WorldCAD Access

Autodesk Numbers Include Crossgrades

"Number of seats" is alwasy a contentious issue, for the number can include educational seats, commercial seats, and upgrades. From Autodesk's annual report, we learn that the numbers exclude educational but include cross-grades. A cross-grade would be an existing customer paying Autodesk to switch from AutoCAD and AutoCAD LT to another product. Autodesk shipped more than 159,300 commercial seats (which includes new seats and crossgrade seats) of 3D model-based design products, including 76,400 seats of Revit, 52,500 seats of Autodesk Inventor and 30,400 seats of AutoCAD Civil 3D. Read more →

Nemetschek Changes Logo

German CAD vendor Nemetschek has changed its logo from the stylized N (which I rather liked, kind of reminded me of the logo for the old Burlington Northn railway): ...to the horizontal skyscraper logo: The purpose of the logo is to emphasize the company's emphasis on AEC (architecture, engineering, construction.) Or, in the words of the press release: The core of the new brand is the slogan “moving minds”, together with the use of a horizon as the key visual and a logo that reflects the group’s diversity. ... Use of a horizon as the key visual symbolizes the opening... Read more →

Pretty Viewpoints: Iceland

An Icelandic glacier spills out near the Atlantic Ocean: Read more →

The Essential Reader: Game Misconduct

Game Misconduct: Alan Eagleson and the Corruption of Hockey by Russ Conway When my wife and I watch Deutsche Welle television over the Internet, we chuckle each time the news reader announces the sports report, for inevitable it begins with the words, "Today in football [soccer] action..." In Germany, sports means soccer; in Canada, we are just as one-dimensional: sports means hockey. Russ Conway was puzzled when former hockey greats mentioned to him how difficult it was to live on their small pensions. The medical bills in particular were hard to pay; their bodies had been damaged by the game... Read more →

Earth Hour Earth Year

Let's do the math on Earth Hour: Turn off all lights for one hour. Assume ten light bulbs would normally be on, each 100W. Total savings = 1 kilowatt-hour per household. In our area, this would reduce the next electrical bill by 8 cents due to the annual event. Here is a more practical approach: Replace the ten light bulbs with compact florescent bulbs, each consuming 13W. Assuming lights are on 4 hours a day, the annual savings amount to 1,270KWhr, reducing the electrical bill by $101 a year. The problem with Earth Hour is that it can give participants... Read more →

Editing QuickRef 09 - The Squeal

More Bill Fane-ish humour: You might need to read it a few times to get the pun. Read more →

Something New Next Month from UGS

UGS Siemens PLM has a major announcement on April 22 -- "an industry-changing breakthrough in design technology that will fundamentally change the way companies improve their product development," they say. One tip: capture ideas as soon as you think them. Another: product design that's up to 100 times faster. I don't know what the financing arrangements are between UGS and its new owner, Siemens. Maybe the German industrialist is pumping lots of development money into NX/SolidEdge. Or maybe there was some technology transfer. Or maybe it's just marketing hype. I don't know, because the CAD media is not being NDA'ed... Read more →

T5

There is an old joke about the first fully automated airplane flight. As the plane takes off, a recorded voice explains to passengers how this airplane has no pilots, and that "...nothing can go wrong... nothing can go wrong...nothing can go wrong..." The chaos at the opening day of Heathrow's $4-billion Terminal 5 reminded me of the joke. Earlier in the week, the press were given a tour. BAA (british airport authority) reps boasted how computers would run everything, from getting luggage to passengers before passengers arrived at baggage claim, to targeted ads via giant electronic boards. The computers would... Read more →

Editing QuickRef 09

Last week, I finished updating my The Illustrated AutoCAD 2009 Quick Reference book for Autodesk Press. And then the editors get to fix it up. Here's what technical editor Bill Fane had to say about the LayOn and LayOff commands: (The writing is red is from copy editor Stephen Dunning.) Read more →

Competing Headlines: Germany

When all else fails, the state should rescue flailing banks, said Deutsche Bank's chief economist. (link) ...versus... The German government has derailed a high-speed rail project because of runaway costs. (link) Read more →

5x Zoom Becoming Standard

Watching camera specs in the weekly fliers, it appears that 5x zoom is slowly supplanting 3x as the standard for point'n shoot cameras. Read more →

Dassault Slowly Fixing Brand Confusion

Dassault Systemes changes its Delmia brand to Dassault Systemes Delmia Corp. Dassault's brands are: CATIA -- design, CAD. ENOVIA -- data management and collaboration SIMULIA -- simulation. DELMIA -- digital manufacturing. Throw in a host of product names, as well as V4, V5, and V6, plus R-numbers, and that whole 3D VIA thing and its multiple offspring, not to leave out SolidWorks, COSMOSworks -- solving brand name confusion has a ways to go at Dassault. Not that other CAD vendors have it any easier, what with PTC and its 42 add-on modules, five versions of Pro/E, the whole WindChill thing... Read more →

