WorldCAD Access

freeCAD is becoming lessCAD

 When upgrades become downgrades

 

As I work with recent updates to a variety of CAD programs, I notice that the updates are stripping functions out of the free and cheap versions of the programs. Customers are getting less by staying free.

The reason is not surprising. The CAD vendors who are offering some of their CAD software for free now want you to pay. The free version is just the hook; in their thinking, it's high time for you to swallow the line and sinker as well.

I have no problem with this. You would do well to pay the price it costs developers to develop (or license) the software. Even when software is entirely free, I'll send a donation to the programmer whose software I use a lot. When I make revenues using his program, then I feel good sharing some of my profits with him.

Here's where the problem is: when the CAD vendor makes negative changes on the sly. Most do. When a new release comes out, they are sure to trumpet the improvements and new functions added; they are, however, loathe to spell out what's been removed. If that removed function is important to the running of your firm, you want to know that you shouldn't upgrade. The solution is to install one upgrade on a dummy machine and see for yourself what's changed.

On the other hand, if the function-available-now-only-in-the-paid-version is so crucial to your firm's operations, you should be paying anyhow.

CheapCAD Also Becomes LessCAD

The issue affects not just freeCAD. I see it also in cheapCAD, where functions are being removed from the lowest priced version, and then customers have to pay 2x or more for the "pro" version.

Then there is yet another tactic, in which the CAD vendor removes a chunk of commands from the core CAD package, and then repackages them as an optional, extra-cost add-on. Kc-ching!

As one industry commentator put it, "Thing is, all this free 2D stuff is complete spyware. It monitors absolutely everything you do.  So they know the most popular commands to pull out and stick in Pro."

As a pro-capitalist, I understand why software companies -- large and small ones -- tweak the feature sets to generate more revenues. The disappointment comes when customers set their expectations on the company they decide to support, and then the company changes the rules, unilaterally.

So, who is doing this? Well think of CAD vendors with cheap or free software, and the list includes the biggest and some of the not-so-smallest.

 

 

CIMdata: Developing a Sustainable PLM Strategy

CIMdata Webinar

 

Peter Bilello, president CIMdata: "We are seeing a shift in expectations in what PLM is expected to do. Healthier business success, unhealthy ones fail. Even though PLM began in the 1980s, it still is not mature. It is not a stagnant industry by any means."

Following the Webinar, Mr Bilello answers questions from the audience:

Q: Agile development seems critical to your approach. Do you recommend a particular approach?
A: No. Companies find one that works for them. Any agile approach can be applicable.

Q: My company is using agile for prototyping and not for real system implementation. Any advice to educate them?
A: Plenty of software in your company probably has been developed using agile; show them what you are already using. Ask software providers if they are using agile, and use that as proof.

Q: You showed an example of an implementation heatmap. Is there a way to connect it to ROI?
A:  Yes, and you would want to do that. We have an ROI [return on investment] model that maps right to it. For some implementations of PLM, you have to do the foundation, which has no ROI, but you have to have [the foundation] to build on top of it.

Q: Do you advocate the agile approach for product development?
A: Interesting question. In general, it depends on the type of product; in some products, agile can be used, and has been done with agile. A lot companies think that agile is Design-As-You-Go, but this not true. It still has a target to which you go. If you have well-defined outcomes, then agile can be used; if not, then something else has to be used. Some industries are heavily regulated, if you can't plug the regulations into them, then you can't build it, and if agile cannot handle it, then it cannot be used.

Q: From what domain in the enterprise PLM lead from?
A: Not engineering, not IT. It should be from the COO or CFO or even CEO level. It cuts across so many components of the organization. Engineering may be the champion, but the owner should be one level above them.

Q: What is the best way to keep up with changing technology?
A: Do research. There is a lot of information on the Web; there are lots of events; electronic magazines, paper magazines, user events, our own weekly newsletter and information session.

www.cimdata.com

Russia to ban non-Russian software from government use

Blow to American and European CAD vendors

 

As of 1 January, 2016 national and local Russian government offices are banned from using non-Russian software, when a local version exists. Minimum local ownership is 50%. An agency will create a list of acceptable programs.

Russia has a healthy CAD industry, with ready replacements for MCAD, plant design, and AutoCAD; not quite so robust are BIM systems. Foreign software companies last year sold US$1.4 billion sales to Russia, of which $300 million was to Russian government agencies.

Russia Today explains the reason for the blockage:

While the latest [Russian prime minister] Medvedev’s order can be seen as supporting domestic software producers, Russian politicians and officials have often pointed out the dangers of surveillance and data leaks that come with the use of foreign computer programs in state bodies and government-owned companies.

Moscow Times adds:

As Communications and Mass Media Minister Nikolai Nikiforov put it a year ago: "We stand for complete sovereignty of information."

Not surprisingly, a few other countries are attempting the same, most notably China. The Association of European Businesses warned darkly that non-Russian software firms would freeze investment or pull out of Russia. Well, I kind of doubt it, as 80% of their sales were to non-goverment firms.

Sources:

• Russia Today https://www.rt.com/politics/322836-medvedev-bans-foreign-made-software/
• Moscow Times http://www.themoscowtimes.com/business/article/russia-restricts-use-of-foreign-software-in-battle-for-information-sovereignty/550106.html

 

 

Here's what's new to 3D in BricsCAD V16

The 3D cat long out of the bag

 

 

At last year's Bricsys International Conference, the company gave a preview of what to expect in BricsCAD V16. (See http://www.worldcadaccess.com/blog/2014/10/heres-whats-planned-for-3d-in-bricscad-v16-next-year.html.) No 2D or other functions were pre-announced a year ago.

The official BricsCAD V16 announcement will be made today in Munich. Until then, here is what we learned a year ago about new 3D features:

• Direct modeling will get lofting
• Array and mirror in parametrics
• Recognize assembly structures automatically
• Clash detection
• Large and lofted bends in sheet metal
• Different kinds of reliefs in sheet metal
• Associative dimensions and annotations on generated drawings
• Exploded views for assemblies and sheet metals
• Import assembly structures from Solidworks and Inventor

Will all these promises make it into the released version? Stay tuned to this WorldCAD Access blog for all that's new from BricsCAD International Conference 2015, live from BMW World in Munich, Germany.

 

IntelliCAD update a big one from ITC

IntelliCAD 8.1

 

Just a couple of weeks ago, the Open Design Alliance released an update to its DWG read-write libraries that added multi-core processing when opening and regenerating drawings, and so on. At the time I wondered how long it might take members to apply the new functions.

