Articles tagged with Enovia

Carestream Health, a medical and dental imaging, molecular imaging and non-destructive testing product specialist, has selected Aras Innovator suite to replace an “outdated and highly customized implementation of Dassault’s Enovia MatrixOne and a collection of third party and internal legacy systems.” Aras, if you’re unfamiliar with the name, is one of the first vendors to base their business on an open source model in the PLM field.

The new system will provide Carestream Health with “advanced PLM functionality and a modern Microsoft-based platform for global product development and supply chain integration for improved collaboration.” According to the details due tomorrow, Carestream will be implementing Aras’s tools in a phased approach as it’s rolled out to support 3,000 global users and supporting suppliers spread across in the US, Canada, China, Israel and France. The press release which we got an early copy of, has two intriguing quotes from Carestream executives.

“We wanted a single enterprise PLM backbone for engineering, quality and regulatory compliance, tightly integrated with SAP,” said David Sherburne, Leader of Global R&D Effectiveness and champion for this initiative at Carestream Health. “Our legacy platform was built a long time ago and we knew we didn’t have the functionality required for the future; it was time to carefully look at our options. We required a rapidly deployable solution coupled with a sustainable cost model. When compared to other PLM suppliers, Aras offered a solution unique to the industry.”

“We’re a progressive company and we want to work with other forward-thinking companies who can help us eliminate organizational silos and increase collaborative development to achieve a competitive advantage in the marketplace,” said Bruce Leidal, CIO at Carestream Health.  “In switching to Aras we now have a highly capable, global PLM platform that will allow us to consolidate other systems at will, increasing reuse and improving collaboration without continual capital investment in PLM licenses.”

There’s an undercurrent here of a major medical device manufacturer looking at its current PLM system and staring into the distance and the future of its business and seeing that a highly proprietary PLM system that locks it’s user in isn’t in that crystal ball. I’m due to meet the guys from Aras at COFES in April and I’m going to dig into what Aras have to offer and to find out exactly what they mean by Open Source and how it differs from what else is out there on the market.

Right. This is late. Very late. My apologies. The reason for my tardiness is that I’ve been gallivanting about the place the last week or so, but more that that, I’ve been mulling this over for the past two weeks since I left California, adding bits and bobs here and there, wondering how much to speculate (note: much of this is speculation), but I think I’ve got a good handle of what went down in California. I’ve been going to SolidWorks World for the last 11 years apparently. It said so on my badge. I think I missed one in Boston but that was about it. So I’ve been there for all the major announcements, the major shifts, seen the staff change and evolve over the years. But 2010 saw the most dramatic shift for the company in nearly a decade.

SolidWorks have always avoided showing technology too far into the future. That’s always been a good move. When you have 5,000+ people who’s business is based on a core technology, the last thing you want to do is build expectations of things that are a little too far over the horizon. The same is true of users as it is of resellers (SolidWorks World is a bifurcated event, running a reseller conference and user conference in parallel - hence the big attendee numbers).

Bernard comes to play

For 2010, this changed and on the first day of the event, the company took a bold move on two fronts. The first front came when SolidWorks’ CEO, Jeff Ray, after a brief chat with the crowd, moved aside to introduce someone that should have been at the event years ago. Dassault Systems CEO, Bernard Charles. Yup. The mothership landed in Anaheim. For me, this was fundamental shift in how SolidWorks is presenting itself to its community. Since Dassault acquired SolidWorks over a decade ago, there has been a separation of the two organisations. Dassault does its thing with Catia, with Enovia and Delmia (for factory automation and simulation), while SolidWorks does it’s mainstream thing. The two has an incredibly successful relationship based on separation. things started to merge when Dassault acquired Seemage, reinvented the product and integrated it into its 3dvia business line and the SolidWorks channel brought 3dvia Composer to its customers. This was the first public sign that the Dassault and SolidWorks relationship was anything more than a financial one - but it’s clear that this was the starting point.

