Hi,
any experiences about Sibe, www.sibe.io ? Nice price, features ok…supports SW and Inventor.
Looks like @matt is a fan.
Very little shown on the product itself. The other articles, all written by their resident market guy is generic fluff, apparently composed by AI (ChatGPT?)
I don’t see ECO control anywhere in their product feature descriptions. And another article about data migration references a YouTube video from GoEngineer about SolidWorks PDM migrations.
Well, aren’t you guys detectives? I got paid to write a couple of things. I think some of it got used in ways I wasn’t consulted about.
I will say they are enthusiastic people. From a wide range geographically speaking.
Have you had a chance to use their product? Just wondering what all it offers.
It looked extremely basic. In conversations with the people, there wasn’t anyone who sounded like they really understood what they were getting into. I don’t think they had anyone who had a background even remotely connected to product development or manufacturing. It might have been more interesting 20…25 years ago.
And in an era where DS is actively pushing to the cloud and pushing away their partners, I wouldn’t invest a lot of time or money in the company or the product. My check cashed, that’s about all I can say.
Thanks guys.
I personally don’t have a huge problem with cloud services as long they are good (unlike 3DX), but so far I don’t have any warm feelings for AI or what Matt pointed out about no background to product development etc. Anyway, we really need “something like” this with decent price for solo self-employed people and small companies. For example SW PDM Standard is just too crippled.
I wouldn’t say that PDM standard is crippled, you essentially get it free with Solidworks Pro and it does about 75% of the full PDM product. The setup is not easy however and of course you have additional server costs. It’s also not great if you need easy outside user access and collaboration tools. That seems to be what Sibe is trying to address, but you need core engineering and manufacturing workflow understanding first.
Standard is missing a lot important stuff, like automated tasks. Sure, you can replace most of them with macros etc. but I still feel it’s crippled.
Well, it is free but I wouldn’t call it crippled. You are limited to just auto PDF tasks with limited options.
Again, it’s free… does Inventor or Solidedge offer more?
Is it really free? It’s just part of the more expensive package, right? Plus, you used to get PDMWorks for that price, which for all it’s shortcomings, actually did work and was easily user configurable. SW PDM is more of a lock-in tool than anything.
Its part of the SolidWorks Professional bundle, so not 100% free for anyone to use. Also if you have non-cad users that want to use it, then you need to purchase a contributor or viewer license separate.
PDM Standard is a feature reduced version of PDM Pro that replaced the old PDM/Works product. Makes since they replaced it as its easy to upgrade from PDM standard to PDM Pro, its the same product. Is PDMWorks better than Standard is debatable. It had a flat file structure instead of DB so easier to setup on a server, but less powerful to search and data mine. It was licensed the same way, free for SWX Pro users, purchase for contributors and viewers.
Lots of limitations:
SOLIDWORKS PDM Standard and Professional Comparison
And, not free. I don’t know what it matters what Inventor or SE offers.
Don’t get me wrong…I’m using SW PDM Pro almost every day and like it a lot. Easy to use, easy to learn. I just don’t like the way many companies try to get your money. They give you a nice product, but take away just what is the most important, pushing you towards the expensive solution that has many features that you don’t need. Main point: why just not make a versions that have features that people really need?
I’m sure their analysis shows that this lineup generates the most profit. The customer needs are secondary. Giving the customer a less expensive solution is antithetical to their goals.
Some years ago, I had a thought on how to sell PDM. The engineering department already spent thousands on computers and SolidWorks, to then add thousands more for PDM seemed like a lot all for one department.
QA was in charge of document control all the work procedures and other documents that were created to run the company. They could have added PDM for that and then the Engineering department could have done their thing to make it work for them.
I can’t think of any product where you wouldn’t do something like this. The more features you have add, the more it costs, like options on a car.
The software world seems to do this free to cost model. Some companies really cripple their free version, Onshape for example with their file limits.
IMO, PDM standard is not nearly as crippled as other software.
Every car has wheels and some kind of motor, brakes etc. that makes it a car. Rest of the stuff is often more like “nice to have, but not vital”. I think PDM Std is missing those vital features, that makes it actual PDM, well at least for me. For somebody else it might be ok.
Well, if you live in Alaska, that heated seat and steering wheel is a very important nice to have, but you can still drive the car. Going back to PDM is missing Automated tasks as your reason its crippled, thats a nice to have, you can still do those tasks manually.
Looking at the list, I don’t see anything missing that can’t be done manually. Its obvious they’re hoping you want those things bad enough to upgrade. Same for most products out there, and most companies strategically pick things that really entice customers to pull the trigger and buy up.
In the end, you vote with your dollars. If not good enough, don’t buy it, they’ll change it up.
When SW PDM was still Conisio, price was really nice even for solo entrepreneuer and all required features where there. Then SW bought it. Automated tasks are not the only reason for me. Still waiting this “they’ll change it up”.
Manually? No, no and no. I put my money to a software that should be PDM and then do things manually? No. Before “IT” there was abbreviation “ADP”, where A stands for Automated. If I want to do things manually, I could switch to pen and paper (done that too, before 2D-CAD).
I have definitely voted with my dollars…and still waiting for the change (that probably never comes)
I’m not expecting much change, Dassault just seems to be taking all of our subscription dollars and funneling it into their 3dx and cloudworks products. The What’s New for 2026 is the most sparse yet.
Going to VAR’s “what’s new” meeting next month. I have been there every year if possible and my notes for one year, well, they used to be several pages long, but the last years could fit into single one.
3dx, I don’t like it, very generic platform to do everything you can imagine, it just doesn’t work well. I have started to develope an add-ins kind of package to get the basics of collaboration tools available with reasonable price, but now SW wants me to pay API usage…don’t really know what to do. Hope somebody besides Sibe is developing solutions too. Still love SW.