They are Dassault Systèmes, Autodesk, PTC, Siemens (UGS),  Mentor Graphics and ANSYS.

Dassault and Siemens have the complete ecosystem: CAD-CAM-CAE-PLM.  Autodesk and PTC reply more on CAD. Mentor Graphics has a limited presence beyond in the electronics industry. ANSYS is an interesting company focusing only CAE.

Compared with the rank of the previous year (2010), all these 6 companies climbed some potions varying from 1 to 4.  This indicates the demands for CAD/CAE/PLM are getting stronger.  The following table illustrates the ranking of these 6 companies in the last three years.

We will analyze these companies, as well as other CAD/CAE/PLM software companies in other articles.… Read the rest “The Big 6 in CAD/CAE/PLM software industry (2011)”

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How to ride this wave to get a larger market share? Major CAE software players choose different approaches.  Essentially, they bet on the ecosystem (CAD-CAE-PLM), or bet on disciplines (multi-physics, or multi-discipline, structural-mechanical-CFD-electrical-magnetic).

When the $413 million acquisition of Abaqus by Dassault Systems was announced in May 2005, it marked the new era in CAE industry: compete with an ecosystem. Before the acquisition, only UGS (later acquired by Siemens as Siemens PLM Software in 2007) had its own ecosystem. Apparently, Autodesk is positioned to enter CAE market based on their acquisitions of Algor, Moldflow and CFDesign in recent years.

For a CAD or PLM player, providing CAE solution is a natural expansion. Compared with pure CAE players, they have at least two advantages:

1. Cross-selling. CAD market is far larger (in terms of the number of license, and users) than CAE market, and most new CAE opportunity lies in the CAD adopters.This means CAD vendors have

… Read the rest “Bet on ecosystem or on disciplines?”

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We are frustrated with the numerous CAD/CAM/CAE/PLM/PDM magazines, which have articles similar to marketing materials: lack of depth. Such articles may mislead the CAE professionals, although they provide the updates on the industry.

We are also frustrated with the market research reports produced by some research firms. Unfortunately, a lot of these researchers even  cannot ask a proper question, and therefore cannot present a clear picture of the industry, because they do not have any knowledge on CAE.

So, here comes CAE Watch.

We will give you in-depth analysis on the CAE  industry and share with you the advanced techniques in both FEA and CFD. In addition, you can ask any CAE related questions: FEA, CFD, PLM, HPC, preprocessing, post-processing, meshing, CAD import…, and our experts will try to give you the most relevant and accurate answer.

Not enough?

 … Read the rest “CAEWatch, WTF?”

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