WorldCAD Access

PS/2 Port Servers as Power Source

Computers still have those round "PS/2" ports for connecting mice and keyboards. Except that nowadays most keyboards and mice use rectangular USB ports -- making the PS/2 ports superfluous. ("PS/2" comes from 1987, when IBM introduced the then-new PS/2 line of desktop computers. The PS was short for personal system; the 2 referred to second generation, IBM's original PC being the first generation. Some of the changes to the PS/2 did not survive, such as its OS/2 operating system; other features became standards in the industry, such as the PS/2 port and the VGA graphics board -- short for video... Read more →

Bricscad 10: What's New?

I was looking at a beta of Bricscad 10 last week, and it looked no different to me, superficially. And that's a good thing for existing users, because then they don't suffer from SUIS [sudden user interface shock]. Because changes are not obvious, Bricsys ceo Erik De Keyser yesterday emailed me the list of new-to-10 features: Smooth view panning, independent of drawing size. Entities highlight when the cursor hovers over them. Hold down Shift+spacebar, and then click to cycle through overlapping entities. Hold down Shift to select multiple grips, and then move or copy them simultaneously. In 3D views, the... Read more →

Reading MIME (*.mim) Files

My daughter sent some photos she took for her Digital Photography course at college. She sent sent two pictures in one email, and they were regular .jpg attachments; the second two were embedded in another email as 5.4MB worth of MIME data, which looks like this: Content-Type: image/jpeg Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64 Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="DSC_0211.JPG"/9j/4AAQSkZJRgABAQEAYABgAAD/4RJRRXhpZgAASUkqAAgAAAAKAA8BAgASAAAAhgAAABABAgAK AAAAmAAAABIBAwABAAAAAAAAABoBBQABAAAAogAAABsBBQABAAAAqgAAACgBAwABAAAAAgAAADEB etc. How to view the pictures? A quick google found that the venerable WinZip program does. I still have WinZip 3.1 that came out for Windows 9x, but it will install on Vista, albeit with lots of incompatibility warnings (whose fault is that, Microsoft?). Ignore the... Read more →

Making Euros From Free

Many CAD vendors have a free version of their software that expires after 30 days, or student versions that adds watermarks to prevent commercial use. CAD Schroer is no different, offering its free MEDUSA4 Personal 2D/3D CAD software for Linux and that other operating system at www.cad-schroer.com/index.php?&ziel=Products-MEDUSA-M4Personal&ref=pr0908_eserv All CAD vendors offer trial and free versions as at tease, of course, hoping the customer will pay for the full experience (and then keep paying, year after yea)r. CAD Schroer is no different, but they have a very different twist on the money-making side. I'll let Michael Schroer explain it: Many MEDUSA4... Read more →

Q3: Corel Down 28%

Corel reported Q3 revenues were $47.4 million, down 28.5$ from last year's $66.2 million. Net income was $7.2 million. Source. Read more →

Non-disclosure Will Cost USA Bloggers $11,000

WorldCAD Access and upFront.eZine have been making disclosure statements for several years now. We were the first in the CAD industry to declare when a vendor "pays" us, whether in providing transportation to a corporate event or providing free hardware for review. We do this so that you know when an article might be biased, even though we work hard at writing neutrally most of the time. (Sometimes, we allow our feelings to show through.) Now in the United States, the Federal Trade Commission has decided that all American bloggers have to make disclosure statements -- or pay an $11,000... Read more →

iray in Next Acad?

nVidia last week released new GPU-based iray rendering technology, and says it is integrated with the mental ray renderer used by software from Autodesk, Dassault, and PTC, such as AutoCAD. In its press release, nVidia sez: iray rendering technology will be included with mental ray 3.8 starting in late November 2009 at no extra cost to existing customers and OEMs under maintenance. iray is much faster at rendering ("minutes" instead of "hours," according to Jon Peddie, president of Jon Peddie Research) but requires that your computer have a newish nVidia graphics board, because it runs on the GPU and CUDA... Read more →

Q3: Oce Down 10%

Oce's Q3 revenues dropped declined 10% to e631 million (about $820 million), but chairman Rokus van Iperen figures his company did better than the rest of his industry, whose revenues fell 19%. The European markets weakened further compared with the first half of the year... For the fourth quarter we anticipate markets will remain challenging, although we are noticing early indications of bottoming out in some US markets. Net income was negative e25million, due to restructuring costs of e32 million. Further cuts are planned for Q2. The bright side was Oce's outsourced document management service, which grew 7% as clients... Read more →

From PageMaker to InDesign, Grudgingly

I continue to use PageMaker v7, long after Adobe abandoned it. But now my book publisher is insisting that I start using InDesign for next year's AutoCAD 2011-series of books. (I design and typeset all my books.) Fortunately, Adobe has a generous upgrade price for us holder-outers, just $199 for InDesign CS4. I bought it last night from adobe.com and -- after a 3 hour delay while Adobe "checks your order" -- was able to download and install it. Some stuff I will appreciate, like the unlimited undoes (PageMaker had sort of half an undo), drag and drop, and being... Read more →

Vernor Wins; Customers Win

A judge decided today that Tim Vernor did not contravene the USA Copyright Act, when he resold AutoCAD software he apparently picked up at garage sales. The judge told Autodesk to back off harassing him. From Owen Wengerd's CAD/court: "The court declares that Plaintiff's [Vernor's] sales of Defendant's [Autodesk's] copyrighted AutoCAD software do not violate the Copyright Act to the extent Plaintiff [Vernor] acquired them in the manner described in the order. Defendant [Autodesk] is hereby enjoined from asserting its rights under the Copyright Act as a basis for preventing or otherwise hindering Plaintiff's [Vernor] sales of AutoCAD software." (The... Read more →

Tailoring AutoCAD 2010 -- Ready Now

I'm working until 8pm each night, getting the latest edition of Tailoring AutoCAD ready. This will be the 8th edition of my best-selling ebook. "Tailoring AutoCAD" began w-a-a-y back in the days of AutoCAD Release 13 as a monthly column for AutoCAD World magazine. In exchange for not paying me very much, the editor allowed me to take back the copyright after three months. After 90 days, then, I posted the column on the upfrontezine.com site, where the originals can still be viewed at www.upfrontezine.com/tailor/tailor01.htm. A reader suggested in 2002 that it would be awfully convenient if I would collect... Read more →

WorldCAD Access Now Available in "Every" Language

WorldCAD Access adds Google's translation service so that it can be read in your language. Select a language from the Translate Into Your Language droplist at the top-right of the Web page. Google admits machine translation isn't as good as human translation. When I tried out the German translation, it wasn't too bad. I dunno how the others are turning out. For a proper translation into Russian, you can continue reading WorldCAD Access at www.nanocad.ru/information/blogs/index.php?page=blog&blog=WorldCAD_Access. Read more →

What Should Be the Price of CAD Software?

The price of CAD software today runs from $0 to over $20,000/license. In the 1980s, the price of software + proprietary hardware + support could top $150,000/seat from the likes of Intergraph and Computervision. What should the price be? This was a question that came up often in my meetings with eight CAD vendors in Russia. They have a price advantage over the large American and French firms; outsourced Russian programmers cost just $25-$45 an hour. Even Autodesk CIS offers AutoCAD 2008 for the equivalent of just US$1,000 (AutoCAD's original price tag in the mid-1980s.) The Russians were particularly interested... Read more →