WorldCAD Access

NH Floods Affect ADSK Servers

Denix Paiste of the Union Leader newspaper reports that flooding has affected computers run by Autodesk in its New Hampshire offices. Twelve inches of rain in 48 hours caused the Merrimack River to flood 100+ businesses, causing US$2 million in damage (est.). "Many of the buildings had their electrical, heating and air conditioning and other utilities in flooded basements. Texas Instruments and Autodesk had some major computer systems in the basements, too, so they’re all flooded." Read more →

The 18th Release of ParaSolid

Some CAD vendors use their own home-grown solids modeling kernel, like think3 and Autodesk. Most use a kernel from Dassault Systemes (Spatial ACIS) or UGS (ParaSolid). It's good to see what's in the new release of a kernel, because then you know what to expect in a future release of the MCAD software you use. New in ParaSolid v18: - Finer user control in local editing. - More ways to thicken, taper, and emboss. - Enhanced blending and filleting in tightly-curved regions. - Localized behavior for hidden line removal and sectioning. - Improvements to data tracking, rollback efficiency, and partition... Read more →

9. The unFunded Newsletter

My second last experiences with Microsoft came through Visio. WordWare Publishing asked me to write a tutorial book on Visio, and it sold so well that I wrote several. While Visio Corp was still independent of Microsoft, the company treated me very well. So that I could write a better book, they sponsored me for a week's training in shapesheets and the like. Microsoft bought Visio for $1.3 billion in January 2000, and the software became nearly invisible. Aft first, I was treated well, because I was still dealing with many of the same employees. But in amongst all else,... Read more →

Autodesk Green

Autodesk launches Web page to promote environmentally-enhanced designs: Sustainability Center. Judging by the URL [www.autodesk-centers.com] Autodesk plans to have a number of "centers," which reports: "You have reached the future home of autodesk-centers.com another site successfully deployed by (mt) Media Temple Web Hosting." Read more →

Millions and Millions and Millions

Three million downloads of Macromedia's plugin a day. Ten million downloads of Autodesk's DWF Viewer. Five hundred million copies of Acrobat Reader floating about. Impressive numbers, yet there was always something that bothered me about them. They sounded inflated. Then it struck me: multiple versions. Each time a new version comes out, the downloads of the free software start all over again. By the same users (plus a few more). Reader is at version 7.0.7. DWF Viewer is at version 6.5. And I don't really care what version Macromedia is at. Divide the download numbers by the number of versions... Read more →

Heated Steering Wheel

Another item for wasted technological effort... I was in a shopping mall (hate them, but my daughters needed to go, badly), which had one of those Porsche SUVs in display. If malls are the new churches, where people go today to make themselves feel good, then art-like displays of automobiles must be our rational substitue for Jesus-worship. In this case, we were in the BellisFair Mall (Bellingham WA USA) with its cathedral-like food court. So here's this car, ugly as sin, colored in embarrassing shade of deep red, almost rust-like in color. Something like $63,000. Gets 13 miles per gallon,... Read more →

PTC Increases Offshoring by 300

CIOL reports that PTC is upping its staff in India to 900 over the next three years. Currently, 600 work in Pune, India. The facility will be expanded by 35,000 square feet to accommodate the extra 300 programmers, who develop Pro/ENGINEER Wildfire, Windchill PDMLink and Windchill ProjectLink. Read more →

Soft Gold

Soft Gold of Tula, Russia has released a stand-alone and .Net controller for viewing and modifying DWG/DXF drawings. You can learn more about the two CADSoft Tools here and download the software here (.net required). CAD Import .NET is the first 100% .NET DWG/DXF reader; the company also has an ActiveX version, CADViewX. But here's the interesting read: "Currently, our team is involved into the development of the next generation CAD software." Read more →

develop it, release it, abandon it

As a two-time victim of Adobe dead-ending software, I hold no hope out for NoteTab. Steve Rubel of Micro Persuasion describes it: Adobe Labs is working on a concept project called NoteTag that allows users to capture notes during meetings and assign tasks within those notes to individuals. NoteTag can turn the notes around and post them to a blog or del.icio.us and tag them. I bought Adobe PageMill, which the company later lost interest in. (I now use Nano WebEditor.) I still use Adobe PageMaker, which the company also lost interest in a few years ago. Unfortunately, I am... Read more →

