OK, here we are at the CGM Capabilities Webinar, which we joined late, since WebEx spent the first ten minutes insisting the event starts at 4pm this afternoon -- instead of 7am this morning. After a few "Huhs?" and refreshes, WebEx let us in, but then complained that our Opera 11.5 Web browser is not supported by WebEx (boo).
Over to FireFox 5.0 and we're in!
We're hearing someone telling us that CGM does robust modeling. For example, a parting line is a sharp line that goes across curves. Fillet the area, and many sharp parts are added by other modelers; CGM handles this as a special case to ensure the fillet as only a sharp edge at the parting line.
Why are we listening in on this? Spatial is a division of Dassault Systemes, and Spatial this year is finally licensing the modeling kernel used by Catia V5 and Catia V6 CAD programs. This means that non-Dassault CAD systems can use the same modeler as Catia. In particular, it allows competitors to read Catia files accurately. (Writing Catia files is not available until later this year.)
Data is not translated by 3D InterOp (the name of the API licensed by Spatial), but is extracted, and so is fast and accurate, according to the presenter. Practical short-term effect: SolidWorks can finally read (and eventually) write Catia files. Huh, how about that. Took only, what, 10 years?
Seeing a bit of a demo now. A summary, and we're done with the presentation.
Interesting that the CGM Capabilities webinar comes on the same day that the Catia To NX Migration webinar happens.
Posted by: Matt Lombard | Jul 20, 2011 at 07:47 AM
> SolidWorks can finally read (and eventually) write Catia files
Unless SWX switches from Parasolid to CGM (good luck with that) they'll be converting their Parasolid data to V5 just like any other Parasolid-based app.
Posted by: Anon | Jul 20, 2011 at 08:23 PM