Get your crystal Balls out. 10 years from now. repost as a question instead of poll

Repost since polls are as useless everything else on this "forum". No discussion for polls?? No way to view custom answers??

As a cad admin I find myself with corporate IT constantly trying to get us to move resources off prem to the "cloud", and me having to explain every year why this is a bad idea for solidworks users.


10 years from now: For a large Solidworks Customer with many millions of dollar in IP stored in SolidWorks binary parametric legacy data that cannot be abandoned due to service life of machines and heavy design reuse. What scenario do you think we and the many other solidworks customers in similar situations will be in?

  1. Still running traditional desktop SolidWorks and traditional file management. 3dexperience cloud offerings are still just toys for new and small customers. High performance workstations and fast local cached file storage is still a requirement.
  2. Still running desktop SolidWorks. But wishing we weren’t tied to our legacy data since desktop SolidWorks development is lacking and the cloud offerings are better, but not good enough to justify leaving SolidWorks desktop.
  3. Running both desktop SolidWorks and cloud offerings. Spending lots of resources manually converting solidworks legacy data to the elusive “parametric cad in the cloud” that is now better than SolidWorks desktop. Similar to how 2d cad was abandoned and converted "as required" and paper drawings before that.
  4. Running only 3dexperience “cloud” offerings. Parametric design 3dexperience software is fully developed and “converts” legacy data via the even more elusive translators.
  5. SolidWorks desktop has been modified so extensively that the files and software are now stored and run in the cloud, but the transition has been an evolution from version to version of SolidWorks.