Tech E Blog's Parody of 'Popular Mechanics'

TechEBlog lists what it claims to be the Top 10 Strangest Gadgets of the Future. It reads like a Popular Mechanics magazine of the 1950s. You know the ones, where none of the predictions of bubble houses, flying cars, and entire-day's-meals-in-a-pill ever came true. Not because they weren't possible, but because they were impractical. Back in the 1950s, the editors of Popular Mechanics and Popular Science thought that bubble houses made sense. The idea was that was these houses could easily be transported to suburbs or waterfront, inflated, and instantly be inplace and easily relocatable -- to solve the problem... Read more →

'Nother Free CAD Package to Launch "Soon"

Another year, another free CAD package. I can't say anything about it until later, but a well-known name in the CAD industry will spring a free CAD program on the market. Free, except for commercial use. Alibre did a great job of getting exposure for their free Xpress, so it'll be interesting to see what stunts this company, older than Alibre, will pull off. [Gosh, this blog entry just might be one of the first of a string of stunts. Contain your excitement, Grabowski!] 30-day Free Demos? Bah! Should competitors quiver in their boots? Probably not, considering the niche this... Read more →

Bentley Up 8%

Sara Ferris of CADalyst magazine reports from the Bentley Empowered user conference that: - Bentley's FY05 revenues were US$336 million in revenue, up 8% (excluding acquisitions). - 2/3 of revenues were from subscriptions, 50% from North America. - Bentley recently acquired GEF-RIS of Germany, whose GIS software is for multi-use utilities. - And they acquired CADScript and MAPScript software from Corporate Montage of Australia. Read more →

Touch, but Don't Buy

Tom Krazit of CNET reportss that Dell has a "brilliant" idea that I am sure will fail: Neither [new] store will carry inventory. Rather, the shops will allow customers to order products through Dell's Web site after trying out the display models... The idea is not new, and has failed before. Gateway did it in Canada: you went to the store, looked at and touched the computers, and then walked out without buying one. After a few months, Gateway shut down the stores. What's the problem? You couldn't buy it and take it home. Instead, you had to wait a... Read more →

Autodesk Announces Adjectives

In a press release headlined "Autodesk Announces Rapid Acceptance of Autodesk Inventor 11", Autodesk's external marketing firm fails to back up, with hard numbers, the adjectives it chose to include: - rapid (acceptance) - best-selling - best-choice - rapidly (adopted) - well-received - best-in-class - superior But no numbers. Zip. Nada. Nil. Or, in terms that CAD engineers and programmers understand, the selection set is empty. Marketing needs no numbers. That's because it knows that numerous news organizations -- Tenlinks.com, Yahoo Finance, MCAD Cafe, et al -- will pick up the headline and run with it, no questions asked. Readers... Read more →

Team Editorial 2006: Maximum Brightness

The SunProperites command lets you specify the sun light's intensity factor in AutoCAD 2007 renderings. The minimum is 0, darkness. The maximum is... well, I'll let technical editor Bill Fane explain it non-technically: Read more →

IMSI "Merger" Approved

IMSI shareholders approve of its merger wtih AccessMedia: "We currently have over 15.2 million votes registered in favor of the proposed merger with AccessMedia and this exceeds the required majority." As I've noted before, once the merger is complete, then the TurboCAD side of things will most likely be spun off as an independent company in a management buyout. Read more →

Examining Dassault's Patents

I was once a consultant on a CAD patent case, and talk about mind-bending. I was just there to explain the CAD side of things, but ended up with a great admiration for the lawyers who could figure out what the logic of the patent's wording. Rachael Taggart alerted me to the blog of Steve Thomas, who is working his way through some of the patents Dassault Systemes holds, and which apply to CATIA. If nothing else, read his posts to gain an understanding about why obvious ideas get past patent examiners. For example: Claim 1 is a "computer implemented"... Read more →

'WorldCAD Access' Aids Software Pirates!!!

