A Conversation With Truman Du

At COFES 2011 I sat down with Truman Du, the CEO of ZWCAD, the Chinese IntelliCAD developer which is looking to create a space for itself in the MCAD world with its acquisition of VX. Truman told me that the negotiations with VX lasted 18 months. He laid out some of his plans for ZW3D, the rebranded VX product portfolio. Apparently there will be a “transition period” of 1 to 2 years with the plan of releasing a new version of ZW3D every six months.

One of the things I absolutely detested about VX was its horrid user interface. ZWCAD has made a few minor to it by modifying the icons. I am told that the UI will be “drastically changed” by the end of the year.

ZWCAD hopes to cater to the huge domestic market in China as well as serve the existing VX customers in Germany, Italy and Europe. In China the main competitor is SolidWorks. Come to think of it, I guess the main competitor anywhere on Earth will be SolidWorks. 😉

I asked Truman about the software piracy problem in China. He replied that he doesn’t care about it. He said, “People who pirate software will go ahead and pirate SolidWorks or something else. We are not interested in them.” Makes sense.

I asked Truman whether there were any layoffs post the acquisition of VX. He replied that there were none adding that just one web developer left the company.

ZWCAD will be holding a series of webinars on ZW3D 2011. Click here to register.

I asked Truman about his views on the ITC, the delay in the release of IntelliCAD 7 and what he thought about the beta. He replied that he was happy with IntellliCAD 7 beta but added that it “needed a long time to be perfect”. ZWCAD would continue to use the old IntelliCAD 6 code for at least another year. As regards the reason for the delay, he candidly replied that the ITC was not a very well managed organization. As regards its future, I asked him if he thought whether the organization would grow in members or dwindle. He replied that in his view the numbers would remain the same.