and SW should hold itself that way!
The last thing we need is different versions of a standard. Its an oxymoron. This is precisely the way the IGES file format was abused by CAD vendors. I recently counted 60 odd types of IGES files. No wonder people cannot exchange data confidently with IGES anymore.
At least import my lowly SolidWorks files to Catia. I can understand a penalty for me using low budget SolidWorks but to make high dollar Catia user feel pain when they import a dumb solid into their systems seems wrong. If memory serves me correct before Synchronous Technology, NX could import a Solid Edge model with full parametric intelligence however the reverse was not true.
For clarification on a few points discussed here, NX and Solid Edge can import Catia V4 models and Catia V5 parts and assemblies. The interoperability between Solid Edge and NX is that you can insert the solid or surface model from one system into the other, if the model is changed in the source system this can be updated in the receiving system with full associative update of any follwing operation carried out on the model.
On the topic of collaboration in a multi-CAD environment we recommend using JT which is an open format used by many organizations. See http://www.jtopen.com
Just discovered this application:
http://www.mintronics.co.uk/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=48:news-item&catid=37:alibre-news&Itemid=78
Probably cheaper in the USA as well…
I work at a company which employs several thousand, with 1,500 seats of CATIA. We like CATIA, however it is way overkill for a lot of what we have to do (not to mention expensive), so we also have seats of AutoCAD and SolidWorks. We like SolidWorks and more stuff is being done with it.
Recently we made a decision to upgrade our main CAD platform. The choices eventually boiled down to only 2 platforms; CATIA or NX-6. We chose NX. Even though the transition from CATIA to NX will be painful, in the end it is a better platform for us overall for many reasons, INCLUDING the inability to exchange CATIA and SolidWorks data. No such artificial roadblock exists with NX. So guess what. At least with us, the Dassault corporate strategy of “No SolidWorks/CATIA Translator” backfired. For many years to come, 1,500 seats of (used to be catia) NX will happily work along, freely exchanging data back and forth with SolidWorks and AutoCAD. Life is good.
Hi
I wonder why everyone wants to get the CATIA-SW reader, what for actually, i just dont get it?!
All Features cannot be mantained when changing the platform thats obvious even if/when the translator will be available. Exchanging files w/o history=the same as exchanging in step iges etc.
Exchange data in STEP or IGES or whateven neutral.
I ve been working for 7 years now with SW and when ProE-SW converter came we were excited but hey, i just opened one PRoE part and what happened? I got around 1/3 of fetaures, other features were not recognized. Thus i was getting not only part with not complete history also geometry was not complete because not all fetaures were build?
Jesus, I quit doing that instantly and though i do this on daily basis I never did it again and never will.
Well, when you see a Catia translation through IGES, I think you’d understand. The problem is that you can’t make Catia users fix their settings before they send you the file. Catia allows really wide tolerances, presumably to help them work with huge models. When they send you an IGES file with wide open tolerances, you get a sticky pile of goat crap because nothing will knit correctly. Making software that will give you what is needed is far easier than applying a 2×4 to the side of a Catia user’s cranium for sending you junk. Most people recommend STEP for Catia, but only because apparently Catia can’t output Parasolid. If Catia did Parasolid (and you could pry the users finger off the IGES button), the problem would also be solved. I don’t think people are primarily talking about getting features from Catia, I think they would settle for geometry that knits solid.