Rumour: Adobe to sell its MCAD translators; CCE steps halfway in

I've reported before that Adobe has given up on its MCAD business, which primarily consisted of the MCAD translators it got by buying in 2006 TTF (Trade and Technologies France), a CAD file translation company. For a while Adobe sold a technical version of Acrobat (named "3D" that included the xlators), but then folded its capabilities into the Pro Extended edition.

Imagine my surprise when a former employee told me earlier this year that Adobe had shut down that entire division. Subsequently, the rumour emerged that Adobe was selling off the TTF technology, most like to Tech Soft America, also known as "The HOOPS People."

(Shades of Visio's experience with IntelliCAD!)

I've since heard from Adobe customers who are furious at being left unsupported. As CAD programs changed their file formats over the last number of months, the Adobe translators become out-of-date, and so useless for newer drawings. Translation software is expensive, but Adobe's was relatively cheap; so it's expensive to switch to another vendor.

(Like being sent a DOCX file before OpenOffice updated its xlators.)

CCE sees the opportunity and so today announces ODX/3DPDF, a C++ API that generates 3D PDF files from CAD files data, "...independent of Adobe software." The catch: this is only for programmers, not for end users.

(The cost to Adobe: it can no longer be relied upon by an industry whose files are crucial for being relied upon.)

Comments

[Roos Jaikanen]

Interesting piece of news/rumour. Its quite a coincidence that when Adobe sells off the TTF business, which was based in Lyon(France), Datakit which is also based in Lyon (from their webiste), has stopped giving the Solidworks importer for Mcneel to include in Rhino?

The customers who bought translators from Adobe can buy other products from the market.

[Vinay Wagle]

Ralph,

Thanks for highlighting how important and equally difficult it is to keep the translation technology up-to-date as the underlying file formats change. CCE has been doing this successfully for 20 years now, and this is a key focus for the company. Its not without reason that 3 of top 5 CAD vendors rely on our interop technology. Obviously translation technology has never been a focus for Adobe. In light of the recent developments from Adobe, we are working very hard to create full-blown replacements for Adobe's 3D PDF based end-user products.

Vinay Wagle
VP Sales & Marketing
CCE

[Adobe Investor]

Lets see: the brilliant minds at Adobe paid a reported $25+ millions to acquire TTF technology, tick off more uncounted millions to create the 3D pdf technology on top of that, all to finally sell the failed technology to some other company for peanuts while at the same time tick off many customers who purchased their product? Does anyone know how much Adobe got in this stupendous bargain?

Where are activist shareholders when you need one?