I politely said we had no interest, so they went ahead and bought our main competitor MasterCAM. But at the end of the 2nd meeting, they said their real intention is to buy SolidCAM. They contacted us and we had 2 meetings, that I thought would lead to some sort of cooperation. We are also in the process of integrating SolidCAM in the Siemens SolidEdge CAD product. We have integrated iMachining in Siemens NX CAM, providing the amazing iMachining 2D & 3D advantages to all NX CAM customers worldwide. Siemens then invited me to their office in Munich and offered to buy SolidCAM. However, this was not finalized since there was no agreement on the commercial terms. Our relationship started with the integration of our superior iMachining technology in their Siemens CNC controller. I politely told him that we are not interested and suggested to him to buy Cimatron – he went ahead and just did that! However, 3D Systems was not successful in the CAM market, and they resold Cimatron to Battery Ventures, which later resold it to Sandvik. The president of 3D Systems met me for lunch and offered to buy SolidCAM. InventorCAM continues to be the best integrated CAM in Autodesk Inventor, used worldwide by Inventor customers who need a complete integrated CAM solution inside their Inventor.

When they finally gave up, they went on and bought HSMWorks and DelCAM and developed their own CAD/CAM Fusion360. They refused to understand that we are simply interested in our integration with Inventor, and not more than that.

Autodesk has expressed strong interest to buy SolidCAM. SolidCAM is integrated in Autodesk Inventor and called InventorCAM. Through the years they bought VERO, Sigmanest and Cimatron, and resold them to Hexagon and Sandvik. Every time they acquired a CAD/CAM company, they contacted us to be the next to be acquired! We have always politely refused.

This investment company have expressed interest to buy SolidCAM many times in the last 10 years. It is incredible how many offers we got in the last 10 years to buy SolidCAM, from both Investment companies and large companies in the CAD/CAM and Tooling market.

Solidcam