3D design: a two-horse race now?

2,000 users, 50 international journalists, hundreds of software partners and members of the analyst, consultancy and financial community all converged last month on the lights of Las Vegas to witness 3D design software vendor Solidworks’ annual user conference. And the company’s ceo John McEleney stated in his opening address at the conference that, “Our mission is quite simply to unleash the power of 3D for everyone in product development.” In order to do this, McEleney said that the firm’s five future R&D priorities would be: 3D modelling power; ease of software use; performance; drafting; and exchange of data. “We’re going to stick to our roots and focus on what we do best,” explained McEleney. “2001 was a tough year for all of us. But we persevered and gained market share. We added more than 60,000 new users over the last 12 months.” And Solidworks really is a force to be reckoned with these days. It now boasts an impressive total of 25,000 clients and 175,000 users worldwide. McEleney: “What used to be a three-horse race between Solidworks, PTC and Autodesk is fastly becoming a two-horse one: us and Autodesk." He added that Solidworks would continue to gain market share by, “Extending our lead in partner applications.” The user event itself echoed this objective with a very large partner exhibition hall containing some 80 different software and hardware partner stands.