Welcome to the first in this new series of interviews of Interesting People of CAD (IPoC).

First up, Heidi Hewett. Heidi has a long CAD history and is well known for being outstandingly good at her job. She made big news recently by shifting camps from Autodesk to Bricsys. Here is the third and final part of Heidi’s interview.

Steve: Did you go to Gent? What were your impressions of the people at Bricsys?

Heidi: Yes. After my initial discussion with Don Strimbu, he invited me to Gent to visit Bricsys headquarters and meet the team. While I wasn’t yet ready to give up my newly earned real estate license, who can turn down a trip to Europe? Don met me at Heathrow airport and accompanied me to Gent from there.

As soon as we arrived at the office, Don introduced me to Erik, Bricsys CEO, and other executive staff including Patrick, Mark, and Sander. I went into the office with Don every day that week as he arranged for me to meet and get product demonstrations from people across the organization. They were all incredibly welcoming and treated me as if I was already part of their team.

Several things about the office environment got my attention. The first was that nearly all the conference rooms were empty. And it was very quiet. People were sitting at their computers working, not sitting in meetings! They’re a team of dedicated people that know what they need to do and how to get it done. But they also know how to have fun.

A chiming sound ringing through the quiet office indicates an important event. One afternoon it signalled everyone to meet in the kitchen for Portuguese wine and cheese tasting hosted by Carlos, who was visiting from his office in Portugal. Each Friday at lunch the chime reminds everyone to head to Pinocchio’s for weekly pizza and wine. And I heard rumor that company hardware policy enables employees to keep their old computers when it’s time to upgrade. In exchange, the employee leaves a few bottles of wine in the community kitchen, which, coincidentally is right next to the rec room with ping pong table.

Steve: How about Gent itself?

Heidi: When I wasn’t in the office, I was exploring Gent and nearby Bruges, with my gracious hosts from Bricsys. It’s a beautiful city with so much to see. I look forward to the opportunity to return!

Steve: How have your former colleagues reacted to your move? Have they been supportive? How about the reaction form the CAD community in general?

When I decided to join Bricsys after all my years of working on and promoting AutoCAD, I was a little concerned about the reaction I’d get from the AutoCAD community, whether internal or external to Autodesk. But my concerns were unfounded. Immediately following the announcement that I joined Bricsys and for at least a week following it, I was bombarded with responses through social media and direct messaging. Names were scrolling by so fast that I couldn’t keep up. Former colleagues and customers that I haven’t talked to in decades as well as those I worked with just a few months ago. Many names I’ve never seen but suspect they belong to AutoCAD users somewhere around the world that have attended my presentations or read my posts.

I was truly touched by the kind words of respect for my past achievements and the enthusiastic support for my new endeavors. It made me realize this global CAD community is incredibly small and tight. And, even if we’re developing or using different CAD software, we have the same goal… to design amazing things. I’m proud to be part of it.

Steve: I’m sure you’re deeply immersed in learning everything you can about BricsCAD and related products. What has surprised you most so far about the software?

Heidi: It’s a little surprising how much there is to learn about a product that feels so familiar to me. I’m confident that I can jump in and immediately start using BricsCAD the same way I use AutoCAD. That’s reassuring but it’s not enough. The challenge for me, as it is for most CAD users, is to push beyond the old and familiar ways of doing things to take advantage of the software’s most powerful functionality. What I found most surprising about BricsCAD, is that it allows me to create 3D solid models in a way that’s intuitive and familiar yet with more intelligence than I thought possible in a DWG-based drawing.

Steve: What are you most looking forward to in your new role?

Heidi: When I met with Erik and team at the end of my week in Gent, he asked if/how I wanted to work with Bricsys. He knew that my career had been headed in a different direction, away from CAD, so he left it up to me to decide if I wanted to work part-time, full-time, consulting, whatever. After what I’d seen and experienced at Bricsys, I knew I couldn’t be any less than fully committed! There’s just too much to show and talk about and demo and teach.

I can’t come up with a single thing that I’m most looking forward to. That’s what attracted me to this role. What I’m most looking forward to are the Endless Possibilities.

IPoC interview – Heidi Hewett – part 1
IPoC interview – Heidi Hewett – part 2

Welcome to the first in this new series of interviews of Interesting People of CAD (IPoC).

