September 16, 2025 • 49 mins
In this episode of The Engineering Passion Express, we have a relaxed chat with Dale Rice, SOLIDWORKS Electrical Applications Engineer at GoEngineer, though despite the name, we weren't having drinks at all, we just didn't have a particular journey in mind when the conversation started.
Dale has been supporting engineering companies for decades and has seen a tremendous amount of engineering, and he also is a good friend of mine.
This is not a narrative episode, rather it is a discussion between two old friends.
You'll hear discussion about:
1. SOLIDWORKS and SOLIDWORKS Electrical
2. How to ensure you're not getting duped by demos
3. Making sure your boss doesn't compare you to the performance of a demonstration
4. Keys to implementing a software or a change in a process successfully
5. Thoughts on AI, it's coming impact in SOLIDWORKS and what we think it would be good to focus on.
Here are a couple links to check out:
https://www.goengineer.com/webinars#on-demand
https://www.goengineer.com/blog
You can also reach out to Dale at drice@goengineer.com if you have questions around SOLIDWORKS or SOLIDWORKS Electrical.
The Engineering Passion Express is about growing knowledge and the passion for engineering.
If you are a conference organizer and are looking for an engineering or scientific speaker to inspire or educate in a keynote presentation, please reach out to me on LinkedIn. You can find my profile below.
Thanks for listening,
Brandon Donnelly
Please connect with me on linkedin @ linkedin.com/in/brandondonnelly
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
SPEAKER_00 (00:15):
On this episode of the Engineering Passion Express
podcast, I talked with DaleRice.
Dale Rice is a friend of mineand a former co-worker that
worked together with me foralmost 10 years.
And he's just an all-around goodperson.
Dale's currently working at GoEngineer and supporting the
SOLIDWORKS electrical software.
(00:36):
But in our discussion, which ismore of a chat that will devolve
into sort of everything.
SOLIDWORKS SOLIDWORKSelectrical, thoughts on general
engineering careers, AI, and howit's changing stuff.
SPEAKER_01 (00:51):
You may just get a glimpse of who Dale is, his
enthusiasm, and that if you everneed anything SOLIDWORKS
related, he's a guy you canreach up to.
With that, let's get into theepisode.
SPEAKER_00 (01:07):
Welcome to the Engineering Passion Express
podcast.
Today I have Dale Rice on.
Dale and I worked together forover 10 years at a CAD reseller
called GSC.
At the time, he was an amazingCAD instructor, a great human
being, and he also does a goodimpression of a salmon swimming
upstream.
(01:29):
He currently works for GoEngineer, one of the largest, if
not the largest, CAD reseller inNorth America.
And it's great to have you on,Dale.
Thanks so much, Brandon.
It's awesome.
Glad to be here.
SPEAKER_02 (01:39):
Tell us a little bit about your background, Dale.
All right.
So my background is I startedout as an engineer and designer
and worked my way up and endedup in the reseller chain as an
application engineer.
And so I had so much fun.
It became my calling to do thistype of work.
(02:02):
I mean, pre-sales, post-sales,that type of environment,
helping customers.
And I've been doing this for, ohmy gosh, probably what, 15 years
now?
And absolutely love it.
Started out on the mechanicalside for SolidWorks.
And then now I am currently onthe SolidWorks electrical side
of the business.
So I've been doing theelectrical side for about four
(02:24):
years.
SPEAKER_00 (02:24):
Probably every engineer out there knows what
SolidWorks is.
If they're younger engineers,they may not be familiar with
pre-sales and post-sales.
So pre-sales is essentiallyhelping you find a solution to
your problem.
Post sales is helping you find asolution to a problem after
you've made a purchase.
Tell us a little more about yourcurrent role and what you do
(02:46):
with SolidWorks Electrical andhow you help customers versus
maybe and how it's maybedifferent than what most people
are familiar with inside of likeSOLIDWORKS and mechanical
design.
SPEAKER_02 (02:56):
Absolutely.
So the electrical is there'ssome correlation between
mechanical and electrical.
And then there's a huge dividethere.
So when we get into the softwareaspect of SolidWorks Electrical,
it's working with 2D schematics.
So you have software to createyour schematics.
You also have software that weconnect to SolidWorks Mechanical
(03:20):
that has a 3D add-on thatconnects between 2D and 3D.
So I get to play with both sidesof the fence a lot of times and
take that experience, that 20plus years of SolidWorks
mechanical side, and be able toleverage that experience on both
ends of the fence.
So it's kind of a fun job to beable to take those perspectives
(03:42):
and help the customer from bothsides.
We have people that are justhave electrical experience, and
then we have people that havethe experience like myself on
both ends, mechanical andelectrical.
So it's kind of a fun positionfor sure to be in.
And so, really from thepre-sales, I will present the
software and offer, show thecustomer exactly how this fits
(04:06):
for their organization withintheir organization.
Then the customer obviously asksquestions or has any concerns,
and we try to answer thosequestions and concerns.
So the software is a good fitfor the customers.
So from the technical side,Brandon even knows this.
From the technical side, we liketo just make sure our customers
are happy because at the end ofthe day, if we sell something
(04:28):
and we've lied to them orwhatever in a bad way, like told
them, hey, this software isn'tgoing to work, we told them,
hey, the software is great, andthen it doesn't work out, is
what I should say.
Then you have a lot of problemson from the customer coming
back.
And so we always just like to beupfront and honest and tell them
exactly how it is.
And I know a lot of salespeopletend to not like that.
(04:50):
The good ones are good withthat, and then the ones that
just want to sell a seat, thoseare the ones that don't last
long, to be honest.
So we have good honestsalespeople and and the tech
people on our side.
SPEAKER_00 (05:03):
What do you think?
This is a hard question, butwhat do you think is something
that maybe no product manual ordemo really shows about
SOLIDWORKS electrical?
SPEAKER_02 (05:13):
Oh.
So anytime you get manuals, youbasically get the perfect
working condition.
And so everything works great.
I found this when I started outin engineering was okay, I got
this little manual, and it showsyou things that oh, the perfect
world.
And then when you go to use itin your own world, all of a
(05:34):
sudden it's like, well, what isthis error?
What is this error?
What's that error?
So that's part of the trainingaspect that I like to show
errors and things that go wrongall the years I learned uh from
just being on the engineeringside to be able to show those
things when things don't gowell, what does that look like
to try to make that a bettersituation?
SPEAKER_00 (05:55):
I think that's an interesting aspect because it's
an underrated aspect ofsoftware.
There's always going to be timesthat things don't go well, and
like you said, it's not gonnashow up in a manual, it's not
gonna show up in a demo.
But I would like to see when itdoesn't go well what the errors
are throwing up.
If the software just crasheswithout any warning, without any
feedback, and it just keepsrepeating that, and you can't
(06:18):
really troubleshoot it or figureit out.
That's much more irritating thana software that says close due
to X, Y, and Z.
And then Like maybe it's amemory limit or whatever, and
then you've you can start tofigure out how you can change
your behavior so that thatdoesn't happen, but the other
way leaves you no clue at all.
And I think that's a good partof quality software and software
(06:42):
design.
So yeah, that that I think youthrew out a good answer there.
SPEAKER_02 (06:47):
Well, thanks, thanks.
Yeah, definitely that's years ofexperience from both of us
knowing that, hey, these thingsthey're gonna see eventually.
And a lot of times the manualwill throw that under the rug.
And uh to make it look, it'smore like streamlining.
Same with the demo aspect.
You asked about training and thedemo aspect.
(07:07):
Well, demos are the same way.
We run through, I got a greatexample.
I had done this presentationprobably 5,000 times between
practice behind the scenes andgoing live with customers.
I had done this this data set atleast gone through it at least
five grid, 5,000 times.
And I could do it with my eyesclosed pretty much.
(07:29):
And I went into a place and theengineering manager saw the
presentation, he went, Wow, howcome you guys aren't as good
with CAD as this guy is?
And I just by mouth dropped, Ilooked at all of them and I just
couldn't keep quiet.
I just laughed.
I said, Well, I've done thispresentation so many times that
(07:50):
it just looks perfect.
And if the real world is thatyou're gonna have iterations,
engineering is all aboutchanges, and you're gonna get an
error all of a sudden, andyou're gonna have to sort
through that problem and havingto figure out those things.
Uh, demo is completely differentfrom the real world.
And as long as engineeringmanagers know that and see that
(08:10):
expectation of, okay, Dale'sjust done this so many times, he
knows how to do that aspect ofthe software.
So always keep that in mind ifyou're an engineering manager.
Your team is better than youthink.
If you see something thatsomebody blows you away, whether
it's an ERP system or whateverit is, they've practiced a
thousands of times before theygot to you.
(08:33):
Because we have to make thesoftware look great, not just
good or okay.
It has to look great.
And we know the pitfalls and weknow where things are not so
great in the software.
So at all costs, we try to avoidthose.
Or if you can't fix it, featureit.
That was kind of the rule at GSCwith Sam Hockberg years ago.
(08:54):
He was like, can't fix it,feature it.
And that was always somethingthat stuck in my brain was hey,
if we can't fix this thissoftware and they are absolutely
needing this, this is theworkaround, and this is how we
can fix it.
SPEAKER_00 (09:05):
And that's that's a good part of being an honest,
trustworthy partner, I think.
Because you need to see thatworkaround for things that are
suboptimal so that they knowthey're not they're not being
taken by something that lookedgood in a in a demo presentation
and doesn't actually work inreal life.
Exactly.
SPEAKER_02 (09:22):
Well, I have to say, and I'm sure you would agree
with this, for any customers orpeople that are considering
software in general, do your duediligence.
Make sure that you are that isthat all your issues are being
addressed, or at least there'ssome kind of workaround if 99%
are fixed that work great andthere's 1% that doesn't.
Well, how critical is that?
(09:44):
And do your homework andresearch.
Don't just buy something sightunseen.
Software is never perfect.
I don't care where you buy itfrom and who you are.
Having good, reliable people towork with is number one.
And then that software, makingsure that it's gonna match your
needs is super critical.
So that's something I'm sureBrandon and I, we both run into
that over the years where peoplejust bought the software and
(10:06):
then all they had all they hadwas a bunch of complaints
afterwards.
Well, it was great, thesalesperson doesn't care as long
as they they get that deal forthat quarter, they're in, right?
But then we get to deal with itlater on.
So that's why we that's why Isay, hey, do your due diligence,
make sure that the software is agood fit for you.
And look at a few pieces ofsoftware before you jump into
(10:27):
just one.
Because people are great atdemos at in all competition and
all different pieces ofsoftware.
So make sure you're asking theright questions.
SPEAKER_00 (10:37):
I also think if you've worked with a reseller or
a partner that you've found istruly honest and does show you
that stuff and doesn't hide theflaws and make sure and is
ensuring that you're gettingvalue out of the solution.
