WorldCAD Access

New CAD Systems For 2024

Opinion In the early days of the cloud, everything was going to run on it, according to the enthusiastic CEOs of certain CAD companies. Then reality hit, with users not necessarily keen to transition from desktop to cloud, and, worse, rewriting desktop software to work in multi-user, multi-server environments being hard enough that some vendors gave up on it. It’s easier to write new CAD software for the cloud from scratch, partly because user expectations of what desktop programs can do aren’t there. Over the last decade, numerous new ventures received funding to build on-line CAD programs. After a while,... Read more →

Reading Patent 11,977,821

Opinion In Canoa, the canvas is dimensionally unlimited (all images sourced from US Patent Office) The press release headline promised, “The Future is Here: AI-Powered Interiors by Canoa.” The text of the release explained what patent #11,977,821 granted Canoa: “The patent is the first to embed a learning algorithm directly inside of a CAD application and covers the generation of user-specific recommendations using their own clicks as prompt inputs.” I was intrigued, and set about to read the 52 pages of the patent, so that you don’t have to. It’s available through https://patents.google.com/patent/US11977821B1/. Overall view of how the method operates... Read more →

My Q&A With Siemens About Zel X

Opinion Assembly displayed by Zel X; image source Siemens Software The day before the Zel X PLM for SMBs launched, as I asked Siemens about the new product. Ralph Grabowski: Where did the unusual Zel X name come from? Siemens Software:In the product naming world, there are several different classes, including: descriptive (e.g. General Motors), evocative (e.g. Amazon), and invented (e.g. Pixar). We decided to take the invented name route, with a name that’s short and simple -- matching the easy-to-use and streamlined nature of the product itself. The X suffix indicates that Zel X is part of the Siemens... Read more →

Three New Companies Producing AI-based CAD

Opinion It was pretty exciting when, 11 years ago, a new kind of CAD company emerged, several seemingly at the same time. They were pure cloud-CAD plays, taking advantage of new capabilities in Web browsers that allowed us to select and edit entities. The companies had names like sunglass.io, TinkerCAD, To3D, and Onshape. All ended up being acquired by larger firms. After the Open Design Alliance cracked the RVT and RFA file formats of Revit, a second wave of CAD companies emerged two years ago, with names like Infurnia, Snaptrude, and Qonic. All three handle some aspect of architectural design... Read more →

Do We Need a New 2D CAD Program?

Opinion During the era of zero-interest rates, investors were desperate for returns. The desperation turned to the ridiculous, such as buying cartoons of anthropomorphized apes and believing in 20% annual returns from crypto-exchanges. Others invested in new companies that promised to deliver on buzzwords like AR, crypto, AI, carbon. The passion to invest in anything-everything has now retreated, what with with banks paying as much as 4% on savings accounts. Nevertheless, Techcrunch* continues to document those who dream of making it big with the Next Big Thing, and one of those is a new online 2D CAD (computer-aided design) program,... Read more →

Solidworks 2023

Opinion It’s been 13 years of Solidworks users stubbornly sticking to the desktop, as attempts by Dassault Systemes to tempt them to the cloud have not succeeded, not even with promises of “effortless, easy design” products that ought to replace Solidworks. So, at this year’s 3dexperience World 2023, Dassault handed out more candy. Senior vp of 3dexperience Works Gian Paolo Bassi said that “everyone in the Solidworks community should be taking advantage of all that 3dexperience Works has to offer,” and so as of July every seat of Solidworks will include cloud services. It turns out he meant Collaborative Designer... Read more →

Onshape holds its third user conference

Opinion Surfacing in Onshape At first, I was surprised to learn that Onshape would hold its own user conference just two months before PTC, which owns Onshape, holds its annual user conference. But then, I realized, it made sense. Onshape would be buried under the onslaught of information on all of PTC's other software programs. We saw the same happen after Microsoft bought Visio. The Onshape conference seemed prerecorded, and was held online. Parts may well have been presented live, but given that another CAD vendor fakes questions from users, you just never know these days. There were tutorials on... Read more →

What Did Dassault Promise Solidworks Users?

