SolidWorks CEO Gian Paulo Bassi showing SolidWorks on a MacBook
Forget your powerful CAD workstation, soon you will be able to run SolidWorks 2016 on virtually any device with a browser and a fast Internet connection — be that laptop, Mac, or tablet. You won’t need to install anything, even a plug-in.
The new SolidWorks Online Edition relies on cloud technology from Frame, that allows SolidWorks to run on a 3D optimised cloud server that then streams pixels to any client capable with an HTML5-browser.
SolidWorks Online Edition was recently demonstrated by CEO Gian Paulo Bassi on both a Chromebook and MacBook connected to a server located over 1,000 miles away.
Bassi showed how users could get one click access to the software through online portal, mysolidworks.com.
While this ‘was presented as an easy way to give potential new customers access to a ‘product trial’ — an approach shared by Siemens PLM for Solid Edge — DEVELOP3D believes that Dassault Systèmes intends to use the technology to give its customers flexible access to its software.
Nikola Bozinovic, founder of Frame (previously called mainframe2), told DEVELOP3D that his company has done a lot of work on providing tight integration between mysolidWorks.com and SolidWorks running on the Frame platform that will give users a ‘personalised experience’.
“We exchange information about who the user is and bring up, for example, a user’s specific files, so that the environment you come into is the same you had the last time you used the software, including most recently used files and your preferences and everything else.”
With Onshape and Autodesk currently pushing ahead with cloud-integrated CAD — and making a lot of noise about it — the fact that Dassault Systèmes is looking to take SolidWorks to the cloud should come as no surprise.
To learn more about Frame’s cloud technology read our hands on review, from last year when it was called Mainframe 2.
