Jon Hirschtick | Founding & Developing the Solidworks and Onshape CAD Systems

hi everyone we've set up this being an engineer podcast as an industry knowledge repository if you will we hope it'll be a tool where Engineers can learn about and connect with other companies Technologies people resources and opportunities so make some connections and enjoy the show and I could have given up I could have given up when people said no with SolidWorks and and I think as an engineer I can tell you two things one is if you try I can't guarantee you'll succeed but I can guarantee that if you don't try you won't succeed and the other thing is failures and problems those are the neighbors of successes [Music] [Applause] hello and welcome to another wonderful episode of the being an engineer podcast today we're speaking with John hershdick who is a legend in the cad industry if you're not familiar with John by name you certainly will be familiar with him by his product which we will get into products multiple plural that is John is currently Chief evangelist at PTC where he focuses on focuses on on shape the world's first and only Cloud native Cad and PDM system which includes rendering collaboration workflow analytics and many other tools John is also the former former general manager as well as the co-founder and former CEO of onshape prior to onshape in 1993 John founded SolidWorks and served as CEO group executive and board member until 2011 watching the platform grow to 2 million users in over 500 million dollars per year in Revenue John what a treat it is to have you on the show today I feel like I'm speaking with CAD royalty thank you for for joining us on the the being an engineer podcast well Aaron I'm delighted to be here and thank you for making such interesting podcast episodes for the engineers of the world that we both are welcome right yeah we love doing this well same question I ask everyone to get started and then we'll dive into SolidWorks and onshape and all those wonderful things what made you decide to become an engineer I think it was as a child I found I liked building things you know building it was just cool to build something and see it work now mind you I am not one of these people that grew up um in a household of building things you know I didn't I grew up in a small apartment in Chicago the only tools we had in the house were pliers and a pair of pliers and a screwdriver that was it in the kitchen drawer I didn't learn to at home any of this we didn't we didn't take apart cars or build anything but what happened was um I had a friend who was into electronics and he invited me over we went in his basement he had a little this data workbench we built electronic circuits and just as soon as I had any any experience building things and then also fueled by the Space Program when I was a kid which is back now but you know watching the Rockets take off for the moon you know I'm talking about 1960s and 70s and then um also uh I started subscribing to to magazines like Popular Science and popular electronics and it was just that draw to make things I think yeah that's I can relate with that myself I loved building things when I was a kid everything from Legos to clubhouses and everything in between well we will certainly get into your your current it's more than a venture your current activities with onshape and PTC but I was hoping to spend a few minutes talking about SolidWorks before we dive into on shape I I read some stories about where the funding came from for SolidWorks back in the 90s and and they they had to do with gambling and Las Vegas casinos and you tell me is is that true or is that apocryphal well it's it's pretty much true you know and and I'll give you the the truthful version is that um I was able I was in a financial position to start SolidWorks which required me to go about one year with no real income and spend money to you know to rent office space to buy a phone system to tell you know we're talking 30 years ago Aaron so you know remember it was a different world so I bought a phone system you know and buy a computer which were much more expensive relative to today's prices anyway that ability for me to have the money to start the company came from my prior experience as a professional Gambler a professional blackjack player with the MIT blackjack team so you know I made money playing Blackjack and that allowed me to be able to start the company but it's not like that we took company money and gambled with it or anything no no no no no no this was all personal I was personally enabled by that still that is that's wild that you were able to earn enough money gambling in Vegas to to start SolidWorks I just I love that it feels so um I don't know Wild West in a way it's just a great story well you know it it was really exciting and since since that time there's been as you know or may know there's been um a movie uh TV shows books and so forth about it and um but at the time it was just a lot of work just like engineering is the the parallel draws just like some some listeners build exciting products that everyone would know about you know and like I suppose if you work at Apple or you work at Tesla or you you know you work at um uh in a toy company and everyone knows your products people say to you oh it must be so exciting you're thinking well it is exciting but it's mostly just a ton of work and in the same way when you hear about Blackjack it's kind of like you know it sounds so exciting but it is exciting exciting but it's a ton of work really sure yeah Amen to that well um let's let's go back in time a little bit and this is in in the 90s and back of that time AutoCAD was kind of the big name maybe not quite the only name but but certainly by far the biggest name in CAD and uh they they dominated the scene PTC was was on its way as well how was SolidWorks able to get its foot into what was essentially autocad's Market back then yeah well Aaron you're really it's really um uh smart of you to mention AutoCAD because so many people talk to me about those days and mind you we're talking 30 years ago SolidWorks was founded 30 years ago 1993 so you really you know it wasn't five years ago 30 years ago you have to think about the world so AutoCAD is like these days it's forgotten I mean really I don't mean it's forgotten that nobody uses it there's a lot of people use AutoCAD it's a good product people are very successful with it but in the mechanical engineering scene the the the world on-shaped SolidWorks Creo is in and so forth Annex uh so forth you just don't hear about on a cat at all like if you know you just don't hear about it as being used so much but anyway at the time AutoCAD was everywhere and it was viewed as almost a monopoly you know it was viewed as just a standard standard CAD system but for 2D 2D drawings you know doing drawings and I don't mean for your listeners who who grew up using SolidWorks or use onshape or use Creo or modern systems they think oh drawings you take the views of the 