Autodesk Hints of a CAE Office

A $500 million shopping spree has left the biggest CAD vendor in the world with a wealth of  CAE tools. Autodesk, known for design software such as AutoCAD and assorted vertical apps (Inventor, Revit, Civil3D and the like) now also has to figure out what to do with Algor (general purpose FEA), Moldflow (mold flow analysis) PlassoTech (FEA, again), Solid Dynamics (kinematics) and Blue Ridge Numerics (fluid dynamics). It is as motley a collection of CAE tools as there ever was. Each product has brought with it a unique interface, developers and code base…and user base.

While PlassoTech and Solid Dynamics will not go forward as products (Autodesk says their technology will find its way in other applications), faithful adherents of Moldflow, Algor and Blue Ridge products need not fear that their trusted apps will die of neglect, lost in a huge company.

In fact, there is a formula for each product’s future, says Autodesk’s Bob Williams, who is representing Autodesk’s newly assembled SIM Squad, a loosely linked group whose purpose seems to be to evangelicize CAE products, individually and collectively, to the public and internally to the company. Such a group within a larger company seems like the way to go, in contrast to a monolithic leadership which may not have the necessary time and energy to assure the ongoing success of varied and various products despite the initial commitment of money and effort expended in their acquisition.

Remember Visio? Yeah, that’s my point. Swallowed by Microsoft, never to be heard of again.

But along with the full attention of Autodesk will come changes.

In the first stage, the various CAE products will exist with their previous identity intact, says Bob. In the second stage, they will share the same interface – including the ribbon toolbar. Ok, maybe they will all look kind of like Inventor, Bob concedes. I suppose you have to start somewhere. Finally, they will share the same code base.

Bob also tells me the SIM products will be CAD-agnostic.

Hmm. How CAD-agnostic would they be, exactly? Moldflow was in use as an add-in not just for Inventor, but also for Pro/E. Bob vows to they will not be cutting off support of competitive products.

If done properly, Autodesk’s clout could make the CAE products as ubiquitous for analysis as MS Office is for general use. I can see a CAE suite just over the horizon. It won’t matter if each application is best of breed. They will work similarly. They will share data. They will be bundled at a price too low to ignore. Maybe a few ANSYS devotees may eventually do a last stand. Remember Lotus before Microsoft rolled over them?

ANSYS may be best equipped to make the last stand, itself having built up a coterie of varied CAE tools and covering so many types of analyses that they now refer to themselves as purveyors of multi-physics – a term that would seem to encompass all everything under the sun and beyond.

But I am getting ahead of the story. For now, I’d have to say don’t bet against Autodesk as it seeks to establish itself in the world of CAE.

 

Comments

[Mook]

Autodesk's acquistion of Algor, which is the core of Autodesk's CAE offering, is decidedly "low end" in capabilities in comparison to Ansys, Abaqus or any of the flavors of Nastran, all of which will take market share from Autodesk FEA and CFD products and eat them alive.. just as structural analysis competitors continue to give Autodesk's Robot FEA structural software a beating in the structural analysis marketplace despite Autodesk's financial weight and the integration of Robot with Revit (which Robot's competitors also offer).

Autodesk doesn't appear to have a clue what they're doing in the CAE market. Doubt me? Then what's with their absurd marketing push suggesting that building designs will routinely use CFD to design building A/C and heating systems via Revit, which is complete overkill and unjustifiable in 99.9% of designs? But it sounded like such a briliant idea in the product marketing meetings, right?

On a related note, imo it's fantasy to believe that their CAD-centric dealer channel can ever support support their analysis products suite. Moldflow, for which ADSK paid $300 Million, may continue to survive because it's a a market leader in a niche market, but the rest of Autodesk's simulation offerings are a losing proposition.

[Billmce]

Are you nuts? The stuff they bought is not exactly state of the art - well maybe excepting moldflow. The rest of the stuff is decidely problematic in a number of areas. It isn't much good if you can't simulate what you are aiming at. The vendors that do the hard stuff would be very hard to kill off by purveyors of deciedely mediorce products. Kill ANSYS? That's funny! Frankly in my view all of the CAD embedded vendors are making such junk in analysis products that they are seeding the market for vendors that have products that actually work reliably. I believe the market is waking up to this as many users are getting more than frustrated by the CAD embedded products performance when it comes to anything slightly off the beaten track. The challenge for the high vendor's is to realize that a lot of the value of the easy stuff has been zapped by the CAD embedded guys. They need to re think their strategies to gain market share through this nicely seeded market and retain the value of their technologies for dealing with the difficult problems. It will be interesting to see how it shakes out over the next 5 to 10 years.

[Sunith Babu]

Sure CAE will make its best, when Autodesk Plans to buy LS Dyna a crash analysis tool used by automotive industry.

This is just my view. A CAE tool, having Algor + CF Design + Blue Ridge Numerics as a suite will make a good stand in the CAE World.

Further, if Autodesk plans to buy any of the Composites software like Lusas or any associated products, it would definitely be a world class leader in CAE Tool.

[Kevin De Smet]

Autodesk even bought the world: http://estore.autodesk.com/v2.0-img/operations/autodesk/desc/proddesc/world.htm

The mayan calender was off by a few years, wasn't it??

[Alexander Bausk]

Did they buy Algor too!?
Oh God. Oh God.
Unbelievable.