Opinion Dassault Systemes has been trying, since 2010, to get Solidworks users to trade in their desktop computers and move on over to its V6 cloud-based CAD system, now known as 3dexperience. It’s been a long haul, and the more Dassault tries, the more Solidworks succeeds. Since 2010, the number of Solidworks users has grown to over seven million*, and license and other revenues give Dassault over a billion dollars a year, one-sixth of its total revenue. The problem is that Solidworks is fundamentally incompatible with 3dexperience: Solidworks 3dexperience Model storage Discrete files Enovia-based database Kernel Parasolid CGM Operating system... Read more →

Hexagon’s Big Launch of Nexus

Opinion The company had been teasing a new product for several weeks, with count-down reminder emails arriving a day, an hour, and 15 minutes prior to the launch hour. And then Hexagon unveiled Nexus, their new Web-based platform for working with manufacturing software and hardware, with an emphasis on “open.” The entry screen to Nexus Nexus offers inter-software and inter-person communications, along with new app development through the cloud. For the launch, the offerings are, however, sparse, with just five items ready to go: Nexus Digital Reality platform -- includes 3D Whiteboard for project reviews Three in-house apps -- Metrology... Read more →

PTC Lifts the Curtain on Its Plus Replacement for Atlas

The cloud goes + It wasn't so long ago that the future of PTC was Atlas, the cloud system based on Onshape technology. This made sense, as Onshape itself was based on a multi-user multi-database system. The mythical Greek character held the entire world on his shoulders, and so Atlas would do the same for all PTC software -- in five to ten years. Programs like the Creo mechanical CAD software would strictly become SaaS (Software as a Service, the fancy term for subscription paid and running off remote servers, aka cloud). But then PTC went all quiet on Atlas;... Read more →

Zigzagging to Cloud Nivana

Finding a pot of gold, any pot of gold, at the end of the rainbow-colored cloud Autodesk ceo introducing Fusion Industry Cloud I recall when a large CAD vendor first enthusiastically announced it was going to embrace the cloud. Well, it was going to get us to embrace the cloud. This was at a user conference at which we were told that the cloud represented “infinite computing.” The ceo even used the phrase a few more times over the following years in interviews, adding that the only way to get all of his company’s software would be online, by 2014-5.... Read more →

Moving bookmarks, passwords between Operas

If you know how The Opera Web browser is one I've been using ever since the days when floppy diskettes were still considered the acceptable form of software distribution. Although, if you needed to use a Web browser, you'd have an Internet connection, and so you could download it. Opera used to be programmed in Norway, but now it has Chinese owners, which is annoying. Still, it remains the best Web browser around: it's based on the Chrome browser (as are most these days) and then adds all kinds of useful extras. (The founders of Opera subsequently developed their own,... Read more →

Using Asynchronous Communication in CAD

Guest editorial by Cedric Desbordes More than any other DWG vendor, Graebert of Germany has done more to connect the primary design platforms with one another -- desktop/laptop on Linux/Mac/Windows; tablet/phone on Android/iOS; and Web browsers. The name of the company may not be familiar to you, as they tend to sell white label CAD. Companies like Corel, Dassault Systems, and Onshape use Graebert's "ARES" code for their DWG editors. Here, business development manager Cedric Desbordes describes how this trifecta of CAD platforms is useful for today's WFH environment. Asynchronous communication means that all parties don't have to be online... Read more →

Two core weaknesses of Onshape

Kernel and browser I've come across a couple of Achilles' heels for PTC regarding Onshape. The two weaknesses are inherent to what makes Onshape Onshape. Kernel Incompatibility. At the kernel level, Onshape is incompatible with PTC's CAD software. Onshape runs Parasolid (licensed from an arch-competitor to PTC, Siemens), while PTC has its own Granite geometric modeling kernel. I wonder how well Onshape and Creo work together; I have not heard PTC address this problem. The drawback to any translation is, of course, that data can be lost or, worse, mangled, and so it helps when two CAD programs share at... Read more →

The SaaS-ification of PTC's Software

Moving from dark green to light green Saket Kalia (financial analyst): I'd love to zoom in on slide 20 a bit [see figure below], very useful slide. Understanding that diagram is a vision and not guidance per se, I'd love to hear how you envision PTC's move to SaaS [software as a service]. Chart showing some aspects of some programs starting to run on Atlas; the lighter the shade of green, the more of the software is on the cloud It looks like you'll have all your products available in a SaaS form -- well, the major products available in... Read more →

Our Cloud Development for 3D BIM

by Alexey Ershov Viewing 3D models in Web browsers became popular in the mid-2010s with the introduction of WebGL that allowed the display of sophisticated graphics. New Web protocols and JavaScript then made it possible to build 3D Web applications with advanced logic and interactive user interfaces. Cloud-based BIM (building information modeling) became a primary target for development, thanks to the big data volumes that are typically generated by BIM projects. Big data requires big storage. As well, BIM involves collaboration between designers working on specific areas and layers of buildings, bridges, civil, and industrial projects. These requirements correspond well... Read more →

