Switching To Another CAD System

There is a myth that when a company buys into a particular CAD system, they almost never switch to another one, unless of course they switch to a different technology – maybe something like AutoCAD to SolidWorks. Looks like Chrysler has busted that myth with their decision to dump CATIA and switch to NX (see “CATIA vs NX“). I was discussing this with Al Dean and Peter Harman on Twitter today and Al said, “It shows that they’ll switch when there’s a financial or process incentive. Which there is in this case.”

Chrysler is not publicly commenting on this issue – for good reason. But I decided to ask anyways. Here is the reply I got from Eileen Wunderlich from Chrysler’s Corporate Communications:

Gualberto Ranieri [Senior Vice President – Communications] forwarded your note regarding the CATIA vs NX blog item you wrote. Thank you for your inquiry, however, the only information to provide right now is the following statement: “Chrysler Group is continuing to evaluate every aspect of our business as a means of implementing and developing the best business practices for moving the company forward.  We do not have any announcements to make at this time.”

The statement itself is quite a safe one, since it does not confirm or deny anything, which also makes it easy to read between the lines.

Moral of the story: Nothing is permanent.