Originally posted on MCADCafe
The advance of Industry 4.0 is encouraging new companies to enter the engineering software market to create new products that engage digital twins, connecting them to the material world. New players, as a rule, dedicate themselves to niches in which they possess the greatest competence and best strategic vision. Among the niches we are seeing are in the areas of generative design programs, collaboration tools, and additive manufacturing preprocessing software. In 2019, we will hear about even more of them, but will also witness more takeovers by the giants. Recall the recent acquisition of Frustum, a star of the new wave, by PTC.
Newcomers to the CAD community are impacting the mature market of software components – geometric kernels, data exchange tools, visualization engines, and so on – because they are looking for affordable components that integrate into their projects extremely quickly. In our digital era, go-to-market time is not measured in years, but in months and even weeks. Fortunately, the choice in geometric kernel now goes beyond ACIS or Parasolid. To provide functions such as geometric modeling, constraint solving, file conversion, and visualization, CAD software development firms can choose from the venerable CGM by Dassault Systemes, the completely new Kosmos kernel by Kubotek, and C3D Toolkit by C3D Labs.
In 2019, get ready for even more news from the geometric kernel world. The companies that help their customers develop CAD products fastest will be the ones to come out on top.