3D model no no no no I don't mean taking abuse of 3D model I mean laying out lines in the drawing that's what people did with AutoCAD so AutoCAD was sort of a everywhere standard everywhere you went and then also what had happened in the late 80s a pro-engineer came along from PTC where I work now at the time it was called Pro engineering and today it's called it's evolved into Creole it's evolved in many ways but Pro engineer was a landmark 3D product not the first 3D product but the first one that really worked well that Engineers could could really use real Engineers could use to make product models so you had this um you had this world of AutoCAD everywhere in the 2D market and pro engineer not everywhere but the clear leader in 3D but then there's a bot so you want me to get to the butt here so where was the room in the market well AutoCAD was um a Dos based product it ran on a PC under dos I don't know some people don't even know what dos is that was the operating systems before it was Windows so it ran on a PC and it was like four thousand dollars which is relatively cheap at the time compared to other cat but Pro engineer while it was 3D it was pretty expensive twenty thousand dollars a license typically and it ran on Unix now Unix workstations at the time and some of your listeners don't even know what I'm talking about with the Unix workstation imagine a purpose-built computer that ran something like Linux before there was Linux it was called Unix and and these systems were very hard to use you know command lines and weird weird UI you know the pro engineer UI was really weird and and so so you had AutoCAD with the right kind of price and running on on a PC that was a good idea but it was only 2D you'd pro-engineer with the right modeling technology 3D but expensive and hard to use and yet nobody using Windows or Mac style uis which I said wow that's the future so the idea of SolidWorks was pretty simple have the 3D like Pro engineer had the 3D power of pro engineer have the cost and PC platform of AutoCAD and have the windowsness of Microsoft and we felt that that would be overall a formula for bringing making 3D as popular as 2D was that every engineer could have it and that's the SolidWorks formula well well this this brings me back um when I was a freshman in college which is the first time I ever used a CAD program it was pro-e Pro engineer and I remember that we were on Unix systems back then and oh yeah oh yeah you don't hear anything about a Unix system but no you don't I think we're probably on the tail end of of that era yeah I mean Unix has come back as Linux and by the way you know if you know Linux there's no such thing as Linux really there's Linux based operating systems and there's you know 100 varieties you know into red hat whatever but anyway Linux based operating systems have come back quite a bit and what we're seeing is particularly among users who are entrenched in software they have a great interest in running their cat on Linux and really the only pro-grade CAD that runs on Linux of course is on shape you know that you can use in a browser and so we get a lot of Linux fans come to the on-shape um you know you know show up in our our user base but uh yeah so you're you're obviously older than I thought I have a baby face yeah yeah people often mistake my age for like 10 years younger I'm I'm 43 right now so I'm not thrilled but I'm not young okay you were probably at the tail end of the Unix workstation stuff then yeah yeah by the way people told me when I went around to start SolidWorks I told people what I was doing you know Engineers I said hey what are you think and they're like uh that's a bad idea world doesn't need a record system you know it's like uh you know AutoCAD everyone uses AutoCAD and the people who the few people that need 3D use Pro engineer and they're already doing Windows versions about a Canon Pro engineer and they told me um the the pc windows isn't powerful enough because there's no 3D Graphics drivers for Windows yet so it's not powerful enough it'll be too slow Windows is slow and it was at the time okay and they also told me nobody will take it seriously people won't trust it it won't be secure you're running running engineering on Windows this is all the stuff they told me and I'll just tell you I got turned down by zillions of investors I went to investors and said here's my plan now you know I'd be like yeah we're going to build a complete CAD system get out of my office you know it's like and we're going to compete with AutoCAD and PTC PTC at the time one of the most successful companies in the software industry they like get out of my office you know come on I had one Venture firm didn't even finish the meeting and we have like an hour meeting in like 15 minutes in they're like yeah I'm going to end the meeting early I'm like we haven't even shown you the demo yeah we're not going to invest in this you guys are crazy you know so so it was like no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no how did you finally get to a yes so we kept trying you know and we believed in what we were doing we kept trying and then also what really helped was we added another team member who had been one of the founders of PTC and when he came on board that gave us more credibility and we kept trying and our prototype got better and better and then I still remember the moment that it all tipped we were in this meeting with a venture capitalist um I don't know if I should say who I don't think it's a problem to say who this fellow John Flint great guy he was at a company called bur Eagan deliage and he came in late you know the meeting was let's say it was at two o'clock you know we're sitting in the conference room he rolls in at like 2 18 you know for an hour meeting and and I had told my co-founder Scott Harris just once we get to the demo just keep it rolling keep the tape rolling no matter what you know even if we start talking don't stop the demo because I want to have the site you know cads are pretty exciting demo if you watch it I said I just want that demo keep going if we don't stop demoing okay okay and so he shows the Prototype and we're showing the demo and he's very this guy John is very disinterested and then there's this moment where light goes on he's like wait a minute this is all running in Windows on a PC yeah yeah and that's 3D modeling yeah we're showing a solid model and drilling holes and stuff yeah yeah he's like and nobody else really runs in windows with a real UI like you know word or Excel no no they don't you know he goes and and he points to my co-founder you go you're one of the founders of BTC he goes yeah yeah and he looks at me asks me a call he goes okay I'm in that was it he goes I'm in he says I want to fund this deal and then and the other person I'll really give tons of credit to actually I I got to be fair here John was the second investor to commit the first investor to really get what we were doing was Axel bishara of a then Atlas venture