The best tweets about Google's signon failure

The Top 10 Google's signon servers went down earlier today for about an hour, meaning that you could not access its cloud-based software through your account: Gmail, YouTube, Google Drive, Docs, Sheets, Slides, Google News, Google Translate, Google Ads, Google Domain, Google Cloud Platform Dashboard, Google My Business, and more. Services that don't need an account, like YouTube, Maps, and Search, still worked, if you signed out. Offline software, like Picasa, kept right on working, naturally. The outage occurred during the night for my timezone, so I never noticed until reading the excited tech media upon waking. I captured some... Read more →

ChromeOS Grows Up

Now with Android & Linux support A number of years ago, I bought one of the very first Chromebooks out of curiosity. It was pretty lame. About the only thing I found myself doing with it was periodically booting it up to update ChromeOS. Chromebooks run Google's Chrome Web browser as the operating system. This means that the only thing a Chromebook can do is run Google's Chrome Web browser, and any extensions supported by ChromeOS. Very limiting. I was limited to using apps like Google Docs and lame photo editors, which held no interest to me. Further, the Chromebook... Read more →

On Who Would Buy OnShape

Speculation runs rampant Who would be interested in buying OnShape? Well, it needn't be a CAD vendor; it could be an Oracle or a SAP (both of who have long offered PLM) looking for a cloud-based CAD file editor. Both already have CAD viewers. Or it could be a peripheral CAD vendor, like Hexagon or Trimble. Hexagon is keen on the cloud for its new line of Smart bundles, but doesn't have a cloud-based MCAD offering; on the other hand, it already owns nearly a dozen CAD packages. Trimble doesn't have an industrial strength (M)CAD system but is more into... Read more →

Al Dean explains why Autodesk running generative design in the cloud is wrong

On Twitter, DEVELOP3D co-founder Al Dean explains why it is a mistake for Autodesk to limit running its generative design software on a cloud service: So here’s the thing with this. Autodesk’s Generative Design tools run in the cloud, its rationalization being that it needs parallel computation and it needs collaboration. The issue is that this is going to restrict experimentation -- experimentation that’s vital in both an industrial and an educational context. (It’s unlikely to be made available in Fusion Educational licenses.) There’s also the fact that Autodesk say they need to recoup the costs of that computation. That’s... Read more →

Autodesk hopes to have complete BIM in 5 years

Five-year plan Autodesk ceo Andrew Anagnost describes where he hopes the company will arrive in five years, BIM-wise. - - - Our cloud products have become an integral selling point for our EBA [enterprise] customers and usage within our EBA customer base has really taken off. For example, in Q1 [Feb-Apr, 2018], just over half of the monthly active users for BIM 360 were in EBA accounts. This really validates our relevancy at the top of the general contractor market, which is where we focused initially. From High-end to Mid-market That success is a strong foundation to build on and... Read more →

Why Dassault figures Solidworks will become a billion-dollar brand

Double-digit growth For a CAD package as firmly set on the desktop as Solidworks, its sales are growing remarkably. Not only is it stuck on the desktop but doubly-stuck in Windows. Yet sales in 2018 are "double-digit," as marketing people and financial analysts would tout. In the last quarter (January-March, 2018), sales of Solidworks licenses grew 13% over a year earlier. This wasn't supposed to happen. This is, after all, the age of Onshape (the self-declared Solidworks killer) and Fusion along with the rest of Autodesk's "infinite" cloud marketing. Heck, Onshape and Autodesk were so sure that the cloud (and... Read more →

PTC loves IoT (but not CAD) on the cloud

IoT yes, CAD, not so much Dassault Systemes and Autodesk continue to be the only Big 5 CAD vendors to wholesale their software from the multiple servers located who-knows-where (ie, the cloud). Siemens PLM, PTC, and Bentley Systems have little interest, as moving desktop software to servers has been proven to be a long, arduous, painful, and then largely unsuccessful haul. In his conference call with financial analysts, PTC ceo Jim Heppelmann confirmed his company's lack of urgency of jumping on that particular bandwagon. ------------ Ken Talanian of Evercore ISI: I was wondering if you could talk about the initial... Read more →

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 →

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 →

Did Autodesk's near-monoculture bring down its cloud services?

