COFES, the Congress on the Future of Engineering Software, is “meet by the pool” kind of conference. It’s a place where you have the chance to chat with really interesting people, who are otherwise quite busy.

A few weeks ago, at COFES 2013, I sat down with Jon Hirschtick, and recorded a six minute video, where he talked about the complexities of creating great CAD software — and why he loves working in the CAD industry.

You may know that Jon and some of his friends recently founded a new CAD company, with the working name Belmont Technology (they’ll change the name to something snazzy when they get close to shipping.) In this video, I didn’t ask Jon about Belmont, for a simple reason: They’re not ready to go to market. I’d prefer to wait to see what they come up with rather than spending a lot of energy speculating. It’s just a matter of being practical: I’d rather talk about the tools you can use today, rather than those you can’t buy anytime soon. However, if you really want to give it a try, you could watch this video, and make some guesses as to what Jon and his friends are working on. (I’ll give you a clue: it’s a CAD program. Beyond that, I know nothing more.)