SpaceClaim’s New Direction

Randall Newton is reporting on CADCAMNet that Mike Payne, the CEO of SpaceClaim, has been made Executive Chairman of the Board of Directors and Business Development VP Rich Moore is taking over his place.

Apart from a new face for the CEO, the company recently gave a new face to it’s web site as well, although they have still not updated their leadership page with the new hiararchy. The SpaceClaim blog has dissappeared altogether. I am not surprised since the last post was on Jan 4th this year.

One thing is for sure. SpaceClaim is changing direction. In fact, is has been changing direction for quite some time now. Among other things, they now offer a trial, a perpetual license option and have priced it more reasonably.

SpaceClaim also now claims to be the world’s first “Natural 3D Design System”, which if I have understood correctly, is another fancy phrase for “Direct Modeling System”.
SpaceClaim is also keeping one eye on AutoCAD users. Take a look at this video. Mike Payne showed me this at COFES 2008 in April this year and I was blown away.

For the most part SpaceClaim appears to have got it right. However, I think SpaceClaim is trying to be a lot of things to a lot of people. That’s probably because it can indeed do a lot of things. I may be wrong, but I think a better idea would be to position itself as a “Jack of All Traits and Master of One”, the “One” in this case being its ability to be a revolution for AutoCAD users. The video mentioned above does not leave much to imagination, does it?

I believe this makes good business sense as well, especially since AutoCAD users form the largest section of prospective customers for SpaceClaim. They need to be given special attention and the message to them needs to be louder than the messages to other people. Very few people appreciate a Jack, but everyone admires a Master. In this small and over-crowded CAD world, you need to be a Master to get noticed.

Watch this space. There is something else going on in this sphere which I cannot share right now. Keep guessing…