I would encourage you not to goseek out a different partner to
save a handful of dollars whomay not have that same respect
(10:59):
for you.
Absolutely.
SPEAKER_02 (11:01):
Absolutely.
It's a it's you're building agood relationship and it's a
partnership moving forward.
It's not just I'm gonna save$100on this or even a few thousand
dollars.
Sometimes you go, okay, why isthis cheaper?
What am I not getting?
I I look at that.
Hopefully, I never have to buy acar again, as expensive as they
are.
But you look at that same kindof aspect as the whole car.
(11:25):
Well, am I gonna get a goodservice from these people?
Does it even matter?
Or do I do I want that?
Do I need the services?
Do I need the consulting?
Do I need the support?
Where is our team at?
Does our team need nothing fromit from this reseller, or do
they need a ton of do you need aton of help?
That's the thing to consider aswell, not just software.
(11:46):
It's hey, do these people have agood depth?
Like Go Engineer, our electricalteam.
We have 10 engineers,application engineers dedicated
to electrical.
And that's a hugedifferentiator.
Every other reseller like GSCand some of the other ones, they
had one electrical person.
I don't know what they have now,but back in the day, there was
one person for that.
(12:07):
And we have 10 that are helpingout.
So that's a pretty hugedifferentiation when you start
looking at resellers and thesize.
And Go Engineer is all 50 statesplus Canada now.
So it's pretty uh if we can'tfigure out the answer, we're
gonna find it for you.
We're gonna figure it outsomewhere, give you a good
answer.
SPEAKER_00 (12:26):
Some of what you were just saying there actually
ties into my next question.
So you were talking aboutservices, assistance, all of
that stuff.
What do you think the mostmisunderstood part of the
process of adopting like anelectrical eCAD solution like
SOLIDWORKS electrical is?
SPEAKER_02 (12:44):
I would say to write off with my experience, the
thing that I ran in with when Istarted with electrical, my
misconception was that I had todo installs and upgrades.
And it was way more challengingthan I thought when you go into
that aspect of, hey, I've now Ihave a SQL database that I have
(13:04):
to manage, and how do I workwith that?
I actually just did a webinar onSolidWorks electrical boot camp.
So that I tried to answer someof these exact questions,
Brandon, where where do you gofor resources?
At the end of the day, I said,hey, try to install it yourself.
Have make sure you have a goodsandbox, a backup, and that
(13:26):
you're testing it on your own ifyou don't want us to get
involved.
If you don't want the resellerto get involved and you're like,
hey, I'm independent, I like todo it all on my own, go for it.
You're gonna fall down someholes.
It's definitely gonna happen.
It's different from SolidWorksinstallations where that's just
a click of a button.
It's so mature that it's beenout there.
PDM is pretty mature as well.
But then you get electrical, itis mature, but there's things
(13:49):
that have changed where theworking with different
environments, you have to watchyour different servers.
It still has the dedicatedserver that you have to install.
But it's one of those thingsthat you can do a virtual
machine, you can do all kinds ofdifferent options, but there's
good, better, and best, and thenthere's terrible options.
So getting consulting with us orwhoever you're working with is
(14:12):
going to be the key that firsttime around.
And that's what I've definitelypushed was the first time, get
some, we'll teach you how tofish, but you need to get some
assistance to see what you'regetting into.
And a lot of times we actuallydo upgrades every year, every
other year for customers morethan you can imagine.
And people just don't want todeal with it for one, or they
(14:34):
just don't have the time to doit.
So that's one of those thingsyou kind of have to see.
Do I want to try this myself ordo I have the resources that I
can pay for someone else to doit?
SPEAKER_00 (14:42):
Okay.
I mean, it sounds like it's justa little bit more IT heavy than
a normal installation.
I mean, most engineers canhandle just a straight software
installation, but it sounds likeyou're maybe migrating databases
and things like that that are alittle bit more IT heavy.
SPEAKER_02 (14:58):
Yeah, it was something I didn't expect when I
first jumped on the team.
I was like, oh, this will be apiece of cake.
I work with PDM and all theseother things and seek manage SQL
databases and things like that.
It's very similar, but yeah, thecomplexities, just other side
things.
You get you'll get errors andyou won't know what the errors
are.
And if you haven't installed it50 times or 100 times, I'm
(15:20):
still, after four years, we'regetting new errors now with the
newer software.
And due to latency and a lot ofthe latency between the client
and the servers, or server andclient, excuse me, if it's they
change the hard coding of thesoftware, that if it's past 10
milliseconds, it will just notinstall the software and not
(15:41):
tell you that that's theproblem.
So we've got into that and wewere starting to do some
installs, and we're like, holycow, what's going on here?
And then we found out that thatwas changed.
And honestly, if you think aboutit, because the earlier software
of electrical would install, andall of a sudden you'd have
performance issues, you'd haveconnection issues and things
like projects locking out, andyou're like, what's going on
(16:03):
here?
There's a lot of performanceissues.
And all of that was due tolatency.
So now they've decided, hey,let's switch this where you'll
have an error up front and youneed to fix your latency issue
before you can install thesoftware.
So that actually makes bettersense, but it was a it's a
change, and customers need to beaware of that type of stuff.
And that's the kind of thingthat happens all the time when
(16:26):
you're doing this installs andupgrades.
SPEAKER_00 (16:28):
I'm going to ask you two questions that kind of tie
into each other.
So I'll read them both and thenwe'll go through them one at a
time.
So, first, what does failure ofadoption look like?
And then second, what do youthink the biggest failure people
have in adoption is withoutrealizing it?
Maybe a benefit that they're notgetting because they didn't do
something correctly, that kindof thing.
(16:49):
So start with what does failureof adoption look like in maybe
solid or selection?
SPEAKER_02 (16:54):
Yeah.
So honestly, if you take spend alittle extra money and get us
involved for training,consulting, and any services,
one-on-one services to get youup and running, so you
understand how to manage thedatabase, how to install symbols
and manufacture parts and createa template and all those things
(17:14):
that you don't think about whenyou buy the software that we can
help with.
And the people that fail are theones that try to do it on their
own.
That's just the simple, that'sjust the plain facts, unless
they've done it and gone througha process before with a reseller
of whoever they are.
And if they haven't gone througha process, they tend to fail.
(17:35):
Not all, but there's people thatjust give up.
It's like, oh, this is too hard.
And that could be any piece ofsoftware.
Hey, that's too hard, and justgive up and go back.
I know, just being inengineering, I've seen myself
and other people that go, ohman, I know how to do this in
two minutes, but it takes me 30minutes to do it with the new
software.
I quit.
And so we have to take a stepback and see the value of it.
(18:00):
And so that failure can be ifyou don't see the value of it
and the engineers don'tunderstand what they're actually
going to gain from the software,they give up.
And I definitely have helped.
We don't get too many peopleafter they've gone through
training and pretty differentperspectives, Brandon, that that
tend to fail.
But I do actually follow up andmake sure that our customers are
(18:23):
still using the software andhappy.
And if they're not using it,well, why aren't you using the
software?
And try to get them back ontrack.
But if you try to run with it onyour own, well, you're on your
own, unfortunately, and it'sit's up to your own devices to
succeed or fail.
SPEAKER_00 (18:37):
I think something you said I just want to clarify
on something that I've seensimilarly with softwares, is in
general, if the software maybeadds a task to a person that
didn't have that task before,even though it's going to help
downstream, that's when theystruggle or they don't like it.
So, for example, like maybesomebody was entering part
(19:00):
numbers or metadata or whateverinto an ERP system and that was
an administrative person, butnow, however, the workflow has
changed and in your CAD tool,you now enter that when you
create some new part orwhatever.
That wasn't on the engineer'splate before.
Now it's on their plate, they'reresponsible for it.
Even if the total sum of all thepeople that touch it and the
(19:22):
time downstream is less, you nowkind of get resistance to the
adoption of this because thatwasn't on my plate before and
now it is.
Exactly.
Yeah, you nailed it.
SPEAKER_02 (19:31):
And that's definitely what happens.
The vision from an engineer is Ihave to get this done in the
time that I have.
And my boss says I have to getit done in an hour, and it's
gonna take me two hours to use Aversus B software.
What are you gonna use?
You're gonna use the softwarethat your boss is telling you to
get it done by that time.
(19:52):
And to get extra steps, a greatexample is PDM.
People in the beginning of thatadoption for product data
management was.
Oh my gosh, this is going totake longer.
I have to check in files.
I have to add attributes ormetadata to explain what I'm
doing.
So I have a history.
But what are you gettingdownstream?
Like you're saying, now I cansearch.
(20:14):
I have a revision history.
I have different, I have moredata to go by than I had before
by just using, say, Twigs andMud or AutoCAD or what AutoCAD
2D.
And they all have value.
But how much are you getting forthat?
Electrical is the same way.
Yes, you're going to have to putyour symbols in a database or
(20:36):
download the data bit, you know,the symbols from the database to
get that into your SQL, SQLdatabase one time.
But after that, everybody canshare, everybody can
collaborate, everybody can use.
You're getting more reporting,more efficient reporting because
it's built in SQL.
Plus, you're getting greatsearching.
You're getting so many moretools than you would by just
(20:59):
using 2D or a pen and paper tomake that happen.
And you have a history of that.
So there's there's trade-offs,right?
There's that upfront and thethis total sum of time that you
were talking about.
SPEAKER_00 (21:11):
Agreed.
I think people don't see thewhole solution, and it's it's
tough because no one person inthe company generally has that
vision.
So it's kind of like theengineer is saying this takes
longer, but maybe they have lesssalespeople coming to them
saying, is this the latestrevision or less shop floor
managers, whoever it is, becausethose people know it's the
(21:32):
latest revision because they cansee all those in the system.
SPEAKER_02 (21:35):
That kind of tells me, Brandon, that I also need to
be having more discussions withengineers on the benefits of it,
and that yes, you're going totake a little more time here,
but you're going to see this inthe back end a lot more
information.
So that's actually a really goodthing to approach from a
business standpoint.
I like that.
SPEAKER_00 (21:55):
And even those engineers' bosses, they're
engineering managers, make surethey understand it.
Your guys might be taking alittle longer than normal, but
the business is benefiting andXYZ.
Yeah.
I guess the next question herewould be do you have like a good
big win story, something youreally helped the customer
achieve?
Well, absolutely.
SPEAKER_02 (22:13):
So I think when I first started, it was the
customer had they were usingVisio.
And Visio actually is a prettydarn cool piece of software.
And it actually, if you can takethat pretty far, the problem was
they just outgrew the software.
They wanted to do more.
They wanted to have more of acollaborative environment
(22:34):
between their engineers andelectrical mechanical.
And they already ownedSolidWorks Mechanical.
And they said, well, how can webetter work with our customers?
And that age-old story of, well,maybe we take a look at
SolidWorks Electrical.
How does that work and how doesthat connect?