today at a new firm called balcoons that oxel just created um fantastic Venture investor who focuses on on hardware and Industry he does other deals too but he really knows the hardware World anyone out there trying to raise money if you've got a hardware startup you want to contact oxel at balcoons Great investor Axel believed in us first but we needed another VC and that's when we got got John and we ended up getting Northbridge as well but but oxel was amazing he got it he he understood CAD he knew the market and he got it so anyway I just wanted a great story wrong I don't want to I don't want to chew up all the time here but it was a fun time oh no that you had me on the edge of my seat John okay that was excellent yeah well what were some of the biggest problems that your team had to overcome technically as as you developed SolidWorks well a couple Big Technical problems one is nobody nobody had ever built a solid modeler on a PC or on windows before not one that worked you know people had built little ones but you know you know Engineers need a lot of power in their tools so no one had built one that worked that was one big problem and windows was a little bit of a green banana you know so like like so that was one you know the the platform was was an issue the second thing was we were the first successful production level CAD system that used component technology no one had done that successfully before meaning we licensed a lot of chunks of Technology from other companies um particularly like like for instance the geometric modeling engine we license parasolid from what was then unigraphics now Siemens we license translators we and people at the time the kind of wisdom in the in the cad insiders was well that's okay if you're doing some small application but if you're doing a real application you need to build your own it would be kind of like talking about batteries and and electric vehicles today Aaron if you if we were talking and we said I said oh I want to build a I want to build my own Electric Lawnmower you'd say yeah you can order batteries online and it'll work but if I said I want to build a car a company to compete with Tesla you'd be like you better you better have your own battery plant John because you'd have to build that yourself and I'd say well why I said well no one has ever done it without you know at that scale you know you can't just go down the road and you know order it off Amazon well times change you know so it was kind of this radical idea so that was um that was probably the the two big problems that hadn't been dealt with before were the windows platform which was a little green and underpowered for the job and and the whole idea of doing it in Windows UI we had to think about how do we take the the paradigms of Word and Excel at that time where the defining user experiences that we were shooting for and put cat in there and so that those were the technical challenges besides one more technical challenges building a cad system is just freaking hard you got to be a little bananas to try Okay so that that wasn't unique because it was hard to build these other systems too and so I don't want to forget that point yeah for sure um how long did it take before you started getting some real traction and success with Engineers let's see I would say from the early days of SolidWorks to getting some traction about three years you know in terms of like you know it was probably six yeah we well at the end of 95 we shipped the product and so in in a trade show called Auto fact that was a big event so into 96 were our first users now at the time honestly between you and me and the amount of functions in SolidWorks in 1996 were a little light and by today's standards you know but today's standards you get laughed out of the room you know I was missing so many things but at the time you got to remember expectations were lower you know um this would be 1995 96 so 27 28 years ago people didn't expect as much in the cad system but we did have people using it and I would say it took to hit its stride you know it was you know it was seven eight years to really get the system where where it was hitting its stride I would say in that era you know I remember the first time I used it it was an internship I had in college and I had been used to using uh Pro e and then wildfire and so moving to SolidWorks at first it was really tough for me because I was used to looking back the proe interface was so clunky back then but I was just so used to it you know yeah and then I moved to SolidWorks and I remember little things like there were there were um animations like if you wanted to look normal at a surface you didn't just snap normal it was kind of a smooth animation and I thought oh that's so cool you know just these little things like that and then after not very long I thought well I'd never want to go back to to proe because SolidWorks just is so much easier to use I think that was 2004 so by that point to me at least it felt like a mature product that that competed well with uh with Pro E Yeah 2004 by 2004 you know it was pretty pretty good probably now SolidWorks doesn't never had everything Pro he had but you know it had enough and yeah that's right yeah well once it did become established and was being used by Engineers around the world was there ever anything that surprised you about how users either were or were not using the application um I think uh uh I was surprised let's see what was I surprised I mean not principally you know SolidWorks was a company it was a business that pretty much did what we set out to do you know it wasn't like like a lot of companies start doing one thing and then they pivot to do something else you know like you know Apple has found to do computers but today I believe most of the businesses phones and iPads and music you know and streaming television you know where did that come from yeah and and but SolidWorks I would say pretty much we built the product we set out to build it was used largely in the way it was and I could think of some except you know some interesting things I mean people probably built bigger things with it than I might have anticipated um uh and I think the size of teams that started to use it was was surprising too but no it was you know it wasn't a huge you know a huge uh pivot in what people did with it versus what we expected did the magnitude of success ever surprise you or did you always kind of have a feeling that yeah this is this is going to blow up and be huge I I think I always had the feeling that this was going to be huge I mean I would tell people when we were building the Prototype I I got an argument with a vendor one day I said look one of these component suppliers the people who built Asus I flew out to Colorado using frequent fire miles and I met the the guys and I said look you know they're like you know yeah we're being nice we're letting you try it out for free you know and you're lucky to have it and I'm like look your product isn't that great but