WorldCAD Access

foto of the sunday: the rather red corner store

A corner store in Washington DC, taken in June 2000. It boasts two public telephones, two air conditioners, two Coke machines, and two garbage containers. Read more →

The precision of computer modeling is rather divergent

As a transportation engineer in the 1980s, I used mainframe computers to model traffic volume predictions, and was embarrassed at the poor outcome. Predicted traffic jams failed to materialize, because human behavior cannot be modeled well. We learn to route around problems with our cars. Some 30 years later, computer modeling continues to be used today for unpredictable events, such as the paths for hurricanes. I was struck by the divergent results of 15 computer models predicting paths for Hurricane Bonnie over the next five days. One path shows the hurricane (or its aftermath) ending up in Toronto, while another... Read more →

foto of the sunday: for you steampunk fans

Foto I took in Washington DC, June 2000. I think it might be the timer mechanism for the bell atop the old postal building? Read more →

Latest pen plotter made from Lego parts

This YouTube video shows a felt tip pen plotter made from Lego. "Horseattack" wired the electronics to control the motions, and wrote the Mac OS X printer driver. Although a pen is used, this is not a vector plotter. The action is like that of a raster printer, where the print head goes back and forth as the paper slowly moves through. The pen is raised and lowered to create gaps and to draw. Best to see the video here . Read more →

European repository of historical CAD documents

Fernando G. Valderrama of Spain writes me: While reading a friend´s doctoral thesis about CAAD history, I discovered that most of his research was done using Internet and only Internet. In this way, only a part of the story is written, that of North-American origin, as we Europeans don't share this enthusiasm about publishing every bit of significant history. Information about European created software was completely missing. With the help of the architect and web designer Alfredo Calosci, I uploaded a large set of commercial documents... When you go to the beautifully-designed http://www.arcadecad.es/cad2/index.php site, you'll see 215 CAD manuals segregated... Read more →

Coming up May 1: 15th anniversary of upFront.eZine

It was about a year ago, during the first Open Design Alliance conference (in Holland), that ODA president Arnold van der Wieide presented upFront.eZine a commemorative plaque celebrating its 600th issue. I'm not sure why, but I forgot to show it off to everyone. So now that it is a year later, and upFront.eZine is up to 641 issues, here it is: the plaque is a Dutch-style ceramic tile, 6x6" (14x14cm). Coming up on May 1, upFront.eZine turns 15 years old, and continues to be the longest-running e-publication in the CAD world. Its archives have proven useful to people needing... Read more →

Looking for the Graphtec Command Set Reference manual

upFront.eZine reader David Anderson wrote in Febraury: "Looking to restore a Graphtec GP 2106 plotter. Any info -- manuals, pens, parts, resources, etc. (Graphtec no longer supports them) -- you can recommend would be helpful." Today he writes me with this update: Thanks to a wonderful individual in Baltimore, Md., I have received a copy of the GP 2106 User's Manual which has appendices that have handshaking, emulation and other physical/supply information. Great! This gets me halfway to my restoration goal. The Plotter manual comes in two parts, though: the User's Manual and the Command Set Reference Manual. If you... Read more →

A story from inside Autodesk in the early days of Carol Bartz as ceo

Nilofer Merchant writes in Business Week on There's More to Innovation Than Good Ideas: As Autodesk CEO, Carol Bartz wanted fast action on innovation, but her plan didn't work out. Nilofer Merchant explains how to avoid the "Air Sandwich." Ms Bartz got the idea to launch six new product lines with in 18 months. The story, unfortunately, doesn't tell us what they were. (Over at the Wall Street Journal, Ms Merchant gives us one of the endings to the story: "I got fired by Carol Bartz [the CEO] of Autodesk.") Read more →

Autodesk ships AutoCAD R13 for UNIX 14 years ago

Registered AutoCAD R13 for UNIX customers will receive the latest version of AutoCAD R13 for UNIX in late February 1996. - Autodesk Ships an Updated Version of AutoCad R13 for UNIX; The Leader In Design Software Delivers Object-Oriented Technology to UNIX. Read more →

For some CAD users, the drawback of the cloud ain't so new

The fundamental problem with putting CAD software on the cloud is that it will be paid for through rental. Like renting a home, you will pay month after month, the price increasing set at the whim of the landlord. And after paying for years and years, you own nothing -- not even the data, should the landlord decide to change the rental terms so drastically that you need to find a new place on a month's notice. Over at Matt Lombard's Dezign Stuff blog, Kevin Quigley relates his story of renting think3. His experience serves as a worthwhile warning against... Read more →

