Hardware Podcasts

Jon Hirschtick | Founding & Developing the Solidworks and Onshape CAD Systems

Being an Engineer · 10 Feb 2023 · 1h 15m · Episode 6

What this episode covers

Jon Hirschtick, founder of SolidWorks and Onshape, and current Chief Evangelist at PTC, explains how he used personal funds from his time as a professional blackjack player to launch SolidWorks in 1993, targeting the gap between expensive Unix-based 3D CAD and 2D AutoCAD. He details the technical challenges of building a solid modeler on Windows and licensing Parasolid, leading to its success, and later founded Onshape to solve persistent user pain points like version control, installation failures, and file-based collaboration by creating a true cloud-native CAD and PDM system. Hirschtick discusses Onshape's features, including real-time collaboration, FeatureScript, and its subscription model, arguing that cloud-native architecture enables faster innovation and better security than legacy file-based systems.

Most relevant to

early-stage companies and companies scaling up

Topics

Mentioned

Companies
PTC, Siemens, Brostrom
Products
Onshape, AutoCAD, Pro/ENGINEER, Creo, Unigraphics, Salesforce, NetSuite, QuickBooks, Google Docs, Arena, ThingWorx, Codebeamer
Also
Parasolid, Linux, Windows, Unix

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