we can help you make it a lot better if you work with us and they're like who are you man you don't even have any money to pay us and I go look I'll tell you right now if you make us successful we're going to be a bigger customer than all your other customers today put together that's what I told them it's like that get out of here John you're yeah you're so I wasn't being arrogant I was just being like so I always thought SolidWorks would become an extremely popular CAD system what I didn't understand is how big the cad Market would get so our place in the market was pretty much what I thought would happen for SolidWorks what I I didn't understand was how big the cad Market would get I remember sitting around with John mcelhaney who was the second CEO of SolidWorks after I was we were like how big can this get and we were like well maybe it would get to 300 million dollars a year well today it's probably a billion dollars a year I don't know you have to look at the NASA system financial statements or something but it got way bigger than we ever dreamed it could more users use 3D cat but the position in the market was you know I mean I you know it was pretty much what I I had thought what I told people would happen when we financed the company and built the product that's amazing yeah like you said not often does a company end up where it thought it was going to be but but SolidWorks did so congratulations what a huge accomplishment there and uh apparently that was not enough for you you wanted to do it again and and so now we get into on shape um uh let's see for those who aren't familiar with onshape can can you just share like a 30 60 second summary of what onshape is and and what its benefits are over some of the other major CAD systems out there sure well onshape is the first and only true Cloud native Cad and PDM system so what it means is cloud native offers huge benefits and solves huge problems people have with Cad and PDM problems everything from installs downloads service packs special computers and all that nonsense license codes is everyone on the same version that all goes away everyone in the world's on the same version and um and then also the data management and collaboration you know who's got the latest copy of the file I don't know oh we locked it in a PDM Vault somewhere you know who's running a PDM Vault I don't know you know like all that goes away and it's just there so we're kind of what we we've we're we are um complete and we're pro level system we've got incredible power and functionality in all these areas and uh um on shape was built to solve a lot of the problems we saw with the old style systems today it's used by oh I think it's over two million people maybe more um in in thousands and thousands of companies and uh schools and all that and so we're we're um really um you know really excited by most of all what our users do with onshape and how much they they love it at what point did you start having this notion that there was a better solution for CAD that wasn't being solved by SolidWorks or any of the other CAD systems out there and and you know that you might like to have a second shot at go another round with developing a cad system so it was when I visited users back when I was at SolidWorks I would visit users and customers I've always visited users and customers by the way I worked in this industry before SolidWorks I had found another company no one's ever really heard of it called premise and before that I worked at computer vision so I started in the cad business in 81. Aaron 81 and I've worked in it ever since so that's uh 40. this is soon going to be 42 years that I've worked in the cad business consecutively okay lots of wisdom in that cat area yeah well wisdom lots of wisdom lots of time to eventually do it right you know it's like the monkey throws darts you know like I've thrown enough systems at the cad dartboard that a couple of them are bulls eyes you know whatever but but anyway you know my whole journey is really about studying users problems what are the product about you know I I I develop products that other people use to develop products so my customers are product developers you're listeners you know engineers and so I'd see the problems they had so back at SolidWorks yeah good news you know SolidWorks was a lot easier in in 1993 hey it was great news that SolidWorks a lot easier to use than Pro engineering had a Windows UI and um it was you know ran on a PC that was all great but then you go into customers and I would go visit them and they would say to me they'd sent me down a conference room I still remember visiting a medical company in Boston it made the coolest um heart um heart valve repair or heart hole repair systems out of memory allies I mean I just can't wait to talk about the product but time out before we talk about the product into the conference room and I get two hours worth of anger really over problems involving well John where you know we got 24 users using SolidWorks I'm like 24 we we thought maybe you know I don't know I kind of never really imagined big teams using songs but okay um and and um we're trying to we have to buy everyone these special computers okay they're doing that and then they got to do installs and they fail half the time I mean anyone's anyone who's tried doing anyone who's installed cat has had installations fail right Aaron you've installed Chad and all your installations gone smoothly no they have not right I mean you know they fail oh yeah and then and so the first thing they complained to me about was just getting the darn system running you know it was just cost him all this time and they're like they're like well whenever we add a new person we have to go through this again and we're adding people all the time you know we we hire somebody new in a city we got my computer we got a license code for download to install it on that okay then the other problem they had is like like they're like we we need to get everyone in the same version as SolidWorks and we've got our vendors on one on different versions our customers on a version we're on a version we can't get everyone in the same version so we run multiple versions you know like uh uh okay and well the multiple of course the files aren't compatible we all know that you know you can go forward but you can't go back you know and then again you're not in your head right and anyone who's used CAD knows these problems will exist then they're like well it's just that I'm sorry to interrupt it's horrible that this is our versioning right so you understand why they do it from a business standpoint but it's just the pits foreign it's not just the business it's technology you know the technology was installed software and files and by the way I'm going to go through a few more problems because you say why did I start SolidWorks well and why did I start on shape well let me tell the whole story so so there's that and then they tell me that oh well what we did is we decided to run two