From December 1995, the oldest press release in my electronic records

A reader was wondering if I had any press releases from the original IntelliCADD company (before it was purchased by Softdesk). I might, but if I did, they would be locked away in my long-abandoned CompuServe account. I wondered which might be the oldest press release in my electronic archive, going back to when I first got onto the Internet. (I still use Eudora as my email client, and its Press Release folder now contains 15,696 press releases going back to December 1995.) The first one was from Cadkey (now Kubotek USA) from the days when they still owned DataCAD... Read more →

CyberGlove works with Jack from Siemens PLM -- just like before

The wireless CyberGlove II works with Siemens' Jack digital human modeling software, providing real-time hand motion analysis. But this is not new news: CyberGlove Systems joins the Siemens Solution Partner Program as a Software and Technology partner, formalizing a long standing relationship with Siemens PLM Software supporting the CyberGlove. Source. Read more →

Video of AutoCAD in 1987

Leif Steinert resurrects the good ol' days with 45 seconds of video from 1987. The video shows AutoCAD Release 9 running on an 6MHz NEC 286 AT clone and MS-DOS. He enters the plot command, and we briefly see his HP DraftPro plotter at work -- which he calls "the money machine." http://www.youtube.com/user/AutoCad9in1987 Read more →

Does Visio Ever Change?

Visio 2010 is available as a beta download today from www.microsoft.com/office/2010/en/visio (requires registration). Having written a number of books on Visio (98, 2000, and 2002 releases), I was interested to see how far Visio has progressed over the last eight years. After reading the features that Microsoft marketing considers to be among the Top Ten, I was dismayed that little had changed. Here's a sampling: Visio 2010 makes every step in creating diagrams easier. Jump-start diagramming with a diverse set of pre-drawn shapes, sample drawings, and templates. Add and align shapes easily and accurately. Make your diagrams more appealing and... Read more →

The Day Sun Announced Jini

upFront.eZine #117 from 21 July, 1998 led with the headline, Sun Announces Jini. Jini (pronounced "genie") was supposed to allow any computing device to connect to a network as easily as a plugging a phone into the wall outlet. Jini distributes computing power among devices connected to a peer-to-peer network sharing each other's resources. A lookup service keeps track of devices on the network. ...vendors working with Sun include Novell, Ericsson, Canon, Epson, Toshiba, Quantum, and Mitsubishi. In the newsletter, I wrote that "In my mind's eye, I see the wording of press releases that will flood my mailbox": "Bentley... Read more →

Press Release Arrives from 1969

Email can be slow. Last week, I got an email sent to me at the beginning of May. As I understand it, sometimes mail servers get overloaded and so store messages for later delivery. Kind of like the rare horror story of Lazy the Mailman storing his route's mail in the basement. Today I noticed an email at the very top of my email client (my Inbox is sorted by date). Opening it, the send date was revealed to be: Date: Wed, 31 Dec 1969 17:14:07 -0700 A press release from nearly the pre-history of CAD. How exciting! An electronic... Read more →

10th Anniversary of Posting IntelliCAD Source Code

Today is the tenth anniversary of the IntelliCAD Technology Consortium web site going live with source code for IntelliCAD 2000 freely available to constortium members. The ITC's executive director from back then, Ronald Prepchuk, provides us with a slice of history: One thing I discovered was that it was the intention to roll IntelliCAD into Visio to make one product. Feeling that would be a disaster I set out in December of 1998 to write a white paper on fixing IntelliCAD... On April 15, 1999 I delivered it to Jeremy Jaech, President of Visio... A couple of weeks prior to... Read more →

Russian Flashback: T-FLEX V7

I'm editing my interview with TOP Systems from Moscow, Russia, and came across the part where executive officer Sergey Bikulov is telling me about his company's involvement with North American distributor Martin Sales International. I recalled that name, and checked my press release archive. Sure enough, from 4 July 2000, here is what they had to say: We've changed our 3D kernel from ACIS to Parasolid, and the attached releases (long and short versions) have that and other information about our new Version 7 of T-FLEX Parametric Pro. Although we are not extremely well known in North America (we've been... Read more →

Oldest CAD Vendor?

