How Was the SolidWorks FeatureManager Created?

swx-fm-thumb 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.