different versions of SolidWorks two isn't really enough but it's better than one you know they'd want to run three or four well so so then we discovered that the license code manager you can't have two of them on the same network so we set up a separate Network for the people who are on the other version of SolidWorks yeah I'm like just make my freaking Netflix but I'm like poor you you they're like with these multiple versions what should we do John and I'm like I don't know like I don't know what you should do and I'm thinking I don't even I wrote this system I'm a founder of the system and CEO of the company for many years and I don't even know what you should do to fix this I'm thinking how do they even get the product made I don't understand and then by the way then not done yet because then they're like well we also want to talk about PDM and the files I'm like PDM oh no because that was always a problem okay all right yeah because we're going through this right now yeah yeah oh you are okay yeah you know why because you know how many people have come I've been very lucky in my career and people come up to me and say oh John you know on shape I love it it's SolidWorks I love SolidWorks I love the cad you built you know what no one ever said to me PDM Works John you built PDM I love it can I take your picnic autograph because I love PDF said nobody ever now with onshape people love PDM because we've reinvented it we have built-in I'll get to that in a minute so what they said to me is well we have a vault set up and we try to get everyone to lock files and and copy it out you know but we never know who's really got the latest version of files is in the computer because we can't get people to do all locking because if they do try and do the Locking well then this slows people down and what we did is so that what we started to do is we put each other's passwords on the walls of the cubicle on Post-it notes this is a good idea for security right okay you know and I can't I'm not making this up man you know this is what I saw okay and we tried at solver so like let's try the cloud by the way all the vendors do Cloud right so my competitors all say oh we're doing what John's doing we run the cloud except they took 30 year old code and they sort of used the cloud a little bit to help it along in some ways but that's not the same thing so at the same time as I see this stuff going on with customers and we you know we're trying to do our best but it's hard because files are not a good way to collaborate if you think about anyway at the same time I saw what was happening with Salesforce workday zendesk Google Docs netsuite basically everything cool was going to the browser and it wasn't just going to a browser see this is the key part you know you don't just take a file based system and say I'm going to run it in the browser that doesn't really solve any problems that was a little bit of problem not really big problems you really have to rethink it so it doesn't rely on files and copies of files and you might say well what's wrong with files that works fine well it doesn't work fine for most Business Systems like do you use anything you ever use something like Salesforce you ever use an accounting system netsuite okay or QuickBooks like I I use quick quick um I use QuickBooks even personally for a while online and but but if you use netsuite if you do accounting you use Salesforce here's how you don't do accounting you don't say um I need to enter a a debit in The Ledger everyone stop using it please so I can lock it and I'll take a complete copy of the ledgers of the company onto my local computer and I'll edit it and then I'll check it in and then you can edit it if you try to do accounting that way what would happen your company would would be screwed you know you can't do that you have everyone accessing a database so I'm laughing because we actually did that a long time ago with QuickBooks desktop I would send the file to our account and they would do things and they would send it back to me and it was just a nightmare so yeah so anyways QuickBooks understand exactly files if you use netsuite there's no file because you need a hundred people editing at once so anyway I saw what's happening I said we can solve the problems people have with SolidWorks and files and all that but we have to build a new system that is built you know not like word using files and installed software but built more like Google Docs or or netsuite or Salesforce so our design for onshape was informed by those kinds of systems that didn't use files and didn't use copies we have PDM hey you need revision control you need release processes we do all that stuff but we don't do it by files and locking okay we do it using a database that's in one place in in the cloud there's no copies any of anything there's no chance of two people being on a different version of software because you're all using the same Master instance okay to record this podcast you're using a cloud-based system you invited me to I don't know if I should say the name of it I didn't even know existed it's look cool system Aaron we're recording this in a browser I didn't have to install anything we I didn't have to ask which version of the software should I use because it's all in the cloud so so we solve all that there's we don't worry about installations problems because there's nothing to install with onshape there is no installation you know you don't have to worry about what computer you have because we run on every computer if you have a Linux machine fine Mac fine Chromebook fine you don't even need a computer iPad runs on that Android tablet yeah sure um what about a phone oh yeah what about an Android phone yeah it runs in that iPhone yeah runs on that what about my old computer yeah it runs on that too you know it's like like you don't have to worry about installing things and you collaborate oh my gosh the collaboration is unbelievable real-time collaboration and so um anyway I should you know I'd go out all day I know you have you know I don't want to pick your make this into a Five Hour podcast so well I have a couple of thoughts to interject I'm just supporting evidence I guess of everything that you're saying uh the first time I used on shape was probably a couple of weeks ago in preparation for for this interview and um so this is uh what is this January 16th right now that we're recording and I decided that for Christmas one of the things I wanted to do is get a gift for for my family that would help us spend more time together and so what I did was I bought a 3D printer we have plenty of 3D printers here at work but you know they're American so I bought one for home and my kids have two boys and a girl and they're uh eight to Fifteen right now and so they're in that that age where they're they're young and but not so young that they can't you know do things so um uh we got this 3D printer and then of course we need we need some uh CAD system to create files to 3D print and I thought