Who is the oldest CAD vendor still operating? My guess is Intergraph (originally named M&S Computing), based in Huntsville Alabama. Its first product was real-time software for NASA, sometime in the 1960s -- which makes it at least 40 years old. Who is the longest serving employee in CAD? That might belong to the staff at ACS Software, who have been there since the company's beginning in 1981. Debbie Simpson of ACS sent a press release yesterday with this footer: Did you know that 2009 marks ACS Software's 28th year in business?! That's right, ACS has been around since 1981... Read more →

What Teens Want (Media Edition)

Teenager Matthew Robson of Morgan Stanley wrote a report* that has the blogosphere buzzing. I thought I'd respond to his points from the viewpoint of a parent of three teens/post-teens (18 to 22 year olds): Teens don’t want to pay for music, and certainly not CDs. They’ll either download it illegally or going on streaming sites to listen to what they want, when they want. The issue is not paying; the issue is access. When they hear of a song they like (through friends, in a movie, or a music-conscious tv show like The OC), they want a copy now.... Read more →

Happy Birthday, Canada -- older than most

I'm just back from Europe, where 1000-year-old buildings are passe -- and where Germany is celebrating its 60th birthday. No kidding; they're counting the 60 years going back to when a reset button got pressed in 1949. Germany: where everyone is an expert on George Bush, but no one knows about the 2010 Winter Olympics. Today, Canada celebrates its birthday, being nearly three times "older" than Germany at 142 years. To celebrate, here are some self-deprecating Canadian jokes: Q1: How do you get a Canadian to apologize? Q2: How to you get a pool full of Canadians to get out... Read more →

History of (M)CAD

Dave Weisberg has released his history of CAD -- or, more correctly, history of (primarily) mechanical CAD. You can download a ZIP file that contains all chapters in PDF format here. I love reading history, and I am enjoying learning more of the roots of our industry.Topics include: Computer-Aided Design Strong Roots at MIT Research in the Second Half of the 1960s Civil Engineering Software Development at MIT The First Commercial CAD System Applicon Autodesk and AutoCAD Auto-trol Technology Bentley Systems Calma Computervision IBM/Lockheed/Dassault Systèmes Intergraph Patrick Hanratty and Manufacturing & Consulting Services Parametric Technology Corporation Structural Dynamics Research Corporation... Read more →

CV for AEC

Rifling through my collection of mouse pads, I came across this one made by ComputerVision: I never thought of ComputerVision being ideal for AEC [architecture, engineering, construction] software; the heavy duty piping belies the claim, as well. As for being "for the 90s," well, CV was purchased by PTC in 1997. Read more →

AutoCAD v2.5

Autodesk showed AutoCAD v2.5 in June 1986 at the AEC Systems show in Chicago. I have Autodesk's brochure from back then, and it's interesting to read what was considered "new" in 22 years ago: -- AutoCAD had more than 50,000 users. -- Autodesk recommended 640KB RAM, but this release of AutoCAD also had Expanded/Extended Memory Support for computers running the then very expensive 80286 CPU. -- regen-free zooms and pans. You can see the list of new commands in the figure below. Autodesk cheated by making the ellipses from short polyline segments. Real ellipses would come later. Still, you can... Read more →

One Story on How GIS Began

Today's Globe&Mail reports on how Roger Tomlinson of Canada birthed geographic information systems (GIS). The idea rose from the thought that computers might be able to derive map data more cheaply than doing the work by hand: The project estimate for doing the job manually was about $8-million; Dr. Tomlinson thought it could be done for $3-million on a computer. "We eventually did it for about $10-million, but that's the way programming goes," he chuckled. Full story here. Read more →

LighthouseAxon-Shapeware-VisioOmnigraffle

AppleInsider has an article explaining why Microsoft will be shipping Office 2008 for the Mac without some of the applications found in the Windows version. The paragraph regarding Visio's absence is a bit odd: In 2000, Microsoft paid $1.3 billion to acquire Visio Corporation, which had delivered a clone of the Lighthouse Design Diagram! application for NeXTSTEP. The Omni Group delivered a similar product for the Mac called OmniGraffle, which Apple bundles on new Macs. Omni also offers a pro version, which can open and save Visio 2007 documents, leaving little reason to want a port of Visio in Mac... Read more →

Adobe Also Celebrates25 Years

While Autodesk endures a $10 million lawsuit on its 25th Anniversary, Adobe also celebrates its Silver year. Pamela Pfiffner of Macworld tries to Imagine a World Without Adobe. Unmentioned in Ms Pfiffner's mini-history is that Visio was founded by co-founders of Aldus (of PageMaker fame, which I continue to use to this day), which was then bought by Adobe. Or that controversy of TrueType fonts, which Apple/Microsoft gave away free -- killing Adobe's market in over high-priced fonts, but making fonts universally available for the Rest of Us. Something for which Adobe's never forgiven Microsoft. Hey, you're gonna step on... Read more →

Five Corrections

Here's the errors I found in the statement, "Did you know that 25 years ago John Walker & 16 employees started Autodesk, with the sole goal of creating a CAD application for under $1,000?" 1. Employees -- they were equal partners. 2. Walker & 16 -- there were 16 in total, not 17. 3. sole goal -- AutoCAD was just one of several software applications the group launched, and the only one to become a success. The company itself is named after one of the other, unsuccessful applications -- an early version of today's office suite. 4. creating a CAD... Read more →

