Flex-X is a joint venture in creating a productivity application set for small- to medium-sized businesses that use SOLIDWORKS 3D design tools.
SOLIDWORKS is solid modeling CAD produced by Dassault Systèmes and it’s used by over 2 million engineers and designers at more than 165,000 companies worldwide. The company was was founded in December 1993 by MIT graduate Jon Hirschtick. Hirschtick took $1 million he made while a member of the MIT Blackjack Team and used the funds to recruit a team of engineers to build 3D CAD software that was “easy-to-use, affordable, and available on the Windows desktop.” SOLIDWORKS’ first product, SolidWorks 95, was released in 1995, and in 1997 Dassault acquired SolidWorks for $310 million in stock.
Developed by Hawk Ri
dge Systems and ATR Soft, this new set of productivity tools extends the capabilities and functionality of SolidWorks’ Enterprise Product Data Management (EPDM) to streamline processes.
The first Flex-X application, called xBOM, is set to be unveiled at Solidworks World 2015.
The companies say xBom adds the ability to easily incorporate and reconcile multiple data sources into a single, complete Bill of Materials which can be viewed in many different forms. xBOM was developed and designed to process a Bill of Materials (BOM) within the EPDM solution and it came out of interviews with users who called for BOM Management help.
“The joint venture between Hawk Ridge Systems and ATR Soft is a partnership designed to optimize software development with a global distribution model,” says Dale Ford, President and CEO of Hawk Ridge Systems. “Flex-X is a platform that was built for productivity as it provides a natural extension of the capabilities of Enterprise PDM. With the first application, xBOM, we are able to provide a tool to process BOMs within the EPDM application, which is exactly what our mid-market customers have been asking for in user groups. The savings in costs, resources and time are significant.”
Accessible as a download with a price point under $1,000, xBOM is available to SOLIDWORKS EPDM users anywhere in the world.
ATR Soft is a leading software development innovator based in Finland.
“Hawk Ridge Systems and ATR have decades of experience as trusted partners of Dassault Systèmes SOLIDWORKS – Hawk Ridge Systems as the number one global reseller for years, and ATR Soft as the original integrator for SOLIDWORKS and EPDM,” says Mika Reinilä, the CEO of ATR Soft. “The partnership is complementary on so many levels, not only technically, but with our shared vision of providing cost-effective solutions for our mid-market customers.”
Do you use SOLIDWORKS for your work or your hobbies? What impact do you think this new BOM tool will have on users? Let us know in the xBOM Tool for SOLIDWORKS forum thread on 3DPB.com.