well I'm not not gonna buy a bunch of SolidWorks licenses right and so I thought well on shaper I'm doing this interview pretty soon anyway it would be great kind of research for it so we we all downloaded on shape and or not I'm sorry not downloaded it signed up for an account uh for a four on shape and my my uh my daughter she put it on her iPad and I was it at first I thought okay well it's in it's a mobile application right we'll probably be able to view a few things but you know it's a full-blown CAD application on an iPad and this is not a top of the line iPad it's a little bit older model and it ran great you know you could do all the different things it was it was really cool uh and then my my um my dad also has installed on shape and he lives you know not with us so he's he's remote and uh We've we've been able to share files back and forth and and collaborate on them because it's just it's a really cool platform um and one more thing I'll add when I first opened it up I was almost uh uh this was like like a gut reaction kind of almost a little disappointed by the lack of um snazzy Graphics I'll call them but what I have come to appreciate is the Simplicity of of the design this it's so unpretentious and I I really like that now it did not take long at all to get over that initial oh there's not a whole lot of like you know color or cool graphics um it's I love it actually I think it's really cool so anyway a few Thoughts by a very new user of onshape and it's been really easy to pick up my my boys they asked me hey how do you do this thing and and on shape and well I'm like well I don't know but let's take a look and I've used SolidWorks for so long that when I'm using on shape I think well there's I know there's a way to do this I just have to find the right button and all the buttons are intuitive and things are laid out pretty uh intuitively so it's it's just it has not been very difficult to for me to transfer over to onshape and I have actually a couple more questions about that so it was easy enough for me to transfer over because we're just we're you know creating a few simple things in the family with my boys and my dad and things but if you're a company and you have a big team of people who are all using SolidWorks and you're heavily invested into SolidWorks you have this whole history of SolidWorks files how do teams like that transition to on shape or are there tools that help facilitate that or do you basically just say everything before this date that was on SolidWorks that stays on SolidWorks and everything after this date will be on on shape well it depends on the situation in the business but there are there are a lot of companies that move a lot of data into onshape from SolidWorks so there's the question of moving the people moving the data and moving you know sort of the processes and connections to other systems and so to start with the data part it depends what kind of needs you have for the data most people need to um certainly access the old data if you just need the shapes of data say you want to keep old designs around because you're going to use them as starters for new ones but you're you really just need the geometry of it not the whole feature history or assembly mates and so on well obviously we do that very very well reading the geometry but if you are going to be um uh you know there's different needs some people have big component libraries that they use they need to bring those over you know so each approach takes some some work and we have a customer success team that will work with customers on how to approach it there is no magic solution though it just brings it all over with people yeah you run into a couple kinds of people you run into people who who will you know never change tools you know they're like I use SolidWorks and that's all I'm ever going to use you know same way people said to me I use Pro engineer it's all I'm ever going to use I use AutoCAD I'm never getting off AutoCAD I pay people used to ask us what do I do with all the AutoCAD files and if I get SolidWorks and I'd give them these same answers it depends what you need them for and so forth still no way to edit um you know to to really edit those AutoCAD drawings in SolidWorks there are other products now that NASA system has and so forth but anyway and there's great tools from uh graybert in Germany um they have this great tools um Eris Ares um uh for editing um AutoCAD but anyway back to onshape so you got to bring you have we can bring in huge numbers of files and there's some great tools now that can make migrated data much smarter and easier to do in bulk we've had people migrate hundreds of thousands of I mean a single customer up to hundreds of thousands I don't think I've heard of any million file migrations um then moving the people takes training now the interesting thing is the emerging generation is way more comfortable with onshape as you saw in your own time at home so every day A Little slice of the workforce that looks a little like me like you've spent 42 years doing this stuff they retire or step out and a new generation comes in and they don't by the way the new generation doesn't even know what files are you're gonna have to train them in a few years when you bring in new hires if you want them to use files and windows you're gonna have to train them in what a folder is and what file copying is and you're laughing but it's true look at your kids they don't know about any of that junk there isn't I don't I don't you know there ain't no kids using Windows computers for school work at school anymore they're using iPads Chromebooks you know cloud-based tools so anyway migrating to people it depends on the kind of people you get then there's process migration and the answer is when people people ultimately will change their process because of onshape but it's changed for the better they discover that they can use more of an agile process than than a waterfall process and that can be a little that can be the most uncomfortable part of the whole thing is it's one thing to move a bunch of data files okay and live with whatever data you've been praying and whatever it's another thing to say I need to learn to use different icons for you know different workflows for part modeling the way you know you're discovering but the hardest thing is my team can work differently what do you mean we can all work on the assembly at the same time oh yeah you can well wait a minute that's not how we do things normally well could you work faster this way oh yeah it's a little uncomfortable so so what's happening is teams work faster and there's process change involved and ultimately that's the the the real benefit isn't just hey I saved a little on the install time the real benefit is um making more Innovative making better products getting the changes that you wanted into this release of the design and not the next product because you can make changes faster being more Innovative because you and three colleagues collaborated