Well, now it is a couple of weeks later, and the IntelliCAD Technical Consortium is releasing an update to IntelliCAD that incorporates it. Here's the details of what's new in IntelliCAD 8.1:

• Supports for Windows 10
• Multi-core processing when opening and regenerating files, 1.5x to 3x faster
• Opens and saves DWG 2015 files
• Opens and saves MicroStation DGN files
• Annotatively scales text, dimensions, and so on
• Publishes drawings DWF, DWFX, PNG, JPEG files
  Draws helices and revision clouds
• Draws lofts and swept entities
• Creating polysolids
• Adds SetByLayer, Xplode, Txt2MTtxt, and AutoComplete commands
• New ribbon user interface with or without menus
• Customizable workspaces
• Switch UI color schemes

You cannot, however, purchase IntelliCAD 8.1 from ITC today. It builds the software for its members, who then add their branding and customizations, and then ship the software to end-users. To learn who carries IntelliCAD, see http://www.intellicad.org.

 

Carl Bass talks about Autodesk's plans for IoT

From Q1 2016 Results Earnings Call Transcript

 

Carl Bass, Autodesk ceo: This is probably the first time we've really talked about [Internet of Things], and it's one of the areas where our customers are really interested in. I was doing the prepared remarks last night when I came upon this tweet, and it made me pause about including it, because the tweet was something like "IoT is like teenage sex, everyone talks about it, nobody really knows how to do it, everyone thinks everyone else is doing it, so everyone else claims they are doing it."

And so it did give me a little bit of pause, but let me just tell you that we do know what we're doing and it has become a huge focus for our customers in all of our industries. IoT has been often associated with just purely manufacturing, but it's also in the building space and I would say this is both for vertical and horizontal construction, a big deal. Sensors have been built into every building, they are being put in every infrastructure project from electrical infrastructure to sewage infrastructure, to dams, roads, bridges are all having it.

The important thing for us is figuring out how do you help customers not only collect that data and analyze that data, but how does that feed back into better products that they build in turn for their customers.

Also many of our customers are contemplating transitions of their own. You've certainly seen things along the lines, from large industrial companies like GE talking about essentially jet engines as a service as opposed to selling jet engines and railroads as a service, and so it's a huge interest.

What we saw in the market was that there was a real lack of contemporary modern tools to do it. There are a lot of old tools that have been around for a long time. We're doing some in-house development that we started from scratch and we will be opportunistic about finding M&A [mergers and acquisitions] opportunities. 

Source: http://seekingalpha.com/article/3197526-autodesk-adsk-carl-bass-on-q1-2016-results-earnings-call-transcript

SolidWorks founders to revolutionize MCAD again

by Ralph Grabowski, reprinted from Design Engineering magazine

 

Around the year 2000, the Internet bubble was getting seriously big. Established CAD vendors looked for ways to show they were hip to the new thing. PTC integrated a web browser into Pro/E and Autodesk came out with a lean file format, DWF, so that drawings would be transmitted in less time over slow connections.

Meanwhile, an unknown CAD company caught the attention of Microsoft, who was looking for software to promote its upcoming Windows 2000 launch. That company, Alibre, had figured out how to run MCAD software on servers, with the results appearing on remote desktop computers.

The problem, however, was that most of us still had dial-up modems, and so this Internet-based CAD system didn’t catch on. Alibre was rewritten as a traditional program and then was purchased by Geomagic and 3D Systems. Today, it still runs from the desktop.

Fast forward a dozen years, and Internet-based CAD is busting out all over again. A fresh round of financing and advances in web programming has encouraged all kinds of companies (e.g. sunglass.io, ShapeSmith and TinkerCAD) to feverishly write cloud-based CAD programs and viewers that run in today’s heavy-duty web browsers.

Figure 1: OnShape collaborating in a Mac Web browser and on an iPhone at the same time.

 

Enter OnShape
The most serious of these renewed efforts is OnShape. I label it “serious,” because it has snagged the largest amount of investor money ($64 million to date) and is being lead by one of the most storied development teams in the CAD world. Besides instantly recognizable names like SolidWorks founder and CEO Jon Hirschtick and former CEO John McEleney, OnShape’s leadership includes original SolidWorks developer and former VP of R&D, Dave Corcoran, as well as SolidWorks co-founder and former VP of new product concepts, Scott Harris. In total, eight former SolidWorks employees and managers helped start the company, which has since grown to 50 employees.

Back when SolidWorks was launched in 1995, it surprised the industry by running only on Windows. This was at the time when serious CAD ran on Unix, like Pro/E, or on DOS, like AutoCAD. CAD on Windows was thought to perhaps have some potential, just as today CAD on servers is considered “interesting.”

The OnShape guys are determined to rewrite MCAD for the post-Windows age. As such, it has to run on any kind of hardware and operating system, access files from a central repository, allow simultaneous editing by many users, and throw away difficult aspects, such as saving, backing up, forking and revising models.

In short, OnShape wants something that functioned like SolidWorks but works like Google Docs. After nearly three years of development, the new software is ready to be unveiled.

Using OnShape
In January, the folks at OnShape gave me access to the beta program so I could experienced the software for myself. The MCAD program is both a history-based parametric modeler and a direct modeler/editor. It runs in any modern web browser, which means the operating system is immaterial — Linux, OS X, Windows. However, due to the small screen sizes of Android and iOS devices, the company is writing native OnShape apps for these two platforms (see figure 1).

Figure 2: Version tracking is shown graphically in OnShape.

 

I accessed the program by going to the cad.onshape.com site and found that files loaded fairly quickly, but that editing and making view changes ran more slowly. I tested OnShape on two Windows computers: One a quad-core 3.1GHz desktop and the other a dual-core 2.7GHz machine. Even though the speeds were similar, the quad-core computer worked significantly faster than the dual-core, so it appears that cores matter. Opening files that need to be translated occurred nearly as quickly as opening native files.

Model files are not stored locally, but on servers. At this point, OnShape operates server farms located on the West and East coasts of the United States, Ireland and Asia. To keep everything together, the model and all of its support files are stored in a single container file. There is no Save command so that we don’t need to think about saving or backing up drawings. Instead, there is a Save Version command that archives the current state of the model.

At this early stage in development, the number and variety of OnShape commands is basic. The reason is that, when writing a brand-new Google Docs-like CAD system, there is a great deal of work at the beginning to write the file and collaboration portions that underpin the web-based program.

As a result, collaborating on a model involves emailing a URL; anyone receiving it gets full access to the program and the model. Parts can be edited simultaneously, down to the feature level. The program supports forking to create variations of models, as well as merging to bring multiple versions together again. To keep track of things, versions, forks and merges are displayed graphically (see Figure 2).

