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Autodesk Fusion 360 Hand Up To Startups

Posted on June 15, 2015 | 4 comments

One of the things that drew my attention to Autodesk initially was the idea that they took customers seriously and were assembling a suite of products accordingly. Over the years regarding online programs we have had a chance to watch just who has been able to actually deliver. SolidWorks and Dassault had become famous for vaporware and programs rolled out at the annual SW launch coventions and gone tomorrow as they failed to work. SE had nothing and still does as far as I know although you can rent Solid Edge by the month rather than buying it outright. I can advocate this as a way of covering a temporary glut of work or to extend your “trial” until you are certain it is for you. Otherwise for most of us who intend to be around for a while it is the more expensive way to go.

Autodesk is a different animal though in this arena and they have made real working online programs that people are earning livings with. Going to the Autodesk CAM forums is kind of an eye opener to someone like me who has never considered this way of working to be anything I would want. Apparently there are a fair number that do want to work this way and money is one of the major considerations for them. First off I want to make clear that I have never used Fusion 360. It comes with Inventor Pro HSM and for a short while I had it loaded. I was just never interested enough to bother going there to learn yet another thing I did not need since I have a permanent seat of Inventor. So I uninstalled it. But going to the forums this morning reminded me that just because I was not interested did not mean others were not. It is surprising how many Fusion 360 guys are there and asking questions. The basis of the CAM program with fusion is the same kernal as Inventor HSM and SW HSM and so by virtue of the questions being asked by these guys it is clear working businesses are deriving a livelihood from Fusion 360.

Personally I don’t work online for a number of reasons but this is clearly not a barrier to many as evidenced by the frequency of posts there. This brings me to another aspect of the Autodesk customer paradigm and it is the idea that they want to have a working relationship with you and not bludgeon you with huge bills and yearly fees. I have corresponded briefly with a guy who is thinking of a start-up company and this is the reason for this post. If you have ever been there ( I have ) you are overwhelmed with how quickly the costs can add up. http://www.autodesk.com/products/fusion-360/try-buy will take you to a page you should consider if you are in this boat. As far as I know this is the only thing like it on or off the web of all the CAD CAM companies. In a nutshell if your start-up makes less than $100,000.00 per year the cost of Fusion 360 CAD and CAM is $0.00. Same for students or hobbiest’s although I am not sure of the citeria used to determine this. If you are one of these categories go there and see.

If I was a start-up company today I would most certainly try this out. It is a smart move from a company that does not fear what you may find under the covers once you start to use their product. They believe that you will in time be a cash customer and if Autodesk behaves themselves correctly probably be one for your whole small business working career. Politics can get in the way in bigger companies where different things may determine what is used. But I remember getting a free 2axis milling program from Surfcam in 2002. I had use of it for about a year when it went paying customer only. I stopped using it a year or so later when I adopted VX CADCAM since I needed to design as well as machine and Surfcam had no worthwhile design capabilities.

I left Surfcam because I needed CAD and CAM. In other words I needed a beginning to end manufacturing capability. If Surfcam would have had CAD and CAM who knows how long I would have stayed there. Lack of sheet metal and direct editing led to me leaving VX for SE. I have been a customer of SE for seven years now and only consider leaving because the ecosystem offered by Autodesk is so compelling. (Each time I moved what I was really looking for was a complete best in class solution to making things under my own roof.) To put it plainly because HSM which I consider to be a vastly superior product for what I do compared to CAMWorks for Solid Edge was now a part of Autodesk. I fully expect to remain with Autodesk for the remainder of my working career unless they do something really stupid. I happen to appreciate companies that believe in the old fashioned ideas of value and loyalty to their customers and Autodesk best measures up to that standard today.

The idea of manufacturing and having a company that gets this idea was over the last two years the single most compelling philosophical consideration for me regarding Autodesk and it should be for you to. Carl Bass can program up to at least five axis manufacturing equipment. He personally makes things and there is no other individual at his corporate level I am aware of that truly understands both the design and manufacturing equation with hands on time. So as the icing on the cake you have a company that may not have the absolute best program in any individual area but they do have an intense desire and corporate focus on becoming the best overall soup to nuts manufacturing ecosystem in mid range MCAD. Oh, and they are buying the tools to do so from Delcam to HSM and if you cut parts you need to check these guys out. Free + capable seems to be a good start up asset and Fusion 360 does apper to fill the bill. Have a look, after all just what does it cost besides some of your time. Know what I mean Verne 🙂

PS,
By the way, if you are a current user of Solid Works or Inventor and have no CAM program or have one but would like to have a try of HSM go here http://www.hsmworks.com/hsmxpress/ or here http://cam.autodesk.com/get-inventor-hsm-express/ for free 2.5 axis versions of HSM. This has been going on for some time and there appears to be no end to this in sight. I had to laugh at a CAMWorks 2.5 axis program for Solid Edge promotion earlier this year which would only cost $4,500.00 + maintenance. Does not quite stack up to free but sadly SE won’t work with HSM. Attention Carl Bass. Would you please buy SE too?

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New Direction

Posted on May 27, 2015 | 4 comments

Obviously there has been a shift in my loyalties in the last couple of years. With Solid Edge it has been a ride from ST1 until now with very few regrets regarding the software. Direct editing is what I came here for and while the first two versions were really rough the rest has been nothing but a validation of how correct this choice was. My principal complaint about SE has always been Siemens and UGS not caring if we make it or not.