TIPS: New in AutoCAD 2009

I downloaded the 30-day eval version of the AutoCAD 2009 shipping version, and found three more new items: * SkyStatus - new sysvar. * LayerDlgMode - toggles which layer UI is displayed by the Layer command: dlg box or palette. * Text Find -- new toolbar. Read more →

Apple's License-free Software

There have been plenty'o complaints over Apple's repeated attempts to install its Safari-brand Web browser onto computers that run that competing operating system, Windows. Cf. fig. below. Here are the problems with the dialog box: Select the items you want to update - I can't select them, because Apple has already done that for me. I can only unselect. - Safari cannot be updated, for it was never installed on this computer. Safari for Windows is the ... easiest to use web browser - I had installed it on another computer, and found it non-intuitive -- not easy to use.... Read more →

Oh my, Oh slow

Need an excuse for an extended coffee break? Or, in European countries, another smoke break? Search for a command in AutoCAD 2009's Customize User Interface dialog box. Fer instance, to find the "About" command (alphabetically, the very first one), takes 13 seconds. It turns out every command takes 13 seconds on my computer running the shipping version of AutoCAD 2009. The file being searched is named acad.cui and, optionally, other .cui files. They are in XML (ASCII) format and 2.7MB or less in size. It surprises me that text searches could take so long in this day of dual-core 2+GHz... Read more →

KOMPAS-3D LT

ASCON offers a free version of its professional MCAD solution, KOMPAS-3D LT. Its 3D portion is functionally-reduced, 'natch, but includes 2D Drafting and Design and 12 lessons; all that's lacking is 3D assembly modeling. (Commercial use is prohibited.) To download KOMPAS-3D LT, register at ascon.net/download.php?dl=305. Read more →

Negative Software Pricing

We can pay $$$ for some software. We can pay $0 for free software. And now we can pay $150 for no software -- a brilliant idea from Sony. ($50 to not install trialware software on your new computer, on top of a required $100 fee for a "business" verison of Vista. Sony has since recinded the fee.) Perhaps others, those who like pushing software upgrades onto our computers, such as Microsoft and Apple, will start charging us if we say "No!" to potentially-damaging upgrades. (Reminds me of pay parking: being charged to not use my car.) Read more →

Mt St Helens Webcam

Every day or so I check the webcam trained on Mt St Helens. This mountain blew off its top in 1980. The US parks service mounted a Web cam on a nearby mountain, and trained it on the crater across the valley. It lets you observe mountain conditions; a friend who teaches Grade 3 students gets them to observe it from time to time. The real reason for the web cam, of course, is to record the next eruption. Several summers ago, hoards of media camped out for several weeks, speculating that another eruption was imminent. It would have been... Read more →

The Essential Reader: The Stories of English

The Stories of English by David Crystal I write for a living, and I write in English. A history of the English language is of interest to me, because of this:I have wondered why a relatively new language like English has such complex grammar. True, we have just one word for "the," whereas the French have three (le, la, and les), and the Germans have 16 different grammatical situations that determine if der, die, or das is employed. Thus I was pleased to receive "The Stories of English" as a Christmas present from my son. The title is unfortunate, for... Read more →

Millions of Options

CAD programs seem to have millions of options to handle all those exceptions to the norm, or to make things just the way we want them. (This is something we manual drafters never needed to deal with.) AutoCAD, for example, has the Options dialog box with ten tabs of options, sub-options, and branching dialog boxes. Plus, AutoCAD has the Drafting Settings dialog box with its four tabs of options -- and a fifth tab was added in AutoCAD 2009. The DimStyle dialog box has seven tabs worth of options. Several dialog boxes, like Plot and Hatch, have a "More Options"... Read more →

Autodesk Keeps Inventor LT Free

Autodesk released a reduced-function edition of Inventor last year in preview mode. The plan was to decide what to do with the product this time this year. They've decided to keep it free (for at least another year), as well as update some of its features to match Inventor 2009 in some ways. Inventor LT Technology Preview 2009 will become available before the current one expires May 1, 2008; it'll be free, but will stop working roughly a year later. (It's not yet available.) Read more →

3 Reasons Against Extended Warranties

I never buy extended warranties, and here are three reasons why: 1. When you pay for an extended warranty, you've made a 100% payment for repairs the item will probably never need. 2. Guestimate the expected cost: multiply the likelihood of repair work times the cost of the repair. For example, the chance of the product breaking down is perhaps 10%; the cost of repair is perhaps $500. The expected cost is $50. If this is higher than the cost of the extended warranty, then the extra warranty is worth it. If not, then not. 3. Your credit card may... Read more →