Most of the commands are located in a single line of icons, a few having flyouts. The icons displayed depend on the modeling mode — parts, assemblies or sketches. Figure 3 shows the commands available for creating and editing parts next to the word “Sketch.”

Pause the cursor over an icon to get a paragraph of help text. Clicking the icon displays a docked dialog box with the command’s options. More than one user can work in this dialog box at the same time — whoever clicks the green checkmark last, wins. In fact, I could sign in twice into my own account on two different computers and work on the same model that way.

As an alternative to icons, users can enter shortcuts on the keyboard, such as Shift+E to extrude or D to apply dimensions. Right-clicking a part displays a shortcut menu with display commands, such as Hide Other Parts.

Figure 3: History tree in OnShape (at left), editing a fillet (dialog box next door), help tip (at center) and view cube (at right). Tabs along the bottom hold parts, assemblies and support files.

 

Models are displayed in wireframe, hidden, shaded and other visual styles in orthographic or perspective viewpoints, as well as three forms of isometric view. A viewcube rotates the model in steps. Zoom, pan and rotate are available from the middle mouse button, naturally. The program does not, however, have specific touch controls; just the few that work with all programs in Windows 8.

The pancake button (three horizontal lines) lets me select units, specify properties, rename the model and print. Printing is rudimentary at this early stage, and in fact did not work for me. I got a print preview in a separate browser tab, but then my laser printer spat out a blank sheet.

I really liked the tabs along the bottom of the OnShape window. They segregate the open drawing into different aspects. In separate tabs, I can open parts (this is known as the “Part Studio”), assemblies and support files like PDFs, scans and photographs. Indeed, there can be more than one Assembly tab, each with a different collection of parts. The 2D drafting portion of the program was not, unfortunately, ready for me to test.

Price and Availability
The base price of OnShape is free. This includes all the functions and is not limited by time. The catch is, however, that all our models are available to everyone else. I suppose this is one way to quickly build up a parts warehouse. To make models private, you need to pony up $100 per month per user.

OnShape Beta is available now at cad.onshape.com. At some point in the future, the application will achieve Release 1.0 status. In the meantime, the company plans to keep adding functions, while they look for partners to provide ancillary operations like FEA and CAM.

OnShape is another attempt to create a CAD system that runs well over the Internet. This has its advantages, such as having no program to install, accessing the program and models from anywhere by one or many users, and working with most operating systems. But because it relies on the Internet, we cannot use it off-line, so it could suffer from latency (delays between our browsers and their servers), and the software is always updated, whether we want it or not.

The company designed their new program to be attractive to existing SolidWorks users, yet not be unfamiliar to users of similar programs, like Inventor or Solid Edge. Now it’s up to those users to figure out if working on the web is preferable to the desktop.

The team behind this software is smart, and has spent much time thinking about how an MCAD system should operate in 2015 and beyond. They are taking as much a gamble with the web as they did twenty years ago with Windows 95.

www.onshape.com

[Reprinted with permission of Design Engineering magazine]

 

Q&A with Chris Yessios, CEO of AutoDesSys

by Ralph Grabowski, reprinted from CADdigest.com

 

 

Apple’s 1984 introduction of the Macintosh computer spurred on researchers to take advantage of Apple’s unique, interactive, graphically-oriented interface. One of them was Dr. Chris Yessios, who at the time was the director of the Computer-Aided Architectural Design (CAAD) Graduate Program at Ohio State University. He could see that computers like the new Macintosh could become the future of 3D modeling, software that longed for interactivity. The result of his musings was formZ, one of the first 3D modelers designed with the user in mind.

In this interview, Ralph Grabowski spoke with AutoDesSys CEO Chris Yessios about his company and its software, along with input from Senior Vice President of Development, David Kropp, an ex-student of Yessios’ and co-founder of the company.

- - -

Q: You were first with a university, and then this company came out of your research. Tell me about how formZ came about.

A: In 1968, I came to the United States to study city planning, after studying architecture in Europe. While in a master’s program, I picked up a couple of computer classes that I hadn’t done before, and l fell in love with the computer, as its potential became pretty obvious to me right from the beginning, I ended up transferring to a doctorate program in computer-aided design at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh that Chuck Eastman, then an assistant professor, was starting. After my graduation in 1973, I was hired by Ohio State University, which wanted to expand its research activities into potential applications of the computer in architectural design.

When I joined the Department of Architecture, it had no computer equipment and right from the beginning we had to establish a collaboration with the Computer Science department, which flourished more and more as our research work progressed. In a few years we established a special graduate program in CAAD. Its aim was to explore and develop computer tools that enhanced architectural design. Among others, this work was strongly supported by IBM, DEC and the National Science Foundation and led to the development of a number of prototypical modeling systems that were used in design studios by students not enrolled in the CAAD program. It’s needless to underline how valuable the feedback of those students was and how much they contributed to the evolution of the 3D modeling tools.

With the arrival of the Mac, we finally had an interactive machine supportive of a graphic user interface, such as the one we had been dreaming of, for implementing 3D modeling tools in the image of human designers. All this presented us with the challenge of re-implementing the most advanced of our prototypes to run on the Mac. Because our expectations to raise research funds for redoing work that had already been funded in the past were rather slim, we decided to do it privately. To make a long story short, we started work in 1989. AutoDesSys, which stands for Automated Design Systems, was incorporated in 1990, and on Valentine’s Day — February 14, 1991 — we had the first release of formZ, 24 years ago.

 

Q: What does the name formZ mean?

A: We were initially inclined to use an architectural name and Vitruvius, the name of the Roman architect, was a strong candidate. But then, as work progressed and we started receiving feedback from some alpha testers, we realized that our software was also applicable to a variety of other design fields, beyond architecture. We kicked around a few names, and decided on formZ: "Z" for the third dimension, and "form" for what we are dealing with. For a while we also carried the subtitle, 3D form synthesizer.

 

Q: The original formZ ran on Mac?

A: Yes, it ran on the Mac exclusively for a couple of years, and then we brought it to Windows 95.

 

FormZ model by Giorgio Borusso

 

Q: Who tend to be your customers?

A: Since the beginning, formZ has been a general purpose 3D modeler, but it has been accused of having — and applauded for — a heavy architectural bias. As already mentioned, at the beginning, it was intended to be an architectural application, but then we realized that 3D modeling is also useful to many other fields. As a result, we have a multi-faceted user base, with the majority of them being in architecture. formZ is also used in Hollywood for set design and special effects in movies, for product design, jewelry design, exhibit and retail design, forensic animations, and so on. We have users that design and build inflatables, others that do furniture, design ships, etc. In general, we have seen formZ being used in areas that we had never thought it would.