Bernard talked to the assembled crowd and while I only heard the occasional “Who the **** is this French guy?” it was deemed a success (apparently, some American’s don’t like French people - usually the ones that couldn’t point to France on a map, I’ve found). He discussed the various business groups, how they interacted and what differentiated SolidWorks from Catia. For those used to seeing Bernard present in the context of a Dassault event, the slide stack shown was dramatically reduced. The content was also simplified. As I sat at the back of the auditorium I was trying to work out why - and it quickly became very clear indeed. And this is the second fundamental shift shown at the event.

Following Bernard and over the next few days, SolidWorks showed what they’re working on. Apparently, it’s a three year project that’s been conducted in extreme secrecy. I’ve spoken to someone old friends that now work in development and apparently, this is the team to work on. The guys building out the company’s future products. But what was shown? Let’s deal with that.

The future?

The demonstration was a mix of video and live demo. there were mentions of everything that’s hot at the moment, from Multi-Touch (Josh has some tasty treats on that front), from OS independence (Yup. there was a Mac being used on stage) and that rather hateful phrase “the cloud”. There were demonstrations involving direct modelling mixed up with more traditional modelling methodologies, direct interaction with geometry, live search and reuse for data both within your organisation and out on the web, there was a whole load of things that looked incredible - as you would expect.

But at it’s core, what was shown was that SolidWorks are building their next generation of product using the V6 platform on which Catia, Enovia et al are being built. So what does that mean? Let’s look at it.

The next generation of SolidWorks will use the same underlying base of technology as Dassault’s V6 products. Taking that further, that means the same underlying product design technology as Catia, but alongside this, it means that it’ll also be built on the Enovia platform.

Now. The reactionaries will read this and think “Christ, they’re dumping Parasolid”. Probably. Yes as a core modelling engine. But Parasolid within SolidWorks won’t disappear purely for the sake of being able to read legacy data. But it’s a lot more simply switching kernel and it’s something to embrace and take some time to understand the immense potential for users.

Dassault’s V6 platform is possibly the first time that the data management backbone for a product development system has been so tightly integrated with the authoring tools - not just 3D and 2D design tools, but everything, mechatronics, digital factory, simulation.

At present, there’s a disconnect between the two disciplines across the board. Whether you talk to Dassault about V5, whether it’s SolidWorks and EPDM, whether it’s Siemens and Teamcenter. The 3D tool creates the data, the data system manages those packets of data. Ever linked, but ever separate entities.

Enovia V6 (although having been around for sometime as MatrixOne) is becoming a new wave of tool where that distinction is fundamentally removed. Within V6 everything is managed to a highly granular level. We’re not talking revisions of parts and assemblies, we’re talking live updated and tracking of data to feature and sub-feature level on a massive scale - both in terms ability to handle huge datasets (which are inherent in the granularity), but also in terms of people creating, editing and accessing that data (this was one of the key reasons for the MatrixOne acquisition). Granularity is something I’m going to talk about in coming weeks.. But for now, it’s this granular platform and the way that it interacts is what enable much of what both Dassault are showing with Catia V6 and this past week with the next generation of SolidWorks.

Geometry engine

Alongside this, looking at the demonstrations of the core modelling tools, it’s clear that the SolidWorks R & D team are using the Catia V6 geometry modelling kernel (though I’m not entirely sure it’s a thing that even exists - it’s all mixed together at a very base level). The tools demonstrated for geometry creation and modification, for data search and reuse, match the same shown in V6 demonstrations in terms of capability and focus. What differentiates the two is down to one thing: user experience.

And for me, this is key.

What I believe SolidWorks showed was the next generation of the product and the future for all Dassault products whether that’s Catia, whether that’s SolidWorks. Everything is built on the same core platform, a very powerful platform and one that has huge resources behind it. In the future, what will differentiate the two business groups will be the focus of the business and the user experience.

• The Catia product line will always focus on the strategic user where business process is hand in hand with complexity (relating to product, of teams, of supply chain, etc etc).
• SolidWorks will always continue to focus on the mainstream community, where cost vs functionality reigns supreme.