Luckily, our software connectswonderfully and collaborates
between Mechanical andElectrical.
(22:56):
And so they were through theroof on productivity and being
able to what they could do aboveand beyond Visio.
So a lot of times I seecustomers that are like they
hang on to that Visio or the 2DAutoCAD for dear life because
they're used to it, like youwere saying.
And once I was able to bringthem, our team was able to bring
(23:16):
them over the bridge, across thebridge, to see Electrical, they
never look back.
And they did everything correct,too.
They got us involved, and whenthey had questions, they bought
a book hours to get us to helpthem, or if it's something easy,
we just help them out.
So that's one of those things,yeah, it's a good, good story.
And I have a bunch of them likethat.
(23:38):
A lot of people, a lot of themare Visio, a lot of them come
from AutoCAD electrical, or justhonestly using a spreadsheet or
some other thing.
It's amazing what people usestill today.
And I'm sure we can relate, youand I, between the draft site
AutoCAD, where people just werelike, I don't need any more than
than 2D, and then we broughtthem across the bridge to see
(24:01):
3D, and then they never lookback.
So it's the same type of thinghere that you'll see going into
the electrical world too.
Once you see that vision, youwon't look back.
SPEAKER_00 (24:11):
Yeah, I think there's always this tension
between like a user's skill andthe tools that they use.
It's like a good engineer canprobably get by with just about
any tool.
Exactly.
But a bad engineer isn't goingto be made a good engineer by a
better tool.
But that's not to say that agood engineer still isn't going
(24:31):
to get their productivityboosted and all that by moving
up to a much better tool.
They will.
There's no doubt about it.
But again, it comes back tothere's a separation between
your abilities and the tool, butif you are a pretty able person,
a better tool is going to helpyou a lot more.
And there's, like you said,about 2D CAD.
There's no doubt that there'sengineers that were thinking
(24:53):
through interferences and allthat, even when they drafted in
2D these big complex machines.
But that doesn't mean that whenthey went to 3D CAD, they didn't
find a whole bunch ofinterferences that they would
have found on the shop flooreventually up front, just
because there's so manyinteractions going on, it's easy
to overlook something.
SPEAKER_02 (25:11):
Oh, exactly.
You're only as your software'sonly as good as your engineer.
SPEAKER_00 (25:16):
Right.
That's well said.
Are there any trends that arehappening in this in this tool
or in this space at the moment?
Any sort of consistent changesyear to year where you see them
going in a certain direction?
SPEAKER_02 (25:29):
Yeah, I I definitely see cloud-based losing moving
over to the 3D experienceplatform.
I do see that moving forward.
I just saw some internalcommunication on Teams that
Dassault has created a 3D add-infor the platform.
I don't know all the detailsyet, but they have there look
(25:50):
like that's going to be in July.
So there's some movement thereand some being able to move this
over to the platform.
I'm sure you'll have bothoptions, but that'll be an
option for people that, hey, youhave people all over the world,
and you'll be able, you'll wantto check in files in the cloud
and things like that up throughthe 3D experience platform.
(26:12):
So yeah, that's one thing I'mactually trying to get myself up
to speed with that because I seethat direction of where the
software's going to go.
Well, as we can see, a lot ofpeople don't want to manage
these databases.
Now, currently, the software isgoing to have to be rewritten
because of SQL.
And I'm not sure where they'reat on how they're going to
(26:34):
handle that with the platform.
I know currently it's going tobe installed on your computer or
on a server, same as it iscurrently is.
So that might not change in theshort term, but maybe long term
that will be a complete overhaulin the software world for
Dassault.
And that's what we're hopingfor.
That's to rewrite that.
(26:56):
It was just a hard thing to tryto replace.
Now the uh going to the PDMside, they had the same issues,
so they used Anovia, right?
That was the we switched overand did anything cloud was using
that type of PDM or PLM typesoftware.
And now Electrical's gonna haveto make that jump as well and
(27:16):
build some bridges that way.
SPEAKER_00 (27:18):
I guess if you had to make a bet on a massive leap
in the technology in the nextthree to five years, do you have
any guesses on what what thatchange would be?
Oof, that's a good question.
Yeah.
Huge leaps.
I mean, for you, it could evenbe something that you just heard
maybe multiple customers'requests, so you're thinking
maybe it's getting on theirradar or something like that.
SPEAKER_02 (27:39):
Yeah.
I know some small integrations,any massive leap.
It's usually with software, it'sintegrate, you know, it's tiny
iterations.
As for a quantum leap and likeyeah, like our processing and
and working with the quantumcomputing, which is changing the
world, is gonna change thingshuge.
(28:00):
I haven't heard anythingdirectly from Dessau that aspect
of any huge jumps, but I thinkit'll probably be focused on the
platform and that will integratejust with a lot of different
tools.
You're gonna see a lot ofdifferent apps that you'll be
able to connect into, and you'rejust gonna have a lot more
capabilities and options as anengineer than you would as we
(28:25):
currently do, which is kind ofcool, isn't it?
I mean, you can jump in and say,hey, I like you are the you're
the sim genius, and the andbasically how that incorporated
and was able to take on the theextra burden for people that
needed more power, horsepower,and capabilities within
simulation.
Yeah.
(28:45):
So yeah, I think that'll be alot of it.
You're gonna get a lot morehorsepower.
I I'm more curious now at what'sthe quantum computing gonna do.
So now people we've createdcompanies have created that that
alpha of where we're at.
Where's that gonna go?
I think that's gonna intrigueme.
And what is software gonna dofrom that point?
(29:05):
So any type of processing isgonna be instantly.
It's gonna be an instant change.
There'll be like simulation,that's gonna benefit in a huge
way.
SPEAKER_00 (29:15):
So it already is, actually.
So you mentioned my simulationbackground.
I mean, AI in this space, peopleare already taking old analyses
of like the same kind ofcomponents, or maybe aerodynamic
analyses of like stuff they'veanalyzed over years and years
and years, using that to trainmodels that then they no longer
(29:35):
have to run models that takedays or weeks to run.
They just get an estimatedresult in a matter of seconds,
and then they decide based oncertain factors what would they
like to do their high fidelityrunoff.
So that's already happening.
Do you think that there's any AIequivalent in the electrical
world at the moment?
SPEAKER_02 (29:56):
Yeah, I'm betting that's gonna be in the works.
I haven't heard much, but that'sgonna be something that's gonna
change.
There's it has to, right?
That's the next evolution,basically the internet 2.0, but
it's gonna be massive.
And I'm sure you're alreadybenefiting.
I already use AI almost everyday for personal and work, and
there's some aspect of thatbeing incorporated already, and
(30:19):
that's exciting.
And I was like, geez, just thinkif we had this 20 years ago, 30
years ago, how much differentthings would be.
There's gonna be some changes,and there'll be people that had
positions that won't havepositions any longer, and that's
starting already.
And I've seen that foraccounting, HR.
What else is in there?
(30:40):
There's a few other areas wherepeople are already being
eliminated.
Like IBM, a great example.
IBM eliminated a bunch of jobs,HR-related jobs.
My wife's in HR, so humanresources.
So I'm very aware of those typesof things for her position as
well.
And to see some of thosechanges, like, okay, yep, we're
gonna retire at the right time.
(31:02):
There's gonna be otherwise,you're gonna have to start over.
I would say, as a youngengineer, pay attention to that
and get some skills with AI, getsome skills with that next
level, that next evolution,because it's gonna change.
What you went through schoolprobably isn't what you're gonna
end with in your career.
You need to stay on top ofthings and you need to really be
(31:24):
focused on your skill set morethan anything else.
Always keep your skills fresh.
Even to this point, at the lastbit of my career, I've had to
stay fresh all the way to theend.
And it's kind of exciting, itwas exciting.
That was always a goal of mypersonal to say, I'm gonna stay
with technology until the day Idie.
And that was my goal 30 yearsago, to say, I'm gonna stay with
(31:47):
this and keep up as much as Ican till the day I go.
And so I am.
I have I'm staying with it.
It's moving so fast and rapid.
Now there's so many things goingon that you have to keep your
eyes open and be on a swivel tosee what the next technology is
gonna be.
It's actually we're in anexciting time right now.
I know people are scared, butit's exciting, isn't it?
(32:10):
I think it's exciting.
SPEAKER_00 (32:11):
When you start talking about AI and staying up
with it, there's two prongs toit.
So there's the software that youalready use, and almost
guaranteed that software companyor that software vendor is
trying to figure out how tointegrate AI directly into their
software in some manner.
Right?
But then there's also like whatcan Chat GPT or just some more
general language model do foryou.
(32:33):
For example, I was doing somedesign work maybe like a month
ago or something, and uh, Istarted thinking to myself,
like, there's gotta be adifferent material that I could
use or something like that.
And I typed in ChatGPT saying,give me a list of materials that
are in this range, and then forthis property, then give me ones
(32:53):
that have thesetemperature-dependent
properties, and then by the way,cross-reference that with being
in this price range.
You've always been able to doall of that at some point, but
where you had to go to get theinformation might have been this
manual, then a separate manualfor these temperature-dependent
properties, and then checkingthis website from this
manufacturer for the differentcosts.
(33:14):
To be able to do that in like afraction of the time, like like
maybe in like 60 seconds, 30seconds, compared to looking all
those up, or maybe even havingto order those manuals, wait for
them to come in, look at thevalues, call up the
manufacturers.
You're talking like a 10 to 100times increase in speed for
(33:34):
that.
So if you don't stay up with it,somebody that does is going to
be able to do 10 times the work.
And if you have, say, 10% ofthat industry all being able to
do 10 times as much as before,then they're the ones that are
gonna get to keep their jobs andeverybody else is gonna be gone.
So, not to say that the industrywon't grow and that there won't
be other room, but I mean,obviously, if somebody's adopted
(33:56):
technologies that make them thatmuch more efficient than the
rest of their peers, they'regonna be the desirable ones.
Absolutely.
SPEAKER_02 (34:04):
And like I said earlier, it's all about your
skills.
Keep it, keep your skills fresh.
That's gonna be the key tosurvival in the working for
other people.
If I had to do this all overagain, Brandon, I probably would
have started my own businessbecause that was the way to go.
And seeing that vision now,after going through my whole
career, I would definitely havestarted my own business.
And I honestly got it off topica little bit.
(34:26):
I would have also doneinvesting.
I would have actually taughtmyself and got my skills set up.
I have them now, but I wouldhave done that as a 20-year-old
and really learned.
When you're poor, you grow uppoor and your parents are poor,
you don't know any better.
And now that I've looked back,I'm like, geez, I could have
been not just a millionaire, amultimillionaire.
(34:48):
And it was just what lookingback is like, holy cow.
So same kind of thing.
If you're not good with keepingup your skills, then you're
gonna fall behind and it's gonnabe a problem.
There's gonna be, I don't knowwhat's gonna happen to all the
the hordes that don't keep up.
