Elucidating the importance of validation in design

Rajagopalan Varadarajan, Product Manager, SolidWorks Simulation Solutions, SolidWorks Corporation talks to Prasad Ramasubramanian of CyberMedia News on his company’s steep rise and changes he has witnessed in the design trends.

What was the vision when you started the company in 1995?

The vision of the founders was to put a 3D CAD (Computer Aided Design) in every desktop. The industry at that point of time had said that CAD/CAM is mature and everyone said that the industry is mature and there is nothing more.

At that time, CAD was expensive, a specialized software working on UNIX platform and it’s not possible for SME players to invest their money into it. We started with a single-minded vision – to run CAD on a WINDOWS platform, that too an inexpensive one.

It took about 3-4 years for us to get the first 100,000 licenses sold in the market, but subsequently it took only two years to get the next 100,000. Today, we have more than 600,000 to 700,000 users.

We grew because we were easy to use, inexpensive and though we started as a CAD company we moved on to other engineering design offering entity such as CAE and then we moved on to data validation management.

Today we have four products in our kitty. One is the 3D product, the design validation, data management solution and documentation software. Our offices in India include in Bangalore, Mumbai and we have office in New Delhi with several resellers spread across the country.

How critical is validation the entire process of design?

The question always is when you design a product, how sure are you that it would work with the end user or your customer? Years ago, product failing during warranty period was acceptable, but product failing is just not acceptable today.

On one hand the products have to be designed in lesser time, must meet tougher specifications and must not fail within warranty time while at the same time, excessive life beyond the warranty would mean that the profitability wasn’t optimized.

All product development costs, which include raw materials, (i.e. petroleum products and steel), energy, and labour, are increasing. Also, consumers expect regular new and improved functionality in all types of products but don’t expect to pay any extra.

Moreover, consumer prices are actually declining. The retail price of consumer products, machine tools, and OEM components are dropping globally. These factors are influencing the designers to impact the profitability of the companies that they work for.

They can achieve this by specifying the optimal part size with the best material. They can create reliable products by design (vs. after costly and time consuming test iterations). When designers are empowered to meet these goals, corporate confidence increases and a culture of innovation is fostered.

What role has products from SolidWorks’ stable played in the customer’s domain?

Our role in this entire exercise is to validate the design which is much more than just creating a design. What I would do when I have a 3D model – I apply, give a support, I take the material and there is a research which would say whether the thing is fine or not.

The effort is always to make things easier for our customer at the end of the day so that every designer could do it.

So what has changed in the design arena – say a decade back to what it is today?

Our product is a relatively inexpensive one, which helps one do so. When we develop a product, there are some challenges. When a designer designs product, there are some challenges. We need to check the design before it is given to the customer.

Analysis is usually called by many as difficult and we have processes like Finite Element Method and many such processes which help understand and analyze this. If you go back a decade, 3D models could be designed only by qualified engineers whereas it is not so today. Everything is automated today. Whatever was done manually at that era is on to automated mode.

You are a pioneer in the product design space. What does a typical SME customer coming to you asks for?

The challenges are the same. How to be profitable? The main challenge for the SME companies in India would be the information challenge. Removal of the fear that design validation is difficult needs to be addressed.

The products that companies like us come out help them remove this fear and help them realize that they can indeed use these products and it would benefit them in not only making them a profitable organization but also a sustainable model in the future.

Are you approaching markets such as Sri Lanka, Bangladesh or Maldives etc which though small but have a lot of potential especially in the SME bracket?

We have the Sri Lankan operations managed out from India and we will have one design validation in Sri Lanka in the month of September this year.