What I mean by that is except for a period of time under Newbury and Cooper Siemens/UGS could care less whether SE’s market share grew or not. The ramifications to buyers ARE serious. From not having work from others who demand you be on the same page as in same software. Then not having a resource of institutions to train potential employees which of course leads to a lack of trained people. The lack of trained people stems from having few companies that use the program and since the job boards have few SE listings students do not ask their prospective educators for SE training. They look to SW and Autodesk courses because the job boards say they can find work with that training. So you as an employer have to find someone and then train them and then suffer under the other Siemens imposed handicaps to. Most just go on by and purchase SW and Autodesk whatever because these programs come equipped with better market/work presence and trained at no cost to you people to hire.

With the CAMWorks for Solid Edge debacle in combination with Siemens running off people who wanted the same things I did, namely for SE to thrive and acquire market share, has finally worn out my desire to even promote SE beyond saying it is the best mid range MCAD program out there. No more time with videos or how to’s or examples. Really I quit this some time back as I refuse to help those who have hamstrung my favorite CAD program. The Geometric CW4SE forum has not had a post in four months now and it is another sign of user fatigue over Siemens imposed problems. Yes that is right. I do believe all things go back to Siemens and the UGS people who have poisoned the well there for SE. It is a pervasive and under current management irreversible problem. Geometric has a lousy philosophy towards users but if Siemens had really cared about SE and CW4SE customers they would have kicked Geometric and kept kicking to make things right and in a timely fashion. Siemens/UGS has clout but zero desire to help SE in any way.

So I have changed the blog title to more accurately reflect my own personal direction. SE is and will be my principle modeler for some time I think. My maintenance will take me just over into ST8 and I have no intention at this time of ever renewing past this. I don’t believe in rewarding bad management that does not consider my needs with my money. Even the pace of improvements is dropping fast with SE. The very idea that they are touting as a major new ST8 deal the sparsely populated App store boggles my mind. You have to be a dofuss Siemens marketing dude grasping at straws and trying to turn a pigs ear into a silk purse to even put something like this out. last year it was all those partner products until someone went there and mentioned publicly how few there were and most certainly way short of claimed numbers. Of course marketing with Siemens is run by idiots so no surprise there but don’t you know if great things were happening they would at least talk about it? They aren’t so they can’t.

This takes me to Autodesk and what I see going on there and it is the only exciting place out there for future oriented people who are looking for a software company that believes in them too and wants them as partners and not chattel. Even as clunky as Inventor is compared to SE I fully intend to cut Siemens off and keep Autodesk. Siemens has malign intent towards SE and it’s users and Autodesk wants their users to succeed. Even to the point of donating free software to start-ups and trusting you to become a customer when you get past that point. And you bet most will and Siemens will never see any of these as customers. I had use of Surfcam 2 axis machining for free in 2002 and as a result when they finally did go cash only I bought from them. Autodesk has run free stuff far longer than anyone out there I have ever heard of. They believe in what they have enough to let you determine just how good they are for free. Who else is doing this at the same level? Who else is planting seeds for the future along with fertilizer and nurturing. Who else is confident enough in what they are doing to earn customers and their loyalties to do this?

Inventor Pro HSM everything both programs at $10,000.00 and $1,500.00 per year after. And I can tell you that if you are someone with a ton of money wrapped up into a program you have grown to hate they will probably take that into consideration when you negotiate for a final cost. Ask, all they can do is say no and you just might be really surprised. SE and CW4SE on the other hand for the same equivalent stuff would be well in access of $20,000.00 and well north of $4,000.00 each year after. Inventor HSM is right now producing about one update a week you can download if you wish. CW4SE had garbage until about seven MONTHS after the release of ST7 and have had one update they were forced into doing. These HSM guys want you to have tools in hands and work hard to get them there. Yes CW4SE has some capabilities beyond HSM right now. But the darned thing is so cumbersome to use and has been so buggy that why would you bother to try unless you were trapped there? The few shortcomings I see in HSM I happen to know they are aware of but more importantly they do intend to fix them and they don’t have to be forced to do so. I would crawl across nails before I would rely on CW4SE as my main CAM program ever again in the current state it is in.

Once again we see intent with Autodesk in HSM. Buy great tools and gain complete control over them and then use them. I don’t say much about Delcam products because I just don’t know much about them other than by reputation and peer comments. Bass bought them to though and they are part of the forward-looking plans. Carl Bass is the only big wheel out there that can program and cut on five axis manufacturing equipment and he gets the maker things from A to Z. The other guys talk about it but he does it and the programs he is assembling into the Autodesk fold prove his intent and hands on knowledge. Outside of NX CAM and maybe some CATIA stuff Autodesk now controls best high-end CAM with Delcam and it was no accident that HSM was bought before them. HSM is going to be vastly improved over the next year or so and really hard to beat for general CAM usage.

Why in the world would I not want to be here? So you see in the new header and name the beginning of a progression away from a combination of deliberately smothered great CAD and a duplicitously managed over priced CAM program made by people who don’t care if your days are ruined with SE and CW4SE to a company that is doing it all right. Yes there are problems with the programs but at this time I completely believe they will fix the problems. There is a lot on their plate right now and I know that. But they have not lied or give evasive excuses/answers to me and I have run across no-show stoppers yet. They just get in there and solve the issues in order of importance one after the other.

Perhaps some day this will be an Inventor Pro HSM blog only. For now though with my workaday feet in two worlds my blogging shoes will be to.