 

Q: How many people use your software?

A: An exact number is always hard to calculate as it is hard to know who of the people that acquired the software continue to use it, in spite of the fact that we remain in contact with the majority of our active users. Excluding academic licenses, we estimate around a couple of hundred thousand active users. This does not include the free and student versions. Neither does it count formZ free, a relative new addition to our product line, the free downloads of which sometimes surpass one hundred a day.

 

Q: You are located in the United States, but do you see a benefit to sales in Europe due to your European connection?

A: Not really. The U.S. remains our main market, while we also make significant sales overseas. Most of our European sales are in Germany, the United Kingdom and Italy. From the overseas sales, Japan has always been the strongest market. We haven’t figured out China yet, even though the program circulates a lot there, mostly as a bootleg.

 

Q: How does formZ fit into the architect’s workflow?

A: As a conceptual program, it sketches stuff very quickly and interactively. Then architects can take those preliminary models to full detail. Our models are solid models, in contrast to some other so-called modeling applications. Being solid models, they are ready to be 3D printed. We have rendering, of course, and animation, and drafting for construction drawings with dimensions, annotations and sectioning. We call these "layouts," and they can be extracted directly from 3D models.

Our idea for formZ has always been a design tool: very easy to use with a good data representation. It allows exploration for cyclic design, where architects quickly evaluate and change things.

 

Q: What about generating 2D drawings from 3D models?

A: formZ tries to be full range, and so we also make 2D drawings from 3D models; we call it "layouts." The drawings have dimensions, notes, and sectioning.

We say that our program has multiple personalities. By this, we mean that you can design with polygon modeling or smooth (ACIS) solids, NURBS modeling or sub-division modeling (sub-d). Sub-d is part of the workflow, and not an add-on. You can switch from one to the other, for example, from sub-d to NURBS surfaces or solids. formZ is the only program we know of that does this, letting you work in any personality: start in one modeling mode, like sub-d, and then switch to solid modeling. Given today’s architectural trends towards organic and curvy forms, frequently mixed with rectangular shapes, formZ’s multiple personalities are proving conveniently efficient in accommodating these contemporary trends.

 

Q: Is there an API?

A: Yes, it is C or C++ based and allows one to develop plug-ins that can then be run under formZ. A lot of our newer functions are written as plug-ins. Also, some of our power users are writing their own plug-ins, some of which are becoming available on our web site. Also, rendering applications such as the Maxwell and Lightwork renderers are currently running as plug-ins.

 

Q: It is interesting that rendering was invented in the U.S., but now it seems that European companies are making the renders.

A: Yes, this is true. Popular renderers are today coming mostly from Europe. However, we have noticed that there are also developers in China and Japan writing rendering software, quite independently.

 

Q: Who are some of your competitors?

A: There are quite a few modelers on the market, but they all have different strengths and most apply to specific fields, such as architecture, different types of engineering, product design, etc. While not completely comparable, we would say that the most similar to formZ are Rhino and SketchUp. Each of these has its own strengths, but neither offers the multiple personalities that formZ does nor are they as complete in their range of capabilities.

 

Q: What are your future plans?

A: Keep on doing what we have been doing: making the software still more powerful, yet easier to use as technology evolves. For example, Boolean operations were very slow in 1991: to union two relatively large spheres it could have taken two to three minutes. Today, it is instantaneous. Our Reshape function, which resembles the push-pull operation of other applications, behind the scenes, executes continuous Boolean operations in real time, something we couldn’t even imagine a couple of decades ago.

We want to make our scripting easier. The API formZ is offering currently is very powerful, but it is programmer-oriented; for example, it uses naming conventions following computer science standards, which makes it unfriendly for the casual user and programmer. We are also working on visual scripting, but we are not ready to announce specifics at this time.

Real time dynamic and parametric modeling is another area that we want to further enhance by developing generative algorithms that can be driven through touch sensitive screens and voice commands. We expect these techniques to have a dramatic impact on the ways designers brainstorm and conceptualize. Sorry, but we have to put off discussing more specifics for a later time.

We want to produce field specific plug-ins that, when attached to formZ, will transform the application into a specialized version. We intend to do this especially for architectural design, where the planned plug-ins will implement architecturally intelligent procedures and elements, such as walls, doors/windows, floors/ceilings, etc., that know how to behave according to what they are, when operations are applied to them. These will offer the starting points for our entrance into our version of BIM. While this is all work in progress, we have no timetable yet.

We take a special pride in our support of 3D printing. Our models go through [the 3D printing process] very smoothly. 3D printing is successful with watertight models, which is something we have always made. We can even fix incomplete models produced by other applications, using tools specific to 3D printing. We intend to continue our attention to this area as 3D printing technology further evolves.

 

Q: Describe your software lineup to our reader.

A: We recently restructured our product line to three levels: 

• formZ pro ($995) with animation, layouts and customizable interface
• formZ jr ($495) based on bonzai3d
• formZ free ($0) with an introductory toolset and no ACIS modeling 
• RenderZone plug-in ($395) based on Lightworks rendering engine for Pro and Jr editions

In addition to the above, we have always had and still have a student/faculty license that we offer for free. As a matter of fact, we were the first to introduce free programs for students at a time when other companies charged schools dearly. Now most have followed our lead.

 

Q: Do you have any other products planned?

A: There will be a formZ Layout application, where the layout procedures will be sold separately from the modeling. There will also be a formZ Viewer, which will allow users to view models from formZ and other applications on smart phones and tablets. There will be more renderers and other plug-ins. Expect more specific announcements in the not too distant future.

http://www.formz.com

 

 

Renga Architecture is brand-new AEC software by an MCAD vendor

From ASCON Group

 

 

Saint Petersburg's ASCON Group is best known for its MCAD software KOMPAS-3D. As the largest Russian CAD vendor, it has concentrated on the MCAD market for more than 20 years, along with more recent projects like its C3D geometric kernel and DEXMA cloud-based PLM system. 

When I visited them in 2009, they hinted at wanting to enter the AEC sector, which in Russia currently is dominated by foreign Autodesk programs. Under the radar, they've been working hard on AEC software, which entered beta in December. And within the next four weeks, ASCON plans to release it officially.