The user experience will differ between the two. There are different requirements, different tools and capabilities, some of which are unique to each set of users. But for me, the key is that there’s the potential to use technologies from both groups to the benefit of the other. They won’t look or work the same, but they’re converging onto a common technology stack - another key fundamental.

Mixing the tech stack

Take an example discussed this week. Terafugia (we talked about it recently on the blog). These guys are developing a hybrid car/plane (it’s a car AND a plane, not mixing fuel types). The core product, the mechanical design was done with SolidWorks, but when it came time to develop the carbon fibre skins, this was conducted using Catia’s highly specialised tools.

For me, that’s one of the huge reasons that SolidWorks users should be enthused about this shift. Being able to access all of the technologies that exist within the Dassault product range (there’s 190 orso different modules in Catia alone) - whether they’re allowed to remains to be seen, but the potential to make it easy is implement is there.

The Cloud…

I’m trying to avoid the puns. I’m sure there are umpteen of them out there already but in this very instance, the ‘cloud-based’ tools that SolidWorks demonstrated - both in the futures demo and in more immediate tools, ‘the cloud’ was referenced almost to ad naseum. I also believe the definition is something that should be avoided - as should rather hackened analogies with Google Apps.

In this space, “The Cloud” refers to a technology running on a web-server. That’s all. The V6 platform is a server-based architecture.  Your data is stored and served from that server. Whether you’re interacting it with it in a browser-based tool, whether it’s with a thicker client installed on your local workstation (something that might be key for mobile workers or those without higher-bandwidth), or whether you’re doing it through an mobile device. The data is centralised and managed.

The first thing that most people discussed when I asked them about the cloud-based tools shown was “Does that mean I don’t own my own data?” and many seemed uncomfortable with it. No. It doesn’t. Whether you opt for the hosted service (using Amazon’s services for example), whether it’s installed in a privately maintained server from the vendor (Dassault are gearing up for this already) or whether it’s all behind your firewall - it doesn’t really matter. Your organisation will have options. think of it more of “A Cloud”, rather than “The Cloud.” When you do, it becomes far less intimidating.

Pricing?

One interesting thing that was brought up at the event was that the potential to save money is there when you move to a cloud-based, browser-driven environment. Everything is stored on the server. If your client crashes, it’s just the client that goes pop. Not the data. That is a huge time saver and time means money. Another thing to consider is that if these tools are browser data where you’re essentially interacting with data live, your reliance on workstation technology is lessened.

There’s also huge potential for things like simulation and rendering - compute heavy tasks. If you’re working on a server-farm with 100s of core available, you can generate those types of assets immediately and as you need them. Rendering was demonstrated with Luxology’s Nexus engine (the same one powering PhotoView 360) creating photo real images in realtime, on demand. Again, time is money.

Will the tools get cheaper? I very much doubt it. I’d imagine you’ll see a service-based charging structure become the norm. You want to use them? log-in. Buy a license. Away you go. Want your simulation tasks run over 10, 20, 50, 100 cores? You pay for the speed in which you get your results, not the tools you use to create them. Get a job where you require carbon fibre design tools that aren’t in SolidWorks? Log-in, buy the license for the Catia tools and use them. When you don’t need them, switch them off and stop paying for them. What happens if you’ve got your data locked into one vendor’s service, in their own format, in a remote location and you switch it off - this is an interesting thing, but there’s no clear guidance there. I’d imagine read only access would be the default. Otherwise it’s simply not going to fly for users.

Route to market?

But what about the channel? The group of resellers that have built SolidWorks to the point it’s at today? With this new approach, many have asked what their place will be in the grand scheme of things. For me, it’s obvious. They’ll be going nowhere. Yes, business operations have changed, but a product like SolidWorks needs to be sold to people and supported. For me, a cloud-based approach will mean even more engagement with both existing customers and new alike. The technology changes afoot will mean that now, more than ever, having some local to talk to, a group of people to support your workhorse tools, will be more relevant than ever before. Yes, the delivery mechanism might change, but the need to interact both during investment, implementation and use will be more critical than ever. Some people have rather loudly been questioning the Value-Add part of the VAR acronym, but with everything that’s coming, that value will be more justifiable than ever before and more needed by users.