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Fine Tune Your HSM Adaptive Clearing Results

Posted on May 26, 2015 | Leave a comment

The whole rationale behind high-speed machining is to remove more cubic inches of material per hour and per endmill or insert. I still watch in awe over what can be done and remembering how it used to be when you had to slow down everything so you would not kill your end mill as you buried it in a step over or corner. There are various flavors of high-speed machining programs out there but they all have one thing in common. Vibration control is essential.

One of the first steps is to have the correct tool holding and while heat shrink is supposed to be the best most of us will never know. It is to darned expensive to set up for and most of us will never need that last tenth accuracy in our life times nor do we have the metrology lab required for this accuracy. The second best and much more affordable option is hydraulic tool holders. Personally I use Schunk Tendo hydraulic holders and right now they are running around $250.00 from my favorite supplier Technology Sales in Chattanooga TN for the .75″ CAT40 holder. The sleeves will run another $80.00 each. The sleeves come in slotted for TSC that will allow for six “sprays” of coolant to be directed straight down into the cut for tooling that does not have coolant holes and unslotted that will allow you to use through tool TSC. The Schunks are very concentric (.003mm claimed runout at 2.5″ on their web site) and also have never in my experience suffered from cutter pullout and I sure can’t say the same for collets and set screw clamp holders which HAVE ruined some of my days. So the first step is to have reliable and capable tool holding. Concentric pullout proof tool holding is essential to your tool life and cut quality in high-speed machining. If you do not take care of this first you can just ignore the rest of this article since your maximum potential will never be achieved unless all the puzzle pieces are put in place.

Have you ever started a cut and found yourself scrambling for the feeds and speeds over ride? Sure you have and we all know the tooth jarring squeal of impending end mill doom. As far as I know there are only two methods to fight this. One is to just fiddle at the controls while cutting until we find the place that sounds and looks good and generally that is where we stay. I dare say this is how most places do it. The second way is to embark on a rational method to fine tuning your specific mill and cutter combination for best results.

Autodesk has a spindle vibration analysis tool that goes on the spindle and analyses during the cut and for all that cut paths conditions. It also costs over 10g. There is another way that any of us can do though and all it takes is chunks of metal and some time. The following link will take you to a PDF well worth downloading and the two screen captures are from this.
http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=2&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CCYQFjAB&url=http%3A%2F%2Fm.plm.automation.siemens.com%2Fen_us%2FImages%2FMMS-HSM-Oct05-17050hires_tcm1224-4241.pdf&ei=1RdiVcD_BoeyggT8_4DQAw&usg=AFQjCNHsI9TfE-5ynJtSg-M4bXol2gazlQ&bvm=bv.93990622,d.eXY (Yes I know the link is long but looking at link renaming tools always seemed to end up with junk so I just posted the real one. Any worthwhile suggestions and I am all ears as long as it is not a click for profit deal.) Here are two screen captures from the PDF that will show you a graphic example of why one should do this.

Block with cut paths

feeds and speeds breakdown

Every mill has a unique vibration characteristic based upon the actual machine variances and it’s environment like the floor stability. My Haas VF4 will be a bit different from yours and the same is true for those whiz-bang 300,000.00 dollar jobs too some people are so proud of. As a matter of fact UGS did this study and they deal in high dollar production and high dollar equipment where getting that last little bit of quality and speed makes a big difference. Speaking of Modern Machine Shop by the way here is a link http://www.mmsonline.com/articles/chatter-control-for-the-rest-of-us that will take you to a page with other vibration control articles.

Do yourself and your shop a favor and have a look at this idea. It is in most cases the last piece of the puzzle to be implemented and in many cases is never even considered.

Humorous update. I was looking for Helical brand end mills on EBay and these turned up. From the Buonshopping EBAY purveyor of fine goods in Hong Kong we have these fine tools. I went to see just what the end mill feedbacks had to say and much to my amusement the first few (I looked no further) had gobs of smiley faces and bad spelling har-de-har-har.

Hong Kong helical end mill

Buonshopping purveyor of fine goods

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Are You COMMITTED To Your Customers ?

Posted on February 12, 2015 | 2 comments

As SW World winds down this year I look at the lack of involvement by users and Dassault. Yes there were a lot of people there but I wonder what the real reasons were? I wonder where all the hub-bub that used to accompany this event has gone to? I know if I go to SEU 2015 it will be principally to see my peers again and not because I expect to learn a lot there I could not elsewhere for free. I have to believe that outside of people in direct employ of those who intend to make money like Dassault or vendors SWW is mainly a re-union of peers. Then I look at Dassault and they trot out stuff no one wants and if you buy into your profits will diminish Dassaults will increase. Strange thing its that as far as I can see you wont get as a buyer anything you really need beyond what you have now for far less $$$$$. So users show up to see each other and Dassault shows up to talk to themselves about stuff that is overpriced and users don’t want. Here is an excellent article on just this thing. http://www.solidsmack.com/cad/pricing-next-gen-cad-dassault-systemes-lost-plot-3dexperience/ I find with great interest they also mention Autodesk. Autodesk is transparent about what they do. They have the best prices for what is offered. Autodesk is serious about gaining new customers and unlike Dassault and Siemens apparently does not believe your primary reason for existance as a company is to be a cash cow for others. I fully expect in this tough market to get new sales generated and where your best source of new customers is your competing software peers that over time this combination of leading best prices and transparency and features of the programs from Autodesk will erode the base of Dassault and Siemens. Autodesk, get busy and fix Inventor and you will get much more attention.

