Tag Archives: CAMWorks for SolidWorks

I had a young lad from my church stop by Thursday. Like many he has graduated from a two-year community college with an Autodesk oriented study mainly Revit and architectural stuff. He also claimed to have six months of Inventor and some SW under his belt. He was curious to see SE though and I always make time to show anyone who is interested. He has been working sweating copper for an HVAC company doing installs for Walmarts. He decided that he did not like the boss though and quit. Now in this retarded Obama economy he is finding out that work is hard to come by and he stopped in to see what I am doing and to see SE.

So I run through some SE stuff for a while and listen to the oohs and aahs that you hear from Inventor types and SW types when you start in on the direct editing goodies. And I get to sit there and grin when he says how long it would take to do these things in SW or Inventor. But then we get into the serious life questions that revolve around this kid getting work and a future. And we get into the serious questions of a potential employer not being able to find the skills he needs in potential employees.

Of course the local college is teaching Autodesk and SW. They all do don’t they? Now this did not happen by accident it was by design with companies that have the ability to be forward-looking and to plan a market conquest based upon creating a need and a labor resource to fill the need. It is called smart business and planning and laying a foundation for the future. Of course this is something the overlords of SE have never done from Integraph until today where Siemens with huge financial power continues this legacy of ignoring the best mid range MCAD program out there. So I sit here with this young lad and ponder this situation that bugs the heck out of me. Namely the idea that Siemens SHOULD be seeking larger market share for the benefit of all involved with SE. But oblivious to things that would benefit their customers and drive more sales for them we see nothing. Again and still and apparently forever.

I look at yet another prospective employee that has no skills I can use unless I am willing to teach him SE. And I would have to be the one to do it because it is not taught by any school I know of closer than a 75 mile drive for him each way to UAH in Huntsville. And even then the instructors in Huntsville are stuck on lazy and do not teach anything about SE ST SIX YEARS AFTER IT’S RELEASE. I figure it is because they might have to be bothered to learn something new before they can teach it. Yes you heard this right, they only can be bothered to teach ordered. And yes Siemens does not police what is done with contributions here so these students never see the most powerful part of SE. It’s no wonder why the adoption rate of ST is so darned low. How are people supposed to know about and be inspired about ST if Siemens can’t be bothered to get behind SE and push this technology? Osmosis? Siemens is truly anal and retarded about this and it just furthers the idea in my mind that they bought SE by design for internal use only. Buy SE because it works for you not because Siemens will work for you. If you are looking to buy SE you better think hard about this. This kid CAN however go five miles each way to Columbia Community College and be taught SW and Autodesk stuff. By design and by plan there is work out there for people trained in virtually everything but SE.

I find myself in a sad position with people and SE nowadays because what I say can influence life changing decisions. I do not try to talk people into buying or using SE anymore because there is just no work out there for them anywhere close to where I live and after five years I have given up on Siemens trying to change this situation for the better. I do highly recommend SE under these two following narrow sets of circumstances. If you are like me and you do design build under your own roof and are basically a closed complete manufacturing entity you absolutely can not beat the power of SE. Bring in your customers files or do your own and then make the designs become reality better and faster than any other way. The second is that I recommend for those shops that have multiples of seats to get at least one seat of SE to deal with imported files and editing quickly internal files that would otherwise consume whole days to fix with SW or Inventor. But your primary customers will in all likely hood be using SW or Inventor and they will expect you to do the same. Refer back to the shrewd planning idea that the masters of SE have been bereft of since the very beginning.

My advice to this kid was I will teach you how to tig weld. There are ads in the paper for welders. I was not going to waste his time and mine teaching him SE when I know he can’t find any work with it. Once again I come face to face with eventually having to train someone how to use SE if I ever hire a designer. Or buying a seat of Inventor or SW and bypassing the training hassle. I hate to say it but my up front costs as an employer will be far cheaper with software I can get trained users for. This is the reality of the world that has been inflicted upon SE by idiots like Siemens German Management Experts. At least they do meetings well and the meetings to plan further meetings bit to.

I am getting really soured on the SE ecosystem. It seems like every time I turn around there are roadblocks placed before the usefulness of SE to me as a company if I step outside of the narrow range of design build under my own roof with just myself. SE does not get me a single bit of work because I have customers that use it. At this time not one does. SE does not provide me with a potential trained work force because students choose to learn SE based upon the idea they will be employed using it. Students just 75 miles north of the SE headquarters have never even heard of SE and when they and the colleges look at help wanted boards SE is absent there to. So just why should the colleges and students be interested in something that will gain them no work? Answer, they aren’t. So we have these inflicted wounds upon the body of SE that have no relationship to the outright capabilities of SE but have as its sole source owners of SE stabbing SE in the back. Time and time again and year after year they inflict these wounds upon SE.

For five years now I have fought to change this and I have just given up. These Siemens people are truly terminal adding to the long list of idiot owners where SE is concerned and who do not care. I have nothing but the highest regard for Karsten Newbury and I know he gets all the right things and wants the right things to happen. Siemens shoots him down all the time. I am only going to say this one time but I mean it. Karsten, if this is the way Siemens is going to do you why stay? Why not join the others who are leaving because Siemens is NOT going to ever get behind SE as far as I can see and you can do far better than this for yourself. Siemens is not going to give you the support required to make SE #1 and in truth they could care less about that whole idea anyway. So where does that leave you? I don’t know how much time you might spend thinking about this but I do and I wonder where it leaves me as a small business owner. Artificially crippled by idiots in Siemens Germany Muckymuck land is what I am thinking. The dead and utter silence since SEU 2014 does nothing but confirm this to me. Not a word about the Summits this year and just space-filling SEU2014 junk on the official blogs. The CADCAM blogosphere seemingly could care less and has nothing much to say about the best software no one has ever heard of. Every day I can read a lot of stuff from individuals and companies about Autodesk and SW but not SE. I don’t have to be there to know that Siemens has cut the purse strings to SE and that they do not care what happens to SE nor do they care what their existing customers think of all this. I can look around me and see what is being done and make this most accurate judgement based upon what I see in the real world. Quite frankly I doubt entirely the idea that SE is #2 in midrange MCAD and I figure it is another thing pulled out of some marketing guys rear end. No provable numbers and no corporate office that cares and you can’t be #2 under this kind of environment. But you can however put a smiley face on this mess because smiley faces are free and within the Siemens authorized budget for SE.

The only hope for SE as far as I can tell are right minded VAR’s and they are the only ones doing good work and trying to get the word out there. They appear to be the only ones who really care about the future of SE. I think of my VAR which is Ally PLM. They do a superb job of support for SE as a product and me as a customer. They care in all the important ways that the Siemens Overlords do not. Heaven help SE if these VAR’s ever get tired of all this.

So Happy Fireworks Free 4Th to you all at Siemens and may you enjoy contemplating the environment of externally imposed failure you have created for SE.