A few final thoughts - on change and on fear

The things discussed where represent a brave move by the company. And it could have backfired in spectacular fashion. The combination of bringing Bernard of stage, talking about how the companies would be working together more closely - alongside a pretty groundbreaking demo of future technology could have gone horribly wrong and for many other vendors, probably would have.

But as far as I can see, it didn’t - a very difficult job, executed almost perfectly.

Let’s cut to the chase. SolidWorks is now over a decade old. We’ve all seen what happens once software reaches a certain age - it starts to clunk, look clunky and perform in a clunky manner. While fixing that code becomes a herculean task, it’s an even braver decision to build something new, built on new technologies.

That’s what Dassault did with V5 and now with V6. Yes, it causes problems with older generation systems hanging on, something that’s plagued Dassault for nearly a decade, but change has to happen. It’s often painful, but the results can be rewarding.

What you have here is that, finally, after it’s been talked about in hushed tones for years, is that core Dassault team and the SolidWorks team are working together. Both have very different requirements from their users and market and the resultant product will always been different to a larger extent.

Do I see a day where it’s all CatiaWorks or some new product? Probably not. Do I see a day were users in both communities are using tools where the influence of both sides of the fence, the strategic vs the mainstream, feed each other to create a set of tools that suit their use case and benefit from each other? Absolutely.

Can a web-based, served architecture support that cross pollination? Absolutely. Have SolidWorks users got a bunch of tools that, in their shear power, have the potential to blow their minds. I can almost guarantee it. I’ve been covering Dassault and Catia for long enough to know that while they don’t like to talk about product and what Catia can do, the thing is quite simply breathtaking in what it can achieve and the limits it can push in terms of what can be done to capture a product, in a digital, in the most holistic manner.

The coming years are going to be one of transition for SolidWorks and it’s users (as it will for the IT world in general) and I’m sure when it settles, many will be asking all manner of questions and queries about what’s coming. There’s also the fact that change often causes fear, particularly if you’re talking about technology products that are a core part of many many organisations daily processes and workflows. But if you’re a SolidWorks user, don’t be afraid. Be Excited. Because when this stuff comes to market, it’s going to be incredible. But the path between then and now is going to be rocky. But sometimes, rocky is fun.

Also note, as I said at the outset. Much of this is speculation, particularly the geometry engine parts. SolidWorks’ team wouldn’t be drawn on the subject and with this being a futures project, things could change. But I think I’m about there with what’s happening, why and how. The only questions are these. When? And are you ready?

#1: Apologies for the tardiness in posting this, the video took way too long to process and even then, doesn’t really give the right look. But anyway, on with the show: Well, it’s a bright, brisk morning in Velizy, located in the southwest of Paris and the first thing we’re doing it donning a wicked pair of 3D stereographic glasses for a virtual tour of Dassault Systemes impressive new campus (where you can buy a heart attack inducing strong cup of coffee for a bargain .50 euro). The DS campus is split into four interconnected buildings, named Air, Water, Fire and Earth are the names for the four buildings that make up the – and as the campus uses 3 times less electricity and emits 6 times less CO2 compared to the average office block.

Taking the stage first is Domnique Florack, who heads up research and development at Dassault Systemes. Three major achievements since the last DEVCON are the last 18 months, won 4,000 new Enovia customers (including Gucci and Samsung Semiconductor). Second key fact is relating to SolidWorks and its achievement of reaching 1,000,000 user licenses and the final one is (amazing considering) 3dvia.com has more than 600,000 users connected using content relating to 3dvia related communities. Incidently there’s just been an annoucement regarding the availability of high-end content for 3dvia as well – details here.