But there is another aspect of this and it is are you committed to your customers. Do you listen to what they want beyond the top ten things to be fixed or do you take your subs money and devise products they don’t want or will run up expenses needlessly or both? How about do you take integration seriously and spend time to make sure your “Gold Partners” so to speak are delivering what they promised? Once again I see the huge contrast between Autodesk and Dassault and Siemens where everything Autodesk does or intends to do is an open book with lengthy beta periods where they give users free use of a product to make sure it is what they want or if it will even work. And they are doing so at prices that businesses will appreciate. (It looks to me like Autodesk wants to be your partner and not your overseer unlike others that come to mind.) Thinking of all the vaporware Dassault has come up with over the years here. Thinking of Siemens where you have to inflict sales drones upon yourself to even get a price. And in particular thinking of Solid Edge where this wretched mess of CAMWorks for Solid Edge has been allowed to fester and only after some real public user anger did Siemens decide to look into it. I have no idea if it will go any further than this because Siemens is so bureaucratic that they could not decide on a plan of action in a reasonable time frame if their lives depended on it. CW4SE has had serious problems from day one and I am convinced that Geometric had no intention of fixing it. Indeed a comment to one of the users about problems that plagued him their reply was this was “intended behavior”. I kid you not. Then after the big stink starts and the heat is on they want to fix it. Does this kind of reaction inspire any confidence in you as a potential customer?

What it says to me is that both Siemens/SE and Geometric will not do the right thing unless pressure is applied. What is also tells me is that a company like Siemens/SE has had no interest in what their integrated partners do and therefore no method of policing them for quality. At this time I can only say that by association and by their actions with CW4SE I would not trust a darned thing they have partnered with unless I first did extensive testing. They recently appointed some poor guy, that’s right one, to be in charge of this but I can tell you that in my experience with the gargantuan bureaucracy he will have to fight through this is meaningless. It is a see we are doing something now please go away action that will not affect the serious plight of every CW4SE buyer. So we will now have a barking dog on a chain who will be told when he will be allowed to do anything by those who have better things to do with their time than worry about their customers losing money with the garbage they produced.

In this day and time where people can verify statements of intent and the validity of promises made by software companies it becomes harder to fool them. What does a company do compared to what they say and what are the real life experiences of those who are users or buyers? Many years ago the automotive companies brought upon themselves the “Lemon Law”. It was a response to big-ticket items that were so fundamentally flawed they spent more time in repair than on the road. It was a legal response to companies who refused to honor the idea that customers had a right to expect a certain level of reliability in what they purchased. There remain whole industries that do not have protection of this sort for buyers and whose response seems to be too bad so sad. We have your money and if you don’t like it leave. You kept it past 30 days and now you are stuck with software that took you that long just to start figuring out you were had and the only lemon law here for you is the sour taste in your mouth.

Software in the business world is something that can make or break you. Remember some years back when K-Marts bought into that new whiz-bang inventory control system. The huge expense of this debacle is what tipped them over into bankruptcy and reorganization. The only recourse for the little guy is negative publicity primarily on the web where he can’t be shuffled to the side by excuse making corporate representatives. Most of the time this does not mean you get your money and wasted time back but you can prevent bad corporate entities from inflicting further harm on as many people as they would have otherwise. Over time when you hit their bottom line hard enough things can change for the better. I have two companies in mind here and one of them is duplicitous as far as I am concerned and the other is merely derelict in it”s responsibilities. Dassault and Siemens since you wanted to know.

Since this is the case and since we do not have a Lemon Law for CADCAM we will have to make do with user experiences. That word Dassault likes so much. Research carefully what other real users have to say and why. I have not seen one positive word about CW4SE for a long time online and this is for a reason.

Just like Dassault at SWW this year I have to sadly conclude that Siemens/SE is not committed to it’s customers. They have their own little worlds to live in and we are not decision making participants in it until we force them to listen by leaving and costing them potential business by warning prospective buyers off. Money, ours in their pockets and not ours by the improved bottom line for our pockets seems to be all they understand so here is some help. From a CW4SE victim buy SE because it is great even though Siemens will not work for you but put the ancillary products under a microscope before you buy and in any case DO NOT buy into CW4SE until (if ever) this mess is fixed.

Of the three big CAD dudes at this time Autodesk is the only one that looks like they care for the future of it’s existing and future customers.

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The Builders Philosophy

Posted on December 16, 2014 | 2 comments

I have considered for some time that there is a philosophy that directs how programs are focused and who determines or how this is determined. You have people who are convinced that the design of something is paramount and all that happens around after and before is just what follows this most singularly important event. Then there are the guys on the shop floor who know that if it does not work well there it can impact the bottom line of a company far more than the design ever did. Then there are the PLM types that figure it all hinges on them and rather than making the collator organizer type thing PLM is supposed to be they make it the chief entity and all other programs have to be shoehorned into it. Then you have the customer who judges the end result and finds themselves wondering on occasion what genius came up with this mess. Most of the people contacted through my business fall primarily into one category with perhaps another as ancillary to the primary. They may design for instance and they may walk out onto the shop floor and look at parts being cut or talk to the machinist so they have some knowledge of what goes on there but no real knowledge like they have for designing.

