WorldCAD Access

This is why the Omidyars of the world can't run publications

Something to do with a Chinese wall Ken Silverstein's (I actually don't know who he is) non-rant was reported by jimromenesko.com (also unknown to me): "Ken Silverstein Resigns From Pierre Omidyar’s First Look Media, Blasts ‘Dishonest’ Leadership." I am vaguely familiar with Omidyar (eBay founder who today is worth $6.4 billion). The story Silverstein tells is to me, unfortunately, very familiar. The story in short: the need to meddle in the world's affairs comes upon a recently-minted billionaire ("the rest of the world should see things the way I do") and so sticks his fingers into gears he knows not... Read more →

Why my desktop needs 4-5 monitors

All for one When I write my books, I use four or five screens. My Windows 7 workstation has three, as illustrated below by the screen grab: In the center is the main 23" monitor (running at a higher than typical resolution of 2048 x 1152 ) for the InDesign desktop publishing software that I use. I find that InDesign fits two pages better with this higher-res monitor than on standard HD-res monitors. On the right is the second monitor, 18" and 1360 x 768, for InDesign’s many palettes and PaintShop Pro (for editing figures). The secondary monitor with lower... Read more →

Why VR is the next 3D

No! to shoes-on-face I was at the Siggraph computer graphics conference four years ago when the industry was having a collective orgasm over 3D tvs and movies. It was the largest collection of hard-core believers housed in a single building since the last gathering of New Atheists. Every booth screamed out with reassurance that 3D could save the world -- well, the world of the computer graphics industry -- because 3D production and viewing would cost more, it would force consumers and movie houses to buy new equipment, and because 3D was the natural way to see things, not like... Read more →

Hardware review: Logitech K480 triple-Bluetooth keyboard

Intriguing concept, flawed implementation My wife Heather is becoming sufficiently comfortable using her iPad that I suggested she take it as her "computer" the next time she travels. She would need a Bluetooth keyboard with which to type emails. The local flyer of BestBuy that week featured Logitech's new portable keyboard, the K480. I had read about this keyboard, it intrigued me, here was my excuse for buying one, and now it was available locally, finally. Well, except it wasn't. None of the outlets in our area carried it in stock; a helpful store employed finally located the elusive keyboard... Read more →

Beta test the new 2D mechanical nanoCAD

nanoCAD Mechanica Nanosoft has this krazy idea that it can give away its CAD software and then make money on... Well, it sounded crazy back in the day (they've around quite a while), but now it's normal. It's just that today we call it making "in-app purchases." This week they announced a beta test program for nanoCAD Mechanica, a standalone 2D CAD program that comes with tools and a library of parts for creating mechanical designs. It uses "an industry accepted parametric engine" running on their nanoCAD CAD software. It has tools for pneumatics and hydraulics, piping design, gears, shafts,... Read more →

What Trimble Thinks About CAD Software

Quite a bit less than we'd guess For us, CAD software is our lives; for Trimble, not so much. The current priorities of the management of any public company are made public for an hour every three months during their conference calls with financial analysts. During this time, they trot out happy numbers and exciting plans designed to keep the share price up. (Sometimes management just grasps at anything. I recall a conference call from American Eagle, the clothing store, where management promised higher sales through... a new line of printed Ts [t-shirts]. Printed Ts aren't selling so well anymore.)... Read more →

Loyalty

by Owen Wengerd Let me tell you a story about loyalty. For many years, I've used a popular and highly regarded tax form preparation software from a well-known company. As a small business owner in the United States, I have to fill out the dreaded Schedule C form. In the early years I used "interview" mode to guide me through. I'm a hands-on kind of person, so once I gained some experience, I liked that the software gave me the option of filling out the forms manually by entering numbers right on the tax form. Meanwhile, it kept related forms... Read more →

New this week in upFront.eZine: we talk with PTC about PLM Cloud

Issue #846 In this week's issue of upFront.eZine newsletter, we have for you: PTC's PLM Cloud by Ralph Grabowski Tom Shoemaker -- PTC vp of PLM marketing -- and Chris Bergquist -- director of PLM solutions -- talk to upfront.eZine about the Web-based PLM newly offered by PTC. (PLM is short for "product lifecycle management.") You can read about the business of CAD at www.worldcadaccess.com/upfrontezine/2015/02/ptcs-plm-cloud.html. Read more →

foto of the sunday: ice storm

January 15, 2005 Following a mild ice storm a decade ago, in which everything in our town was coated with ice, Christmas lights colorized the ice-coated branches of this birch tree in our neighbour's yard. Read more →

Newest ebook on BricsCAD V15 now selling

Two of three I've been updating my line of books for BricsCAD V15, the latest release of the 3D and 2D software from BricsCAD, and here is my progress report: Pages from the new "Inside BricsCAD V15" ebook Now available: Inside BricsCAD V15 ($20) How to make 3D models and 2D drawings with BricsCAD Dozens of useful tips Bigger at 284 full-color pages Updated for BricsCAD V15: Coverage of BricsCAD V15 for OS X and Windows 10 New start screen and workspaces New ribbon, drawing tabs, and LookFrom and Tips widgets To order, see instructions below Now available: BricsCAD V15... Read more →