When asked about the three key events that have happened in the last 12 months, Florack picked up the acquisition of Engenious enable “Lifecycle Simulation” capabilities in Simulia, a new partnership with Intercim and its tools for PLM driven manufacturing execution and business process engineering to work with Delmia to develop the next generation tools manufacturing related set of tools. Finally Florack highlighted the creation of the DS Design Studio, lead by industry veteran Anne Asensio) which is aiming to help companies with their design processes.
Announcements for this morning are: the announcement of V6R2010, highlights including 42 new products (modules), a new solution for the mid-market PLM Express Version 6 (which we’ll try to get more details about) and “revolutionary modelling and simulation technologies” tools for “innovation collaboration and social engineering.”

Demonstrated this morning was the new platform for Social Innovation (iPLM), a hosted service for managing a company’s development based processes by allowing a much richer set of tools that are in line with the current thinking in social networking, but with 3D at its centre, enhanced with the usual range of web 2.0 tools for tagging, status updating, access management, group subscription and threaded discussion.

Communities can be open or closed. Setting up new community projects is pretty much a case of selecting users and assigning priorities and access levels (Author, commentator), adding the required media, whether in the form of documents, text, images, video or 3D data.

The Innovation Sphere – a slick little way to navigate content hosted on the iPLM service.

Much of this information can be viewed using the ‘innovation sphere’, which presents all of this information in a odd looking but seemingly highly navigable spherical manner, so you can browse through your assets with ease. There also seems to be a wealth of analytics data, which allows the project manager to view information about how your community is reacting to content (which from a design perspective is highly value and almost impossible to gauge using currently available tools).

Here we’ve got some quickly shot video of what was demonstrated next and to say that this is impressive technology for connecting a community centred around product development and use of 3D data is a massive understatement. While some parts aren’t shown in the video, there’s been a complete demonstration of how the company is using Cloud-based computing to offer additional services alongside interconnected design and collaboration tools, from Live Experts (which are real people, available 24/7 to assist with learning all manner of things covering the full range of DS offerings), photo realistic rendering.

What’s interesting about what Dassault have is how its connected with its tools currently available. By using a platform that actually follows many of the clues given by generally application web 2.0 technologies and services, but readapting them to the process of product development and execution, Dassault are doing something quite different from many other vendors jumping on the social networking bandwagon – in that they seem to ‘get’ what its all about. Allowing users and communities to connect using web-based technology, then offer them tools that back that up. One of the most interesting thing shown is how you can create a project, then provide the tools that are required to fulfil that project – whether that’s lightweight modelling technologies in the form of LiveShape or more industrial strength tools like Catia, Delmia and yes, Solidworks. For several years, Dassault have been discussing delivering its technologies across the web – and we’re finally starting to see that enabled and delivered upon.

Note: Dassault also unveiled an 3d iPhone app that let’s you access content from 3Dvia and do some funky things with the phone’s camera. I’ll post about that later today, maybe early tomorrow.

Dassault Systemes just announced it has signed an agreement with Portland-based consultants, i-generator to “strengthen its position as an industry leader in the PLM market for retail, footwear and apparel industry.” Footwear? Retail? Dassault? Oh yes.

i-generator is a footwear creation services consultancy, specialising in applied research (ergonomics, biomechanics, and neurology), biomedical engineering, mechanical and industrial design, development and sourcing. They’ve worked with Timberland, Nike, Scott, Merrell and a little leftfield for them, Norton Motorbikes. i-generator will work with the Enovia team to deliver Enovia-based solutions to global footwear manufacturers. Dassault already has two commercially available, RFA related off-the-shelf, PLM products. Enovia Apparel Accelerator for Design & Development and the Enovia Apparel Accelerator for Sourcing and Production. This agreement should see these expanded upon.

While Dassault’s name might not be a name synonymous with the Retail, Footwear and Apparell (RFA) world, the acquisition of MatrixOne brought the company a raft of customers. RFA is something that many traditional PLM vendors are becoming interested in, as their traditional user based starts to mature. Dassault has MatrixOne (now merging into Enovia), PTC has FlexPLM which I assume is now being integrated into the Windchill product line. and there’s specialised PLM tools as well as well as those working up-in-the-cloud world, Zdesign and its Zweave system spring to mind.

