Bentley Systems says it began shipping the 2004 edition of MicroStation V8 today. New features include plotting drawings in Adobe PDF format, enhanced DWG interoperability, and digital security. Press release is here. Read more →
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Bentley Systems says it began shipping the 2004 edition of MicroStation V8 today. New features include plotting drawings in Adobe PDF format, enhanced DWG interoperability, and digital security. Press release is here. Read more →
Posted at 01:15 PM in Computer-aided Design: NEWS | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
UGS PLM Solutions plans to shorten its name to UGS -- much to the relief of CAD journalists everywhere. The soon-to-be-on-its-own company reported a 14.8% revenue growth over a year ago -- much better results than still-its-parent EDS. Update To help finance the $2-billion buyout from EDS, UGS is borrowing money and offering US$550 million in notes (due in 2012) -- in addition to the cash equity investment from Bain Capital, Silver Lake Partners and Warburg Pincus. The notes will be priced in mid-May. Earlier this year, the three investment firms formed a company called BSW Holdings (first letter from... Read more →
Posted at 03:50 PM in Computer-aided Design: NEWS | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Hewlett-Packard last year launched a lawsuit against Intergraph in the USA over patents related to CAD software. This month, HP launched additional suits against Intergraph's Z/I Imaging division, as well as against Intergraph in Germany -- for a total seven patents. This story has eluded the CAD media; it is detailed at Intergraph's Web site. Read more →
Posted at 01:30 PM in Computer-aided Design: NEWS | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Wired magazine reports that Forgent Networks is suing 31 hardware and software vendors for (allegedly) infringing on a 17-year-old patent on the compression algorithm used in JPEG files. The company says it acquired the patent when it purchased Compression Labs seven years ago. The patent expires Oct 2006. The same problem occured with the GIF format. Some, like Autodesk, removed GIF from AutoCAD to avoid paying royalties to Unisys. The patent on the compression algorithm used in GIF expired June 2003. (JPEG is used for most larger images displayed on Web sites and almost all photographs taken by digital cameras.... Read more →
Posted at 06:10 PM in Computer-aided Design: NEWS | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBack (0)
"Who needs Windows when anyone can have free unlimited access to the world's fastest computer running the smartest operating system?" asks Jason Kottke at Kottke.org. He's talking about Google running on Linux running on 100,000 servers. So far, Google archives Web pages, does searches, aggregates news, compares products, networks socially, emails online, and blogs. It is conceivable that the profitable Google coporation could add PDA software, such as schedules, memos, and contact lists. Others, however, say silly things, like "the more important Google becomes, the less important your PC becomes." If you don't have a PC, how do you access... Read more →
Posted at 09:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)
Healthy CAD vendors mean a healthy CAD industry. Each quarter (every three months), Parametric Technology is always the first publically-owned CAD vendor to report its financial results. The good news is the perennial money-loser finally made a profit, even after spending US$16.7 million on "restructuring charges" (the polite way of saying "layoffs" and "shutdowns"). The hard numbers: Q2 Revenue = $164.7 million ($171.0m a year ago; $156.8m last quarter). Net Income = $3.2 million (net loss of $15.2m a year ago; net loss of $26.5 million last quarter). Cash in the bank = $221.7 million It expects similar results for... Read more →
Posted at 10:00 AM in Computer-aided Design: NEWS | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
"This Mok3 thing could be bigger than SketchUp, especially for interior designers and architects," Geoffrey Moore Langdon tells me. "It is like a PhotoShop that allows you to push-pull the images into correct 3D with the ease of SketchUp. Thus from a single photograph, you quickly create a 3D model: -- with the photograph texture-mapped appropriately. -- with the ability to view the model at any time in wireframe. -- show shadows from new lights added to the 3D model of a photorealistic hotel lobby just created 90 seconds earlier. -- and export out to other CADD programs. "When you... Read more →
Posted at 03:50 PM in Computer-aided Design: NEWS | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
The Princeton Shape Retrieval and Analysis Group is working on developing a search engine for 2D and 3D CAD models. It works like this: 1. You sketch three representations, which could represent the front, top, and side views. 2. Optionally, you enter a text description to help narrow the search. 3. Click Search, and after some time the search engine returns a number of models. The group describes how it works: Shape distributions represent the shapes of 3D models as probability distributions sampled from shape functions measuring the geometric properties of the 3D models. Reflective symmetry descriptors describe global symmetry... Read more →
Posted at 08:55 AM in Computer-aided Design: NEWS | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
After a long delay, Autodesk's visualization software, VIZ 2005, is finally available for AutoCAD 2004 users, as well as AutoCAD 2005. Development of the software has been moved from the discreet division over to Autodesk's Design Platform division (ie, AutoCAD and related CAD products). The company promises annual updates of the US$1995 VIZ to match the release cycle of AutoCAD. In a telephone interview today, Autodesk's Michael Woodcox told me that the new VIZ 2005 imports ADT, VIZ Render, LandXML and Inventor files (for Inventor, the exporter is on the Inventor CD). The layer dialog box is modeless, meaning it... Read more →
Posted at 12:43 PM in Computer-aided Design: NEWS | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBack (0)
Some months ago, Rand WorldWide promised a big investment announcement. Today, Dassault Systemes made that annoucement: the French company is investing US$8.5 million in Rand (a Canadian company) through an arrangement that creates a new US company called Rand Americas. (Briefly, Rand is a "super dealer" that used to sell software from Parametric Technologies. The two had a falling out, and are now engaged in law suits, claiming hundreds of millions in damages. Rand is recovering from financial shortcomings with the help of CDN$38 million in loans from PTC rival Dassault.) Here's the deal: 1. Rand Worldwide transfers its North... Read more →
Posted at 08:45 AM in Computer-aided Design: NEWS | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Attendees of COFES were given a Windows-based iPaq palm-size computer by HP. Because I prefer the PalmOS-based Sony Clie, I've been using the iPaq strictly for wireless Internet access. (Connecting the iPac through installing ActiveSync on my computer also requires Outlook be installed, but Outlook is banned from all our computers.) Having wireless Internet built-in (a.k.a WiFi or WLAN) makes the iPaq a great tool for seeking "hotspots," those areas where a WLAN router is broadcasting its signal, typically in a 50- to 100-foot radius. At our office, the iPaq recognized the WLAN (wireless local area network),but would not connect.... Read more →
Posted at 08:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
The show report for COFES 2004 is now posted here at My Travelogue Web site. Included are a half-dozen photos of the event. Another COFES report is by Sean Dotson in PDF format here. Read more →
Posted at 10:23 AM in Computer-aided Design: NEWS | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)
UGS PLM Solutions announced Friday it ported Parasolid 16, its 3D solids modeling kernel, to Mac OS X. While Parasolid is available for the Mac, no Mac software uses it. That didn't prevent USG PLM Solutions from using large numbers in its press release -- large numbers that are at this point meaningless: * "...offer Parasolid support for the ever increasing customer demand for 3D applications on Mac OS X" but none of them use ParaSolid yet. * "More than one million end-users employ Parasolid-based modeling applications..." but none of the on the Mac. * "...like the Virginia Tech G5-based... Read more →
Posted at 10:06 PM in Computer-aided Design: NEWS | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)
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