on something you didn't have to wait two weeks to design review you all saw each other's work in real time and you said oh man I see an opportunity here that's what's making better designs happen faster in onshape that's the biggest um Improvement and the biggest thing to deal with in migration is process change about a year ago we started using Office 365 products and these are great because it's in similar to Google Docs you can collaborate in real time and when we started using them we thought well that sounds like a useful trick that maybe we'll use here and there and yeah what we found is we use it all the time and it's really really helpful so I can understand the value in being able to collaborate on your CAD models in real time that just blows my mind right like in word or Excel yeah that's cool that's helpful but on a cat assembly wow that's exactly you hit the nail on the head Aaron people say oh well I suppose that I might use that as if they'll plan it people like well I suppose once or twice a month I might invite some colleagues and we'll say let's model together what happens is once or twice an hour you run into each other in the model right and you're like oh I didn't realize that that Jane's working on changing that fillet wow if she's going to do that I can make this whole part on a different machine and save us some money you know it's like let me let me send a message now by the way a message doesn't mean an email because email is too slow if you use things like teams or slack you know today I go visit the fastest moving customers they they don't you know email is out you know email is to this new generation with paper mail is to my generation like I don't have time for that I'm using texting or slack but anyway yeah that's it man that's it so you're discovering the magic and the power and so this is what we're bringing to uh to the world of Cad and PDM amazing how about pricing uh what is the pricing model like for onshape we charge just an annual subscription fee that's it there's no license fee just annual salary per user nope you just pay pay a subscription um people are always like hey what happens if I stop paying what happens to my data well we we leave all your data there you can't edit it you can access it download it whatever um you know you can it's it's all there and and uh unless you you can ask a you know you can close your account goes away but if you have a subscription and you say hey this year I don't need it I'm not going to pay it the data doesn't disappear ever it's a that's a myth um and so um so it's just a simple annual fee that's it per per user annual fee done oh and we have a free plan by the way the free plan like the ones your kids are using maybe the education plan we also have a free plan for makers open source kind of projects um Pros use it to kind of kind of experiment with the system if there's any pros out there we have a trial program where you can get the professional on shape for you know for let's say two weeks or maybe it's three weeks or whatever you know you can get you can you can you can trial the pro version we'll set you up with that with training and advice and all that but also some pros are just like hey I'll try the free version and I'll make some parts I'll see and be careful though because like you say when you look at it you don't see all the power very deliberate design decision by the way it was I'm sure it was the download of the UI make it kind of more like the Google search Page Field and the then the you know 1100 color animation stuff there and we're the ones who wrote all that stuff so we know how to do it the animation we just decided no different aesthetic anyway yeah um one of the issues that I could see being a problem is let's say that uh you know company ABC we try out on shape and we love it we're like oh we see the value in this this makes a ton of sense we love the usability ETC but all of our customers use SolidWorks is that a problem that your team has faced very often and if so how do you how does it how does company ABC overcome that so the the answer is you have to decide what's most important and so yeah if all your customers use SolidWorks that can be a problem but do all your customers actively edit SolidWorks level information or you just sending them a model of a part and it's essentially geometry so if geometry transfer works for you then fine so the answer is there is no perfect solution you can say well if we all use SolidWorks then I won't have any issue with or potential issue with data moving around well that sounds good but if your competitor is using onshape and they're innovating faster and collaborating and getting better results maybe that's more important than the once a month file they got to send over that's going to be geometry only not features and how many customers use the features they get from a solid response and they'll say well well what if we need to edit that model we won't we won't have the feature we won't have on shaped edit it well anyone can run on you can share it with the customer they have a link and like I said earlier they don't have to buy a subscription until they need it if they ever need to buy a subscription boom they're editing it they have to rethink their world a little bit because you don't need to be installing things and stuff so the question is what's more important that that perceived need for compatibility with a customer vendor and sometimes that's totally important but other times that's not as important as your team working faster be more Innovative you know so yeah and saving money on buying you know Windows computers and setting them up and you know the best your best engineer is dealing with you know upgrading the windows to the drivers on the PDM server instead of building a better product for your customer that may be a bigger problem for you than uh we can only send it over in Geometry only form but it depends it depends and so each situation is um it's different but you're right those are real issues but but it's also real issues when your team's spending all all this wasted time and you know check out and locking and you know you know I have bills and stories about that stuff you know I I ran into the parking lot I stood in front of a car that had its engine on because the driver was leaving with files locked you know you got to think about how much that costs and that's a real story right and you know it's true you're not saying to me oh John you're just making that up you're saying yeah John I know that kind of shit's happening excuse me yeah stuff is happening I I just I laugh because all these things that you're saying we are going through these things and it's a real problem it is yeah but you got the same CAD system you had in college 23 years ago so that's a plus right you know I got it you know I got it people don't like change you know you don't like change but you know what guess what you know nobody was using you know everyone changed to SolidWorks you know everyone