Reader J.H. of Australia writes: I realise that the ads which appear on your WorldCAD blog site are selected by some sort of robot which is provided by Google, and you presumably have little or no control over exactly what ads appear on your site, but does it worry you that prominent ads which are displayed on your web site direct people to (presumably) pirated downloads of AutoCAD, Microsoft Office, etc? Is there anything you can do to have such blatant pirate merchants removed from the list of linked ads? Is there anything Google can or should do to control... Read more →

Never Mind the Booth Babes; Here Come the Booth Wars

Roopinder Tara writes about the inside news of trade shows, etc at his CAD Insider blog. Related to that is this item from Robert X. Cringely of Infoworld: How suite it ain't: NetSuite planned to host an SAP-bashing cocktail reception across the street from the German software giant's SAPPHIRE show in Orlando, Fla., until SAP found out about it and pulled the plug. The on-demand CRM vendor claims SAP forced the hotel to cancel NetSuite's reservation and then called all the other hotels in town to do the same. SAP spokesdude Steve Bauer called NetSuite's guerilla marketing ploy a "desperate... Read more →

Wow! Gift USB Flash Drives

I have four USB flash drives, and I've paid for none of them. They've all been given to me as corporate gifts -- 32MB, 64MB, 128MB, and most recently a very nice 512MB one in a blue metal case. I came across the Web site that sells these: http://ipromo.com. Wow! I never knew there were so many styles. Neither BestBuy nor FutureShop have anywhere near this selection. In case you're wondering, I have the straight DE (in blue), two of the curvy AD (but in silver plastic and black rubberized plastic), and the Presideo USB pen. Read more →

Google: #1 in Search, #0 in All Else

Bill Tancer of Hitwise US tracks the popularity of Web sites, and finds that while Google is the overwhelming #1 in search, it does poorly in its other properties. Let's take a look: Email Yahoo = #1 (42%) Google = #4 (2%) News Yahoo = #1 (6%) Google = #5 (2%) Finance Yahoo = #1 (35%) Google = #40 (0.3%) Maps Mapquest = #1 (56%) Google Maps = #3 (8%) Google Earth = #5 (2%) (I think that Mapquest is so strong because many corporate Web sites include Mapquest for the "how to get to our office" page.) This study... Read more →

Autodesk 07Q1 Seat Counts

Total AutoCAD-based Installed Base = 3,928,400 Total Inventor Installed Base = 577,700 Total Subscription Installed Base = 989,800 "AutoCAD-based" means AutoCAD plus verticals that run on AutoCAD, such as ADT and MDT (but leaves out AutoCAD LT, which would goose the number by an extra three million). From the quarterly conference call, I learned that Autodesk shipped the following number of commercial seats during Q1: 13,100 - Revit (all variants) 10,000 - Inventor 8,500 - Civil 3D The company hopes to double in size by 2011/12, which mean earning over $3.5 billion a year by then. That's big, but not... Read more →

Why Google Books Does So Poorly

I make a chunk of change each month from running Google ads on this and my other Web properties. How much? Let's say enough that Google sends me a cheque each month. I'm also participating in Google Print. That's where publishers can have their books hosted by Google's search engine. The usual things apply: when people search for passages in books, ads are displayed and there are links to buying the whole book. Except that they have to use Google Print for seaching. After ten months of my books being live on Google Print (after taking a half-year to get... Read more →

