Issue #1,098 | Inside the Business of CAD | 31 May 2021
Research firm CIMdata says their definition of PLM is “much broader than how most organizations see it” as it covers cradle-to-grave processes involved in making products. From this point of view, “PLM” includes the software we are primarily interested in, CAD.
Peter Bilello, ceo of Cimdata, reported on the results of a survey his firm made in the first part of 2021. It had 151 respondents. Most were OEMs or tier-1 firms in auto/transportation, aerospace/defense and medical devices. Here are my notes from his presentation. You can view the presentation in full at register.gotowebinar.com/recording/7167860752449997581 (following registration).
- - -
A year ago, PLM sales slowed due to coronavirus, but then more than made up for it in the rest of 2020 as companies looked to solutions for work-from-home and for increasing efficiency.
Firms use PLM to make products faster, better, and cheaper. Respondents to the survey have been working with PLM for more than a decade, some for more than 20 years. One-third spend under $500 thousand in their annual PLM budget; ten percent spend more than $20 million (see figure below).
Most firms use PLM in areas traditional to PLM like engineering change management, pre-release data management, configurations, and global collaboration. Perhaps more interesting are the areas thought natural for PLM but where use is nearly non-existent:
-
Recycling and disposal
-
AI and machine learning
-
Social media
About 60% of respondents use the PDM [product data management] part of PLM. Engineering middle management and end users find PLM most valuable. About 60% of respondents’ firms use two or more PLM solutions, usually due to acquisitions, or due to one department in a company picking an industry-specific PLM system.
The reality is that most companies are inefficient and have learned to live with it. So, what problems affect the use of PLM? The primary one is the overlap between PLM, ERP [engineering resource planning], and MES [manufacturing execution system] functions. Then there are culture and practice differences across business units, and conflicts in priorities over multiple digital initiatives. And there still is the problem in understanding the payback from implementing PLM.
These problems are caused primarily by a lack of executive sponsorship. Other times, problems are created by priorities that are driven by PLM providers, or the lack of user involvement/training. Only 20% of corporate management says it could not live without PLM; the other 80% think it is too expensive, that it is just for engineering, or that just don’t know what it is.
There are so many trends bombarding manufacturers these days, such as IoT, digital twins with digital threads, big data, AR/VR, social media, and more (see figure below). Mr Bilello says that properly implemented PLM can help enable these.
Q&A
Q: By “social,” do you mean using PLM for social media functions, like chats?
A: Yes, as a form of looser collaboration, for capturing data inside and outside the firm, and so on.
Q: What is the current status of IoT?
A: The Internet of Things continues to grow. There still is a need to connect devices, to close the loop between the factory and the design.
Q: What are three biggest challenges experienced by PLM customers?
A: They are:
-
Organizational resistance — people are used to doing things a certain way, but that’s because they had no choice, as that was the only way to do things at one time in the past.
-
Resource unavailability — not having resources, like education and training, to make the changes required by PLM.
-
Sustainability of the PLM environment — the difficulty of getting out of old systems, where a lot effort was needed to implement them, and so not moving to a sustainable system long-term.
Q: Any surprises in this year’s survey?
A: Nothing was surprising, once the initial slowdown ended in mid-2020. I was surprised that people are now less likely to say that PLM has run its course.
== 3D CAD & DCC Conversion for MAXON's Cinema-4D Animation System ==
Okino (Toronto) and MAXON (Germany) celebrate 20 years of supporting MCAD data visualization through Okino's PolyTrans-for-Cinema-4D conversion software.
MAXON's Cinema-4D is one of the world's most used and respected animation systems for MCAD data visualization. Okino's PolyTrans software transforms ultra-massive 3D datasets into highly-refined models for fast, efficient, and optimized animation creation. All conversions are 'Load & Go,' with no model rebuilding necessary.
Popular CAD data sources include SolidWorks, ProE/Creo, Inventor, AutoCAD, Revit, Navisworks, DGN, IGES, STEP, Parasolid, and JT. DCC data sources are Cinema-4D, 3ds Max, Maya, FBX/Collada, and many more.
Perfected over three decades, we know 3D data translation intimately, providing you with highly personalized solutions, education, and communication. Contact CTO Robert Lansdale at lansd@okino.com.