changed two windows because those things were I remember when people came off the board I was around when it was a thing when paper was you know everyone was like you know I used to talk to people way I'm talking to you now they're like well our whole operation runs on paper John we can't use a cad system what would happen to our drawers of paper drawings our customers want paper drawings they want the Masters on paper they don't want to hear some computer file you know and all that and so so like you know like Time Marches On and and changes seem impossibly large when you're staring in front of it and almost ridiculously obvious when you look back and so that's a great analogy good place to a good way to put that um you had talked about the speed of design before one of the things that I've appreciated with my very limited experience with onshape is that uh I like to do a lot of multi-body part modeling Master modeling some people call it yeah yes and that's that's almost I mean it's kind of an afterthought with with SolidWorks right I think some people figured out this method and kind of hacked their way into using SolidWorks to do it and over the years some features have been added a little bit with with you know hearing their Master modeling multi-body part modeling in on shape it's it was it seems like it was a very intentional decision to make that kind of a a native function within the software and and that has been really cool to experiment with are are there other features that onshape has has integrated to to make the speed of modeling faster oh yeah well first off Aaron big big credit to you for figuring that out because I can tell you're absolutely right at SolidWorks the multi multi-part modeling was an afterthought okay and it was kind of globbed in there as best it could in onshape we spent a lot of time like I give big credit to my co-founder Dave Corcoran who was head of our product team and he personally pioneered the idea of the parts Studio where we we really do multi-part modeling and very very good clean way and features can operate on multiple Parts as you've discovered you can change your part structure whenever you care to and by the way it's not just the modeling part pun intended that works with parts also the PDM part I don't know if you've had a chance here and you haven't released things yet non-shape maybe because here it doesn't sound like you're using your company yet but what will happen is each of those multi-body multi those multiple Parts you make we're talking about making a bunch of parts with one feature list in a what we call Parts Studio those can each be released independently how about that try doing that in your SolidWorks set up with a file that contains yeah three parts in it they're not real Parts in onshape those are real capital P parts and you can release one of them independently the others you can use them in assemblies and control updating independently and so forth so so you really have incredible power you're absolutely right is a very deliberate decision oh there's so many areas where we have better CAD I mean if you look at how we do sheet metal simultaneous sheet metal where you can edit in the in the flat pattern the bend table and the 3D model at the same time updates go you know updates made anywhere show up everywhere um our approach to custom features will blow you away everyone knows that if you if like everyone wants a feature customized in the cad system or wants a feature doesn't exist right what do we do we send an enhancement request good luck maybe in three years from now in a release and two years after that when you upgrade that's another problem getting CAD is you know it takes a year to get the release adopted and all that so the time scale is too slow to innovate or you you use you know what we call user-defined features Library features macro features but those never turn out as well as the built-in features well in onshape we have a language called features script we wrote Our Own features in feature script you can write your features in feature script and they'll feel performed just like the built-in ones yeah oh wow that is really cool and there's hundreds of features online that people share so like there's there's a feature script library for doing a laser cut Tab and Slot parts for example again all the curves and all that stuff offsets those are real first class features they they're not slower they run they run just as they they have all the roll back and reorder and the preview slider I don't know if you've tried preview slider and final button and on shape those are two cool things that very I don't believe SolidWorks has all those things work with your own features and but wait there's more as Steve Jobs would say one more thing those features we wrote you know fill it Loft shell um extrude sweep those are all open sourced feature scripts you can take the source code and reuse it to your heart's content to make your own features we did that for you as a way for you to build features I'll also tell you that a lot of our customers have written their own very proprietary feature script um uh uh custom features for their own particular uses in their company and it is really freaking powerful so custom features we blow your way out I can give you 10 more things but I'll only give you one or two configurations everyone knows and configurations are a nice idea but try and make a configuration it's really complicated and your table blows up in SolidWorks because you need one row for every possible permutation configuration you know we change all that you can have really complex configs it won't blow up we don't we can you can have um continuums of values in your configs so configs work much better in on shape Bill a material real-time build material shows up not in the drawing is an artifact but in the model where it should be it's smart it's two-way you know I mean we've got so many better approaches oh also big benefit of cloud things like rendering and simulation they use cloud resources so you can do photo realistic rendering yeah a killer idea yeah by the way yeah your kids will say your kids will assume all the systems do this they won't say great idea they'd say you know why are we waiting for this to render why doesn't it use dad why is your computer getting hot when you do a rendering or simulation I do it a non-shaped on my Chromebook at school and nothing happens in your computer you got this big freaking graphics card I'd buy that for gaming but why do you need that ducat you know so we do that too so I could go on and on but uh can I tell you one thing I'm really proud of on this subject yeah of um well actually I think let me go we weren't talking well you asked to make things faster I'll just get to the bottom line this year for the first time in um speed modeling competition open Speed modeling competition Too Tall Toby it's okay to mention another podcaster yeah you k

2023-02-18 18:15

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