WorldCAD Access

On September 7, the cloud dies at the edge of CAD

A bus runs over Autodesk's future When I wrote last week here on WorldCAD Access about how edge computing will replace cloud computing for certain applications, I could not know that a week later I'd be given a demo from a large software company about edge computing for 3D design. The idea behind edge computing is this: the Internet as the data bus that connects the CPU with the display is too slow. The examples of edge computing I wrote about last week were for autonomous automobiles, drones, and robots -- they can't wait for data to arrive slowly. A... Read more →

Benq's Brand-new PD2710QC Monitor

Reviewed by Ralph Grabowski When the public relations firm for Benq asked me if I would want to review one of their new 27" and 32" monitors aimed (in part) at CAD users, I asked for the smaller one of the two. That's because a couple of years back I reviewed the first-ever 30" monitor from Lenovo, and was unpleasantly overwhelmed by its size, but even more so with its weight. Sure, once placed on my desk, the 25-pound weight was no longer a problem, but the huge size was overwhelming for my desk and the adjacent monitors. (From what... Read more →

What it's like to have a cell phone with 5000mAh battery

ASUS ZenFone 3 Zoom Cell phones used to have great battery life, lasting weeks. Credit the low-res, monochrome screen for that. Then a decade ago Apple came up with a power-sucking full-screen phone where most of the innards consisted of a battery that might power the phone for most of a day. It is sad that technology crucial to our daily lives can't make it through a single one of our daily lives. Recall the post-iPhone launch scenes at airports of desperate-looking business people squatting next to precious power outlets -- assuming that the airport made any available to the... Read more →

Revit Co-founder Corrects Revit's History

Fresh code The CAD industry is incestuous, with people wandering from firm to firm, starting new ones, joining old ones. The software itself tends to work and look the same, no matter the source -- with a few exceptions. Even without knowing the inside story, it is possible to speculate over the lines of heritage. Sometimes we get it wrong. One factoid concerns the source of Revit, which seemingly came out of nowhere, helped by $50+ million in funding, and whose founders came from PTC -- a firm solidly based in MCAD, not AEC. (A factoid is speculation reported often... Read more →

After Cloud Computing comes Edge Computing

Can you say, "Pivot," again? Software companies like Autodesk, Graebert, and Onshape have gone all-in for the cloud. Others, such as Siemens PLM Software, Bricsys, and PTC, are cautious about jumping on a bandwagon. Dassault Systemes is a straddler, with V6 being cloud, but V5, Solidworks, and DraftSight firmly on the desktop. The development was logical: Computing moving from standalone PCs to proprietary local area networks (office-wide networking), to standardized LANs (twisted-pair ethernet), to Internet (worldwide networking), to WiFi (untethered networking), and finally to cloud (multiple servers online). But design offices are not homogeneous, as much as some marketing departments... Read more →

Why I gave up on the UMI Super smartphone

Three strikes and you're out I was pretty enthusiastic about the Umi (since renamed Umidigi) Super smartphone, with its big battery, high-end smartphone specs, and an under-$200 pricetag. I've written about it three other times on this blog. It's a beautiful-looking phone (see figure below; image source: gearbest.com), runs stock Android 7, and, while it worked, I loved it. The last time I reported on it here, the glass had smashed after falling on an uneven ceramic tile floor. No worries! Due to circumstances, I had a second one. Half-a-day and I had replicated the apps and widgets on the... Read more →

HP's new VR system for businesses

Z VR Backpack G1 workstation It's being unveiled to the public today at Siggraph, but about 100 journalists got an online preview last week of HP's new Z VR Backpack G1 workstation. Yah, it's a backpack onto which we clip a small Z workstation, don VR [virtual reality] goggles and navigation controls, and then walk about in a synthesized 3D environment. The people are real, the car is not The backpack, workstation, and batteries are said to weight little more than ten pounds (4.6kg). "Batteries" in the plural, because there are two, so that we can hot-swap one out when... Read more →