First up, Heidi Hewett. Heidi has a long CAD history and is well known for being outstandingly good at her job. She made big news recently by shifting camps from Autodesk to Bricsys. Here is the second part of Heidi’s interview.

Steve: Did you have much involvement with AUGI?

Heidi: I haven’t had a lot of involvement with AUGI aside from presenting at CAD Camps they hosted almost a decade ago. I thought they were great events and was sorry to see them fade away.

Steve: What do you think the benefits have been for Autodesk in helping to support AUGI over the years?

Heidi: While I haven’t had a lot of experience working with AUGI, I think any opportunity a company has to get closer to their customers is worth pursuing.

Steve: How much presenting did you do at events like AU and others? Did you enjoy that?

Heidi: During the first half of my career at Autodesk I did a lot presenting at AU, CAD Camps and many other events. My kids were young then. As they got older, I didn’t want to miss all the big things in their lives. So, while I was always willing to travel to events, I didn’t seek them out. Instead, I did more webcasts and limited most of my travel to train-the-trainer events. I especially enjoyed the train-the-trainer events because I felt like I was sharing my knowledge globally without spending all my time on airplanes. Instead, I traveled to a few Autodesk sites in Europe or Asia to train a group of employees and partners from various countries in that region. Then, they would take what they learned, and the materials I provided, back to their countries where they could present it to customers in their local languages.

Steve: You and Lynn Allen worked closely together for many years, right?

Heidi: Yes, I met Lynn soon after she started at Autodesk. She was in the Training department and I wanted to join their team. That’s where we first worked together and became friends almost a quarter of a century ago. I think she’ll back me up when I say we were both 5 years old at the time!

Since then our paths have crossed many times. Each year when I was ready to present the newest AutoCAD functionality, first to employees, I reached out to Lynn so that I could schedule my training session around her busy travel schedule. And, as she was traveling the world, receiving more presentation requests than she could schedule, she referred the AutoCAD ones she couldn’t cover to me. On more than one occasion I’d be at some international event and a customer would bring Lynn’s Tips and Tricks book to me for an autograph, thinking I was her. Or they’d insist that they met me at that same event several years before even though I’d never been there before. Being mistaken as Lynn Allen is certainly flattering!
 
Steve: It’s kind of bizarre that such a successful team was thought to be no longer required. Do you have any idea what was behind that?

Heidi: I don’t have any insight on the thinking behind it. But, I try to believe things happen for a reason. I wasn’t sure what that reason was, until now… and I’m thrilled!

Steve: You’ve now joined Autodesk competitor Bricsys, which is something of a coup for them. Who contacted you initially? Was it Erik [De Keyser, Bricsys CEO]?

Heidi: Ironically, the first contact I had about Bricsys was from Lynn Allen. Not because she was working for them. But because Vince Aman (formerly from Autodesk, now working for Bricsys) had been trying to reach me through LinkedIn. I was attending a real estate class at the time, in preparation for what I thought was my next career. I received a text from Lynn telling me to check my LinkedIn messages. After speaking to Vince, briefly, I reached out to Don Strimbu, VP of Communications at Bricsys. I’ve known Don since my first years at Autodesk and wanted to hear about his experience at Bricsys.

IPoC interview – Heidi Hewett – part 1
IPoC interview – Heidi Hewett – part 3

Welcome to the first in this new series of interviews of Interesting People of CAD (IPoC).

First up, Heidi Hewett. Heidi has a long CAD history and is well known for being outstandingly good at her job. She made big news recently by shifting camps from Autodesk to Bricsys. Here is the first part of Heidi’s interview.

Steve: You’ve been doing this a long time, but was there a pre-CAD part of your career? What did you do before Autodesk?

Heidi: I didn’t have much of a pre-CAD career. I started college at Colorado State University as a Computer Science major. One day I stopped by the Industrial Design lab to meet one of my friends. He was taking a drafting class and had just been introduced to AutoCAD. He wanted me to see it. Using a stylus, he drew an ellipse on the tablet (not today’s kind of tablet, of course). The ellipse appeared in green on the monochrome monitor… like magic! That’s all it took. I was hooked! I realized I didn’t want to program computers, I wanted to draw with them. So, I checked around to see what majors would best let me combine my interest in math with my interest in AutoCAD. The next semester I transferred to the University of Colorado for Architectural Engineering.

