Wow. SpaceClaim. Wow. It’s truly hard to find the words for what I’m reading. You always wonder who it’s going to be. Who is the company bringing new breath to the process of stacking geometry on top of geometry to form our ideas. I think we have the answer. I’ve pasted the full story sent in from SpaceClaim below. Prepare to be amazed by the NEW complexity…

Update:SpaceClaim hasn’t officially released this to the newswires yet, so it’s the first you’ll see of it. I’m also told that there may be double-dongled versions available which will allow you to run multiple copies simultaneously across different computer, whereby allowing an unprecedented level of collaboration by letting people watch you model in real-time. All hail complexity.


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April 1, 2011

SpaceClaim Refreshes Product Portfolio

Updates Product Packaging to “Refreshing Spring Collection that Revolutionizes Complexity of Deployment”

SpaceClaim, the leader in direct modeling software that enables all engineers to work in 3D, today announced that it has completely repackaged its flagship product, SpaceClaim Engineer, into a myriad of suites and configuration options optimized to precisely match the needs of every possible stakeholder.

SpaceClaim will now be delivered as what they are calling their “Synchronicity Suite” of four individual products derived from its four main toolbar buttons: SpaceClaim Pull, SpaceClaim Move, SpaceClaim Fill, and SpaceClaim Combine.  Each product will provide precisely one button (Pull, Move, Fill or Combine, respectively) plus an ever-hovering launch bar to switch between applications.

Additional buttons will be available a-la-carte, with 256 offerings in total.  System administrators will be able to create a custom solution for every SpaceClaim end-user by carefully picking and choosing the tools they perceive each individual to require.  SpaceClaim boasts that this ambitious flexibility reinforces their commitment to customer success.

SpaceClaim Engineer provided a simple and powerful set of tools that could be used by a diverse set of engineers,” said Jean Galois, Executive Vice President of Strategy at SpaceClaim.  “However, nobody believed that sales engineers, concept modelers, simulation users, and manufacturing engineers could all be served by one simple and robust 3D tool.  Customers regularly calculated ROI timeframes that were too fast to be credible to their management, and tools managers weren’t comfortable with such low TCO.  It became clear we needed to slow down the pace of innovation to be closer to that realizable with traditional CAD.  We listened and responded by acting like a large software company that has failed to adapt to evolving customer needs.  We now have 2256 different offerings, which virtually guarantees that every user will enjoy a unique direct modeling experience.  In fact, there are now many more SpaceClaim variants than there are stars in the universe.  It’s much bigger than the cloud.  It’s an unprecedentedly mind-boggling battery of dumbed-down, value-flavored, app store deliverables.”

To designate different configurations, SpaceClaim now uses a convenient hexadecimal number to denote what buttons are available.  For example, SpaceClaim A59B-0FD3-3190-03AA provides the ability to create a circle through three points, while SpaceClaim A59B-0FC3-3190-03AA only includes the everyday center-diameter circle.  When switching between applications, such as SpaceClaim Pull and SpaceClaim Move, the previously-instantaneous tool change has been replaced by a relaxing 45-second interlude audially enhanced by SpaceClaim’s new partnership with Elevator Music International.

“This is freaking awesome,” commented Roger Sternbrow, Director of Vendor Adjudication at Retrograde Engineering.  “SpaceClaim is doing more to ensure my job security than any other vendor in the industry.  Not only will I have an excuse to delay rollouts by decades, but I will also be able to swap out end-user configurations on-the-fly, forcing ad-hoc retraining.  This has increased the size of my PowerPoints by several orders of magnitude, further cementing my importance to the organization.”

“SpaceClaim clearly understands the industry norms,” posits analyst Dale Belvedere.  “They recognize that users always use only one tool at a time.  For example, no user ever wants to simultaneously add and subtract from a model concurrently.  It merits two applications, the former for adding and the latter for subtracting.  We envision workflows where one team of engineers is completely dedicated to creation operations, and another team is focused on deletion.  SpaceClaim’s unified model repository ensures that these teams can dilate their cycle times as distally as necessary to sufficiently delay time-to-market, validating the vision of Parkinson’s Law.”

In addition, all SpaceClaim employees have signed the “Every Grain of Sand Pledge” affirming their commitment to product complexity.  Customers are also welcome to sign the pledge at a low nominal cost.

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Thoughts? Is it possible this is the future? In some ways I hope so. In others ways I want to vomit repeatedly. You?

Pssst! Blake Courter from SpaceClaim sent in this news. If you know him, you know he’s been conniving for more complexity for YEARS… also, it’s April 1st. 🙂

Author

Josh is founder and editor at SolidSmack.com, founder at Aimsift Inc., and co-founder of EvD Media. He is involved in engineering, design, visualization, the technology making it happen, and the content developed around it. He is a SolidWorks Certified Professional and excels at falling awkwardly.