Avatech Solutions launches its Earth Connector for Revit today, a plug-in for Google Earth. Even Autodesk has gotten the Google name into its marketing, earlier releasing an adaptor for its civil engineering software. And before that, Avatech beat Autodesk with the January release of Avatech Earth Connector for AutoCAD.
If you were to rely on the press release, you'd learn that Avatech's Earth Connector "facilitates cross-functional collaboration by producing a common file format using the Google Earth KMZ standard." (Please, I haven't had breakfast yet!) In plain terms, it lets you place AutoCAD and Revit objects in Google Earth, at the correct location.
These -- and similar products from Bentley, Graphisoft, VectorWorks, and others -- have in common one word: Google. Not Microsoft, whose TerraServer product was years earlier than Google Earth and (some may say) better than Google. Doesn't matter. It's Do-No-Evil Google who's got the mindshare over Convicted-Monopolist Microsoft.
It would be nice if the people who pioneered the technology that was subsequently plagurized and commercialized by the likes of Google and Microsoft, are given the credit they deserve.
Now who might that be?
http://worldwind.arc.nasa.gov/
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Posted by: Tony Tanzillo | Jun 27, 2006 at 12:10 PM