So it's one of those.
That's our goal always is tostay up and with technology and
keep up with people, and it'simportant.
SPEAKER_00 (35:10):
I would say the one thing that most engineers have
going for them that having spentyears doing nothing but working
with engineers and talking toengineers, is on the whole,
they're more curious than therest of society in general, I
would say.
So if you're curious about thesethings and you want to stay up
with these things, you'realready kind of ahead in that
(35:31):
race.
A lot of other people aren'teven looking at AI, they're not
even realizing what it can dofor them, and they don't even
see that it's coming.
Exactly.
SPEAKER_02 (35:41):
And this is the frontier.
It's definitely we're back intothe pioneer ages with AI.
And I just read an articlesomewhere where this person
dropped out of school, droppedout of college, and had a vision
with with AI and created withinsix months, they created or he
created his own business andsold the business to someone
(36:03):
else that wanted what he createdfor millions of dollars.
And it was within six months, hewas a multimillionaire, like six
or eight million he got for thehis business.
And so that's how kind offrontier this is, and it's
exciting.
It's just like crypto was what,probably six years, ten years
ago, crypto when that poppedout.
SPEAKER_00 (36:23):
When the internet came out, everybody was becoming
millionaires based on buying theright domain or having a
website, which nobody had everhad before.
We're in those stages again.
Except I think that AI is maybeeven a little bit more
mysterious than that.
I think nobody really knowswhere it's gonna go or what it's
gonna morph into.
(36:44):
It's almost like anywhere thatyou have a large group of data
related to one thing that maybenobody else has, there's
probably value in it with AI.
Absolutely.
Nobody knows.
Everybody's got sort of a littlekeyhole into the world when it
comes to that, becauseeverybody's got their own pile
of data, whether that'sSOLIDWORKS models, or whether
it's marketing briefs thatthey've written over the years,
(37:08):
or whether it's I don't evenknow.
It's endless, really.
Definitely.
SPEAKER_02 (37:13):
Yeah, you're right.
About not knowing where it'sgonna go 100%.
That's pretty that's reallyaccurate.
I thought about that a couple oftimes.
My reflection time and andlearning period is first thing
in the morning, and I've createda schedule over the years of
hey, I get on Udemy, or I read abook, or I or just get on
YouTube and learn something fromthere, if I'm just feeling like
(37:35):
not getting too deep into itfirst thing in the morning.
And that's yeah, those are thetype of things.
AI comes up a lot, and there's alot of uses.
And if you really want to learnand get up to speed, definitely
jump on.
People have already createdclasses for it and basically how
to start up your own business ifyou wanted to.
So that's exciting.
Like I said earlier, uh if Iwould have done this over again,
(37:58):
I would have started my ownbusiness.
And fail, it doesn't matter.
It's okay to fail.
That's part of the part of beingin the US is I think we were
trained to not fail.
And it's okay to fail,especially when you're in your
20s and and you know, you'regetting there before you have
your kids and family, and youhave you have commitments.
Well, you know all about that,Brandon, right?
(38:18):
Yeah, yep.
You and I had many a talk overthe years about we need to get
you need to get your businessgoing before you have your kids
and family and all that.
And it's true.
I'm sure you can attest forthat.
SPEAKER_00 (38:29):
It's true in some ways, and in other ways it's
not.
I mean, I I will say that theone thing that actually helped
me to do something after I had afamily was the the lack of time.
It's like when you're young andyou you see every opportunity
and you're like, I got a ton oftime, I can waste some on this
opportunity, I can waste some onthat opportunity.
(38:49):
You start to get a family, andyou're like, okay, I really
gotta pick the opportunity thatI like, that makes me happy,
that I'm gonna stick with all ofthat stuff, and you kind of
gotta go all in on it, so tospeak.
Exactly.
SPEAKER_02 (39:01):
And that's where podcast got in and jumped into
this.
I love it.
SPEAKER_00 (39:05):
I will say about AI, just one thing, just to finish
it off.
I think something that no matterwhere AI goes, the one skill
that most people should startthinking about is just
delegation.
And I know most people don'tthink of delegation as a skill,
but it definitely is, like beingable to hand things off.
As AIs become more capable,you're gonna have agents and all
(39:27):
of that, and you need to be ableto hand work off that's less
valuable that AI can do andfocus on doing what the most
valuable work is that AI cannotdo.
And I don't think that's easyfor engineers.
So I in my career I've been onthe engineering side and then I
moved into sales.
And I'll say in sales, it's veryeasy.
(39:47):
You start to think about thedollars that are going to come
in based on certain tasks, andyou say, Those are the key
tasks.
I gotta get those dollars in.
That other thing over here, thatthing over there, that's not
gonna bring any dollars into thecompany.
But you know.
This thing will.
In engineering, in myexperience, it was never so
clear like that.
There's ten different projects.
(40:08):
I don't necessarily know thevalue of all of them because
they all have differentcontracts.
I don't know what the value ofthis particular task is.
But being able to decide what isimportant, what can go off to
AI, that's only going to getmore critical.
And even if AI sort of reaches aplateau of capability, knowing
how to delegate will still workwell with people as you move up
(40:32):
in your career.
So I think personally elegationis something everybody needs to
learn because at some point itmight be that every single
person in the world has abasically a huge pool of virtual
workers underneath them thatthey're feeding stuff to, and
they're just in charge of makingsure all the tasks come
together.
So I would say that's somethingthat's that's not going to
(40:53):
disappear.
If if that disappears, thenthere's no jobs left, in my
personal opinion.
SPEAKER_02 (40:58):
Absolutely.
And honestly, no matter whathappens here, people's skills
will always reign king.
You'll always move up theladder.
It's not how smart you are, it'show good you are with people.
You know, I'm not the smartestperson or engineer, and I've
always known that.
But I've always you leveraged mypeople skills and being able to
(41:19):
communicate and listen to bothsides of the story, and and or
at least try to do, try tolisten to both sides, and just
be good to everybody.
Isn't that the key to lifethough?
You just being good to everyone,you never know who's gonna be
your boss, you never know who isnot gonna be your boss because
you pissed them off.
So it's like being a goodperson's a good thing.
And I've always lived by that mywhole career is no matter what,
(41:42):
be good and forgive whoever waswronged you, you have to give
you have to let it go and moveon.
And that's gonna happen in work,out of work, doesn't matter.
You have to learn to let go andand forgive people around you
for sure.
SPEAKER_00 (41:56):
Agreed.
I guess we'll end with twoquestions, Dale, because we've
we've hit on the AI thing for awhile.
The last two would be maybe whoare the right people to work
with you?
Like, is there a group of peoplethat have been listening in to
this episode that you thinkshould reach out to you to start
maybe a conversation aboutwhether it makes sense?
(42:16):
And then following up that,where are the best places for
resources for the work you helpothers with?
Like whether it's guides or datasources, whatever it is that you
want to share there.
SPEAKER_02 (42:28):
Absolutely.
So the right people definitelyare engineers, mechanical,
electrical.
I'm seeing more people thatmechanicals kind of jumping on
both sides of the fence, sothat's why I mentioned that.
But you'll see electricalengineers if you're struggling.
If you feel like even if you'renot and you're like, I haven't
looked at technology for fiveyears, our company hasn't
(42:50):
touched anything new in fiveyears.
You really should reach out, atleast see what we have, see what
we can offer you for sure.
As for resources, once we getinto there's tons of resources
out there.
There's free resources, soYouTube, there's even a couple
of Udemy classes out there ifyou like that type of
(43:10):
self-paced.
Go Engineer also has self-paced.
I was one of the people thathelped, I'm the voice of the
training, the self-pacedtraining for Go Engineer for the
electrical.
And so that's good.
And then you can also, any otherresources, there's an elite
success plan with Go Engineerthat you just pay and you can
(43:30):
access all those self-pacedvideos yourself.
Or there's live training where,say, I can do this online for
you.
Our team can go through a bookand and show the extras and the
thing, the errors that pop up toshow you what happens there, if
any occur.
And then I would say definitelyjust ask questions, ask us and
(43:52):
see if we can steer you in theright direction.
Maybe it's consulting, or maybeit's just, hey, take this class
and you'll you'll be in greatshape.
Use us as a resource.
You don't think about taking allthis stuff on your own and just
running with it.
Years ago, there weren't thatmany resources back in the 90s.
There really weren't manyresources.
There weren't books and things.
(44:13):
There were some, but not muchout there.
And so we had to, as a company,the companies I work for, we had
to learn everything on our ownand figure it out.
Can it be done?
Can you do it on your own?
You bet.
But boy, we wasted a lot oftime, a lot of months, a lot of
years figuring out things on ourown.
Know that technology hasimproved.
People, we have dedicated skillsets to help you with resources
(44:34):
as well, you know, help you outthere.
So just don't feel like you haveto take on everything on your
own like we had to many, manyyears ago.
SPEAKER_00 (44:42):
Okay.
If you have a link to maybe anyblog or anything that that you
think is critically important orother page, you can send it to
me.
I'll put it in the show notes.
Other than that, Dale, if youdon't mind, I'll put your email
in the show notes as well foranybody that wants to reach out
with questions.
I will just say personally, Daleis one of the most helpful
(45:03):
people I've ever worked with, sodon't hesitate to reach out to
him.
He's a great person just ingeneral, but also great at what
he does.
So I'll put his contact info inthe show notes, and we'll end it
here.
Thanks for being on the episode,Dale.
Appreciate it.
Great talking to you.
SPEAKER_02 (45:19):
Thank you so much, Brandon.
I appreciate you very much.
You're an excellent, you're anawesome guy, too.
And I hope nothing but successfor you in the future.
SPEAKER_00 (45:27):
Thank you very much.
SPEAKER_01 (45:28):
Alright, I'll let you go, Dale.
Have a great rest of your day.
Thanks, you too.
Take care.
unknown (45:32):
Bye.
SPEAKER_01 (45:34):
So that was a conversation with my good friend
Dale Rice.
As you can probably tell, Daledoesn't just care about
software.
SPEAKER_00 (45:42):
He really does care about people.
In every conversation I've everhad with Dale, generally some
aspect of life pops up.
And Dale has been around and hasa tremendous amount of life
experience, a tremendous amountof perseverance and grit.
And he's just a helpful personwho can help you get through
(46:04):
hard times, whether that'sengineering software or just
somebody to defend to.
I would encourage you to reachout to Dale.
We'll put his contactinformation in the show notes,
as well as the company he worksfor.
If you ever do have anyquestions around solvers or
engineering experience, he'sjust a good person to reach out
(46:25):
to and like he said, don't sitthere and struggle through
things yourself.
That's not productive foranyone.
Just reach out and use others'expertise.
That episode over, I would liketo take a second to just say I'm
grateful that you're listeningto the Engineering Passion
Express.
It's growing and becoming moresuccessful.
(46:45):
And I would like to make it evenbetter than it is today.