The RFA is a pretty raw industry in terms of technology adoption, with data and workflows being highly fragmented, typically globally dispersed and working with large amount of data to manage. Consider a single training shoe. Between 10 to 12 different sizes for both men and women, regional variations, different colourways. Then consider component count. Different textiles, different suppliers, different components, soles, uppers, lowers, trim, stitching, assembly. It’s ripe for PLM and Dassault looks to be creating some very interesting partnerships to dive into it.

3Dconnexion has just released details of research they’ve been doing into the return on investment, commercial pay back that can be gained from using its 3d motion control devices. According to the research those using 3D mouse devices users noted that they were comfortable using the 3D mouse within two days from the time they began using it (80% of them in fact) and 70% felt proficient within the first week.

The report (available at www.3Dconnexion.com/productivity) brings many more facts to light about the time that can be saved by adopting a tool that’s designed specifically for the job. It is really worth a read.

The question this raises for me is that that for decades now, many of us have been using 3D based design tools to develop new products on a daily basis, but still many of us are using the same keyboard and mouse combo that we have had since time immemorial. Let’s not forget that the QWERTY keyboard was designed to slow down typists on mechanical typewriters so they wouldn’t jam up - is that really the optimum way of interacting with 3D data?

Users are now becoming much more familiar with 3D based working practices, particularly in the professional design related sphere of influence - but I do wonder where we’re headed next?

The last few events I’ve attended have seen references to how Nintendo have changed the 3D interaction world with the Wii and specifically, the WiiMote device.

Dassault demonstrated how the WiiMote device can interact with CAD-related data at the recent DEVCON event in Paris. Of course, Dassault has an interest in Gaming technology because of its Virtools technology (which now supports the Wii platform) and has a head start on many of the CAD company’s not involved in the industry. Dassault’s Bernard Charles also hinted at the same event that their development team is currently working on a hardware-based device for Catia and Enovia users. A chat with the head of their Research and Development team confirmed that this might be in the offing.

Elsewhere, a CAD user has built a drive to allow the use of the WiiMote within Autodesk’s Design Review and the same tool has been made available on the Autodesk Labs website.

I’m reminded of a chat I had with Bill Buxton, the then Chief Scientist of Applied Sciences at Alias Wavefront, who, ten years ago, talked about many of the things that are only now coming to light. If you take a look at his personal web-site, then you can see many of the devices that his team worked on back then. And if you want a further interesting read, get hold of his Sketching User Experiences book. It’s honestly one of the best books on subject I’ve ever read and should be on every designers bookshelf.

Bringing us back to 3Dconnexion and its research, I’m amazed that the company still is the only vendor actively pursuing this area. The potential to do really interesting things has been there for some time. Many have come and gone.

The Dimentor Inspector - combined a trackball and optical mouse - and had around the same lifespan as the average rodent.

There was the Dimentor Inspector device from Sweden, which combined a mouse with a trackball to navigate in 3D (I’ve still got one sat in a box in the loft). It only really worked with SolidWorks and the company was only around for a year or so.

Others have had a crack at it with limited success and I find it strange that its only 3Dconnexion that has managed to actually achieve any form of market penetration - and I take my hat off to them. They took some time to develop truly usable products and made a few mistakes on the way. I still use a prototype of the original, but short lived, SpaceNavigator device, which saw the integration of a SpaceMouse with a Logitech Keyboard (3Dconnexion’s parent company) - and promptly got canned.

I’m off to interview the guys in charge of SpaceMouse products in a couple of weeks and if anyone has any questions, ideas or information they’d like me to ask, to find out, then I’d be more than happy to ask and report back on the response I get.

And don’t get me started on MultiTouch - that’s stuff is coming - its an exciting new world and as professional users of 3D, we’re looking to get the most out of it.