I remember about four years ago starting an argument with the SE guys about thread data that would go with a part file. My complaint was the only reason for SE to exist was so someone could manufacture something from it and in order to do this efficiently the right manufacturing data had to be in there. It was not until last year that SE began to fix this so that manufacturing data would be reflected in the actual dimensions on the CAD file. Prior to this point in time for instance none of your surface data could be used in the part. For instance a 1/4 20 thread would not show a .2010 drill hole size but rather a silly .25 hole size. Decisions made by programmers who just could not understand why this was a big deal. Had they been made to deal with the problems this created on a shop floor or CAM program they might have had a better appreciation for the thought that no software meant for any part of the manufacturing process truly is an island by itself. By the way ST7 finally has this fixed right for the first time ever in the history of SE. Why did this take so long? I wonder if it was because they finally decided to consider manufacturing or whether it was the fact that the US military will soon require all correct and actual part conditions and tolerances to be incorporated in the actual part files in design software used for things they consume. But this is a perfect example to me of the divide perpetuated by management and coders that see themselves as the primary entity and not as a part of an integrated system which as an aggregate is in reality the primary entity.

I find very few individuals who have the knowledge that I have and an appreciation for the how it all must work together. When something is done here I design the part, go and program the CAM paths and cut the part, weld the sanitary tubing or sheet metal assemblies. Assemble the product to the degree required and then deliver this and make sure the customer is happy. Every single aspect of the complete manufacturing process I have hands on experience with. I go to the SE Universities and am in awe of the skill level there with some of these guys. They are so far ahead of me in design abilities and I never expect to be their equal in that area. But I am an expert in shop floor procedures and I am good enough at design to create all I produce. I actually create the idea build it and guarantee it and so I have to deal with every aspect of the part. Very few people do. This leads me to the idea of what philosophy determines the content and capabilities of the software that you use.

I have a builders philosophy. I just want what I use to work well and competently with all the other aspects of building real things so I can, well uhh so, well so I can build real things and my living depends on ALL of it working together. This is one of the things that really excited me about Karsten Newbury being in charge of SE. He had an industrial degree and he grokked the importance of how it all must work together. Miss you Karsten and hope you come back some day and they give you the free rein you and the SE customers deserve. It is this world view of software I find missing so often from people who work with software programming who have a tunnel vision and everything else is below them in the “real” world they live in. So these types of people build little compartments where each thing is separate and the manufacturing ecosystem has to go from room to room to work with dividing walls everywhere hindering efficiencies. And heaven forbid the upper management of these companies getting this in most cases.

Last February Autodesk ran an ad during the Superbowl. Well yes it really was an ad but so cleverly done. The dynamics of air flow around a football and showing how it was done. I was floored with the originality of this presentation and it started the wheels spinning. For some time Autodesk was #2 bad boy after Dassault in my view based on my utter loathing, which I still have by the way, for being forced to work on the cloud. Carl Bass had been accumulating essential and best in class components for A to Z manufacturing for a while by then and it dawned on me what he was doing. He was assembling a comprehensive integrated manufacturing ecosystem. He was also laying the foundation to create interest in design/building/engineering amongst the future and existing workforce. Those who just might be inspired by this and end up using Autodesk products while learning in schools and universities and expect to afterwards to when they were in the private sector as employees. So here I was as an SE user watching Siemens cut SE off at the knees and looking over the fence at Autodesk who had a plan and was implementing it. I wondered then and still do wonder if the companies that compete against Autodesk have any idea of the peril they are in with small to medium or perhaps even larger manufacturing ecosystems? I just have this idea of a juggernaut that was being assembled as people watched in shock apparently incapable of reacting in any meaningful way. The really good CAM bits left on the market get snapped up by Autodesk as part of a plan while others who could have done something elected to relegate the idea of complete manufacturing ecospheres as secondary. I was in admiration of Carl Basses plan at that time and said so. Still not convinced though that the cloud was unavoidable with them. But he and they had my attention and I ask questions.

One of the remarkable things I have since found out is that unlike any other CEO or major corporate officer of any other design software company I know of Carl Bass personally owns CNC machinery himself. He makes things and he writes the programs to do this and I have concluded that out of all the corporate executives out there in design software land he is the only one with a builders philosophy. I am completely fascinated with this and regard Autodesk today as the most singularly exciting place there is because the builders concept is being put into place there by a builder.

So far unlike some past acquisitions by Autodesk things are now being handled in exemplary fashion. The fears the HSM users had have never come to pass and they were treated with respect and courtesy and I don’t know anyone who has left. Not that I know many but of those none complain or leave. Delcam is being integrated but not subsumed and don’t hear squat for complaints on the web from Delcam users about all this now. What I am saying is that by all the information I can dig up there have been no stumbles and no duplicitous garbage forthcoming from all this. I was for some time quite angry over the cloud issue and the lack of information about how the future was to be shaped regarding it but this fear has left for me now and I am today a customer. I am seeing a company that is the most transparent about what they are doing amongst their peers and making prices right to be a player with small to medium-sized and above companies who make or design things.

For me with a builders philosophy I am certain you can find singular programs outside of Autodesk that are much better like SE is compared to Inventor. But for the driving philosophy behind what is being implemented and the future roadmap being planned there is nothing else that touches the potential of what I see unfolding today at Autodesk.

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Solid Edge, Siemens/UGS and the Inevitable Consequences

Posted on October 20, 2014 | 6 comments

So today I read that Karsten Newbury has left Siemens.

Well first off I want to say that there are two people who I hold most responsible for the brief renaissance of SE and a period of time for hope for bigger and better things. Now Dan Staples is high on my list too but for technical reasons and not as a spark plug for serious growth in numbers and community for Solid Edge. Dan is perhaps more than anyone else the reason Don and Karsten had something truly great to sell to the world. But with Don and Karsten was hope for better things personified and moving forward in tangible ways that could be seen and touched.