Profits over reliability Amazon's failure of its east cost server site was so significant that even the mainstream media wrote about it. As you probably know by now, an Amazon employee typed the wrong (probably Linux) command parameters, causing failures to cascade from server to server. Among the brand names listed by the generic and technical media that use this facility is Autodesk. Thanks to Steven Johnson for preserving the failure of the cloud for posterity: How Did Autodesk Fail Its Customers? The Register explains why: Problem #1: The East coast facility of Amazon's cloud service is the oldest one,... Read more →

Autodesk ceo Carl Bass talks a bit about Quantum

It's the future, don't you know Autodesk ceo Carl Bass responds to a question from a financial analyst during this week's quarterly conference call. Comments are edited for brevity and clarity. - - - Financial Analyst: You have some very interesting things to say about your future architecture with the Quantum project. There are numerous references to what you talked about as a common data environment, new [software] architecture, and so forth. Carl Bass: This goes back a number of years, we have firm belief that engineering software is going to move to the cloud -- all design and engineering... Read more →

For its future, Autodesk copies from Dassault

News from @martynday Autodesk yesterday announced the future for some of its software at Autodesk University. (I am not at the show, but have been avidly followed Martyn Day's tweets from yesterday. He is the editor of AEC Magazine out of England.) A year ago, I predicted that Autodesk would cloud-ify Revit. No big secret; this is a natural progression, from Autodesk's point of view. First AutoCAD was served up remotely (aka AutoCAD 360), then Inventor (aka Fusion 360), then a bunch of other programs that support Revit, such as BIM 360. The elephant in the room was Revit itself.... Read more →

Twitter clash over online software

Reliability models Proposed emergency office, as envisioned by some, not being my cup of coffee (image source Wired.com) upFront.eZine ‏@upFronteZine Nov 2: A reader writes: "...The cloud model, which I despise and think will fail soon. Everything is being hacked and all of it is porous." upFront.eZine ‏@upFronteZine Nov 2: I've said it before, and I'll be saying again: DO NOT upgrade to Windows 10 (unless forced to). It breaks too much software. My #1 job is... upFront.eZine ‏@upFronteZine Nov 2: ...is to be productive, not follow the whims of someone inside Microsoft, Inc. who knows neither us nor our... Read more →

PTC's plan for cloudifying Creo

Gingerly Whereas Dassault Systemes and Autodesk are going whole-hog into cloudifying their software, major competitors Siemens PLM Software and PTC are being cautious. They understand that CAD is a desktop program, not a tethered-to-the-Internet app. When PTC ceo James Heppleman was asked about Creo-on-the-cloud at this week's conference call with financial analysts, here was his response: - - - Cloud-based [Creo] CAD will come in some phases. Some early phases involve repositioning the product largely in its current form, but served through a cloud SaaS [software as a service] model. And then subsequent to that, we're likely to go into... Read more →

Where is Revit 360?

M.I.A. (Missing In Announcements) Autodesk's big three CAD packages are AutoCAD (general design work), Inventor (mechanical design), and Revit (architectural design). Autodesk's executives have repeatedly stated their plan to eventually become all-cloud all the time. Two of the big three have nascent cloud versions: AutoCAD -> AutoCAD 360 Inventor -> Fusion 360 Revit -> ??? 360 Never has Autodesk talked about Revit 360. The cloud version of Revit is missing from announcements. The reason is, I believe, that Autodesk is having a tough time converting this particular Windows-based desktop-bound program with a poorly constructed API to run on a remote... Read more →

Neolant Says InterBridge Far Better than Navisworks, et al

View from a cloud Neolant is a Russian software company with expertise in plant design. They recently began following the ASCON model by making their core technology available an an independent product. For ASCON, it was their C3D modeling kernel; in the case of Neolant, it is their server-based InterBridge data viewer and manipulator for 2D and 3D files from CAD and PLM systems (a.k.a. cloud-based project review and maintenance software). The company freely admits that CAD vendors have their own products, and that InterBridge is not first to the market. And so their job is to convince customers that... Read more →

Live Blog: Onshape's 2 Announcements

Alright, here we are awaiting Onshape’s press conference. The Web-based CAD vendor this morning gathered the press for a Web-based press conference, appropriately enough. We’re just waiting for the 8:30am even to begin… …and as we wait, here is a summary of speculation, as collected by Al Dean: Onshape is closing beta and going ‘released’ or whatever the cloud equivalent is They’ve launched the partner app store [oh, I hope that’s not the news] They’re buying a simulation startup [Al’s money is on SimScale or SimSolid] They buying a CAM company [that’s someone else’s bet] They’re being bought out [my... Read more →