The Essential Reader: The Weimar Republic

The Weimar Republic: Through the Lens of the Press by Torsten Palmer and Hendrik Neubauer My parents were born in Germany (b. 1924 and b. 1932) during the time of the Weimar Republic, and so I am curious of the history that affected their early years. For my dad, it meant being drafted into the Germany army the day he was due to travel, barefoot, from his dad's rural farm to university on full scholarship; for my mom, the deprivation of living her early teen years in the heavily bombed city of Hamburg. (Weimar Republic is named after the town... Read more →

Blue-Ray And Gamers

My son has an XBOX 360, got the external HD-DVD player from a workmate for cheap and was buying HD-DVD movies until last month, when the supply dried up. He's slightly ticked off at backing the wrong horse, and we were talking yesterday about how the Sony PS3 with its built-in Blu-Ray player is the exact same price (currently) as a stand-alone Blu-Ray player. With Microsoft continuing to believe that people will download movies, there is no Blu-Ray option for the XBOXers. Download movies? My son says Microsoft's online XBOX site has no movies worth downloading, partly because of our... Read more →

Zip: Vista Creates New Security Problem

About 99% of my email is spam, and of the hundreds I get, these days many have an attached ZIP file. The file names are typically ls.zip and vs.zip, and contain HTML code for a Web site in China. (ZIP files contain one or more other files, and are compressed to save file space.) I wondered why Chinese spammers are sending ZIP files. Spammers target the typical low-level computer user, who wouldn't know what to do with a ZIP file. Then today it struck me: Vista users. Vista opens ZIP files as if they were folders. One click, and the... Read more →

NEC: ROTFL!!!!!!!!

NEC paid the University of Utah to produce a study that purports to prove these amazing facts regarding workers using widescreen LCD monitors: -- productivity gains of 76 days a year! -- cost savings of $8,600!! per employee earning $32,500!!! Not surprisingly, NEC hopes to lure you into paying for premium 24" screens (NEC prefers you get one that even bigger!!!!) with a resolution of 1920 by 1200 resolution (or even higher!!!!!). With 19-inchers going for under $200 bucks, it's time for NEC to prod spending on much more expensive screens. Here's the summary: ... the study found that upgrading... Read more →

Google-ized Nanaimo

Google marketing yesterday pushed out the story on Nanaimo being the "Best Known Google Earth Town," as one Google corporate blog named it. The story is that all of the City of Nanaimo's mapping is run on Google, and some of it in real-time through the use of GPSs attached to city-owned vehicles. The silliest example is also the most prominent: no need to look around for where the fire engine is sounding its siren. Instead, just head indoors, start up your Windows computer, wait several minutes for it and the IE browser to launch, and find the location of... Read more →

OpenMoko Releases Cell Phone Designs -- in Pro/E

When I first got this press release, I didn't catch on to the meaning of its headline ("OpenMoko Unlocks Neo Phone Industrial Design") until I got around to reading the first paragraph today: Openmoko... expanded the meaning of Open Source by posting the industrial design source files for its Neo branded mobile phones. Industrial design artists now have the same freedom as software engineers. The CAD files are posted at downloads.openmoko.org/CAD, with each being a ZIP file about 40MB in size: -- Neo (current phone model) in Pro/E and IGES/STEP. -- FreeRunner (next phone model) in Pro/E only. (Openmoko is... Read more →

Vernor Updates

Owen Wengerd updates us on the lawsuit that could rip up all software contracts to the benefit of the customer. In short, Mr Wengerd feels that Autodesk's lawyers are trying to focus the Vernor case so narrowly that its outcome (and fuure appeals) would not affect EULAs. AECnews.com also has info on the latest state of the lawsuit. And both sites have links to related court documents. Ain't blogging wunnerful? We get access to all this information that in the pre-Internet era would effectively have remained hidden. Read more →

The Essential Reader: The Case for Freedom

The Case for Freedom: The Power of Freedom to Overcome Tyranny & Terror by Natan Sharansky with Ron Dermer I initially picked up this book from Chapters (the Canadian equivalent of Borders), because it was $2 on the discount pile. But when I got to reading it, I found it very well written. Natan Sharansky makes one point over and over: only when democracy rules in a country are its people truly free. His reasoning is: In a democracy, the leaders rule at the whim of the people. To return to power every 4-6 years, popularly-elected leaders need to cater... Read more →

Autodesk Installed Base Numbers

At the end of January 2008, Autodesk recorded the following number of software installations for some of its software: AutoCAD LT -- 3,680,000 Stand-alone AutoCAD -- 2,857,000 Inventor -- 775,000 AutoCAD Architecture -- 539,000 AutoCAD Map 3D -- 264,000 AutoCAD Mechanical -- 237,000 Subscribers -- 1,481,000 Read more →

