The company says that the new version of the software is an outcome of its performance-focused R&D efforts. "We have observed that customer experience is one of the most valued traits among CAD software users. Apart from this, the increasing material cost drives the need for optimized environments. We looked at all these aspects while developing the new version of our software," said Ved Narayan, Vice President, Asia Pacific Operations, Dassault Systèmes SolidWorks.

The company, which has partnered with 33 value-added resellers in the country, is planning to add more partners as part of the new launch. The company is serving about 20 industrial cities through its VARs and has about 1700 customers in the country.

"We are catering almost 90 percent of the industrial markets and will continue to focus across these verticals with the availability of SolidWorks 2009. We are going to have more resellers in the country as part of our efforts to expand in the domestic market," explained Narayan. When asked what qualities they look for in new partners, Narayan said, "We prefer to partner with people who have some entrepreneurial background and have passion for what they are doing. Because, people with passion will definitely find their way to success and we believe only such people can add value to us and our customers."

The company will have increased focus on education segment. Accordingly, it has partnered with more than 300 educational institutions in the country. "We are committed to helping develop competent engineering professionals in the country. We have been working closely with IITs in Mumbai and New Delhi and also with other leading institutions in the country to help them train their students," said Narayan.

The company has partnered with 8 educational VARs. SolidWorks has also tied up with CADD Centre Training Services in the country and is providing tools to about 50 training centers. This will reach more than 100 centers by 2009. The company expects to witness 20 percent growth this year globally. In the coming year, the company plans expand its product portfolio by adding new technologies. The focus, Narayan said, would be on bringing out more easy-to-use tools so that the users can concentrate only on their design tasks to come up with better products.