HIDDEN IN MANY DESIGN and data management bundles is a brief history of the design software industry's consolidations. As larger product lifecycle management (PLM) vendors swallowed up independent CAD developers, the CAD-and-PLM combo became the standard. The pairing of SolidWorks with collaboration products from Dassault Systemes is the natural result of Dassault's acquisition of SolidWorks in 1997. Likewise, the pairing of Siemens PLM Software's Teamcenter with Solid Edge resulted from the double acquisition, first of UGS' acquisition of Solid Edge in 1998; later of Siemens AG's acquisition of UGS in 2007. Over time, some of these pairings proved to be less than ideal. The larger PLM firms historically catered to the aerospace and automotive giants. The smaller CAD vendors counted five- to 10-person design and engineer shops as their core clients. The former's hefty enterprise solutions are often a poor fit for the lat-ter's needs-too much software for the tight-knit workgroups.
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