What Dassault plans for its future

To 2015 and beyond! During last week's conference call with financial analysts, Dassault Systemes ceo Bernard Charles talked about his plans for the future. - - - To reach our ambitious mission on strategy objectives, over the last three years we have completely reshaped our applications portfolio and adapted all facets of our organization. Research and development's significant efforts were quite visible in the first quarter of 2014, where we delivered our 3Dexperience platform and introduced an expanded portfolio of Industry Solution Experiences, including our first cloud-plus mobile solutions. And this effort followed a massive simplification of our product portfolio.... Read more →

What Dassault plans for the cloud

It's to be new from the ground up During last week's conference call with financial analysts, Dassault Systemes ceo Bernard Charles answered this question about its plans for the cloud. (Text edited mildly for clarity.) Jay Vleeschhouwer (Griffin Securities): Could you talk about your plans and expectations for your cloud products and services? It seems very clear for those who must have been tracking this industry for a while that we're in the early stages of a potentially fairly significant platform shift, perhaps not dissimilar to what we saw a couple of decades ago on the desktop. And could you... Read more →

What that other kernel, C3D, is doing

From St Petersburg Most of us are familiar with ACIS (from Dassault Systemes) and Parasolid (from Siemens PLM Software), the two solid modeling kernels that battle it out for market supremacy. But there are a lot of others, such as SOLIDS++ from IntegrityWare, CGM (from Dassault), Granite (from PTC), the open source Open CASCADE, and so on. C3D from ASCON Group is less familiar, and so I thought I'd parrot their press release on the latest updates. The kernel has three parts, a modeler of geometry, a solver of constraints, and a converter formats. Montage of functions new to C3D... Read more →

New this week in upFront.eZine: we talk with PTC about the Internet of Things

Issue #845 In this week's issue of upFront.eZine newsletter, we have for you: How PTC Connects IoT with CAD by Ralph Grabowski Rob Black is senior director of ThingWorx product management at PTC, and he tells upFront.eZine about the Internet of Things software newly offered by PTC. You can read about the business of CAD at www.upfrontezine.com/2015/upf-845.htm. Read more →

foto of the sunday: Barcelona Hostel

September, 2008 Read more →

I'd go for a free lunch from Autodesk

...and take the free iPad mini A reader sends me this in a brown envelope and asks, "Received this email today. Wonder how many other SolidWorks World attendees will get one?" "Autodesk believes that the time has come to reimagine 3D CAD from the ground up." Except Fusion 360 runs mostly on the desktop. Could Autodesk be trying to head off Onshape, which is actually new ground-up and written by experienced Solidworks programmers? Read more →

New this week in upFront.eZine: we talk with Dell about their upgraded laptop

Issue #844 In this week's issue of upFront.eZine newsletter, we have for you: Dell Refreshes its M3800 Engineering "Ultrabook" by Ralph Grabowski Dell doesn't have a new line of mobile workstations this year; instead, it is upgrading some features of the M3600. You can read about the business of CAD at www.upfrontezine.com/2015/upf-844.htm. Read more →

Linux Grows as Free CAD Platform

News from Gudrun Tebart A press release from CAD Schroer of Germany says that downloads of the Linux version of their free MEDUSA4 Personal MCAD software nearly doubled, from 14% of downloads in 2013 to 26% in 2014. Linux users among the Top 10 download countries are... Switzerland up 48% France up 39% United States up 36% Germany up 18% Russia up 18% Canada up 16% Brazil up 12% The CAD Schroer press release is lacking in two ares: it does not provide absolute numbers, and because percentages are relative, we don't what it means for Russia to be up... Read more →

3dconnexion's new mouse: corded and 2D

CadMouse brings back middle button 3dconnexion is best known for its line of 3D mice, including most recently a cordless model. So it may come as a surprise that their latest model is a 2D mouse, and a corded one at that. The 2D CadMouse is designed to compliment their 3D mice. Well, 2D mice always have. The demo jocks show off how they can design in MCAD with the 3D mouse in the left hand, and the traditional 2D one in the traditional right hand (for the 90% of the world that's right-handed). The drawback is that we CAD... Read more →

Live blogging the release 11 of Aras Innovator press event

Breaking down barriers to collaboration, they say Aras does PLM, something that we don't usually cover, but here we are. It's Release 11 that's being announced today, which is interesting in that the cloud promises to eliminate release numbers -- a bad thing in my mind. Anyhow, we are just waiting for everyone to show up and'll get started in a few minutes. Doug MacDonald is hosting the event as product marketing director, along with John Sperling, vp of product management. Today's agenda. Remember to press F5 to refresh this page. Who is Aras? 500 customers of their PLM (product... Read more →

Live blogging the Raspberry Pi 2 launch

Runs Windows 10 free Rushing to our desktop workstation, we got just 15 minutes notice about the launch event for the computer press, here this Monday morning. The new device is said to be 6x faster, still costs just $35, and will run Windows 10 free in a special arrangement with Microsoft. While I disparage Microsoft's attempts over the decades to monopolize the software side of the personal computer industry, it is good to see that the new ceo is doing what the former one refused to see: new markets. Other examples, of course, include apps for Androids and iOS.... Read more →

foto of the sunday: German Technical Museum

Berlin No, this airplane was not trying to give me a haircut. Rather, it is on display outside the German Technical Museum, one of the finest such museums in the world. The aircraft is mounted in the air, above an upper story balcony, allowing visitors to walk underneath it, and get pictures like this one. I am unsure, but think this was one of the airplanes used during the Berlin Airlift that saved the people of West Berlin (like my relatives) from starvation by the Communists. http://www.sdtb.de/English.122.0.html Read more →