News or Hype? Company Ditches XYZ CAD, Switches to ABC CAD.

Is this news? I call them conversions. As news editor of TenLinks, I had included such items as news in our newsletter. To me, a company switching CAD systems was important. It signified that a company had found an advantage of one CAD system over another. The hope was that the company had made a serious comparison of the two systems and found their present one lacking. It must have been a gut wrenching decision, as so much is invested in a CAD system: the training, legacy data, the procedures, not to mention the dreaded conversion that is about to ensue. From such anguish, a lesson learned. Maybe for those with similar products, or similar companies.

And as such, a conversion would be worthwhile, interesting, maybe useful... in other words news.

Not so fast, oh smug news editor, says one CAD insider. He works in one leading CAD company, which NEVER boasts of conversions. I tell him a rival has converted a dozen seat from his company's product to those of his rival.  Ho hum, he says. We get this all the time. It's routine for us to take fifty or sixty seats at a time from our competitors. We don't brag,

It actually made sense. A market leader, even one who is not taking a high road, would only have achieved their position and be able to maintain it by constantly converting users of other CAD systems. They would tire of such claims. They would be common place, expected. An editor would soon tire of receiving such claims.

For all the conversions that are going on, it just might be possible that most of it is going in the direction favorable to the market leaders. And if they are not publicizing it, such conversions go unreported. Whereas, stragglers, also-rans, start-ups and upstarts would report joyously on each and every seat wrested from any one, as few and infrequent as they might be. Then don't I risk spreading the unsubstantiated and skewed belief that market leaders are losing market share to their competition, though it may be far from the truth?

 

Comments

[Lisa P.]

i guess "finding an advantage of one CAD system over another" is possible, but "conversions" or "news"? its more like gossip :)

[Kevin De Smet]

p.s. my dollar is on 123CAD ;)

[Kevin De Smet]

Don't Koenigsegg use SolidWorks for some of their internal mechanical systems? And to be frank, it should be capable for that!

[Owen Wengerd]

I'm sure there are newsworthy conversions, but they're sadly not being reported because, well, real journalism apparently doesn't pay any more. I couldn't care less about the parroted press release conversions.