Here is what the user interface looks like:

 

The name given to the software is Renga Architecture, based on the Japanese word for bricks (as in construction) and for collaborative poetry. ASCON ceo Maxim Bogdanov this week released the first public glimpse of Renga through a 13-minute video that goes through the program's user interface and some of its commands.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mah76xQ2SIg

 

 

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

 

4. It uses Parasolid for the kernel; it uses D-cubed for constraints and other MCAD functions, like Solidworks.

5. Users can co-edit models down to the feature level, both editing the same feature.

6. If a server crashes, Parasolid moves your modeling session to another server automatically.

7. The free version makes your files public after the first five; to keep all your proprietary data private, you pay OnShape $100 a month.

8. To keep more than five files private on free account, you deactivate the other files (can't be viewed or edited, but are still sharable).

9. The $100/month includes unlimited file storage on the cloud, unlike any competitor. The free version gives you 5GB.

10. As of today, you can try it at www.onshape.com in any modern Web browser on all operating systems; there are separate apps for Android and iOS users.

- - -

Link to OnShape presentation (PDF): https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/28941239/Onshape%20Press%20Kit%2003092015.pdf

 

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, and so on. The user guide is 900 pages.

To join the beta, go to http://nanocad.com/page/Betatester. (The page loaded slowly for me, so be patient.) There is a lot of info about the capabilities of this new software.

 

 

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. 2014 was a significant year, too, of progress in terms of advancing on our purpose and expanding our addressable market.

Photosphere, biosphere, geosphere, these are not simply words to us. We are advancing on our purpose with our new brand Biovia focused on biology, chemical and material sciences.

With the introduction of our new part of Geovia, which is called 3Dexperience City, it is possible to now represent the behaviors and experiences of different systems to run a smart city such as water, electrical grid, transportation and people.

And we are advancing on building a comprehensive offering for businesses and people on upstream experience thinking to save on marketing.

This year, we added design of molecules with the creation of Biovia Global Business operation planning, with the acquisition of Quintiq, on digital marketing with the creation of 3Dxcite.

The 3Dexperience platform is a critical enabler of our strategy, gathering altogether all our applications for the best product on Industry Solution Experience. Client engagements show the comprehensive nature and range of our offer:

• Lamborghini has adopted 3Dxcite to offer an online configurator for potential customers, including gaming features, where the designed car is ready for an online drive.
• Carlsberg, the fourth largest brewer in the world has selected Quintiq to help manage sales and operations planning, master production scaling and detailed scheduling for 41 breweries in China.
• And Mead Johnson Nutrition is using Biovia solution for compliance for pediatric nutrition products.

The 3Dexperience platform is also a critical enabler to our cloud-plus mobile strategy. We launched our first cloud offering during 2014. It is clear that the value of connecting people quickly, easily to work and collaborate altogether is a game changer in areas such as project management, productivity, closer connectivity between design and manufacturing, among many other benefits in terms of simplicity and cost.

The last three years in total have been about creating a new Dassault Systemes to well orient ourselves to our next decade long vision with 3Dexperience , and our expanded purpose, sustainable innovation for product nature and life, and our Social Industry Experience strategy. We are now positioned to begin to accelerate our execution. With the many assets we now are in place, Dassault Systemes is ready to move to the next stage ahead.

 

Source: http://seekingalpha.com/article/2888756-dassault-systemes-sa-dasty-q4-2014-results-earnings-call-transcript

 

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 V16

 

New to the Modeler

In kinematic operations, the elements of solids are cloned for a variety of positions relative to the guide path. Threads can be adjusted according to the initial position and length of the hole in which it is rendered.

Building shell rings by individual sketches with irregular faces is performed using a constant bend radius. Building conical polygons through sheet metal bends is performed through segmentation of the support arches. When building sheet metal bodies, the closure of angles is rendered through the rotary processing of the target area. Users can set different lengths to the left and to the right of the bending extension.

Edge fillets are created more efficiently, with dramatically fewer inaccuracies and with no building limitations. The thickness of surfaces can be based on singular (polar) points. The tangent line junctions of surfaces built from a web of curves are rendered more smoothly.

New to the 2D and 3D Solver

Clusters are a new type of solid body with their own constraint system, and so arranges geometric models against a hierarchy of nested sub-assemblies. This allows designers to employ the same solver instance for an entire assembly. 

Reflection symmetry is the new geometric constraint for 3D shapes, and is applied to any geometric object, such as curves on pairs of bodies or external facets.

All API calls for the 2D solver are implemented. All details regarding interactions of the C3D Solver are recorded automatically to file, which allows remote debugging.

Also new: a dragging function; interpolated spline function with any type of constraint; function for recognizing the types of conic sections defined as NURBS curves; and constraint for defining spline configurations through its points with fixed coordinates, through vectors of the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd derivatives.

New to the Converter

C3D converter adjusts the accuracy of exported STL models by three triangulation parameters: maximum deflection, maximum pivot angle of a normal curve (or surface), and maximum length of a triangle side.

Polygon models are imported in STL and VRML formats.

Attributes are now imported, such as name, designation, and owner.

Improved multi-threading converts data faster, such as 1.7x faster for Parasolid files (x_t, x_b) and 2.2x faster for STEP files. 

 - - -

To request a C3D V16 evaluation version, register at c3dlabs.com/en/evaluation.

 

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 lifecycle management) software in areas like automotive, industrial machinery, and consumer goods. Here is what their software consists of:

Their unique take on PLM is model-based SOA and SaaS business model. What does this mean? I trust we will find out soon from this Webinar!

Aras software has been proven to handle 250,000 concurrent users.

Why Aras?

 Trends in the industry:

• Complexity of products is increasing
• Global environment is changing, providing disruptions of the status quo and new opportunities
• The needs of businesses are changing

Also, mechanical design is taking on more electrical components, like the hybrid transmission we are being shown. It is a traditional vehicle transmission that also contains an electric motor, which provides a power boost, but also recharges the battery.

Sounding like Autodesk, Aras says that traditional PLM is failing. It suffers from

• Fragmented architecture and proprietary formats
• Inflexible data models
• Old forms of licensing
• Unpredictable costs and time scales, putting projects at risk 

Instead, Aras has model-based SOA [service oriented architecture] and  SaaS [software as a service] subscription model to adapt to businesses more readily and cost less. Aras says its architecture is unique, and looks like this:

The exclusive from Aras is how they handle upgrades: even customer-written add-ons are upgraded by Aras, to ensure that the entire system works with the latest release. No other PLM does this. US Army has been using it for 14 years now, and all their add-ons work today, no matter how old. [Here's looking at you, Dassault - Ed.]