I have a number of ideas for newepisodes that I am working on
creating.
However, these episodes do costmoney to create, to host, to
edit, and this podcast needssupport.
There's a few ways you cansupport this podcast.
(47:06):
Listening is a good start.
But we'd also like you to ensurethat you're following us on
Apple Podcasts or Spotify orYouTube or your favorite podcast
platform.
If you really enjoy some of theepisodes, please share them with
other engineers and encouragethem to also follow this podcast
so that you can start somediscussions.
(47:26):
As I said, I'm truly grateful toyou all that are listening to
the Engineering Passion Express.
I look forward to a future wherewe start putting out even more
episodes.
And I hope you do too.
I'll see you on future episodesof the Engineering Passion
Express.
On this episode of the Engineering Passion Express
podcast, I talked with DaleRice.
Dale Rice is a friend of mineand a former co-worker that
worked together with me foralmost 10 years.
And he's just an all-around goodperson.
Dale's currently working at GoEngineer and supporting the
SOLIDWORKS electrical software.
(00:36):
But in our discussion, which ismore of a chat that will devolve
into sort of everything.
SOLIDWORKS SOLIDWORKSelectrical, thoughts on general
engineering careers, AI, and howit's changing stuff.
SPEAKER_01 (00:51):
You may just get a glimpse of who Dale is, his
enthusiasm, and that if you everneed anything SOLIDWORKS
related, he's a guy you canreach up to.
With that, let's get into theepisode.
SPEAKER_00 (01:07):
Welcome to the Engineering Passion Express
podcast.
Today I have Dale Rice on.
Dale and I worked together forover 10 years at a CAD reseller
called GSC.
At the time, he was an amazingCAD instructor, a great human
being, and he also does a goodimpression of a salmon swimming
upstream.
(01:29):
He currently works for GoEngineer, one of the largest, if
not the largest, CAD reseller inNorth America.
And it's great to have you on,Dale.
Thanks so much, Brandon.
It's awesome.
Glad to be here.
SPEAKER_02 (01:39):
Tell us a little bit about your background, Dale.
All right.
So my background is I startedout as an engineer and designer
and worked my way up and endedup in the reseller chain as an
application engineer.
And so I had so much fun.
It became my calling to do thistype of work.
(02:02):
I mean, pre-sales, post-sales,that type of environment,
helping customers.
And I've been doing this for, ohmy gosh, probably what, 15 years
now?
And absolutely love it.
Started out on the mechanicalside for SolidWorks.
And then now I am currently onthe SolidWorks electrical side
of the business.
So I've been doing theelectrical side for about four
(02:24):
years.
SPEAKER_00 (02:24):
Probably every engineer out there knows what
SolidWorks is.
If they're younger engineers,they may not be familiar with
pre-sales and post-sales.
So pre-sales is essentiallyhelping you find a solution to
your problem.
Post sales is helping you find asolution to a problem after
you've made a purchase.
Tell us a little more about yourcurrent role and what you do
(02:46):
with SolidWorks Electrical andhow you help customers versus
maybe and how it's maybedifferent than what most people
are familiar with inside of likeSOLIDWORKS and mechanical
design.
SPEAKER_02 (02:56):
Absolutely.
So the electrical is there'ssome correlation between
mechanical and electrical.
And then there's a huge dividethere.
So when we get into the softwareaspect of SolidWorks Electrical,
it's working with 2D schematics.
So you have software to createyour schematics.
You also have software that weconnect to SolidWorks Mechanical
(03:20):
that has a 3D add-on thatconnects between 2D and 3D.
So I get to play with both sidesof the fence a lot of times and
take that experience, that 20plus years of SolidWorks
mechanical side, and be able toleverage that experience on both
ends of the fence.
So it's kind of a fun job to beable to take those perspectives
(03:42):
and help the customer from bothsides.
We have people that are justhave electrical experience, and
then we have people that havethe experience like myself on
both ends, mechanical andelectrical.
So it's kind of a fun positionfor sure to be in.
And so, really from thepre-sales, I will present the
software and offer, show thecustomer exactly how this fits
(04:06):
for their organization withintheir organization.
Then the customer obviously asksquestions or has any concerns,
and we try to answer thosequestions and concerns.
So the software is a good fitfor the customers.
So from the technical side,Brandon even knows this.
From the technical side, we liketo just make sure our customers
are happy because at the end ofthe day, if we sell something
(04:28):
and we've lied to them orwhatever in a bad way, like told
them, hey, this software isn'tgoing to work, we told them,
hey, the software is great, andthen it doesn't work out, is
what I should say.
Then you have a lot of problemson from the customer coming
back.
And so we always just like to beupfront and honest and tell them
exactly how it is.
And I know a lot of salespeopletend to not like that.
(04:50):
The good ones are good withthat, and then the ones that
just want to sell a seat, thoseare the ones that don't last
long, to be honest.
So we have good honestsalespeople and and the tech
people on our side.
SPEAKER_00 (05:03):
What do you think?
This is a hard question, butwhat do you think is something
that maybe no product manual ordemo really shows about
SOLIDWORKS electrical?
SPEAKER_02 (05:13):
Oh.
So anytime you get manuals, youbasically get the perfect
working condition.
And so everything works great.
I found this when I started outin engineering was okay, I got
this little manual, and it showsyou things that oh, the perfect
world.
And then when you go to use itin your own world, all of a
(05:34):
sudden it's like, well, what isthis error?
What is this error?
What's that error?
So that's part of the trainingaspect that I like to show
errors and things that go wrongall the years I learned uh from
just being on the engineeringside to be able to show those
things when things don't gowell, what does that look like
to try to make that a bettersituation?
SPEAKER_00 (05:55):
I think that's an interesting aspect because it's
an underrated aspect ofsoftware.
There's always going to be timesthat things don't go well, and
like you said, it's not gonnashow up in a manual, it's not
gonna show up in a demo.
But I would like to see when itdoesn't go well what the errors
are throwing up.
If the software just crasheswithout any warning, without any
feedback, and it just keepsrepeating that, and you can't
(06:18):
really troubleshoot it or figureit out.
That's much more irritating thana software that says close due
to X, Y, and Z.
And then Like maybe it's amemory limit or whatever, and
then you've you can start tofigure out how you can change
your behavior so that thatdoesn't happen, but the other
way leaves you no clue at all.
And I think that's a good partof quality software and software
(06:42):
design.
So yeah, that that I think youthrew out a good answer there.
SPEAKER_02 (06:47):
Well, thanks, thanks.
Yeah, definitely that's years ofexperience from both of us
knowing that, hey, these thingsthey're gonna see eventually.
And a lot of times the manualwill throw that under the rug.
And uh to make it look, it'smore like streamlining.
Same with the demo aspect.
You asked about training and thedemo aspect.
(07:07):
Well, demos are the same way.
We run through, I got a greatexample.
I had done this presentationprobably 5,000 times between
practice behind the scenes andgoing live with customers.
I had done this this data set atleast gone through it at least
five grid, 5,000 times.
And I could do it with my eyesclosed pretty much.
(07:29):
And I went into a place and theengineering manager saw the
presentation, he went, Wow, howcome you guys aren't as good
with CAD as this guy is?
And I just by mouth dropped, Ilooked at all of them and I just
couldn't keep quiet.
I just laughed.
I said, Well, I've done thispresentation so many times that
(07:50):
it just looks perfect.
And if the real world is thatyou're gonna have iterations,
engineering is all aboutchanges, and you're gonna get an
error all of a sudden, andyou're gonna have to sort
through that problem and havingto figure out those things.
Uh, demo is completely differentfrom the real world.
And as long as engineeringmanagers know that and see that
(08:10):
expectation of, okay, Dale'sjust done this so many times, he
knows how to do that aspect ofthe software.
So always keep that in mind ifyou're an engineering manager.
Your team is better than youthink.
If you see something thatsomebody blows you away, whether
it's an ERP system or whateverit is, they've practiced a
thousands of times before theygot to you.
(08:33):
Because we have to make thesoftware look great, not just
good or okay.
It has to look great.
And we know the pitfalls and weknow where things are not so
great in the software.
So at all costs, we try to avoidthose.
Or if you can't fix it, featureit.
That was kind of the rule at GSCwith Sam Hockberg years ago.
(08:54):
He was like, can't fix it,feature it.
And that was always somethingthat stuck in my brain was hey,
if we can't fix this thissoftware and they are absolutely
needing this, this is theworkaround, and this is how we
can fix it.
SPEAKER_00 (09:05):
And that's that's a good part of being an honest,
trustworthy partner, I think.
Because you need to see thatworkaround for things that are
suboptimal so that they knowthey're not they're not being
taken by something that lookedgood in a in a demo presentation
and doesn't actually work inreal life.
Exactly.
SPEAKER_02 (09:22):
Well, I have to say, and I'm sure you would agree
with this, for any customers orpeople that are considering
software in general, do your duediligence.
Make sure that you are that isthat all your issues are being
addressed, or at least there'ssome kind of workaround if 99%
are fixed that work great andthere's 1% that doesn't.
Well, how critical is that?
(09:44):
And do your homework andresearch.
Don't just buy something sightunseen.
Software is never perfect.
I don't care where you buy itfrom and who you are.
Having good, reliable people towork with is number one.
And then that software, makingsure that it's gonna match your
needs is super critical.
So that's something I'm sureBrandon and I, we both run into
that over the years where peoplejust bought the software and
(10:06):
then all they had all they hadwas a bunch of complaints
afterwards.
Well, it was great, thesalesperson doesn't care as long
as they they get that deal forthat quarter, they're in, right?
But then we get to deal with itlater on.
So that's why we that's why Isay, hey, do your due diligence,
make sure that the software is agood fit for you.
And look at a few pieces ofsoftware before you jump into
(10:27):
just one.
Because people are great atdemos at in all competition and
all different pieces ofsoftware.
So make sure you're asking theright questions.
SPEAKER_00 (10:37):
I also think if you've worked with a reseller or
a partner that you've found istruly honest and does show you
that stuff and doesn't hide theflaws and make sure and is
ensuring that you're gettingvalue out of the solution.
I would encourage you not to goseek out a different partner to
save a handful of dollars whomay not have that same respect
(10:59):
for you.
Absolutely.
SPEAKER_02 (11:01):
Absolutely.
It's a it's you're building agood relationship and it's a
partnership moving forward.
It's not just I'm gonna save$100on this or even a few thousand
dollars.
Sometimes you go, okay, why isthis cheaper?
What am I not getting?
I I look at that.
Hopefully, I never have to buy acar again, as expensive as they
are.
But you look at that same kindof aspect as the whole car.
(11:25):
Well, am I gonna get a goodservice from these people?
Does it even matter?
Or do I do I want that?
Do I need the services?
Do I need the consulting?
Do I need the support?
Where is our team at?
Does our team need nothing fromit from this reseller, or do
they need a ton of do you need aton of help?
