The House of Payne: SpaceClaim

During the lovely dinner as we floated down the Siene, most of the journalists were happy enough at being invited to Autodesk's press event in Paris that the conversation stayed light and pleasant. But one among us could not be contained. What do you guys think about SpaceClaim, he asked of Autodesk.

What followed was a round of product and company bashing. They won't amount to anything. The revenue model is flawed. Blah, blah, blah. That was typical, you can expect any competition to be trounced in such a context. But what interested me was that everyone at the table had heard of SpaceClaim, a company in its infancy, one with scarcely a customer. It was like an elephant noticing a flea.

What make SpaceClaim so noticeable? I've seen the product early on, before its release. Sure, it looks easy enough to use--but so do many others. It puts out a inordinate amount of press releases, for sure. It seems to have created some interesting relationships among CAD vendors, ostensibly partnerships, even to the point of finagling a booth at the upcoming Autodesk University -- a venue in which Autodesk has strictly forbidden competition. No, it has to be more than all that for the entire industry to take note...

I think the  buzz is due to Mike Payne, CEO of SpaceClaim. You see, Mike has the enviable pedigree of starting PTC. He followed that with SolidWorks. Is SpaceClaim the Third Coming?

Comments

[Jon Banquer]

SpaceClaim now seems to be moving in the right direction! What would really help is if SpaceClaim could find someway to get a major CAM player to create a CAM application that would run inside of SpaceClaim.

Jon Banquer
San Diego, CA

[roadkill]

the 30 day trial version is out and .... it is very good!
I look forward to future development!

[Jon Banquer]

With no demo to try SpaceClaim is going nowhere fast.

Jon Banquer
San Diego, CA
http://worldcadaccess.typepad.com/blog/2007/07/spend-a-littleo.html#comment-76366100

[Robert]

Spaceclaim takes away issues like collapsed history, constraints and parametrics issues that rice especially in complicated assemblies/ parts. That is the best thing about it. But it doesnt do designvariations very good, cause in those cases you would like to drive with parameters. A system between parametric and direct modelling should propobly be the best solution in general.

[Richard Williams]

Ah SpaceClaim, the mysterious application that is not easy to get a trial version of to see what all the commotion is about. I've seen the Demos but of course that was shown with people very familiar with the product. HHhhmmm!