At some point it is likely that you will need to extend SolidWorks or SolidWorks Simulation to develop capability that SolidWorks doesn't yet support ... that can't be, you say. "We only use a tenth of what SolidWorks does now -- why would we need to extend it? And Solidworks 2011 has even more stuff that looks great, but we won't learn to use that until 2012 or 2013." My response to that is that you will develop the capability to use more of SolidWorks -- it's a complex tool, mastery takes time, but you work at it everyday ... you'll get there. Frankly, you will never use most of what SolidWorks does -- there are some things that will never apply all that much to what you do; after all, there isn't any tool, any capability that anyone ever uses at 100% capacity.
But your job is not to use the bleeding edge of SolidWorks per se, your job is to solve problems for your company ... those are the R&D, cutting-edge engineering problems will take you beyond what SolidWorks [or any other off-the-shelf CAD/CAE product] does; typically, these are not drafting problems (i.e. not about depicting a complicated cam-mating problem) which SolidWorks already does ... these problems are about the edge of engineering, simulation, variation, stochastic models, phase-changes and the very edge of what you know about the behavior of your own technology.
But in some highly-specific areas that are core to your business, you will find that you really NEED to be ahead of SolidWorks; you can't afford to wait for SolidWorks or SolidWorks Simulation to release a tool that solves your problem. The day may never come for the SolidWorks release of what you need ... the need for your application may be too small for Dassault -- even though it is huge for you. At that point, you will almost necessarily be in a highly specialized, unique niche area of the technology that is THE core intellectual property that can take your company past what anyone else is doing ... unless you are in one of those companies where you depend on your brand AND the most important secret about your innovations is actually how damned little you really know. In fact, I would claim that, almost by definition, if you can operate entirely within the SolidWorks you are either in a commodity business or your company is faking innovation ... good luck with faking innovation, but it's easy to predict that commodity businesses are going to get even more competitive.
But your job is not to use the bleeding edge of SolidWorks per se, your job is to solve problems for your company ... those are the R&D, cutting-edge engineering problems will take you beyond what SolidWorks [or any other off-the-shelf CAD/CAE product] does; typically, these are not drafting problems (i.e. not about depicting a complicated cam-mating problem) which SolidWorks already does ... these problems are about the edge of engineering, simulation, variation, stochastic models, phase-changes and the very edge of what you know about the behavior of your own technology.
But in some highly-specific areas that are core to your business, you will find that you really NEED to be ahead of SolidWorks; you can't afford to wait for SolidWorks or SolidWorks Simulation to release a tool that solves your problem. The day may never come for the SolidWorks release of what you need ... the need for your application may be too small for Dassault -- even though it is huge for you. At that point, you will almost necessarily be in a highly specialized, unique niche area of the technology that is THE core intellectual property that can take your company past what anyone else is doing ... unless you are in one of those companies where you depend on your brand AND the most important secret about your innovations is actually how damned little you really know. In fact, I would claim that, almost by definition, if you can operate entirely within the SolidWorks you are either in a commodity business or your company is faking innovation ... good luck with faking innovation, but it's easy to predict that commodity businesses are going to get even more competitive.
If anyone from Brazil, Russia, India, China, Korea ... or North Dakota ...can pick up SolidWorks and reverse engineer your designs, grok your workflows and essentially imitate what you do [and probably do some parts of it better], there will be significant and GROWING competitive pressure on your business company's model ... and your salary.
That is why ... eventually ... your company's desire for success and desire to maintain or extend it core engineering competency will push you to DEVELOP your own CAD/CAE extensions ... of course, you will rely on the "commodity" functionality that all other SolidWorks users exploit, but it will be your FOUNDATION ... not the limit of your universe. Most companies are not there yet ... most companies develop their own tooling and manufacturing processes, but they have not really turned the corner where they develop and extend their internal engineering, R&D, test and other "knowledge work" processes. Eventually, you will get to the point where you gather the requirements from your users and you start developing your extensions to further automate your engineering ... or you and the other engineers at your company will work for less. Quite a lot less ... global competition will make your company less likely to compete and will impact what your company can pay you. Also, we should remember that engineering salaries in China or India are maybe as low as only 15% or so of what those salaries are in the USA.
NEXT... the lines between IT systems development and engineering are blurring ... in my next few blog entries I will writing about my background as software quality engineer, about process audits and about some of the crossovers and best practices that make sense for ensuring the quality of CAD models and integrity of things like properties for ensure full benefit from associativity ... things like pair programming, agile test-driven development, authenticated check-in/check-out revision control and configuration management systems for distributed development, CAD/IT administration etc
NEXT... the lines between IT systems development and engineering are blurring ... in my next few blog entries I will writing about my background as software quality engineer, about process audits and about some of the crossovers and best practices that make sense for ensuring the quality of CAD models and integrity of things like properties for ensure full benefit from associativity ... things like pair programming, agile test-driven development, authenticated check-in/check-out revision control and configuration management systems for distributed development, CAD/IT administration etc
Several years ago, I tried to buy a used SolidWorks. SolidWorks told me the licenses are not transferable, and they would be unwilling to give the magic number you need to install the software, or support it, or upgrade it. They do have an exception for an individual joining a company, or company mergers/sales, but they don't want licenses being sold on an open market.
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