All data is stored in one location, even models and ECOs [engineering change orders]. No upfront software license cost means everyone can access Ares as a full user. 

Aras Innovator V11

New in V11 is visual collaboration, a standards-based view and markup service, with social discussions. It does not require native apps to access data files. It works with tablets.

Other PLM systems are focused on 3D primarily, and lock in customers with proprietary formats. Access is limited because extra fees are charged. 

Oh, and here is screen grab of what the Aras Innovator software looks like:

The new "social media" element is seen on the right of the top dialog box. And here is a screen grab of the tablet version, called Flow. It looks to us like it is running on a Windows 8 tablet:

Q&A

Q: What is the viewer you are using?

A: PDF is the universal file format used by Aras Innovator. It uses Mozilla.js viewer for standard PDFs. For 3D PDFs, they are using the HOOPS viewer from TechSoft3D. A third one is for direct image file viewing, just as TIFF and JPEG. Everything is HTML5, and so works in browsers without plug-ins. 

[None of my questions were answered:

- Q: What happens to customer's data files, like CAD drawings. Are they kept in a proprietary database, or can the customer easily keep them, should they decide to discard Aras?
- Q: How much does Aras cost?
- Q: Is Flow for Android, iOS, or both?]

 

www.aras.com

 

 

 

Counting commands across operating systems

Command equality for all OSes

 

When some years ago software companies like Bricsys and Graebert re-launched their CAD software, they did so with multiple operating systems in mind. The old mindset of writing programs using Microsoft's convenient programming and user interface toolsets (as well as DirectX)... well, all that has gone out the door now.

Being locked to Microsoft is seen as restricting the size of one's market. OS X, Linux, Android, and iOS each have their desirability factor: 

• OS X and Linux -- underserved by (M)CAD software, as compared to Windows; hence, more sales potential as compared to the over-crowded Windows market 
• Android -- the most popular operating system in the world; hence, sales to vast untapped areas of the planet
• iOS -- used by people who like spending lots of money; hence, big sales to free-spending folks

As of BricsCAD V8 and ARES, Bricsys and Graebert used cross-OS programming tools like wxWidgets and OpenDWG API, as well as developing their own cross-platform APIs. So the question becomes: how well did they pull it off?

AutoCAD Compatibility Score = 53%

First, let's look at the standard bearer, AutoCAD. We see Autodesk struggling for several years now to get the Mac version to catch up to the Windows version, which is, unfortunately, locked to Microsoft. It's been hard work to create a Mac version, and a comparison list provided by the company shows that the gap remains still huge in 2015: http://www.autodesk.com/products/autocad/compare/compare-platforms.

 

Counting the checkmarks, we see that of 125 features, 57 are unique to Windows and four to OS X. AutoCAD's compatibility score is 53%. This is calculated from ((125 - 4) - 57) / 121 = 0.528.

Autodesk charges as much for the half-featured Mac version as it does for the Windows version, and is missing a version of AutoCAD for Linux.

BricsCAD Compatibility Score = 98%

BricsCAD runs on Windows, Linux, and OS X. Its help file is helpful to today's exercise, because it applies Windows, OS X, and Linux icons to indicate which commands work with which operating system. See https://www.bricsys.com/bricscad/help/en_US/V15/CmdRef/index.html

Out of 705 commands reported by the Commands command in BricsCAD V15 Platinum edition, 14 are listed by the Help file as specific to Windows. All of the other commands are also found in the OS X and Linux versions of the program. BricsCAD V15's compatibility score is 98%. This is calculated from (705 - 14) / 705 = 0.980.

BricsCAD has the same price for its Windows, OS X, and Linux versions.

I didn't perform a rigorous count for ARES, but from an informal perusal of its help file, this CAD system has a compatibility score similar to BricsCAD. Graebert applies the same price for the Windows, OS X, and Linux versions of ARES.

 

What's Next for AutoCAD Workalikes

Open Design Alliance's Teigha Cloud 4.0.1 beta

 

Press releases from Open Design Alliance are important, because they tell us today what AutoCAD workalikes like IntelliCAD, BricsCAD, and ARES (DraftSight, CorelCAD) are going to be doing tomorrow.

ODA's API is called Teigha, and it gives them and a thousand other CAD developers access to file formats like DWG from Autodesk and DGN from Bentley Systems. In addition, ODA makes it easier for the companies to implement complex CAD functions, such as ACIS-based solids modeling. 

This week, ODA announced v4.0.1 of Teigha with these added functions:

• beta release of Teigha Cloud framework for cloud‐based rendering of DWG and DGN files
• changes to make it easier to customize Teigha Cloud for uses other than rendering
• support for associative arrays in drawings
• improvements to importing DGN files 
• support for iOS 8 (they already support Android)

ODA members can now implement these functions -- or not. The point is that it is easier for them to do things like implementing arrays that automatically update themselves. ODA does the heavy lifting.

http://www.opendesign.com

 

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 latency had to be low enough; the Web browser had to be HTML5-compatible enough; and so on. See figure below of Sunglass running on an iPad, kind of.)

Never mind. Even CAD-unaware publications like TechCrunch heralded this New Era in 3D design. Lanuched with the financial assistance of VC firms, firms erupted with funky software names like TinkerCAD, To3D, and sunglass.io . 

And then it was like 2001 all over again. The answer to step 2 of the old joke...

Step 1: Idea!
Step 2: ????
Step 3: Profits!

... is Paying Customers!

The Web sites for Sunglass.io and To3D aren't even zombies; they're gone entirely now. TinkerCAD was in the process of shutting down when Autodesk snapped it up. And as I write this, Lagoa was bought by Autodesk for $60 million. Earlier, GrabCAD was bought by Statasys, and TeamPlatform by 3D Systems.

Web-based CAD is just too funky to be useful in an efficient way to end-users.

 

Solidworks 2015: Orphan No More

by Ralph Grabowski

[This article first appeared in Design Engineering magazine, and is reprinted with permission.]

Four years after Dassault Systems badly announced the successor to Solidworks (which led to a frenzy of speculation as its dedicated users debated the future of the company's mid-level CAD package), its future is secure. At the September launch of Solidworks 2015, Dassault executives reassured the assembled media that the world's #1 MCAD program would be updated and supported for another 15 years, at least.

The uncertainly affected primarily only the chattering classes, because at 2.3 million users Solidworks continues to sell briskly, keeping its position as the #1 MCAD program. Now, the bulk of these sales are to educational institutions; subtract them out and there appears to be around 650,000 commercial seats. Dassault trumpets the number as often as it can, because arch competitor Siemens PLM only occasionally provides vague guidelines for second-place Solid Edge, such as "over 500,000" commercial seats, while Autodesk stopped reporting licenses of apparent third-place Inventor years ago.