That's the thing to consider aswell, not just software.
(11:46):
It's hey, do these people have agood depth?
Like Go Engineer, our electricalteam.
We have 10 engineers,application engineers dedicated
to electrical.
And that's a hugedifferentiator.
Every other reseller like GSCand some of the other ones, they
had one electrical person.
I don't know what they have now,but back in the day, there was
one person for that.
(12:07):
And we have 10 that are helpingout.
So that's a pretty hugedifferentiation when you start
looking at resellers and thesize.
And Go Engineer is all 50 statesplus Canada now.
So it's pretty uh if we can'tfigure out the answer, we're
gonna find it for you.
We're gonna figure it outsomewhere, give you a good
answer.
SPEAKER_00 (12:26):
Some of what you were just saying there actually
ties into my next question.
So you were talking aboutservices, assistance, all of
that stuff.
What do you think the mostmisunderstood part of the
process of adopting like anelectrical eCAD solution like
SOLIDWORKS electrical is?
SPEAKER_02 (12:44):
I would say to write off with my experience, the
thing that I ran in with when Istarted with electrical, my
misconception was that I had todo installs and upgrades.
And it was way more challengingthan I thought when you go into
that aspect of, hey, I've now Ihave a SQL database that I have
(13:04):
to manage, and how do I workwith that?
I actually just did a webinar onSolidWorks electrical boot camp.
So that I tried to answer someof these exact questions,
Brandon, where where do you gofor resources?
At the end of the day, I said,hey, try to install it yourself.
Have make sure you have a goodsandbox, a backup, and that
(13:26):
you're testing it on your own ifyou don't want us to get
involved.
If you don't want the resellerto get involved and you're like,
hey, I'm independent, I like todo it all on my own, go for it.
You're gonna fall down someholes.
It's definitely gonna happen.
It's different from SolidWorksinstallations where that's just
a click of a button.
It's so mature that it's beenout there.
PDM is pretty mature as well.
But then you get electrical, itis mature, but there's things
(13:49):
that have changed where theworking with different
environments, you have to watchyour different servers.
It still has the dedicatedserver that you have to install.
But it's one of those thingsthat you can do a virtual
machine, you can do all kinds ofdifferent options, but there's
good, better, and best, and thenthere's terrible options.
So getting consulting with us orwhoever you're working with is
(14:12):
going to be the key that firsttime around.
And that's what I've definitelypushed was the first time, get
some, we'll teach you how tofish, but you need to get some
assistance to see what you'regetting into.
And a lot of times we actuallydo upgrades every year, every
other year for customers morethan you can imagine.
And people just don't want todeal with it for one, or they
(14:34):
just don't have the time to doit.
So that's one of those thingsyou kind of have to see.
Do I want to try this myself ordo I have the resources that I
can pay for someone else to doit?
SPEAKER_00 (14:42):
Okay.
I mean, it sounds like it's justa little bit more IT heavy than
a normal installation.
I mean, most engineers canhandle just a straight software
installation, but it sounds likeyou're maybe migrating databases
and things like that that are alittle bit more IT heavy.
SPEAKER_02 (14:58):
Yeah, it was something I didn't expect when I
first jumped on the team.
I was like, oh, this will be apiece of cake.
I work with PDM and all theseother things and seek manage SQL
databases and things like that.
It's very similar, but yeah, thecomplexities, just other side
things.
You get you'll get errors andyou won't know what the errors
are.
And if you haven't installed it50 times or 100 times, I'm
(15:20):
still, after four years, we'regetting new errors now with the
newer software.
And due to latency and a lot ofthe latency between the client
and the servers, or server andclient, excuse me, if it's they
change the hard coding of thesoftware, that if it's past 10
milliseconds, it will just notinstall the software and not
(15:41):
tell you that that's theproblem.
So we've got into that and wewere starting to do some
installs, and we're like, holycow, what's going on here?
And then we found out that thatwas changed.
And honestly, if you think aboutit, because the earlier software
of electrical would install, andall of a sudden you'd have
performance issues, you'd haveconnection issues and things
like projects locking out, andyou're like, what's going on
(16:03):
here?
There's a lot of performanceissues.
And all of that was due tolatency.
So now they've decided, hey,let's switch this where you'll
have an error up front and youneed to fix your latency issue
before you can install thesoftware.
So that actually makes bettersense, but it was a it's a
change, and customers need to beaware of that type of stuff.
And that's the kind of thingthat happens all the time when
(16:26):
you're doing this installs andupgrades.
SPEAKER_00 (16:28):
I'm going to ask you two questions that kind of tie
into each other.
So I'll read them both and thenwe'll go through them one at a
time.
So, first, what does failure ofadoption look like?
And then second, what do youthink the biggest failure people
have in adoption is withoutrealizing it?
Maybe a benefit that they're notgetting because they didn't do
something correctly, that kindof thing.
(16:49):
So start with what does failureof adoption look like in maybe
solid or selection?
SPEAKER_02 (16:54):
Yeah.
So honestly, if you take spend alittle extra money and get us
involved for training,consulting, and any services,
one-on-one services to get youup and running, so you
understand how to manage thedatabase, how to install symbols
and manufacture parts and createa template and all those things
(17:14):
that you don't think about whenyou buy the software that we can
help with.
And the people that fail are theones that try to do it on their
own.
That's just the simple, that'sjust the plain facts, unless
they've done it and gone througha process before with a reseller
of whoever they are.
And if they haven't gone througha process, they tend to fail.
(17:35):
Not all, but there's people thatjust give up.
It's like, oh, this is too hard.
And that could be any piece ofsoftware.
Hey, that's too hard, and justgive up and go back.
I know, just being inengineering, I've seen myself
and other people that go, ohman, I know how to do this in
two minutes, but it takes me 30minutes to do it with the new
software.
I quit.
And so we have to take a stepback and see the value of it.
(18:00):
And so that failure can be ifyou don't see the value of it
and the engineers don'tunderstand what they're actually
going to gain from the software,they give up.
And I definitely have helped.
We don't get too many peopleafter they've gone through
training and pretty differentperspectives, Brandon, that that
tend to fail.
But I do actually follow up andmake sure that our customers are
(18:23):
still using the software andhappy.
And if they're not using it,well, why aren't you using the
software?
And try to get them back ontrack.
But if you try to run with it onyour own, well, you're on your
own, unfortunately, and it'sit's up to your own devices to
succeed or fail.
SPEAKER_00 (18:37):
I think something you said I just want to clarify
on something that I've seensimilarly with softwares, is in
general, if the software maybeadds a task to a person that
didn't have that task before,even though it's going to help
downstream, that's when theystruggle or they don't like it.
So, for example, like maybesomebody was entering part
(19:00):
numbers or metadata or whateverinto an ERP system and that was
an administrative person, butnow, however, the workflow has
changed and in your CAD tool,you now enter that when you
create some new part orwhatever.
That wasn't on the engineer'splate before.
Now it's on their plate, they'reresponsible for it.
Even if the total sum of all thepeople that touch it and the
(19:22):
time downstream is less, you nowkind of get resistance to the
adoption of this because thatwasn't on my plate before and
now it is.
Exactly.
Yeah, you nailed it.
SPEAKER_02 (19:31):
And that's definitely what happens.
The vision from an engineer is Ihave to get this done in the
time that I have.
And my boss says I have to getit done in an hour, and it's
gonna take me two hours to use Aversus B software.
What are you gonna use?
You're gonna use the softwarethat your boss is telling you to
get it done by that time.
(19:52):
And to get extra steps, a greatexample is PDM.
People in the beginning of thatadoption for product data
management was.
Oh my gosh, this is going totake longer.
I have to check in files.
I have to add attributes ormetadata to explain what I'm
doing.
So I have a history.
But what are you gettingdownstream?
Like you're saying, now I cansearch.
(20:14):
I have a revision history.
I have different, I have moredata to go by than I had before
by just using, say, Twigs andMud or AutoCAD or what AutoCAD
2D.
And they all have value.
But how much are you getting forthat?
Electrical is the same way.
Yes, you're going to have to putyour symbols in a database or
(20:36):
download the data bit, you know,the symbols from the database to
get that into your SQL, SQLdatabase one time.
But after that, everybody canshare, everybody can
collaborate, everybody can use.
You're getting more reporting,more efficient reporting because
it's built in SQL.
Plus, you're getting greatsearching.
You're getting so many moretools than you would by just
(20:59):
using 2D or a pen and paper tomake that happen.
And you have a history of that.
So there's there's trade-offs,right?
There's that upfront and thethis total sum of time that you
were talking about.
SPEAKER_00 (21:11):
Agreed.
I think people don't see thewhole solution, and it's it's
tough because no one person inthe company generally has that
vision.
So it's kind of like theengineer is saying this takes
longer, but maybe they have lesssalespeople coming to them
saying, is this the latestrevision or less shop floor
managers, whoever it is, becausethose people know it's the
(21:32):
latest revision because they cansee all those in the system.
SPEAKER_02 (21:35):
That kind of tells me, Brandon, that I also need to
be having more discussions withengineers on the benefits of it,
and that yes, you're going totake a little more time here,
but you're going to see this inthe back end a lot more
information.
So that's actually a really goodthing to approach from a
business standpoint.
I like that.
SPEAKER_00 (21:55):
And even those engineers' bosses, they're
engineering managers, make surethey understand it.
Your guys might be taking alittle longer than normal, but
the business is benefiting andXYZ.
Yeah.
I guess the next question herewould be do you have like a good
big win story, something youreally helped the customer
achieve?
Well, absolutely.
SPEAKER_02 (22:13):
So I think when I first started, it was the
customer had they were usingVisio.
And Visio actually is a prettydarn cool piece of software.
And it actually, if you can takethat pretty far, the problem was
they just outgrew the software.
They wanted to do more.
They wanted to have more of acollaborative environment
(22:34):
between their engineers andelectrical mechanical.
And they already ownedSolidWorks Mechanical.
And they said, well, how can webetter work with our customers?
And that age-old story of, well,maybe we take a look at
SolidWorks Electrical.
How does that work and how doesthat connect?
Luckily, our software connectswonderfully and collaborates
between Mechanical andElectrical.
(22:56):
And so they were through theroof on productivity and being
able to what they could do aboveand beyond Visio.
So a lot of times I seecustomers that are like they
hang on to that Visio or the 2DAutoCAD for dear life because
they're used to it, like youwere saying.
And once I was able to bringthem, our team was able to bring
(23:16):
them over the bridge, across thebridge, to see Electrical, they
never look back.
And they did everything correct,too.
They got us involved, and whenthey had questions, they bought
a book hours to get us to helpthem, or if it's something easy,
we just help them out.
So that's one of those things,yeah, it's a good, good story.
And I have a bunch of them likethat.
