Jon Hirschtick Shares Insight on Cloud, from the Cloud

Sometimes the medium is the message. SolidWorks just held an Innovation Day, a virtual conference that takes place in the cloud. Among the keynote speakers was the company's cofounder Jon Hirschtick, who shared his thoughts on cloud computing.

"I'm really excited about online applications," he said. "Imagine, at our server, maybe, instead of just having one computer powering that web site, what if we have a hundred thousand computers in a server cluster? What can we do for you with CAD if we had a machine like that in our headquarter that you can access over the web?

"Now you're probably asking: Is 3D CAD going to become an online application tomorrow? I don't think so. I don't think tomorrow, or anytime soon, you're going to do everything you do in SolidWorks online. I just don't think that's going to happen. On the other hand, can online applications be used by SolidWorks to do something for you, even if it's not fully 3D CAD? Almost certainly."

Hirschtick also seems to think CAD industry needs to catch up with its more flamboyant cousin, video game industry, in order to benefit from the visualization advances enjoyed by the latter. "The greatest imaging in the world is no longer found in the CAD business, but it's found in video games," he observed. "These days, the graphics processing units that are built primarily for gaming have more transistors in them than the CPUs do. Think about that."

In addition, he believes the type of massive, multiplayer online games (World of Warcraft or The Matrix Online, for example) that have replaced solitary games may offer clues on how to facilitate collaboration. "There are a lot of cool things that are happening in the video game world that we're going to look at to build a great CAD system," he vowed.

The company, however, remains silent on Mac platform -- specifically on the R&D efforts going on to accommodate Mac users who want access to SolidWorks. During SolidWorks World, the company demonstrated what appeared to be a CAD programming running in Mac OS. Subsequently, it admitted it had no specific timetable for delivering a Mac-compatible version of its software.

For more, watch the video clip below, compiled with excerpts from presentations delivered on SolidWorks Innovation Day.