ENOVIAWORKS – a cloud PLM roadmap for millions of SOLIDWORKS customers?

3DEXPERIENCE platform brings a few new product names and 3DEXPERIENCE World 2020 was a good opportunity to learn more about these products and what they do. Unless you’ve been completely ignorant of what Dassault Systemes is doing, you missed the new name – 3DEXPERIENCE Works. Check here for my earlier blog this week – 3DEXPERIENCE World 2020: “The Platform” is Here.

Today, I want to share what I learned about ENOVIAworks (sometimes spelled ENOVIAWORKS and sometimes ENOVIA WORKS). I probably should contact DS media people to check about what is the right branding guidance for the names. However, 3DEXPERIENCE WORKS spelled during the main session on the first day gives me a hint that probably ENOVIAWORKS would be the right one.

A few months ago, I learned about ENOVIAWORKS from 3DEXPERIENCE WORLD 2020 schedule. Check my article, with the quote from the agenda:

3DEXPERIENCE ENOVIAWORKS – SOLIDWORKS. Secure your SOLIDWORKS design files on the 3DEXPERIENCE Platform with an integrated data management solution”.

Based on this description it sounded like ENOVIA WORKS is actually 3DEXPERIENCE PDM solution for Solidworks users. Some sort of “new PDM”. Earlier this week, I attended a few sessions where I was able to learn about what ENOVIAWORKS does.

So, what is ENOVIAWORKS? The following slide can give you an idea. Despite new buzzwords, you can get an idea of ENOVIAWORKS, which is some sort of PDM+ or PLM- in an old fashion language. As the following slide suggests the following domains – design data management, engineering, collaboration, review, and product engineering release.

Here is a more structured view of the portfolio, product, and its functions:

In a nutshell, ENOVIAWORKS is about two main domains – design data management and engineering data management. The technology and products are completely different from existing PDM products, but if you want to align the existing names, you can think about PDM professionals and some elements of SOLIDWORKS Manage.

As everything in 3DEXPERIENCE, you are getting granular set of applications (Apps). Here is a set of roles for Collaborative Industry Innovator and the main part of it – Collaborative Lifecycle.

Another group of names – Product Engineering Management and Product Release Engineer, which includes 3DEXPERIENCE way to think about (Engineering) BOM management.

The focus is clearly on engineering aspects of BOM management, but according to DS brings full associativity with design data (I will come back to this topic in my future articles).

All together, it gives a way to leverage design across the company (downstream), which in a nutshell what was one of the key elements of PLM (cPDM) systems for the last 15-20 years.

What is my conclusion?

ENOVIAWORKS is a set of applications (roles) in 3DEXPERIENCE platform focusing on design and engineering data management, collaboration and information sharing. The goal for ENOVIAWORKS is clear – to provide a cloud-based solution for all SOLIDWORKS users today using desktop SOLIDWORKS and one of the available PDM systems. The strategy is to provide a scalable path to the cloud to existing SOLIDWORKS customers. Combining engineering and design data structure in Unified Product Structure (UPS) seems to be a key element of ENOVIAWORKS data management and also part of 3DEXPERIENCE Unified Data Model. Integration with desktop SOLIDWORKS is a strong element in ENOVIAWORKS strategy. SOLIDWORKS customers were always a hard nut to crack for data management providers. Will ENOVIAWORKS technology and tight integration with “the platform” make a trick? It is not clear for the moment. The product is available and the jury is out. Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg

Disclaimer: I’m co-founder and CEO of OpenBOM developing cloud-based bill of materials and inventory management tool for manufacturing companies, hardware startups, and supply chain. My opinion can be unintentionally biased.