(23:38):
A lot of people, a lot of themare Visio, a lot of them come
from AutoCAD electrical, or justhonestly using a spreadsheet or
some other thing.
It's amazing what people usestill today.
And I'm sure we can relate, youand I, between the draft site
AutoCAD, where people just werelike, I don't need any more than
than 2D, and then we broughtthem across the bridge to see
(24:01):
3D, and then they never lookback.
So it's the same type of thinghere that you'll see going into
the electrical world too.
Once you see that vision, youwon't look back.
SPEAKER_00 (24:11):
Yeah, I think there's always this tension
between like a user's skill andthe tools that they use.
It's like a good engineer canprobably get by with just about
any tool.
Exactly.
But a bad engineer isn't goingto be made a good engineer by a
better tool.
But that's not to say that agood engineer still isn't going
(24:31):
to get their productivityboosted and all that by moving
up to a much better tool.
They will.
There's no doubt about it.
But again, it comes back tothere's a separation between
your abilities and the tool, butif you are a pretty able person,
a better tool is going to helpyou a lot more.
And there's, like you said,about 2D CAD.
There's no doubt that there'sengineers that were thinking
(24:53):
through interferences and allthat, even when they drafted in
2D these big complex machines.
But that doesn't mean that whenthey went to 3D CAD, they didn't
find a whole bunch ofinterferences that they would
have found on the shop flooreventually up front, just
because there's so manyinteractions going on, it's easy
to overlook something.
SPEAKER_02 (25:11):
Oh, exactly.
You're only as your software'sonly as good as your engineer.
SPEAKER_00 (25:16):
Right.
That's well said.
Are there any trends that arehappening in this in this tool
or in this space at the moment?
Any sort of consistent changesyear to year where you see them
going in a certain direction?
SPEAKER_02 (25:29):
Yeah, I I definitely see cloud-based losing moving
over to the 3D experienceplatform.
I do see that moving forward.
I just saw some internalcommunication on Teams that
Dassault has created a 3D add-infor the platform.
I don't know all the detailsyet, but they have there look
(25:50):
like that's going to be in July.
So there's some movement thereand some being able to move this
over to the platform.
I'm sure you'll have bothoptions, but that'll be an
option for people that, hey, youhave people all over the world,
and you'll be able, you'll wantto check in files in the cloud
and things like that up throughthe 3D experience platform.
(26:12):
So yeah, that's one thing I'mactually trying to get myself up
to speed with that because I seethat direction of where the
software's going to go.
Well, as we can see, a lot ofpeople don't want to manage
these databases.
Now, currently, the software isgoing to have to be rewritten
because of SQL.
And I'm not sure where they'reat on how they're going to
(26:34):
handle that with the platform.
I know currently it's going tobe installed on your computer or
on a server, same as it iscurrently is.
So that might not change in theshort term, but maybe long term
that will be a complete overhaulin the software world for
Dassault.
And that's what we're hopingfor.
That's to rewrite that.
(26:56):
It was just a hard thing to tryto replace.
Now the uh going to the PDMside, they had the same issues,
so they used Anovia, right?
That was the we switched overand did anything cloud was using
that type of PDM or PLM typesoftware.
And now Electrical's gonna haveto make that jump as well and
(27:16):
build some bridges that way.
SPEAKER_00 (27:18):
I guess if you had to make a bet on a massive leap
in the technology in the nextthree to five years, do you have
any guesses on what what thatchange would be?
Oof, that's a good question.
Yeah.
Huge leaps.
I mean, for you, it could evenbe something that you just heard
maybe multiple customers'requests, so you're thinking
maybe it's getting on theirradar or something like that.
SPEAKER_02 (27:39):
Yeah.
I know some small integrations,any massive leap.
It's usually with software, it'sintegrate, you know, it's tiny
iterations.
As for a quantum leap and likeyeah, like our processing and
and working with the quantumcomputing, which is changing the
world, is gonna change thingshuge.
(28:00):
I haven't heard anythingdirectly from Dessau that aspect
of any huge jumps, but I thinkit'll probably be focused on the
platform and that will integratejust with a lot of different
tools.
You're gonna see a lot ofdifferent apps that you'll be
able to connect into, and you'rejust gonna have a lot more
capabilities and options as anengineer than you would as we
(28:25):
currently do, which is kind ofcool, isn't it?
I mean, you can jump in and say,hey, I like you are the you're
the sim genius, and the andbasically how that incorporated
and was able to take on the theextra burden for people that
needed more power, horsepower,and capabilities within
simulation.
Yeah.
(28:45):
So yeah, I think that'll be alot of it.
You're gonna get a lot morehorsepower.
I I'm more curious now at what'sthe quantum computing gonna do.
So now people we've createdcompanies have created that that
alpha of where we're at.
Where's that gonna go?
I think that's gonna intrigueme.
And what is software gonna dofrom that point?
(29:05):
So any type of processing isgonna be instantly.
It's gonna be an instant change.
There'll be like simulation,that's gonna benefit in a huge
way.
SPEAKER_00 (29:15):
So it already is, actually.
So you mentioned my simulationbackground.
I mean, AI in this space, peopleare already taking old analyses
of like the same kind ofcomponents, or maybe aerodynamic
analyses of like stuff they'veanalyzed over years and years
and years, using that to trainmodels that then they no longer
(29:35):
have to run models that takedays or weeks to run.
They just get an estimatedresult in a matter of seconds,
and then they decide based oncertain factors what would they
like to do their high fidelityrunoff.
So that's already happening.
Do you think that there's any AIequivalent in the electrical
world at the moment?
SPEAKER_02 (29:56):
Yeah, I'm betting that's gonna be in the works.
I haven't heard much, but that'sgonna be something that's gonna
change.
There's it has to, right?
That's the next evolution,basically the internet 2.0, but
it's gonna be massive.
And I'm sure you're alreadybenefiting.
I already use AI almost everyday for personal and work, and
there's some aspect of thatbeing incorporated already, and
(30:19):
that's exciting.
And I was like, geez, just thinkif we had this 20 years ago, 30
years ago, how much differentthings would be.
There's gonna be some changes,and there'll be people that had
positions that won't havepositions any longer, and that's
starting already.
And I've seen that foraccounting, HR.
What else is in there?
(30:40):
There's a few other areas wherepeople are already being
eliminated.
Like IBM, a great example.
IBM eliminated a bunch of jobs,HR-related jobs.
My wife's in HR, so humanresources.
So I'm very aware of those typesof things for her position as
well.
And to see some of thosechanges, like, okay, yep, we're
gonna retire at the right time.
(31:02):
There's gonna be otherwise,you're gonna have to start over.
I would say, as a youngengineer, pay attention to that
and get some skills with AI, getsome skills with that next
level, that next evolution,because it's gonna change.
What you went through schoolprobably isn't what you're gonna
end with in your career.
You need to stay on top ofthings and you need to really be
(31:24):
focused on your skill set morethan anything else.
Always keep your skills fresh.
Even to this point, at the lastbit of my career, I've had to
stay fresh all the way to theend.
And it's kind of exciting, itwas exciting.
That was always a goal of mypersonal to say, I'm gonna stay
with technology until the day Idie.
And that was my goal 30 yearsago, to say, I'm gonna stay with
(31:47):
this and keep up as much as Ican till the day I go.
And so I am.
I have I'm staying with it.
It's moving so fast and rapid.
Now there's so many things goingon that you have to keep your
eyes open and be on a swivel tosee what the next technology is
gonna be.
It's actually we're in anexciting time right now.
I know people are scared, butit's exciting, isn't it?
(32:10):
I think it's exciting.
SPEAKER_00 (32:11):
When you start talking about AI and staying up
with it, there's two prongs toit.
So there's the software that youalready use, and almost
guaranteed that software companyor that software vendor is
trying to figure out how tointegrate AI directly into their
software in some manner.
Right?
But then there's also like whatcan Chat GPT or just some more
general language model do foryou.
(32:33):
For example, I was doing somedesign work maybe like a month
ago or something, and uh, Istarted thinking to myself,
like, there's gotta be adifferent material that I could
use or something like that.
And I typed in ChatGPT saying,give me a list of materials that
are in this range, and then forthis property, then give me ones
(32:53):
that have thesetemperature-dependent
properties, and then by the way,cross-reference that with being
in this price range.
You've always been able to doall of that at some point, but
where you had to go to get theinformation might have been this
manual, then a separate manualfor these temperature-dependent
properties, and then checkingthis website from this
manufacturer for the differentcosts.
(33:14):
To be able to do that in like afraction of the time, like like
maybe in like 60 seconds, 30seconds, compared to looking all
those up, or maybe even havingto order those manuals, wait for
them to come in, look at thevalues, call up the
manufacturers.
You're talking like a 10 to 100times increase in speed for
(33:34):
that.
So if you don't stay up with it,somebody that does is going to
be able to do 10 times the work.
And if you have, say, 10% ofthat industry all being able to
do 10 times as much as before,then they're the ones that are
gonna get to keep their jobs andeverybody else is gonna be gone.
So, not to say that the industrywon't grow and that there won't
be other room, but I mean,obviously, if somebody's adopted
(33:56):
technologies that make them thatmuch more efficient than the
rest of their peers, they'regonna be the desirable ones.
Absolutely.
SPEAKER_02 (34:04):
And like I said earlier, it's all about your
skills.
Keep it, keep your skills fresh.
That's gonna be the key tosurvival in the working for
other people.
If I had to do this all overagain, Brandon, I probably would
have started my own businessbecause that was the way to go.
And seeing that vision now,after going through my whole
career, I would definitely havestarted my own business.
And I honestly got it off topica little bit.
(34:26):
I would have also doneinvesting.
I would have actually taughtmyself and got my skills set up.
I have them now, but I wouldhave done that as a 20-year-old
and really learned.
When you're poor, you grow uppoor and your parents are poor,
you don't know any better.
And now that I've looked back,I'm like, geez, I could have
been not just a millionaire, amultimillionaire.
(34:48):
And it was just what lookingback is like, holy cow.
So same kind of thing.
If you're not good with keepingup your skills, then you're
gonna fall behind and it's gonnabe a problem.
There's gonna be, I don't knowwhat's gonna happen to all the
the hordes that don't keep up.
So it's one of those.
That's our goal always is tostay up and with technology and
keep up with people, and it'simportant.
SPEAKER_00 (35:10):
I would say the one thing that most engineers have
going for them that having spentyears doing nothing but working
with engineers and talking toengineers, is on the whole,
they're more curious than therest of society in general, I
would say.
So if you're curious about thesethings and you want to stay up
with these things, you'realready kind of ahead in that
(35:31):
race.
A lot of other people aren'teven looking at AI, they're not
even realizing what it can dofor them, and they don't even
see that it's coming.
Exactly.
SPEAKER_02 (35:41):
And this is the frontier.
It's definitely we're back intothe pioneer ages with AI.