After graduating, I moved from Colorado to California to take an engineering position with an MEP firm in San Francisco. They worked exclusively on drafting boards and I soon realized that what I enjoyed most about my engineering education wasn’t engineering, it was using AutoCAD! Within the first year I managed to convince my boss that we needed AutoCAD (I was a horrible manual drafter)! While working with a local reseller to set up our new CAD lab, I learned that the company that makes AutoCAD was located right across the Golden Gate Bridge, in Sausalito. Less than a year later, I was walking down the hall at Marinship Way, passing people like John Walker and Amar Hanspal (my hiring manager). I was in awe that I actually worked there.

Steve: You were with Autodesk for 26 years, right? Were you a Technical Marketing Manager all that time, or did you start at Autodesk with something else?

Heidi: I started in Product Support, as a support technician answering calls from resellers. It wasn’t a good fit for me. Nobody ever calls product support (at any company) to talk about how much they love their product. They only call when there’s a problem and they need help. And, most of the questions weren’t about how to use the software. They were about how to configure plotters and digitizers. I loved AutoCAD and wanted to share my knowledge about how cool it was. So, aside from my first few years in Product Support, my career at Autodesk was focused on educating users on what they could do with AutoCAD. My titles included Illustrator (back when we had printed manuals), Training Specialist, Marketing Support Engineer, Senior Applications Engineer, and Technical Marketing Manager.

Steve: What did a Technical Marketing Manager do, exactly?

Heidi: It’s kind of funny, Technical Marketing Manager was my title for more than half my career, but it was probably the least descriptive of what I did. I was technical and worked under the Marketing organization. But I did the same thing in that role that I did in all my previous roles aside from Product Support. I was a Learner and a Trainer. I worked with the AutoCAD development team to learn what was coming in the next release of AutoCAD. Then I created documents and videos such as the Preview Guides and Launch Demo Videos to help educate Autodesk employees, partners, and customers on the new functionality. Regardless of my official title, it was the perfect job for me because I got show people how cool the software was.

Steve: What did you enjoy most about that job?

Heidi: There were many things I enjoyed about the job so it’s hard to narrow down. I enjoyed working directly with the development team to be one of the first people on the planet to understand and use the newest AutoCAD functionality. And I enjoyed travelling around the world to share what I learned with our partners and customers.

Steve: I’ve noticed that your written materials always show a very high standard of clarity and correctness. What would you put that down to?

Heidi: That’s quite a compliment and I appreciate the acknowledgement.

I graduated from college without having taken a single English class. Back then it wasn’t required for Engineering majors and I was thrilled because I hated to write. As I got further into my career, I realized how crucial writing skills were, even for a math-minded person. That was around the same time I realized my true passions were around training and education. So, after a little research I found two relevant graduate programs at the University of Colorado, Denver. One was a Master in Technical Communication (so I could finally learn to write) and the other was a Master in Information and Learning Technologies. I couldn’t decide between them, so I did both! Having two young children and a full-time job with a lot of travel, it took me almost 7 years to graduate but it was worth it! The technical communication skills that I learned gave me the confidence to write publicly and I launched my original AutoCAD Insider blog, as one of my class assignments.

Steve: Would you say you’re obsessive about the quality of what you put out?

Heidi: Yes, I’m definitely obsessive about what I produce. There are many times I wish I wasn’t because it can be time-consuming. But, if I make a statement (written or oral) I want to know that what I’m saying is accurate to the absolute best of my ability. A perfect example is one of my first blog posts for Bricsys. It started as a quick and simple post about installing the trial version. How complicated could that be, right? But for me it’s not just writing about what I see, it’s understanding it. Writing that simple little blog post produced a string of emails between myself and the BricsCAD development team. Most of the information I learned didn’t make it into the blog post but it helped me fully understand and believe what I was writing.

The greatest value I get from writing is learning. If I want to learn something, I write about it. Because, until I can clearly explain it to someone else, I probably don’t really understand it myself. My first and best experience with the value of writing was when I wrote about sheet sets for AutoCAD. It was such a new, big, and overwhelming topic that I just couldn’t grasp it. Not after discussing with members of the development team and not after trying it for myself. The only way I could fully understand and communicate sheet set functionality was to write about it step-by-step. And so, Sheets Happened!

IPoC interview – Heidi Hewett – part 2
IPoC interview – Heidi Hewett – part 3