Yahoo! Maps

Yahoo Maps is muchly improved, with a user interface that is much, much nicer than that of Google Maps. The Google product seems stodgy in comparison. And, all its interactivity works with the Opera Web browser. I find Yahoo Maps faster than Google, especially when displaying satellite images with roads overlaid. Yahoo Maps also knew my home position, where as Google doesn't. However, some data is missing from Yahoo. For example, it could not find the Comfort Inn in a city I'll be in this weekend. OTOH, Google cluttered up the map with dozens of other hotels markers, so that... Read more →

Get CoCreate for Free... Or for Less Free

PTC typically has some aggressive sale on its software every month or so. This month it's... Buy a year of Support, and we'll trade your old 3D CAD software for a full professional seat of CoCreate Modeling free! Some of the terms: -- Release 2002 or newer of any major 3D CAD competitor, with some extra conditions applying to Pro/E. -- Can't have already taken another CoCreate promotional offer; offer ends 31 July. -- Proof of purchase required, so no trading in bootlegs! -- Get up to 10 seats in Europe, no limit elsewhere. Um, there is a limit: "Seats... Read more →

Yea! OneSpace Name Goes Away

Some names just don't work well, and CoCreate's "OneSpace" was one of those. Did you even know that all their software was called OneSpace? Evertyhting from OneSpace Modeling PE to OneSpace Suite. It always sounded 1D to me. Today PTC announces the removal of the OneSpace name from all products, except for the one where it might make sense: -- CoCreate Modeling Personal Edition (Free 3D CAD) -- CoCreate Modeling (3D CAD), known as ME/30 during the HP days. -- CoCreate 3D Access and 2D Access -- CoCreate Model Manager. -- CoCreate Drafting (2D CAD), known as ME/10 under HP.... Read more →

Why Pay for Bootlegs?

Over the last two weeks, my Eudora email client's In box has been inundated with messages bearing the subject lines: Autodesk AutoCAD 2008 AutoCAD ready to download AutoCAD OEM version AutoCAD 2008 software adds features to help make everyday tasks These are spams for a site that sells bootleg software, such as AutoCAD 2008 for $129.95. (They claim, incorrectly, that the retail price is $6720.) The good news is that students needn't pay $130 for a bootleg copy. Students and teachers can get it for free from Autodesk's own students.autodesk.com Web site. All you need is an email address associated... Read more →

ViewCube Research

ViewCube: a 3D orientation indicator and controller is the name of paper that Autodesk researchers submitted to the Symposium on Interactive 3D Graphics. Azam Khan, Igor Mordatch, George Fitzmaurice, Justin Matejka, and Gordon Kurtenbach are with Autodesk Research in Toronto Canada. Their research showed that users preferred clicking the corners and faces of the cube, over other interfaces, such as the 3dOrbit command's arc ball and a toolbar-style row of buttons. Read more →

Google Apps Save an Emergency

I had taken along an older notebook computer (should that be an "elder" notebook?) to get some work done on a short business trip. When I started it up, Windows complained of some error and refused to work. How to get my writing done? Then I remembered: Google Apps. I had access to a nearby desktop computer, launched Google Docs, and wrote my thousand words. Back home again, I didn't need to use a USB key to transfer the article from my aging notebook computer (whose wireless is flakey). I just accessed the article on my desktop computer through the... Read more →

Siemens Agrees to Use Its Own Software

Siemens CIO Global Forum (the governing body of Siemens) approves the use of Siemens's 3D JT data format for long-term data retention throughout all of its divisions. Surely, this is no surprise. OTOH, notes the press release, "The company selected JT over all other relevant data formats after a comprehensive evaluation." And the head of Siemens PLM Software, Tony Affuso, adds that the JT evaluation took place well before Siemens acquired his company. So, there could have been a different outcome, I suppose. It would be interesting to learn of the competitive formats that didn't make it. Does JT replace... Read more →

TIPS: Adorable Toolbars

The redesigned toolbars in AutoCAD 2009 are just adorable -- cute and tiny. Just one problem: how to get them to show up when the ribbon is the user interface. In the past, the usual shortcut manner of accessing toolbars was to right-click a toolbar. This worked well, because there were usually a couple toolbars open. With AutoCAD 2009, zero toolbars are open by default. The new workaround is to right-click the Quick Access toolbar (found on the title bar), and then choose Toolbars | AutoCAD. (There is another method that should work, but doesn't: when I choose View |... Read more →

The Essential Reader: A Museum Called Canada

The Museum Called Canada: 25 Rooms of Wonder by Charlotte Gray Canada isn't as renown for its museums as are other countries. Before I flew my family to Washington DC, my wife demanded, "This better be worth it!" After three days in the Smithsonians, the demand changed: "When do we get to come back?" And we were not alone. The capital city was inundated by school groups from around the USA. Here in Canada, we tend to visit the local museums in the small centers. The big ones in the capital city of Ottawa just aren't a destination. I'm not... Read more →