And I just read an articlesomewhere where this person
dropped out of school, droppedout of college, and had a vision
with with AI and created withinsix months, they created or he
created his own business andsold the business to someone
(36:03):
else that wanted what he createdfor millions of dollars.
And it was within six months, hewas a multimillionaire, like six
or eight million he got for thehis business.
And so that's how kind offrontier this is, and it's
exciting.
It's just like crypto was what,probably six years, ten years
ago, crypto when that poppedout.
SPEAKER_00 (36:23):
When the internet came out, everybody was becoming
millionaires based on buying theright domain or having a
website, which nobody had everhad before.
We're in those stages again.
Except I think that AI is maybeeven a little bit more
mysterious than that.
I think nobody really knowswhere it's gonna go or what it's
gonna morph into.
(36:44):
It's almost like anywhere thatyou have a large group of data
related to one thing that maybenobody else has, there's
probably value in it with AI.
Absolutely.
Nobody knows.
Everybody's got sort of a littlekeyhole into the world when it
comes to that, becauseeverybody's got their own pile
of data, whether that'sSOLIDWORKS models, or whether
it's marketing briefs thatthey've written over the years,
(37:08):
or whether it's I don't evenknow.
It's endless, really.
Definitely.
SPEAKER_02 (37:13):
Yeah, you're right.
About not knowing where it'sgonna go 100%.
That's pretty that's reallyaccurate.
I thought about that a couple oftimes.
My reflection time and andlearning period is first thing
in the morning, and I've createda schedule over the years of
hey, I get on Udemy, or I read abook, or I or just get on
YouTube and learn something fromthere, if I'm just feeling like
(37:35):
not getting too deep into itfirst thing in the morning.
And that's yeah, those are thetype of things.
AI comes up a lot, and there's alot of uses.
And if you really want to learnand get up to speed, definitely
jump on.
People have already createdclasses for it and basically how
to start up your own business ifyou wanted to.
So that's exciting.
Like I said earlier, uh if Iwould have done this over again,
(37:58):
I would have started my ownbusiness.
And fail, it doesn't matter.
It's okay to fail.
That's part of the part of beingin the US is I think we were
trained to not fail.
And it's okay to fail,especially when you're in your
20s and and you know, you'regetting there before you have
your kids and family, and youhave you have commitments.
Well, you know all about that,Brandon, right?
(38:18):
Yeah, yep.
You and I had many a talk overthe years about we need to get
you need to get your businessgoing before you have your kids
and family and all that.
And it's true.
I'm sure you can attest forthat.
SPEAKER_00 (38:29):
It's true in some ways, and in other ways it's
not.
I mean, I I will say that theone thing that actually helped
me to do something after I had afamily was the the lack of time.
It's like when you're young andyou you see every opportunity
and you're like, I got a ton oftime, I can waste some on this
opportunity, I can waste some onthat opportunity.
(38:49):
You start to get a family, andyou're like, okay, I really
gotta pick the opportunity thatI like, that makes me happy,
that I'm gonna stick with all ofthat stuff, and you kind of
gotta go all in on it, so tospeak.
Exactly.
SPEAKER_02 (39:01):
And that's where podcast got in and jumped into
this.
I love it.
SPEAKER_00 (39:05):
I will say about AI, just one thing, just to finish
it off.
I think something that no matterwhere AI goes, the one skill
that most people should startthinking about is just
delegation.
And I know most people don'tthink of delegation as a skill,
but it definitely is, like beingable to hand things off.
As AIs become more capable,you're gonna have agents and all
(39:27):
of that, and you need to be ableto hand work off that's less
valuable that AI can do andfocus on doing what the most
valuable work is that AI cannotdo.
And I don't think that's easyfor engineers.
So I in my career I've been onthe engineering side and then I
moved into sales.
And I'll say in sales, it's veryeasy.
(39:47):
You start to think about thedollars that are going to come
in based on certain tasks, andyou say, Those are the key
tasks.
I gotta get those dollars in.
That other thing over here, thatthing over there, that's not
gonna bring any dollars into thecompany.
But you know.
This thing will.
In engineering, in myexperience, it was never so
clear like that.
There's ten different projects.
(40:08):
I don't necessarily know thevalue of all of them because
they all have differentcontracts.
I don't know what the value ofthis particular task is.
But being able to decide what isimportant, what can go off to
AI, that's only going to getmore critical.
And even if AI sort of reaches aplateau of capability, knowing
how to delegate will still workwell with people as you move up
(40:32):
in your career.
So I think personally elegationis something everybody needs to
learn because at some point itmight be that every single
person in the world has abasically a huge pool of virtual
workers underneath them thatthey're feeding stuff to, and
they're just in charge of makingsure all the tasks come
together.
So I would say that's somethingthat's that's not going to
(40:53):
disappear.
If if that disappears, thenthere's no jobs left, in my
personal opinion.
SPEAKER_02 (40:58):
Absolutely.
And honestly, no matter whathappens here, people's skills
will always reign king.
You'll always move up theladder.
It's not how smart you are, it'show good you are with people.
You know, I'm not the smartestperson or engineer, and I've
always known that.
But I've always you leveraged mypeople skills and being able to
(41:19):
communicate and listen to bothsides of the story, and and or
at least try to do, try tolisten to both sides, and just
be good to everybody.
Isn't that the key to lifethough?
You just being good to everyone,you never know who's gonna be
your boss, you never know who isnot gonna be your boss because
you pissed them off.
So it's like being a goodperson's a good thing.
And I've always lived by that mywhole career is no matter what,
(41:42):
be good and forgive whoever waswronged you, you have to give
you have to let it go and moveon.
And that's gonna happen in work,out of work, doesn't matter.
You have to learn to let go andand forgive people around you
for sure.
SPEAKER_00 (41:56):
Agreed.
I guess we'll end with twoquestions, Dale, because we've
we've hit on the AI thing for awhile.
The last two would be maybe whoare the right people to work
with you?
Like, is there a group of peoplethat have been listening in to
this episode that you thinkshould reach out to you to start
maybe a conversation aboutwhether it makes sense?
(42:16):
And then following up that,where are the best places for
resources for the work you helpothers with?
Like whether it's guides or datasources, whatever it is that you
want to share there.
SPEAKER_02 (42:28):
Absolutely.
So the right people definitelyare engineers, mechanical,
electrical.
I'm seeing more people thatmechanicals kind of jumping on
both sides of the fence, sothat's why I mentioned that.
But you'll see electricalengineers if you're struggling.
If you feel like even if you'renot and you're like, I haven't
looked at technology for fiveyears, our company hasn't
(42:50):
touched anything new in fiveyears.
You really should reach out, atleast see what we have, see what
we can offer you for sure.
As for resources, once we getinto there's tons of resources
out there.
There's free resources, soYouTube, there's even a couple
of Udemy classes out there ifyou like that type of
(43:10):
self-paced.
Go Engineer also has self-paced.
I was one of the people thathelped, I'm the voice of the
training, the self-pacedtraining for Go Engineer for the
electrical.
And so that's good.
And then you can also, any otherresources, there's an elite
success plan with Go Engineerthat you just pay and you can
(43:30):
access all those self-pacedvideos yourself.
Or there's live training where,say, I can do this online for
you.
Our team can go through a bookand and show the extras and the
thing, the errors that pop up toshow you what happens there, if
any occur.
And then I would say definitelyjust ask questions, ask us and
(43:52):
see if we can steer you in theright direction.
Maybe it's consulting, or maybeit's just, hey, take this class
and you'll you'll be in greatshape.
Use us as a resource.
You don't think about taking allthis stuff on your own and just
running with it.
Years ago, there weren't thatmany resources back in the 90s.
There really weren't manyresources.
There weren't books and things.
(44:13):
There were some, but not muchout there.
And so we had to, as a company,the companies I work for, we had
to learn everything on our ownand figure it out.
Can it be done?
Can you do it on your own?
You bet.
But boy, we wasted a lot oftime, a lot of months, a lot of
years figuring out things on ourown.
Know that technology hasimproved.
People, we have dedicated skillsets to help you with resources
(44:34):
as well, you know, help you outthere.
So just don't feel like you haveto take on everything on your
own like we had to many, manyyears ago.
SPEAKER_00 (44:42):
Okay.
If you have a link to maybe anyblog or anything that that you
think is critically important orother page, you can send it to
me.
I'll put it in the show notes.
Other than that, Dale, if youdon't mind, I'll put your email
in the show notes as well foranybody that wants to reach out
with questions.
I will just say personally, Daleis one of the most helpful
(45:03):
people I've ever worked with, sodon't hesitate to reach out to
him.
He's a great person just ingeneral, but also great at what
he does.
So I'll put his contact info inthe show notes, and we'll end it
here.
Thanks for being on the episode,Dale.
Appreciate it.
Great talking to you.
SPEAKER_02 (45:19):
Thank you so much, Brandon.
I appreciate you very much.
You're an excellent, you're anawesome guy, too.
And I hope nothing but successfor you in the future.
SPEAKER_00 (45:27):
Thank you very much.
SPEAKER_01 (45:28):
Alright, I'll let you go, Dale.
Have a great rest of your day.
Thanks, you too.
Take care.
unknown (45:32):
Bye.
SPEAKER_01 (45:34):
So that was a conversation with my good friend
Dale Rice.
As you can probably tell, Daledoesn't just care about
software.
SPEAKER_00 (45:42):
He really does care about people.
In every conversation I've everhad with Dale, generally some
aspect of life pops up.
And Dale has been around and hasa tremendous amount of life
experience, a tremendous amountof perseverance and grit.
And he's just a helpful personwho can help you get through
(46:04):
hard times, whether that'sengineering software or just
somebody to defend to.
I would encourage you to reachout to Dale.
We'll put his contactinformation in the show notes,
as well as the company he worksfor.
If you ever do have anyquestions around solvers or
engineering experience, he'sjust a good person to reach out
(46:25):
to and like he said, don't sitthere and struggle through
things yourself.
That's not productive foranyone.
Just reach out and use others'expertise.
That episode over, I would liketo take a second to just say I'm
grateful that you're listeningto the Engineering Passion
Express.
It's growing and becoming moresuccessful.
(46:45):
And I would like to make it evenbetter than it is today.
I have a number of ideas for newepisodes that I am working on
creating.
However, these episodes do costmoney to create, to host, to
edit, and this podcast needssupport.
There's a few ways you cansupport this podcast.
(47:06):
Listening is a good start.
But we'd also like you to ensurethat you're following us on
Apple Podcasts or Spotify orYouTube or your favorite podcast
platform.
If you really enjoy some of theepisodes, please share them with
other engineers and encouragethem to also follow this podcast
so that you can start somediscussions.
(47:26):
As I said, I'm truly grateful toyou all that are listening to
the Engineering Passion Express.
I look forward to a future wherewe start putting out even more
episodes.
And I hope you do too.
I'll see you on future episodesof the Engineering Passion
Express.
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