Letters to the Editor
RE: Dassault’s Disconnect with Solidworks Users
To be accurate, Solidworks 2021 was released October 5, 2020 and is certainly not currently in beta. New releases have traditionally occurred, once a year, around that time for several years now. The beta test for the 2022 version will probably start in the next month or so.
You wrote, “It needs, however, to be shut down. Solidworks, like Inventor and AutoCAD, is reaching the limits of its capabilities. So much more could be possible were it cloudified.”
Since this is in the “what you think” section, it sounds like this is your opinion, but I expect that is what Dassault executives want. Most customers are happy with the functionality they have now, so the real problem for Dassault is that they are having trouble coming up with enhancements that justify to perpetual-license customers the cost of paying for upgrades. They need to get them on a term-license model to ensure a continued revenue stream.
Unlike your characterization that Solidworks is sold to one- and two-man shops, there are many large companies with Solidworks installations of dozens to hundreds of licenses building assemblies with tens of thousands of components. Almost none of them are begging for a cloudified solution where they have no control of the process. Especially when the cloud solutions are so inferior to what they have now with SolidWorks.
Gian Paolo Bassi stated recently “3dexperience Solidworks can do everything you do with Solidworks desktop plus more,” but he conveniently ignores huge holes missing in functions. Lack of 2D drawings output is one pointed out most often, but there are many more if you look at detailed functions, rather than just checkboxes like “Sheet metal” and “Weldments.”
- Name withheld by request
The editor replies: If Autodesk, PTC, and Dassault truly think that the cloudCAD is the future (actually, the present, by now), then they ought to get rid of all their desktop software. With the experience that comes from time, the drawbacks to cloudCAD have become clear, and so desktop CAD remains.
Thank you for correcting the version number of Solidworks.
As for the size of typical Solidworks customer workplace, I should have written “SME” (small and medium-size enterprises). I have made the corrections to the archive copy.
- - -
Access to 3dexperience is acquired by purchasing licenses to “roles” that generally define what capabilities or apps a user needs. XDesign is still around as an app in one of the roles.
DraftSight is still available as a desktop program and was not rebranded. 3dexperience DraftSight is a cloud version using Kudo technology.
- Mike DeKoning
- - -
You wrote that staff at Ikea “use Solidworks Composer to drag parts away from one another [and then] monochrome vector drawings are made from the disassembled model for use in the assembly brochures.”
To me, this is one of the baffling things about Solidworks. I do that exact process routinely, but I do it in Solidworks. We do parts manuals, assembly instructions, and graphics for all kinds of brochures, Web sites, and so on.
They keep trying to sell me Composer, but they can never quite explain why I need it. I really hesitate to even discuss it with my reseller, because I’m afraid that if enough people say it, it will get back to Dassault, and they will figure out a way to kill the feature in Solidworks to force us to buy Composer.
Composer, by the way, costs about the same as Solidworks Professional.
- Jess Davis, president
Davis Precision Design
The editor replies: Yikes! (to the price).
- - -
In your article about Solidworks you said, “So much more could be possible were it cloudified.”
You got me laughing considering your historic articles when you were so negative about CAD + cloud. Back then, you got called out by your press peers that you were underestimating the cloud, and you continued to throw shade on those companies that worked to innovate towards the cloud. Now today you are throwing shade on companies that don’t use the cloud.
- Brian
The editor replies: You may have misunderstood where I was going with this thought. More is possible with the cloud (like collaboration), true, but more is not what Solidworks users want — or, indeed, most CAD users.
I continue to stand with sensible CAD vendors like Siemens and Bricsys who find that CAD works best on the desktop.
Notable Quotable
"Does a press release use ‘could’ a lot? Replace ‘could’ with the equivalent ‘might or might not,’ and it reads very differently.”
- Rupert Goodwins
Thank You, Readers
Thank you to readers who donate to the operation of upFront.eZine:
-
Archway Systems
-
Tapio Karras of Design Power (small company donation)
To support upFront.eZine through PayPal.me, I suggest the following amounts:
-
$25 for individuals > paypal.me/upfrontezine/25
-
$150 for small companies > paypal.me/upfrontezine/150
-
$750 for large companies > paypal.me/upfrontezine/750
Should Paypal.me not operate in your country, then please use www.paypal.com and use the account of grabowski@telus.net.
Or mail a cheque (US$ or CDN$ only, please) to upFront.eZine Publishing, Ltd., 34486 Donlyn Avenue, Abbotsford BC, V2S 4W7, Canada.
Recent Comments