VX Acquired by ZWSoft; VX CAD/CAM Becomes ZW3D

Bob Fischer, VP of sales and marketing for VX Corp., used to be part of a seven-person team tucked away in Melbourne, Florida. He’s about to join a 70-person sales and marketing team, part of a much larger firm. Many of his new colleagues will be 8,700 miles away in Guangzhou, China.

Last week, after two years of confidential negotiations, Chinese software maker ZWSoft bought VX Corp. With the completion of the transaction, VX Corp. becomes a wholly owned subsidiary of ZWSoft.

“The VX CAD/CAM brand will go away. It’ll be transitioned into ZW3D,” clarified Fischer. The new product will be ZWSoft’s all-in-one offering, a move that signals the company’s consolidated focus.

When ZWSoft releases ZW3D, VX customers will be able to purchase it from their resellers, Fischer explained. “We estimate that the new versions’ pricing will be similar to the former Annual Update Program costs,” he said. (See chart below for breakdown.)

In the announcement, ZWSoft states, “This new all-in-one CAD/CAM solution will extend enterprise-level mechanical design and engineering capabilities to the desktop at a fraction of the cost of other comparable systems.”

ZWSoft attracted attention with its AutoCAD clone ZWCAD, primarily a 2D drafting package. As a less expensive alternative to AutoCAD and AutoCAD LT, ZWCAD begins to test the market long dominated by Autodesk. With the pending release of ZW3D, ZWSoft is about to butt heads with other 3D CAD products, including Autodesk Inventor.

VX CAD/CAM is known for sophisticated surfacing functions, which put the software in the same category as Robert McNeel’s Rhino, Autodesk Alias, and other NURBs modelers. The repackaged product, ZW3D, will continue to offer the same functions, confirmed Fischer.

In China, international CAD products like Autodesk Inventor, Dassault’s SolidWorks, Siemens’ Solid Edge, and PTC’s Pro/ENGINEER compete with local brands like CAXASolid. But beneath the CAXASolid brand, many may be surprised to find an American CAD package. CAXASolid was born out of a partnership between IronCAD, headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia (hometown of the author of Gone with the Wind), and CAXA, headquartered in Beijing, China. ZWSoft’s plan to repackage VX CAD/CAM as ZW3D for both global and local markets adds a similar twist to the Asia CAD scene.

For VX, Chinese CAD market is uncharted waters, difficult to navigate without the help of a local force like ZWSoft. For ZWSoft, repackaging an established, robust 3D CAD product is a better alternative to spending years of R&D developing its own.

Most CAD products are based on a 3D modeling kernel, licensed from either ACIS or Parasolid. VX CAD/CAM is an exception to the rule; it’s based on its own (thus exclusive) VX kernel. ZWSoft points out in its announcement, “Unlike other CAD/CAM companies, ZWSOFT now owns and controls its own proprietary kernel.”

Fischer said, “All our funding has been focused on R&D. We never really had the wherewithal to devote resources to sales and marketing.” With the backing of ZWSoft, Fischer and other VX veterans expect to find new markets.

For a comparison of ZWSoft’s ZWCAD with other inexpensive 2D products, read “Wallet-Friendly 2D CAD.” For a price breakdown of the new ZW3D, see chart below.