With the recent announcement of SOLIDWORKS Xdesign, the world of browser-based and mobile mechanical design CAD has a new and exciting entrant. As is common among the trappings of annual user events, Xdesign premiered as a working demo, while anticipating a private beta in May, followed by a public beta yet in 2016. The Xdesign site reflects similar depth by presently only providing sign up for updates and beta consideration, and an informational YouTube video that while polished and well produced, clearly is intended to be more inspirational than informational.
As part of the larger Solidworks Innovation Platform (think 'all things Solidworks') and following recent releases of cloud-based Conceptual Designer and Industrial Designer, Xdesign is touted as a cloud-based, fully fledged CAD system, capable of 3D parametric modeling. As its own entity, Xdesign will run a different modeling kernel than Solidworks Desktop, and will store its data entirely in a cloud database. With this foray, attention within Solidworks will be divided to support both Desktop and Xdesign, and their corresponding development.
Perhaps of equal interest from this recent announcement at Solidworks World 2016 is the data storage functionality that will be known as Xdrive. Likened to a Dropbox for Solidworks, the Xdrive app will serve as the data bridge between Solidworks Xdesign and Solidworks Desktop, and is slated to be included in the Standard subscription release of SOLIDWORKS 2017.
As another aspect to the burgeoning Dassault Systemes 3D EXPERIENCE platform, the impetus given to Solidworks Xdesign will no doubt correlate with their concerns of current and future market share. With a well recognized and loyal customer base eager for staying technologically relevant, establishing Solidworks Xdesign as a credible CAD system is imperative for industry giant Dassault Systemes. This is especially so given Solidworks latent posture among established browser-based and mobile mechanical design CAD pioneers Autodesk Fusion 360 and Onshape.
