The Siemens PLM Components - Parasolid in particular and JT and D-Cubed
Really have a major, very major presence in the market.
Hello and welcome to our discussion with Ken Versprille at CIMdata
who recently authored a white paper about Siemens PLM Components.
I'm your host, Margarita Pariente and today I'll be asking Ken
how leading technologies like Parasolid and JT
empower the next generation of 3D engineering software solutions
Before we start, Ken could you introduce yourself to the audience
and say a few words about your work with CIMdata?
I'm probably most famous in the CAD world because my PhD dissertation
was non uniform rational B splines which has been called now NURBs.
and I've been with now with CIMdata almost 12 years
doing basically the same kind of consulting where I work with
both solution providers and industrial clients on their use of CAD
Thanks for joining us Ken we are very happy to have you with us.
Let's get started. I'd like to begin by asking
what interested or surprised you most about PLM Components business
when you were researching your white paper?
It was interesting to me to see where
geometric kernels, specifically Parasolid, was being used.
Your first glance is you would think in CAD modeling
but it turns out that very often Parasolid was used in
simulation - some of the simulation applications,
some of the machining applications.
JT - I sort of already knew... I had been looking at collaboration
for the last 15/20 years and the different solutions
to do collaboration and I knew JT was right up there
and its use, specially in automotive.
Can you talk about some of the challenges that software vendors face
when developing new applications and how solutions
like PLM Components help them to meet those challenges?
So time to market is very important.
If they had to implement all the technology in their application
that could take months, possibly even years,
so components give them a head start.
Over the years it's become more and more apparent
that industrial users want quality software. They can't afford to
deal with problems in the software to try to overcome them.
They are expecting good quality.
Is the component software provider innovating,
or are they sitting there stagnant just trying to rest on their laurels
of what they currently have? Are they adding to the product?
The 4th area would be data interoperability...
How difficult is it to get data into the component
and get data out of the component so it can be shared with other applications,
other tools that they're using?
So my next question is...
As part of your research for the white paper,
CIMdata assessed the market penetration of PLM Components
in various PLM sectors. Could you elaborate on the results of that research?
CIMdata publishes every year what are called the marketing numbers:
The sales from the different industrial solution providers,
So we can see how much CAD is being sold. Where is it being sold
and what country. How much simulation software is being sold,
where - in what countries and what regions and what areas.
sold, where in what countries and what regions and what areas.
The problem is to look at component software...
the solution providers do not publish those numbers.
So what we chose to do was simply take a look at
what were the market numbers of the products
that contained a particular component software.
And it turned out the results of that is by far
the Siemens PLM Components, Parasolid in particular and JT and D-Cubed
really have a major, very major presence in the market
based on those kinds of numbers.
Great to hear that!
Your white paper includes a chapter about innovation
in our industry, which is clearly important to software vendors
who need to keep pace with industry trends.
What were your findings about Siemens sharing its innovation
through component technology with other software vendors?
I think that specifically what was being called out in the research
Was the work that had been done in Parasolid
to deal with facet meshes and lattices.
With the big push towards additive manufacturing
that's happening across the industry
and in all all the different verticals
Lattices provide a way of reducing weight, reducing use of materials,
so that became very important, and what we saw coming out of Parasolid...
keeping pace with that level of technology
was very important to end users.
The other area was in Kineo...
The component to handle robotic simulation and robotic controls.
That was very, very well appreciated by a lot of the end-users.
I often get asked why Siemens openly licenses PLM Components
to potential competitors when it could keep the technology in-house
and create some competitive advantage...
What kind of benefits do you see for a software vendor
like Siemens choosing to be open?
Siemens choosing to being open?
Well, when it comes down to it, I think any reasonable person
in this industry will agree it is a heterogeneous world.
No one vendor can provide everything
or keep up with the trends everywhere.
You need to play in a multi solution provider environment.
By keeping, as Siemens does, an open environment on their own tools,
they play perfectly into that kind of mindset.
That kind of technology positioning.
And it's well appreciated by other end users,
by the other vendors who want to complement some of the Siemens tools.
Well, thanks again Ken for joining us today
and sharing your insights into the PLM Components business.
Thank you for the opportunity to speak with you and your users.