What's New in SolidWorks 2015

And so in this light, Dassault imbued Solidworks 2015 with bevy after bevy of new and enhanced functions. After all, nothing says "We're there for you" like lots and lots of enhancements from a software company. Let me highlight a few that caught my eye.

Treehouse is not so much new as reintroduced after being previewed years ago. It has a flowchart-like interface for building assemblies graphically. We build assembly structures by dragging and dropping parts and assemblies into the interface -- or by opening an existing assembly into Treehouse. After this, we can edit the parts to specify things like configurations, quantities and custom properties. The data can be linked to Solidworks Enterprise PDM.

Chain patterns are a new type of assembly. Here we pattern (array) parts along a path that can be open or closed -- think tank treads or even gantry cable guides -- in three modes: by distance, by distance linkage, or by connected linkage. Once the assembly is complete, Solidworks simulates the motion of the chains so that we can be sure it'll operate correctly.

Assemblies can be exploded radially with a single click; think of bolts exploding out of a pressure vessel.

Something we saw introduced to Solid Edge ST7 this year, Solidworks also automatically flattens 3D models to see how much material is needed. With an eye on the fashion industry into which Dassault sells specialty software, the company states specifically that this flattening can be used towards clothing, footwear, and upholstery design. 

Over in the area of surfacing, surface curvature combs let us see how well surfaces connect. This is important for ensuring smooth transitions from one surface to the next.

Asymmetrical fillets means that we can specify two radii (instead of just one, as for traditional fillets), like two distances for chamfers. In this case, the resulting fillet looks like a quarter ellipse.

Patterns (arrays) no longer need to be regularly spaces: they can have variable distances defined by formulae. (I first saw this in the Russian KOMPAS MCAD program earlier this year, and so it's interesting how quickly the function appeared elsewhere.) To make variable patterns, we first create a pattern table that defines the distances, which can be pasted into Solidworks from a spreadsheet. The table defines distances between features (extrudes, revolves, fillets, domes, drafts, and so on), as well which instances to skip for non-continuous patterns. The values can be static, or calculated using mathematical functions, like sum, sine, log, pi, and square root. I can see this one function needing an entire course to learn!

To make it easier to find references in 2D drawings, sheets can be divided into zones. As a result, annotation notes, balloons, and revisions tables refer to zone numbers, which are updated automatically should parts be moved to another zone.

Other new items that caught my eye are touch-ups that probably should have been added to Solidworks years ago. These include drawing lines symmetrical to the midpoint, saving selection sets by name for reuse, customizing toolbars, drawing spline-shaped leaders, and setting word wrapping, paragraph spacing, and line spacing in paragraph text.

For more on what's new and changed in Solidworks 2015, look at http://help.solidworks.com/2015/English/WhatsNew/c_top_enhancements.htm.


Solidworks Links to MBD

Along with adding functions to Solidworks, Dassault continues on a parallel path slowly writing modules that are independent of the MCAD program, yet help out designers using Solidworks. The modules are independent because they are written with Dassault's proprietary CAD platform -- Enovia database (for the "file" system) and CGM kernel (for the modeling) -- and it is inherently incompatible with the Parasolid kernel employed by Solidworks. Being external modules allows Dassault to charge extra for each, typically $2,000 apiece with a $500/yr subscription.

The newest module is Solidworks MBD.  "Model-based definition" is the idea is that 3D models should contain all the information needed to build the design, forsaking 2D entirely. Now, MBD is the hot new term that isn't as sexy like "social" or "cloud," but is much more important; well, it has the potential to be that, but only now is getting attention along with slowly getting needed traction among design firms. MBD is driven by government agencies, such as the US Military's MS-31000A specification that requires that 3D models for stuff manufactured for military use.

(Traditional 3D models contain only information that is inherent, such as the lengths of edges and volumes. Design details are left for the stacks of 2D drawings, which document 3D models through flattened views, hosts of dimensions and geometric tolerances, welding instructions and other notes, embedded bills of material and their accompanying balloons, all topped off with index sheets. This is why marketing departments make big fusses over how well their MCAD programs generate linked 2D drawings from 3D models, automatically. Because that's the way it's done, currently.)

MBD promises the jettison all the 2D generation, automation, and linking for a purely 3D deliverable that is loaded up with all the information that today is relegated to drawing sheets. But this means updating MCAD systems to embed 3D PMI (product and manufacturing information) and metadata into 3D models, information like design intent, GD&T, BOMs, material definitions, and configurations -- all this stuff that used to be external to the pure 3D model. You can see that generating self-contained 3D models requires a big switch in thinking, and a big programming job by MCAD software developers.

This is not simple transition, and so Solidworks doesn't do it. Instead, the new, separate module does it. Solidworks MBD attaches all that PMI data directly onto 3D models. Output templates generate models and data suitable for different departments, such as procurement, request for quotations, and manufacturing. And, in a tip of the hat the current practice, MBD also outputs drawings in 2D.

See http://www.solidworks.com/sw/products/technical-communication/solidworks-mbd.htm

Conclusion

With Solidworks 2015, users are relieved to see their favorite MCAD system imbued with new life through an impressive set of new functions. For those firms who need it, MBD will allow them to use a mid-level MCAD system for high-end aircraft and military contracts. 

http://www.solidworks.com

Actual details of BricsCAD BIM

Building information modeling

 

BricsCAD V15 is shipping today, and it includes the first edition of the return by Bricsys to architectural design. Recall that the company created the AEC software that was purchased in the 1990s by Bentley Systems for its architectural needs, TriForma. 

Here is the excerpt from the V15 release notes that talks about the new BIM functions:

---

Concepts
Instead of creating a set of dedicated BIM primitives like walls, slabs, columns, etc..., each with their own restricted behavior and properties, we opted for offering maximum flexibility. Any 3D solid can be used in a BIM model, whether it is created and edited by using existing BricsCAD modeling tools, new powerful BIM commands, or even imported from 3rd party software or edited by 3rd party tools.

At any stage one can decide to classify 3D solid or other entities, as Building Elements of type Wall, Slab, Column, etc... Classification can be done automatically and manually.
The automatic classification tool analyzes and classifies entire buildings in a few seconds.
IFC import/export ensures optimal cooperation with other disciplines and applications.