The Onset of SenilityAt Age Twenty-Five

How many errors can you find in this statement (made by Autodesk's external pr firm in an email to editors)? Did you know that 25 years ago John Walker & 16 employees started Autodesk, with the sole goal of creating a CAD application for under $1,000? I count five errors. (I'll list the ones I found here on Monday.) I gentley suggest that whoever was responsible for drafting that sentence take the Remedial CAD History class at Autodesk U. In preparation, please read John Walker's recollections in The Autodesk File. Read more →

SmartSketchIs/Was

SmartSketch is the name of Intergraph's under-marketed 2D design software. (It used to be called Imagineer Technical.) Its "Jupiter" technology is also used in Solid Edge, which Intergraph sold to UGS. Which is why UGS has employees in Huntsville AL, the home of Intergraph. Today I learned that one of the most common Internet formats was first called SmartSketch. SwitchedOn reports on Engaget: ...in 1993, a startup co-founded by one of the Mac's earliest third-party developers showed off a product called SmartSketch, later to be renamed FutureSplash Animator. The FutureSplash plug-in enabled Netscape Navigator to display vector graphics and even... Read more →

Exxon Valdez

"Crude oil lingers from Exxon Valdez spill" is a headline in the Globe&Mail, and it reminded me of that time when I was on the staff of CADalyst magazine. The Alaskan oil leak was a disaster in 1989, and it was CADalyst magazine's first big breaking story it would cover. Until then, the magazine published stories at a leisurely rate, as is common. Articles you read in this month's National Geographic were planned, written, photographed, and edited months, years before. A reader tipped us off that AutoCAD was being used in the cleanup work. During the day, fishermen in their... Read more →

Who Invented "PLM"?

Dassault Systemes is heavly into "PLM" -- short for "product lifecycle management." Who was the first to use the phrase? Let's look at the press release record: Dassault's press release archive goes back to 1996. The earliest date for one of their press releases including the terms "PLM" or "product lifecycle management" is June, 2000. Over at the SAP.com press release archive, the earliest mention of PLM is in a press release dated February, 2000: "SAP PLM is available via a flexible, role-based licensing model with mySAP.com Edition 1 Update December 1999." So we know the term was in use... Read more →

Early Days of think3

An excerpt from "Digital Game-Based Learning" book by Marc Prensky (2001), on page 10: Think3's product, thinkdesign was demonstrably better than the product that the vast majority of mechanical designers were using, known as AutoCAD. More like the rarified "high-end" CAD packages costing $15-20,000 per seat, thinkdesign allowed mechanical designers to work directly in 3D, instead of starting from the 2D drawings of AutoCAD. Backed by impatient venture capital money [$15 million] from Goldman and others, Costello’s business objective was crystal clear -- to convert as many of the 3 million-or-so AutoCAD users to thinkdesign as quickly as possible. His... Read more →

ACS is 25

The CAD industry is young enough that 25th anniversaries are still rare. (I'll be 21 years for me this September.) Debbie Simpson of ACS Software wrote to let me (and others) know that ACS has been around since 1981 -- one year before Autodesk opened their doors. A bit of history from her: "In 1986, ACS delivered the first engineering PC-based EDMS system. We were there when sneakernet was all the rage, and when the game of 'Whoever Saves Last, Wins!' became popularized." Todd Hays was the founder of ACS Software, and is still president today -- another rarity. "When... Read more →

Hang Your Thumbs

Readers ask me for help with AutoCAD and I do my best, even though I am under no obligation. After all, I'm not being paid $4000 a copy. I'm used to rarely receiving thanks for the help, so it was nice to hear back from Mike Kaluski: Thank you very much Ralph!!! For the first time ever, I got a negative thankyou last week. RH asked for some help with a Release 14 problem. After I suggested a solution, he wrote back: "IF YOU HAD TOLD ME TO 'GO HANG BY YOUR THUMBS' IT WOULD HAVE SAVED YOU SOME OF... Read more →

1992: DynaCADD to Run on NeXT

At the 1992 CeBIT show in Germany, Ditek International announced it would release DynaCADD 3 for the NeXT computer. The 3D CAD software would make use of NeXTstep's RenderMan libraries. The company also planned to port its software to Macs and Windows. Since 1985, the Canadian CAD company had sold 100,000 copies of DynaCADD running on Atari and Amiga, 70% in Germany. Ditek President Oren Asher said he has wanted to develop for the NeXT machine since it was introduced, but waited until he received assurances from NeXT that his product would receive full support from the company. After refusing... Read more →