ADSK Up, Down

Autodesk reports Q1 net revenues of US$436 million, up 23% from $355 million a year earlier. Net income fell, however: it was $49 million, down from $76 million yoy [year over year]. A large part of the dip is due to the $16-million worth of stock redemptions by employees. CAD Insider gets into greater detail on What's Eating Autodesk's Grape. The company expects to make $1.81 - $1.85 billion this year. This was the first quarterly report for new ceo Carl Bass. The hopes of other CAD giants Dassault and UGS for overtaking #1 are now just Dust In the... Read more →

McEleney Against Something or Other

SolidWorks ceo McEleney's name appears in the middle of an article from Business Report: Another chief executive, John McEleney of SolidWorks, urged the Supreme Court not to allow expanded copyright lawsuits against manufacturers of file-sharing software popular for stealing music and movies over the Internet. I can't say I understand what the sentence means. Read more →

Insecure Crypto Drive

I'm flipping through the pages of the Tigerdirect.ca print catalog that arrived this morning in the mail. (I ordered from Tigerdirect once, and had a bad enuf of an experience that I'll never do it again. In short, they never shipped an item I ordered -- a spare battery for my daughter's digital camera -- and made me go through all kinds of hoops when I was kind enuf to alert them that they had sent me a VGA graphics board I never ordered.) Page 23 boasts of the Super-Secure CryptoStick USB Flash Drive. Here's the problem with it: The... Read more →

Team Editorial 2006, Par Deux

The editing continues... Read more →

Motley Fool Unimpressed With Autodesk's Performance

Rich Smith of Motley Fool, a consumer stock advisory, frowns over Autodesk's financial performance: here's what has me flummoxed: Autodesk's sales are roaring. Its margins are expanding. Its CEO is, well, extremely optimistic. Why, then, are tomorrow's profits expected to come in essentially flat year over year? After ruling everything else out, the only thing I can come up with is that the company expects its margins to drastically contract for Q1. Read it all at Foolish Forecast: Searching Autodesk's Drawers. Read more →

Is Boot Camp Important to CAD?

When I spoke with Graphisoft last week, they thought not, perhaps because their Archicad software already runs on operating systems from Apple and Microsoft. Why run the Windows version on a Windows emulator of a Macintosh computer? Anthony Frausto-Robledo of Architosh and Randall Newton of AECnews.com collaborated on Will Apple Intel Hardware and Boot Camp Change the CAD Industry? Read it to learn opinions from Nemetschek, Archway Systems, CSI, and IMSI. Read more →

upFront.eZine #474

Issue #474 of our weekly CAD e-newsletter features these articles: * Graphisoft Shows Archicad 10 * Adobe Acquires TTF: Readers Respond, Part 2 * AutoCAD 2007 and Graphics Boards: On the Worse Side, and On the Not-As-Serious Side Next week's issue: * View22's Web-based CAD * UGS Q1 Conference Call * And whatever else crops up in the next six days. To keep up wtih the business of CAD, have the e-newsletter delivered to your email account every Monday evening. Subscribe (free) by sending a 'subscribe upfront' message to editor @ upfrontezine.com Read more →

Team Editorial 2006

...or maybe 2007. I'm working on updates for two of my books for Autodesk Press, The Illustrated AutoCAD 2007 Quick Reference and Using AutoCAD 2007: Basics. I have last year's copies on my desk for reference, which my daughter noticed last night. "Is this your new book," she puzzled over the title: "Using AutoCAD 2006." No, that's last year's book; this year's is 2007. Although that numbering system makes sense to highly-paid individuals within Autodesk, it doesn't to one 18-year-old. Nor to me. But if someone wants to pay me to write about next year, who am I to complain.... Read more →

Affuso on Competitors

When a financial analyst asked UGS ceo Tony Affuso about PTC and Dassault, he remarked (paraphrased): On Dassualt: If you look at Dassault, they've got a real dog's breakfast; they've got everything -- different software, different data structures, different user interfaces, different databases -- and I don't know how they're ever really going to get that together. What are their customers going to do on these five different platforms that they have. It will take them five-eight years to get it together. On PTC: And Windchill is doing the same thing: they talk about a common data structure, but when... Read more →

