Here is my report on two days of meetings with Spatial/PlanetCAD in Boulder CO, October 5-6, 2000.
Update 1 (March 2001):
Update 2 (Summer and Fall 2001):
Update 3 (Spring 2002):
When we arrived on the rainy October 5, I had the following question
in mind: "Why would a company sell off its steady revenue
stream [ACIS], and embark upon a risky Web venture [PlanetCAD.Com]?"
The answer, I found, is that all is not well in ACISland -- exuberant
press releases not withstanding. The revenues from ACIS licenses
aren't enough to keep up the pace of development required. Spatial
candidly admitted that they could not afford to compete against
ParaSolid, which has a sugar daddy (Unigraphic Solutions) to keep
it going, even to the point of giving away free licenses. Indeed,
Spatial allowed that they had not been signing any new licensees
because of the competition.
As for the bidding war between Dassault and SDRC, Spatial really
wants to sell itself to Dassault (not SDRC, sorry guys) to get
first-hand access to Catia's file formats -- the biggest CAD system
in the world. Still, this is not a happy time; as one employee
put it, it feels like they are "selling the grandparents."
If the sale is approved by shareholders in early November, the
company will be split in two, and the split will be physical.
The PlanetCAD portion is moving at the end of this week to an
office across the street -- a nicer office, they told us -- while
the ACIS (or "component software," as they prefer to
call it) team stays in the existing two-story office.
Michael Hanson, vp of site production, was asked to give
us the Big Picture. Here are some of the notes I took on my portable
keyboard-equipped Palm III: There are a total of seven agreements
between Spatial/Dassault and PlanetCAD handling the ownership
of technology, royalties, etc. Among them, PlanetCAD and Spatial
will co-own the healing husk technology. PlanetCAD gets a free
source code license to ACIS, which would normally cost $250,000
and up.
So if it's not just a Web site, what is PlanetCAD? Mr Hanson explained
that "PlanetCAD wants to supply Web infrastructure tools
to automate engineering data exchange." Martyn and I rolled
our eyes at the jargon, and then asked what that meant. In short,
PlanetCAD now has six applications it can offer: Bits2parts, DesignQA,
Quote-a-Part, Connect, 3DPublish, and 3Dshare (more details on
these next week). The company plans to add more applications in
the future, mostly 3D in nature. Missing yet is management of
change orders; PDM (product data management) will be via partnering
with PDM vendors.
Using the roughly US$25 million they get from selling ACIS, PlantCAD
will purchase technology, if necessary. For example, earlier this
year they purchased Prescient to get access to its excellent customer
base in the automotive and aerospace industries. And how long
will that $25 million last? asked Martyn. About 2.5 years, with
the aim for profitability in 12 to 18 months.
PlanetCAD.Com, the Web site, is meant for smaller companies and
as a marketing tool ("give our software a tryout").
The real money, Mr Hanson believes, is providing server-based
software behind the firewall to large corporations worried about
the security of their data. As if to drive home the point, when
I went to http://www.planetcad.com this evening, I got a "The
URL you are searching for is either invalid or there is an error
with the server" message.
PlanetCAD sees RedSpark and Alventive as some of its competitors.
And yet, it plans to work with them via "coopetition."
ASP hosting -- like Buzsaw -- is required because a license for
for off-the-shelf ASP software -- with prices like $250,000 --
is currently too expensive to offer behind a corporate firewall.
(In time, prices may come down.) PlanetCAD, for this reason, spent
US$2 million to develop their own behind-the-firewall Web software
100% in-house, specific to the engineering market and strong enough
to handle 60MB Catia files.
The name "PlanetCAD" may be changed -- after we berated
the staff over the name. Martin didn't at all like the name, while
I thought it sounded too much like a comic book superhero: Captain
Planet CAD! Changing the name is problematic, however, since they've
already made up all sorts of marketing stuff, like PlanetCAD-branded
T-shirts, fleece jackets, and Frisbees. It hasn't helped that
Spatial has been changing the brand names of some of its products,
leading to further confusion.
The software allows an engineering department get a benchmark
for their solid modeling efforts. They check things like layers,
minimum radii, self-intersecting surfaces, and has some ability
to do automatic repairs. If, however, the standards are set up
incorrectly, it can lead to false error messages.
The software works inside of Unigraphics, Catia, and Pro/E; the
next version will support AutoCAD. A Web version being developed.
It does not, ironically, read SAT files (output by ACIS). It will
be licensed on a monthly subscription at US$7,000 per 100 users.
Mr Feitz said that most files are translated and healed automatically
by their software; other files need hand tweaking; and about 12-15%
of files cannot be fixed, or have at least one failed surface.
Typical price is US$75 to US$100 for a typical 3-4MB model, which
is cheaper than healing by hand. Typical turnaround time is about
four hours.
I asked about legal liability of 3DShare making changes to a customer's
design. When you submit your model to 3Dshare, you have to agree
to waive liability of PlanetCAD.
Spatial's goal is that ACIS will eventually displace Parasoloid
in SolidWorks. There would be some saving in not paying royalties
to UGS. Martyn Day asked whether Autodesk might have been the
logical purchaser of ACIS, since they are the largest licencee
of ACIS. The response was that Dassault actually has experience,
since they already own several modelers. I suppose it could have
been possible for UGS to
As for the next release of ACIS,120 v6.3 will no longer (1) leak
memory; (2) crash your app; and (3) and cause regression (things
that work, but no longer works). Immediate concern is to create
the highest-quality modeler, since ACIS already has many features.