I remember getting a call from Don about five years ago when I was expressing frustration in public with Siemens who seemed dead set on hiding SE under a rock and keeping it there. He told me he had a guy who was going to call me that I would find of interest. Karsten called shortly after and told me what his plans and goals were and we basically wanted the same thing. SE to take its place as its capabilities deserved as the company that would overtake SW. This began a five-year journey where at times it was kind of surreal. I mean just how in the world a single man shop ends up helping to influence the outcome of the software he uses is still something that surprises me. I guess I was a pretty good litmus test for how users felt about things and so off we went.

I can say as a guy that had a peek way behind the scenes of SE that neither Don or Karsten ever said they would do something and then not do it. They had a vision and goals and were steadfast to both SE and it’s customers as tireless advocates for the product and it’s users. They were serious about SE and us.

While I have fallen out of the “inner circle” so to speak of SE and Siemens and don’t have much contact with anyone there any more I do wish to say this. I have nothing but admiration for Dan and Karsten both as corporate figures and personally. They both had correct visions of how things should be and could be and eminently qualified plans on how to get there. Over the last year and a half though it became clear to me that they were being hampered in their efforts by Siemens.

I knew these guys and their goals and it was clear people above and around them did not share the same vision. Primarily North American UGS guys who had convinced Siemens that SE was a threat to NX. I think they were becoming quite alarmed at how good SE was becoming and the true potential that SE under Don and Karsten represented in possible sales. I consider Siemens to be quite anal and navel gazers to boot who sadly are stupid enough to believe these UGS guys, some of who have had a real hatred of SE that surpasses mere protection of NX sales. They have deliberately starved SE of funds and permission to market themselves adequately and the really sad thing is that this was with the very money SE had earned for itself. It is so pathetic that the public face of SE through the website had an $80,000.00 a YEAR budget and thought control police who hated SE making sure nothing right or wonderful could ever happen there.   Matt Lombard with a following that was staggering at one time was brought in by Don and Karsten as part of a master plan to eat up SW. Right off the bat Matt was shoved of to the side and deliberately throttled and his value to SE killed.

So in my opinion to protect a few lousy seats of their precious NX they sacrifice tens of thousands of SW conversions and increased overall profit for Siemens. And sadly really talented guys like Don and Karsten who are not going to work for people like this forever. Can you imagine being in charge of something as wonderful as SE and then have board room politics by simple-minded venal corporate turf protecting back stabbers shooting you down? Would you stay under those conditions? So the Siemens quality filter works and good people leave and the bad ones stay and now the whole future of SE looks bleak. Yeah, SE is not going away but until there is a shakeup of upper level management SE is doomed. It going to become like one of those little orange and black spotted Salamanders. They are around but you have to turn over rocks to find them. We have now gone full circle and the bad guys have run off the good guys and SE will once again take its rightful place as the best software you won’t hear about. It is clear to me the Siemens/UGS people who hold SE in contempt have won and will win for some time to come.

I would say that it is Don and Karstens gain and Siemens loss but that presumes Siemens even has the corporate mental capabilities to understand that losing a right hand is not a good thing. They can have a bunch of meetings and talk about all this while they try to figure out if losing body parts is good or bad. I guess the old adage about body parts and who really runs things at Siemens is true. The brain says it is in charge of things and other body parts chime in with why they are the most important. But the winning body part of this debate is the North American UGS a– hole that says if I close myself off none of the rest of you are going to work.

Guys, best of luck in your new jobs and I sincerely hope you both prosper at whatever you do. Your abilities and dedication deserve to be rewarded by someone who judges on merits and not short-sighted little boardroom weasels with axes to grind.

An additional comment.

Sometimes the sublime humor in life comes from strange places. Perhaps there is also more than a little bit of truth to saying like what goes around comes around. Just for the heck of it this evening I went to read the spam posts that accumulate with the filter WordPress provides. The post most frequently generating spam mail is, are you ready for this, “The Destructive Siemens Corporate Mindset”.  Uhh well lets see. Brilliant minds think alike,  birds of a feather flock together. Just some amusing thoughts going through my mind right now. Feel free to post any witticisms you might have in regards to this to dear readers.

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Celebrate Fireworks Free July 4TH with Siemens SE Sales Supression Team

Posted on July 4, 2014 | 4 comments

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.

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Siemens Marketing and Publicity Update 5-27-14

Posted on May 27, 2014 | 6 comments

You can blame Ralph for this post as my jaw dropped when I read the following in his latest ezine. But before we start in here is a picture from a secret spy camera somewhere in a Siemens parking lot as a Marketing or PR guy is driving in. It is kind of hard to tell which department he belonged to as they all look the same.

marketing guy arriving at work

Here is Ralph’s latest. A great read all the time on many topics and you should subscribe.
http://www.upfrontezine.com/2014/upf-820.htm.

“Re: What I Learned at Solid Edge University 2014
Thanks for attending Solid Edge University and publishing your article in upfront.eZine #819. I work in marketing for Solid Edge and just a couple of comments from me that may be of interest to your readers:

The Solid Edge Apps web page that you refer to is a new resource to help our customers find the most commonly used Apps by category (Analysis, Manufacturing, Standard Parts etc.). We are adding the most popular apps into this area right now and you are correct that there are just 30 or so listed here right now. At the bottom of the page is a link to “All Solid Edge Partners” and it is here that you can search on the 500+ technology partners whose software works with Solid Edge.