When Databases Go South for the Winter

CAD vendors are keen to extract more $$$ from your IT budget, and one approach is to promise to organize all your design files with their software, call it EDM, PLM, or ETC. I'm reading a tutorial series by George Mann at the Digital Photography & Macintosh Computers site. In talking about storing digital photographs, he writes: Step 3: Manually set up a folder for your image files on your computer. I suggest using a very simple (and admittedly boring) system based on the calendar, roman numerals and alphabet. For example: year / month / date / shoot number. This... Read more →

Photo Tutorials

I generally don't care for online photography tutorials, because I find them, well, not concise enough. A lot of talking, not much useful detail. Don Beaton alerted me to a tutorial by George Mann at the Digital Photography & Macintosh Computers site. Again, too much verbiage for my liking, and an emphasis on software I don't use (PhotoShop), but I was relieved to read his commonsense advice, such as: + "I have to confess that I myself do not often look at histograms and also leave the camera on full automatic in many cases..." but he recognizes that manual mode... Read more →

Top 100 Rebrander: Autodesk

The ReBrand 100 Global Awards allow corporations to get themselves recognized as effective rebranders. That's where companies redo their logo, their product packaging, and so on. Autodesk is one of the 100 winners for 2006. You can take a look at what the rebranding jury saw here. Read more →

UGS: Up; Avatech; Up

UGS reports Q1 revenues of US$273.8 million, up 8%, but an operating loss of $5.5 million. Avatech reports Q3 revenues of $11 million, up 5.5%, and net income of $1.3 million. Read more →

First AJAX Product from Adobe

Simon Bisson of the Reg Developer describes Adobe's first AJAX product. It's meant to work with Macromedia, but this first AJAX experience could lead Adobe to develop AJAX frameworks for their other graphical products. Can you feel the mountains tremble? Read more →

Future Camera Technology

Digital Photo Newsletter describes a Media Day where Kodak showed off new products and described technology that they are working on for future release. Two of the items include: + A high-speed scanner that processes two prints per second. The scanner reads both sides of photos, and uses optical character recognition to attempt to collect any info it can, including hand-written dates. It attempts to also date photos by how they were made, such as rounded corners or serrated edges. (Fashion has a purpose after all!). And it attempts to group photos by color and backgrounds in the images, and... Read more →

ISO Standard for Finding Unauthorized Software

Colin Barker of CNET News.com reports that the International Standards Organization now has a standard for companies to determine what software they are using. It was promoted by Business Software Alliance, of which several CAD companies are members. The article notes that standard ISO/IEC 17990-1 helps determine if companies are using software illegally -- at least those that want to know. Most likely there are companies that don't want to know. Read more →

ODA Accuses Autodesk of Copyright Infringement

The ODA this morning issued this statement against Autodesk: The Open Design Alliance understands that Autodesk has, for approximately two years, been distributing application programs which include our copyrighted DGNdirect libraries, for reading and writing DGN V8 format files. Autodesk does not have, nor has it ever had, any license or right to use DGNdirect in its application programs. We believe that Autodesk, by its actions, is infringing our copyright. In a FAQ associated with the statement, the ODA accuses of Autodesk of being aware, yet ignoring the issue for two years. You can read the entire document here. This... Read more →

500,000 Page Views!

Earlier this morning, this Weblog delivered its 500,000th page-view. Thank you for dropping by, and making this one of the most-read CAD blogs! Read more →

Google Press Day 2006

Over on Gizmos Grabowski, I took notes from Google's Press Day Webcast. In summary, the emphasis will continue to be on search and on how to make computers easier to use. Addition comments by Om Malik. Read more →

Google Press Day 2006

Here are notes I took from the Google live Webcast of their Press Day, a day where executives are available to the media. The Q&As are all paraphrased. Innovation: Many Shapes, Many Sizes Jonathan Rosenberg Marissa Mayer Google is about helping people find things, and has 3x as many Web pages indexed as anyone else. Much comparing of themselves with "the competition" and the gap (of how much further Google is than competitors). Moved data centers closer to users (a.k.a more?) Most new features will be around the user interface and search. Google sees four components of search experience: -... Read more →

