Wednesday, January 30, 2008

It Seems There was a Bidding War for Seemage

As has been written elsewhere, the "news" from SolidWorks World last week can be easily summed up: 4,500 SolidWorks users had a nice party. Oh, and engineers who blog find some sort of deep mystery in the use of semi-colons. (Follow the link; I guess to one SolidWorks blogger, semi-colons are to CAD journalists what opposable thumbs are to mammals.)


Historic meeting of blogger (left) and CAD journalist at SolidWorks World. It seems bloggers have opposable thumbs; they just have not figured out how to write semi-colons with them.

 But I digress. Sometimes the interesting stuff to be learned at such conferences isn't said in front of a crowd. I learned from a conversation with a Dassault Systemes employee (out on the patio of the San Diego Convention Center) that the recent acquisition of Seemage was preceeded by an ugly bidding war between Dassault and Autodesk. Not ugly, obviously, to anyone who owned a piece of Seemage. Perhaps unseemly would be the better phrase. But all's well that ends well, and now Dassault can continue to pursue its vision of proprietary 3D for all.

What's that you say? What about the contest? Oh, yes. I'll get to that in another post. I was waiting for one of those semi-colon-less bloggers to send me a photo. Moi is a writer, not a photog.

Posted by Randall at 21:36:18 | Permanent Link | Comments (5) |
Comments
1 - Standing in the kitchen licking spoons doesn't make you a cook.

Here's your damned picture:

http://www.noahbrier.com/images/110305/semicolon.jpg (Comment this)

Written by: Anonymous at 2008/01/31 - 18:59:34
2 - While I'm lost in the semi colon conversation I'm not lost in the details of the bidding for Seemage or the DS vision of 3D for all... I'd like to ask why you seem driven to use define the DS vision as "Proprietary"? Certainly DS hs been agressive in protecting it's assets but clearly through the 3DVIA brand they are really opening up the world of 3D. I dare say they are even setting the standard. (Comment this)

Written by: Anonymous at 2008/02/01 - 09:07:45
3 - A bidding war for Seemage? When the boatload of cash you have burns a hole in your pocket, every oldest-profession-in-the-world-practitioner looks like someone you can take home to mama! This reminds of the time not so long ago when the brilliant folks at cash-rich PTC bought nearly everything in sight - $40M here, $100M there - and managed to squander over $400M of shareholder money, with LITTLE to show for it. Some of the same people are still running the company now, shitcanning more employees - corporate governance at its best, wouldnt you say? Gawd, when will these companies ever learn? (Comment this)

Written by: Anonymous at 2008/02/01 - 15:42:53
4 - Interesting post. I wonder if it would have read any different if Autodesk had won the "bidding war"?

But I tend to agree with #2's point; the purpose of Seemage was to make it easier to share your 3D data with the enterprise and beyond. I think the new 3DVIA product line will open up 3D to even more people.

(Did I use the semi-colon correctly? ;)

It was nice meeting you in San Diego. Sorry again about not getting you the pic sooner!

Brian
http://www.cadfanatic.com/ (Comment this)

Written by: Brian at 2008/02/03 - 02:43:14
5 - What was the acquisition price? (Comment this)

Written by: Anonymous at 2008/02/27 - 21:56:05
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