All about the drafting component in OnShape

(It was written by Graebert) Now we are hearing from Robert Miner of OnShape 2000: Wrong database (from Microsoft), and market not ready 2009: Operations expertise missing, and funding faded 2011: Funding fading again What's needed to get server-based CAD working: Need CAD experts Need databases that can scale with the Web; use NoSql, SQL not good enough Need 3D graphics in the browser, like WebGL Need fast Internet everywhere, and cheap Need to be able to provide 24/7 support Need faster JavaScript, like V8 from Google Need support and funding Need to do all of the above on a... Read more →

Carl Bass on why translation with cloudCAD isn't a problem

All's fine in Cloudland Richard Hugh Davis (Canaccord Genuity analyst): So I know the cloud kind of helps you guys compete better, but one of the hardest parts that I hear from companies that are thinking about switching from one vendor to another is the fear that the engineers have with regard to their old models won't translate over seamlessly. Is that still an issue, or is that a legacy issue? Is that a data issue or is it not an issue at all? Carl Bass (Autodesk ceo): I think this used to be a huge issue in the industry.... Read more →

10 things to know about Onshape Drafting

Powered by Graebert Xenon 1. Onshape Drafting is the first example of integrating a third-party add-on into Onshape, an example of what to anticipate from other add-ons coming in the future. 2. The drafting technology is based on Xenon, a cloud-based DWG editor developed over the last three years by Graebert Gmbh of Germany, and in collaboration with Onshape for the last year. 3. If you have used AutoCAD's drawing layout methodology, then this works similarly: place 2D views semi-automatically on a template sheet, then take off details and sections, and add dimensions, tolerance notations, and annotations. See figure. 2D... Read more →

Seven flaws in Onshape today

Difficult Birthing of new MCAD Software 1. Runs only on the Internet. No or poor connection = no working 2. No one-time perpetual license available. $1,200/year perpetually 3. No drafting, no generation of 2D drawings 4. Switching from paid mode to free mode can be tricky 5. No third-party add-ons available yet. No FEA, no CAM, no advanced rendering 6. App promised for Android not available; only for iPhone/iPad 7. Waiting list for getting an account. No immediate access Read more →

Ten things you need to know about OnShape

Launched this morning at 8am Pacific 1. It's free. No limited functions; no time-out bomb; no limit to online storage. 2. It is a history-based feature modeler that is also a direct modeler-editor; it employs features, extrusions, parts, and assemblies -- just like Solidworks users are used to using. 3. It is a pure cloud play that runs in desktop browsers and on apps specific to Android and iOS. There is no local version; there is no local install; there is no local saving of files. The OnShape user interface, when the program first starts up in a Web browser... 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 →

It is time to declare browserCAD in a deep funk

by Ralph Grabowski It was a scant two years ago that a flurry of start-ups launched 3D MCAD software that runs in Web browsers. The catalyst was HTML5 and other browser technology that allowed users to interact with 3D models in their Web browsers on any hardware. No more installs to desktops; no more being limited to Windows. Wanna run 3D CAD on an Android ultrabook or a FirefoxOS phone -- no problemo. (Well, almost no problemo. There were a few caveats. The hardware had to be powerful enough; the Web connection speed had to be fast enough; the Internet... Read more →

How Sanctions Affect the Russian Building Industry

by Vladimir Talapov This is a new issue for us. To be honest, it is a very unpleasant one, since it involves an artificial (aggressive) influence upon economic processes painstakingly organized by the business-community -- bilateral, multilateral, and, in any case, mutually beneficial. Still sanctions are our today’s reality. Thus, I would like to make a few points. First. Sanctions are introduced by the governments of some countries and not by software developers. I think that to a greater extent, sanctions are a blow against vendors rather than users, but it is rough luck on both. Second. Formally, sanctions have... Read more →

Lagoa going from simple rendering to Parasolids cloud-based MCAD

by Roopinder Tara, Tenlinks.com Who or what is Lagoa? And what makes a relative newcomer think they can go up against a reigning champion? CAD Insider readers know of Lagoa for its cloud-based renderer and a user part library/gallery. It was a hit at SolidWorks World, where it was nominated for a Best of Show. I am invited to see them last week at COFES, where they rented a suite. I expected them to show me a newer version of what I had already seen. I'm expecting a hit; I have no idea they'll be swinging for the fences. I... Read more →