Free MEDUSA4 CAD for Linux

CAD Schroer Group is making its free MEDUSA4 CAD software available on Linux. The free version has limitations, naturally: - different sheet format. - watermarked print output. - no export to DXF/DWG. - no customization. - providing your computer's MAC (the unique Media Access Control address associated with every network card.) - reregistering every six months. Positive features include: + basic 3D sheet-based modeling. + parametrics. + 2D drafting. + hidden line removal. + drilling table tolerances. The software is also available free for computers that run Windows 2000/XP as their operating system. Read more →

Cloud Data Patented

Geomagic gets the patent on generating 3D digital models automatically from scanned point-cloud data. U.S. patent 7,023,432 describes four processes: - Reading any type of scanned data. - Using memory-efficient algorithms to handle point clouds of 100 million or more points. - Automatic 3D geometry processing, from points to polygon models. - Editing the resulting shape without losing topological properties. R&D director Mike Facello says, "Patented technology is the cornerstone of our unique product offerings." Read more →

Editor Interviews Editor

Roopinder Tara of tenlinks.com interviews editor Martyn Day. Excerpt: Q: What company do you have the hardest time dealing with? A:Currently it’s Bentley Systems. I’ve almost resorted to going to a medium to contact them. Luckily, I have an inside source. I have difficulty with UGS and Dassault getting past their PLM mantra to talk in normal language. Then there’s Autodesk that dumps about 50 products for us to review all at once. Read more →

Screeds

You all have "friends" who pass along warning screeds. Y'know, the kind that in very large type yell, "THIS IS IMPORTANT. Pass this along to everyone you know!!!!" Like lemmings, they do. A reader passed along a screed, but with a more thoughtful attitude. He wrote, "I was sent the following, if you care to read it. I wondered if it was correct but might be limited in content and reasoning." It was taken from the Georgia Strait, a left-wing free weekly published in Vancouver. The author, Braun Mcash, starts off like this: Let's imagine that one morning you awake... Read more →

IE, IE, IE Affects PTC SW

Microsoft loses a court case; software supporters suffer. With Microsoft losing a law suit over technology used by its Internet Explorer Web browser, other software companies are having to issue patches. (Is their programming time compensated by Microsoft?) PTC notes that This issue affects all releases of Windchill and Windchill-based solutions, including Windchill PDMLink, Windchill ProjectLink, Windchill Foundation & PDM, Windchill DynamicDesignLink, and Pro/INTRALINK 8.0 and higher; ProductView clients may also be affected. Some of the problems include: - Loading the Java plug-in from an updated Microsoft browser may cause it to exit prematurely. - Launching ProductView Standard Edition plug-in... Read more →

Writiing is Like Engineering

Don Beaton pased along this item from slash.dot: Present writing as an engineering problem by MarcusQ. His transposes engineering analysis over to the writing process: 1. Top down design. 2. Checking your facts. 3. Failure mode analysis. 4. Dependency analysis. 5. Optimization. 6. Structured testing. The only one I object to is #1: Starting with an outline and working out the details is the normal way of tackling an engineering problem. The assumption is being made that I, as a writer, know the outcome ahead of time. When writing a new book -- even on a sterile topic like CAD... Read more →

What a Wine Cooler Is

Wine coolers are the bread makers of the mid-2000s. I don't drink wine, so the reason for their popularity eludes me. My wife does, but we're talking a bottle a month. Imagine the irony when my 18-year-old daughter wins a wine cooler this week at a cosmetics event hosted by a local department store. She doesn't drink, either, and this fall she's moving into residence at a university where drinking is banned. This free wine cooler is ugly. All black plastic, tall and narrow, with a red LED announcing the current temperature. In fact, it looks like an oversized desktop... Read more →