3D design firm seeks PH partners

Benjamin Tan, director of Professional Channels, Asia Pacific South. Romy Homillada

Heads up, startups: A “suitor” in the form of a 3D design software company is on the prowl for new Philippine partners—particularly smaller companies—who may find their latest flagship product, which they have billed as “the most intuitive” of its kind, useful for their business.

In a press briefing, Dassault Systèmes executives recently revealed Solidworks 2017, the company’s latest version of their premier 3D design tool for product design and development.

“Solidworks is intuitive, working mostly like a game. Like with a gaming console, we’d like our customers to focus more on their designs, and not which button to click,” said Benjamin Tan, the company’s professional channel director for South Asia Pacific.

Solidworks 2017, which had its first customer shipment on Oct. 7, features the following improvements: better printed circuit board (PCB) design tools; a more user-friendly interface, thanks to a unified environment for schematic and layout tools such as Interactive Routing, AutoRoute, Multi-Track and Differential Pair; an accelerated design process with the use of new tools for Chamfer, Fillet and Advanced Hole Specification, as well as new surfacing features and easier drag-and-drop motion for repositioning of models (useful for designing, say, factory assembly lines); and simulation.

But what Ba-Thong Phan, Dassault’s senior manager of technical sales for Asia Pacific South, is most proud of is Solidworks 2017’s improved collaboration and integration tools, which allow the software to recognize data from non-Solidworks software, or even those from a legacy system.

To give a taste of what one could build with Solidworks 2017, Tan and Phan presented a product called MyoPro, made by one of their clients, Myomo (My Own Motion) Inc.

The MyoPro is an electric arm brace which allows, say, a stroke victim to regain full use of his weakened limb.

They also made an example of Tiny Tower, an ergonomically ideal, adjustable and portable laptop stand designed using Solidworks by The Big Tiny Co., an Australian startup.

In the Philippines, Tan said Solidworks was being used by a wide variety of industries, particularly big names in  semiconductors, automotive, and high-tech industrial automation.

“Without even knowing it, you are most probably using products made by our customers using our tool,” said Phan.

Locally, Solidworks is available through Dassault’s authorized resellers: Computrend Systems Technology Inc., SurePro Solutions and Cadcentric Solutions.

Solidworks 2017’s price ranges from $9,000 to $15,000, depending on which version once acquires (there’s Standard, Professional and Premium).

However, with Solidworks 2017, Tan said he would like to “aggressively court” more of the small and medium enterprises, as Dassault has no local partners under that business category yet.

“When we were a startup 20 years ago, our customers gave us a chance,” said Tan. “So it’s in the heart of [Dassault] to support startups.”  — Annelle Tayao-Juego