There was a subtle shift this year when it comes to SolidWorks World. Several bloggers have commented on how much more Dassault participated this year. I mentioned this last year with the change-over in leadership so this really was not a huge surprise. The interesting thing from my perspective was how much more evolved the user community was and the higher level of offerings from the SolidWorks partners. This show has typically been all about grass roots CAD users and this year's show had sufficient amounts of content for your hard core SolidWorks users. Last year the phrase "product lifecycle management" was rarely heard and while this year it did not dominate discussions it certainly was more prominent. When you walked around the Partner Pavilion last year there were a handful of companies offering data management solutions but this year there seemed to be double the amount from last year. The applications they demonstrated were much more robust as well. You even had a company, Kenesto, debuting their ad hoc workflow solution at the show. This blog will wrap up Zero Wait-State's participation and impressions of the show and discuss how PLM is becoming more of an issue for SolidWorks users and what the more aggressive posturing by Dassault might mean in the future for SolidWorks users and partners.

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Some of the more interesting occurrences at this show were the keynotes. I think everyone expected Dassault to stand up and clearly announce their PLM strategy at this event instead we got robots and thermostats. The prolific Oleg Shilovitsky addressed this somewhat in his blog "SolidWorks World 2012: Community and the opportunity for PLM". Based on chatter I got from several Dassault sources and some partners, things are still percolating and they are not quite ready to share the strategy before a large audience. I think Dassault has been careful not to disrupt the SolidWorks community due to their success but they would like to consolidate product lines and capitalize on the SolidWorks momentum by leveraging the Catia footprint in this market. The rumor of consolidating the SolidWorks and Catia modeling kernel was quashed and EPDM was left untouched for the moment. I did have an interesting discussion with one of the Dassault resources responsible for development of the connector between SolidWorks and Enovia and he said his goal was to make it look just like EPDM. So the news from SolidWorks World was that there is no news. V6 is still under development as far as SolidWorks users are concerned and there are no immediate plans to try and move away from SolidWorks and EPDM toward Catia and Enovia for now. I expect in the long term as companies using SolidWorks mature and grow there will be a upgrade path from these tools to their larger enterprise cousins. It appears that this migration will be voluntary which is good news for users and partners.

The more telling information from the show was the attendees themselves. I have attended the last three SolidWorks World events and have noticed an increasing sophistication among the users as SolidWorks capabilities increase. Typically, when you discuss sharing data outside of engineering you tend to get a blank stare from a lot of the attendees. This year more and more companies were looking for ways to address the demands made on engineering by the rest of the enterprise and were far more open to discussions about EPDM and PLM than they have been at the two previous events. As I mentioned there were more solutions available for them to review with several standalone PLM vendors exhibiting and a number of complimentary point solutions available to supplement SolidWorks data management applications. I am sure it was around last year but Enovia itself was more prominently featured and the traffic around their kiosk was brisk. The EPDM station was very crowded and I think more and more companies are beginning to see the writing on the wall about PDMWorks and its imminent demise. As one SolidWorks executive put it, "We are not killing the product but it will slowly die of starvation". In summary the level of interest and the prior knowledge of PLM were significantly higher at this conference than previous ones. It is my belief that the maturity of the SolidWorks community can be gleaned from observing PTC and their evolution. PTC has historically been considered a more capable and mature platform and the companies using their tools were considered larger and more advanced. I think the line between the two companies and their customers is starting to blur as SolidWorks closes the functionality gap. When the V6 solution is fully realized there will be little difference in capability between the two product lines and I suspect the adoption of PLM technology in the SolidWorks community will grow even higher.

Another interesting phenomenon from this conference were the number of larger companies that have now adopted SolidWorks and who either have PLM or are pursuing PLM strategies independent of CAD considerations. As I have mentioned in previous articles CAD based PLM is not for everyone and the number of companies that came into the conference already using PLM tends to validate this perspective. SolidWorks executives are realistic about the fact that Enovia is not for everyone and it appears that Dassault also recognizes this. Unlike PTC whose strategy was to force feed all of their clients the Windchill platform Dassault seems content to let their technology speak for itself and provide functional reasons for clients to adopt their solutions. If their client's needs are better served by staying on SolidWorks and EPDM and using other PLM tools so be it.

This was a great show for Zero Wait-State. We enjoyed good traffic in our booth and there was a lot of interest around our new RAPIDconnect application for EPDM and Agile and our new RAPIDaccess tools which allow non-CAD users to access EPDM data. Our giveaway of the IPAD 2 and Big Daddy Estes rocket drove a lot of new members to our Engineering Collaboration for PLM group on Linkedin. We have selected the winners and they have been notified. Once we get responses back we will formally announce the winners and post it on our website. Given the success of the show and the membership drive you can expect we will do more of this activity in the future so stay tuned. Now that I am back in the office I will continue the Superfriends series with Application Man. Thanks so much for all the great feedback at the PLM Summit and SolidWorks World it really helps motivate me to keep writing the blogs.[clear-line]