How Was the SolidWorks FeatureManager Created?

by Josh on February 12, 2009 · Comments

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You know that handy little thing that sits on the left side of your screen? The sidebar that keeps track of all features, mistakes, workarounds and wonky bits? Yes it’s a veritable visual of your organizational ability and it had it’s start somewhere.

Beleive it or not, it came out of a customer visit Jon Hirschtick made one day in 1994. After seeing how people worked in other CAD software, the concept was born on this scrap of paper. Take a look.

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The first concept of the SolidWorks FeatureManager, circa 1994.

Impressive huh. Amazing how users can affect change in a product. I’m sure some are wishing that history-based product tree, was not so history-based. Nonetheless, if a customer changed it once, a customer could change it again.

Get on the horn and have Jon or a Product Dev guy come watch you play in SolidWorks. SolidWorks employees have to visit so many (5?) customers each month.