Great that you were impressed by the Create Sheet Metal from 3D Part capability, and we would agree we should have featured this more prominently in our marketing materials for Solid Edge ST7. It is featured in the “Fast and Flexible Part Modeling” video on our Solid Edge ST7 web page.
– David Chadwick, mainstream eng global product marketing
Siemens Industry Software Limited”

SO Dave, this Dave the user and not the marketing whiz-bang, what did you learn today reading the above quote from the esteemed Mr Chadwick? What I learn is that once again these people can’t be bothered to do their jobs. There are a number of reasons for this which I know but will not go into at this time. Any one of these, or all of these or maybe even some new monumentally idiotic reasons I may not be aware of apply here.

Suffice it to say that once again with a known convention date that presents a once a year opportunity better than any other by far to promote SE these guys fail to fix yet another website problem. LOOK HERE at all of our partners, 500+ of them!! Don’t you love it when you go there as Ralph did and see 30 some listed right now? And of course right now is heading into two weeks after what should have been a hard must make it deadline. I wonder how many of these are here from last year first off and secondly if they were at all worried about this there would have been more than 30+ even if they could not get them all in there. AND that number would grow rapidly each week until they were all there. Of course I digress because that happens elsewhere and not here in the land of never-ending meetings to decide web page colors. Clearly Mr Chadwick was not worried enough about this to do it in a timely fashion so the year’s best opportunity squandered again. For crying out loud my church just finished a web site and the links work and it is populated quite well and one person did it with a part-time effort in a few weeks. How is it that when Siemens M&PR get ahold of these simple things they never see the light of day?

You guys better wake up and realize that the brand you are making for yourself in the public eye is one of superior product and bungling navel gazing M&PR. Also known as the best software you’ve never heard of. Look people I have a serious question for you. How many times do you have to walk face first into closed doors before you begin to realize that opening the door first gets you farther faster and in much better shape? It will also allow you to take that big red clown ball off of your noses which is another great benefit.

OK I know this is hard for you all to understand but let me spell out why this is important to users who BUY your product. The larger the market share SE has the more we as buyers benefit from increased work that will come our way as a natural and inevitable consequence of growing market share. I said this FIVE YEARS ago and find it nearly impossible to believe I am STILL saying it to people who STILL don’t understand this. Oh, and you guys as a company will make more money too although I guess this must not be too important or else Siemens would be cleaning its dead wood out left and right.

Would one of you with some gonads please reply to this post and explain this situation to me? I want to try to understand this continuation of absolute and I fear deliberate evasion of duty to your customers and corporation to do what they and we have hired you to do. Really, I want to know.

From yet another secret spy camera purportedly in a Siemens M&PR meeting room where important decisions are made.

marketing decision process

A rather simple and elegant answer to determining what gets done. The Siemens gray color-neutral darts are labeled with cool to do M&PR stuff and the blindfolded guy whips it to the dart board which is invariably in the upper left quadrant of the selected wall as you face it. The tally guy writes down what makes it according to the points each dart gathers and this sets the agenda for the next meeting where highest scoring dart gets forwarded to a subcommittee for further study. This happens again for all the other darts until they all make it through the vetting process. Any darts that miss completely are discussed in another series of scheduled meetings where darts are labeled accordingly and launched with great hopes and expectations that these will graduate to the points category thus proving to themselves the great progress being made.

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Siemens Marketing, PR and the World of Never Never Land

Posted on May 10, 2014 | 2 comments

Reading the statistics here on my blog today and something that has been drawing more of my attention is this. Months ago, 10-6-13 to be exact I wrote a post comparing the direct editing capabilities of SE and SW. It has been BY FAR the most read post ever for me and still comes in the top three read posts every day including the new one if there is one. Many thousands of reads. Of course Larry, Curly, Moe and Shemp are to busy setting up meetings to determine colors on web sites and the next meeting and on and on. Way to busy to directly compete with those who should be regarded as competitors. By my reckoning and the number of reads the CAD world is keenly interested in a direct comparison where it is shown on the same part how things differ and how file sizes and complexities grow. These are what my numbers PROVE to me. But the symphony of crickets is the stiff upper lip of competition these people bring to the contest.

Meanwhile back in the chirping crickets department life goes on. In case you don’t know who the Stooges are read https://solidedging.wordpress.com/2014/02/07/the-destructive-siemens-corporate-mindset/ and add the fourth one Shemp who is Jon Fox to the list. As the social postmortem for SE goes on in my mind I ponder how people who are supposed to be planning conquests and growing market share and beating the competition can possibly be this inept and still get paid by the company they are sabotaging.

Funny thing about the sound of crickets. It is meant solely to attract themselves to themselves and has no other purpose. Kind of like what happens in real life with the Siemens crickets as they plan another meeting. Heaven forbid a multi-year cogent and properly themed strategy and multi-year dedication in serious time and money to the same. It would interfere with the meetings where the cricket noises prevail and life is never bad.

Wait till Autodesk gets ahold of these clowns with plans that span years and have serious effort in community and identity. A crummy product can still prevail over a great one that no one knows about. SE is doomed to third place if nothing changes here. The real choice is the color of granite on the tombstone unless Siemens gets smart and gets real and sheds their dead wood. Funny thing about dead wood. I go out for firewood and around the bottom of the pile there are always crickets.

These people do not want to win.