Dassault ceo on the launch of 3DExperience

Bernard Charles is the ceo of Dassault Systemes spoke during the company's quarterly conference call with financial analysts: Following the successful Lighthouse [3Dexperience beta] program, which we have conducted over the last six months, we are shortly launching 3Dexperience release 2014x. This is a very major release from several perspectives. By introducing our 3Dexperience platform, we are bringing to companies a business platform for product innovation. We are introducing a completely new user interface, dashboarding, search and analysis capabilities on a platform for social, collaborative innovation. Release 2014x is about providing end-to-end support of the innovation spiral in our targeted... Read more →

Updated: Autodesk cloud-based TinkerCAD suffers 5 days of outages

I've been asked to provide some input on a new book about TinkerCAD, and so first thing this morning I checked out the software, which is cloud-based and runs only in Web browsers. When I pointed my ChromeBook to tinkercad.com, the following sign greeted me: (Autodesk bought TinkerCAD last year.) I tracked the service's Twitter feed to learn that the problems began last week, January 9: Tinkercad (@tinkercad) Jan 9: Sorry everyone, the team's been scrambling to get it back on all day. Check this feed for more updates. Tinkercad: Tinkercad hit a certificate expiration, causing the editor to freak... Read more →

PTC ceo: Sure, we could do the cloud, but customers aren't interested

PTC made its first step towards cloud-hosted CAD through last quarter's acquisition of NetIDEAS. Here's how PTC ceo James E. Heppelmann explains his thinking about the cloud: Windchill is the first PLM system and, I'd argue, one of the first enterprise applications -- period -- to be available in a pure native way of architecture back in 1998. And there was this group of customers, actually in a large defense company who purchased this technology and then said, "Wow, this is really an interesting breakthrough," as compared to the client/server technology of the day. They got so excited, they decided,... Read more →

TeamPlatform Takes on the Email-FTP-Dropbox Troika

This is a comparison of popular systems like email, FTP, and Dropbox with an engineering coordination portal named TeamPlatform. Generic approaches to project management cannot meets the needs of engineers the way a centralized location like TeamPlatform can, because it is designed to cater to the needs of engineers. I'll look at the pros and cons of each system as they apply to coordinating CAD designs. When we work with more than one person on projects, we need ways to communicate with one another, move files between us, and coordinate the who-does-what tasks. Email remains the most popular way to... Read more →

Why Adobe's "cloud" software doesn't work for customers

With a hacker claiming to have broken PhotoShop CC's authorization mechanism, we are getting an idea of how Adobe's "cloud" software works. In addition, I spent about a week trying to upgrade my license of InDesign CS5 to CS6. So here is how it all works: Adobe still sells its Creative Cloud software as traditional desktop installations. We download a 30-day demo copy of PhotoShop CC or InDesign CC, and install it on our desktop or laptop computer. CC software then provides access to additional features online, as well as updates. Monthly Payments The first difference is in how we... Read more →

With NetSuite linkup, Autodesk confirms that it's no longer just a CAD company

Autodesk adds a bi-directional integration between PLM 360 and NetSuite, which it calls the "world's #1 cloud ERP solution," and calls its own PLM 360 "the fastest growing in the market" -- a point that was repeated. Of course growth for any new product is fast because of the mathematics of percentages on small bases. (ERP is short for "enterprise resource planning;" PLM is short for "product lifecycle management.") The announcement was made to us media last week, but we had to keep the news secret until today. I'd heard of the NetSuite name, but don't know anything about it.... Read more →

Viewing, Sharing Revit and SketchUp Models with Vizerra Revizto

In business since 2008, Russia's 3DreamTeam (which does business as Vizerra) writes software for viewing 3D worlds interactively. Their idea is to make it easy for designers and clients to collaborate in areas like AEC, urban planning, product design, and even virtual tourism (see figure 1). For now, however, emphasis is on AEC, and in particular, Revit and SketchUp. Figure 1: Vizerra's Revizto Viewer software displays 3D models exported by Revit or SketchUp What Revizto Consists Of There are three tasks that Revizto software performs: Convert and Edit - Revizto for Revit ($399) converts Revit and SketchUp models to Visual... Read more →

CAD vendors will be tempted into biasing their cloud pricing

The price you pay for CAD software depends on several factors, including these: The country in which you purchase the software (USA workers get the baseline price, with customers in nearly every other country paying as much as double) Educational status (students and teachers routinely get the software free; other occupations do not -- except for software reviewers) The status of your company (networked licenses cost less; bulk licenses cost less) Whether you are part of a target market (I hear cases of software being seeded, given away free to specific customer in specific cities of specific disciplines; in addition,... Read more →