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Solid Edge University and the Lackluster Launch

Posted on May 9, 2014 | 15 comments

I guess in writing this I have made a decision. I have come full circle and I find myself back where it all started, namely the best software you have never heard of. Here we are just days before SEU 2014 and the totally incompetent Marketing and Publicity departments with the Four Stooge’s combining from Siemens the top Marketing and Publicity incompetents and the cluelessness of Jon Fox for a powerful and deadly body blow to the user community and the future potential of SE in numbers of sales of seats. What first brought me here was complaining about the very same things I find myself complaining about today. For some years now I had entertained real hope things were going to change. On the technical side they have and SE is the best midrange MCAD program out there along with finally a true integrated CAM partner. But this social side of it all still reeks of the foul odor of either people who could care less about SE and it’s future or outright gross incompetence.

Some time back I had written a post on “SEU 2014 No News is No News” The purpose of it was to be a pre-emptive strike against incompetents Like Jon Fox and force him to actually have to do something. I was sent a letter that stated that if I wanted to be on the inside as I had been I needed to stop writing these types of things which were harming their attempt at building a brand name. Out of respect for the individual I did. But I have to admit the first thing that popped into my mind was what brand? Did I miss something here? Out of respect for that same individual I now address the same topic and let the chips fall where they may. I have very little desire to be a part of something that is doomed to fail unless big changes are made. Sadly I do still care and I care a lot. I care enough about what is going on to come right out and say can’t you guys see you are destroying any potential for SE to be #1? I understand that threat to not be a part of the “inside” is real but remember my primary loyalty is to USERS of which I am one and a failure to fix this long-standing problem is of far greater concern to me than someones opinion of me. In this day and time where sycophants are so easy to come by and real honest input is not, if honesty is secondary to hearing the glad handing and falsehoods about how well things are going from the sycophants take me off the privileged insiders list.

This is why I am not going to SEU2014. I am going to work and take a little time off and ignore an event that will have many more Siemens employees attending than actual users. I am privy to the numbers and it is appalling. What really got me going today was looking at Novedge again and seeing a continuation of week after squandered week where nothing much is made of the premier annual event for SE. Folks, if it is not showing up at Novedge it is not showing up anywhere and what I said about the incompetence of PR and Marketing is not only true but has now produced exactly what I feared it would and the indisputable truth is in the numbers.

Three years now and two of them with regional summits where interested people cared enough to attend. If there was a lick of sense in the idiot PR&M (Public Relations and Marketing) departments this would have been the nucleus of user groups across the country. Instead this data just sits and rots. Which brings me to another point besides outright incompetence which is after all so capably manifested by the four stooges. There has been basically no change in the status of users outside of the Universities. There are some VARs who are doing great work with information and reaching out but Siemens itself is a big fat fail. I figure that when the final numbers are in of actual USERS who attend the Nashville event from two years ago will have been the peak. however in the mean time these clowns can waste days talking about what should be the approved background color for the official Siemens website.

There is another idea that has been floating around in my mind for some time and it is not all bad either for the users. But it is a wretched thing for the potential for SE to have explosive and technically well earned growth and a thriving user community. Talking with an ex SE user last week and he came right out and said he could confirm my idea to be more than fiction. What if Siemens bought UGS for their own manufacturing ecosystem and their sole concern was to have best of class software for their own purposes under their total control? I can see that this would by and of itself be a more than adequate reason to buy UGS. It means that if you want to have software that is designed for manufacturing by a manufacturing giant that eats it’s own dog food you are in the right place.

What really puzzles me though about this is that I thought profit from any division of a conglomerate was desirable and funds and management would get behind an area like SE that has such potential for growth. Instead we get things like jackasses saying stuff like why should SE users be treated any differently than NX PLM World users? These Siemens people genuinely can’t see that different markets mean different strategies and no one size can fit them all. By math I have generated here before I figure these guys have saved limited budgetary expeditures on advertising and cost a ton of profits as a result. Penny wise and pound foolish. Quite frankly if I was an industry analyst I would be paying attention to this myopic treatment of SE and wonder just how many other areas of huge profit potential these same individuals in PR&M are costing the corporation in other areas to. Is there a point that can be reached where a company becomes divorced from what made the companies they buy out tech leaders because they are to big or to hide bound? Or smothered by self serving bureaucrats whose main concern is paychecks and fiefdoms?

After SEU 2014 I will have some other things to say about all this but for now I just shake my head over the management of Siemens that can’t see how they are enabling significant failure to utilize the profit potential of SE. For whatever reason. I fully expect that within two years if nothing changes and the current PR&M people are not fired and replace with competent individuals who are empowered and directed by upper management to prevail against the market the Universities will be a thing of the past. A fading but fond memory of SE users just as the Summit from 2005 in Cincinnati became to SE users for years.

A, you can’t take people and strategies that do not work and do the same things again and expect the miraculous to happen. B, You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it drink. So what is it going to be Siemens? Are you going to fix it or do we play the dirge for what could have been and should have been under rational profit seeking hungry owners? I for one am thinking that this mess is just not worth my time and effort to support. I make no money from this and I am not an employee and your attitude has managed to take one of your biggest fans and destroy my desire to be anything other than a silent dues paying customer. Have a nice time at SEU 2014 and look at all the Siemens employees around you that far outnumber the users and remember that it could have been thousands of users with a sprinkling of Siemens types and your user base could have been the largest. But hey, at least I am eating the same dog food as is used in the Siemens kennel and that is not all bad.

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