Modeling Commands 

BIMDRAG: Main editing tool for 3D solids which resemble walls and slabs. Geometry of 3D solids is analyzed on the fly. Depending on this analysis and on which face is selected, BIMDRAG allows you to easily perform following operations, which can be toggled on the fly by pressing the CTRL key: 

• Drag a single face to extend a wall or slab over a distance or to a point in the model
• Automatically connect to the nearest solid
• Select any solid(s) to connect to
• Move an entire wall or slab, specifying the distance relative to any other wall or slab in the model, dragging along faces of connected walls or slabs
• Modify the thickness of a wall or slab

BIMCONNECT: accepts a selection set of 2 solids, and will try to create an L-connection between the two solids. Press Enter to accept the suggested connection or tap the CTRL key to switch to alternative connection types. This command works for walls and roof slabs, or any other set of 3D solids for which a connection can be found.

BIMINSERT: inserts a window or door (see section below on windows and doors).

About Windows and Doors. Windows and doors are native .dwg files which can be inserted in walls or slabs by the command BIMINSERT. Using dynamic UCS, a window will automatically align with the 3D solid face it is inserted on. A 3D solid in the window drawing on a layer named "BIM_SUBTRACT" will be used to automatically create an opening in the wall, keep the window in its position in the wall, and keep the opening associative with the window.

Optionally, the window drawing can contain 2D symbols. These 2D symbols will either replace the actual 3D solid section of the window, or be added with the 3D solid section, depending on their layer: symbols on a layer with prefix 'BRX_2D_' will be used to replace the geometry resulting from the actual section, symbols on a layer with prefix 'BRX_2D+_' will be added to the section result. Only those 2D entities in a plane parallel to the section plane are considered.

BIMWINDOWUPDATE: updates the opening made by a window or door in a solid, in case the definition changed in such way that the opening was not correctly updated automatically.

BIMCLASSIFY: this command allows to classify an entity to any of the elements listed below. Each type is separately available in the Quad when an applicable entity is highlighted.

• Automatic: BIMCLASSIFY has an option to automatically classify a set of entities. Currently automatically classified elements are walls, slabs, windows and doors. 
• Unclassify: Any classified element can be unclassified, removing all BIM data from the entity.

About BIM Classification: At any time, any .dwg entity can be classified as a Building Element and get a name and an internal guid (a globally unique identifier). Specialized types of Building Element are: 

• Wall: applicable to any 3D Solid
• Slab: applicable to any 3D Solid
• Column: applicable to any 3D Solid
• Beam: applicable to any 3D Solid
• Window: applicable to any Block reference
• Door: applicable to any Block reference

BIMEXPORT exports the model to a .ifc file containing all 3D geometrical and BIM related data. Entities which were not classified, or were classified as Building Element, are exported as Building Element Proxy. Others are exported to the corresponding IFC element.

---

Clearly, it will take a while for BricsCAD BIM to catch up with the Graphisofts and Vectorworks of the world. Bricsys tells me that they plan to rapidly add BIM functions over the next several months. 

The interesting aspects to this, however, is that (a) any commands found in the Windows vesion will also be available in the Linux and Mac versions when they ship; and (b) all the data is stored in DWG files, and not in proprietary formats, like RVT. This makes it the first BIM system for Linux users, and the first .dwg-based BIM system for Mac users.

You can download a 30-day demo of the V15 Windows version from http://www.bricsys.com/common/open.jsp?m=%2Fcommon%2Fdownload.jsp%3Fpl%3Dwin

 

New Capabilities in ACIS R25

by Ralph Grabowski, presented by Vivekan Iyengar, vp of R&D at Spatial

 

Spatial is the exclusive provider of Dassault Systems technology, no surprise, given that the 25-year-old company is owned by Dassault. Currently, its V5 and V6 translators are built using Dassault technology, along with the CGM modeling kernel; other specialized components from Dassault include hidden line removal and the constraint solver, which Spatial makes available to 3D application developers. Their two primary products, however, are 3D InterOp for translation and 3D ACIS Modeler, a geometric kernel for solids and surfaces.

3D InterOp

The 3D InterOp software natively translates CATIA V4-V6, SolidWorks, and ACIS (hey, Solidworks could license it so that it can finally read CATIA files), as well as IGES, STEP, Pro/E, Parasolid, and more. It fixes translation problems using healing. "Geometric quality is a never ending task," said Mr Iyengar.

For new functions in 3D InterOp, Spatial concentrates on data reuse. Developers who add 3D InterOp to their programs can limit how it works. It can read independently any and all of these sections of a CAD file:

1. Read only the product structure (fastest)
2. Optionally also read selective graphical data
3. Optionally also read the exact geometry
4. Optionally read metadata, such as colors or PMI (most detailed)

It works with imported models as if they had been created in the native software, as 3D Interop recognizes features, like fillets and holes. 

A part imported from a Catia CGM file

New in 3D InterOp R25 are readers for JT (from Siemens PLM) and 2D/3D DXF/DWG (from Autodesk). Both read the product structure, graphical data, and exact geometry.  After importing a model, 3D InterOp can...

• search for missing parts
• import components of an assembly in parallel
• extract views and captures (camera info) from imported files, such as those created by NX
• extract PMI data from the views/captures
• reuse Parasolid data
• import geometry using multi-threaded CPUs
• support semantic PMI and FTA [feature tolerancing & annotations] constructed geometry

R25 imports data about 2x faster than R24 (such as 7 seconds instead of 14 seconds), although the exact improvement depends on the format of the source file. 

In summary, 3D InterOp captures all the design insight from the original model.

3D ACIS R25

3D Acis is deployed by 350 commercial applications and so used by two million designers. It handles defeaturing, advanced meshing, constraint management, and more.

New in R25 is feature matching (or face matching). This is useful for matching faces in the same process over and over, such as in link chains or crankshafts; it reduces the time needed to make designs with repetitive elements.

Also new is shadow projection, which is useful for CAM applications to calculate the direction of the cut. It's like shining a flashlight onto an object and seeing the shadow on the wall: the "shadow" determines the cut, such as from water cutters.

Also new or improved are sheet wrapping, more robust Booleans, improved wire projection, and improved entity-entity distance.

 

The State of BIM in Russia

by Vladimir Talapov

 

Adapting BIM in Russia is a subject that for a long time has got hyped up the most forward-minded people in our design-building industry. Obviously, the emerging issues often have a purely Russian flavor, but there is a lot in common with the practice of adapting BIM in other countries, so it seems that the paper will be of interest to our foreign colleagues. Good ideas put forward by smart people nourish national pride in any country and are global assets, while stupidity is the same everywhere.

Two years ago I already published a review of the issue on isicad.ru where I shared some predictions about developing BIM in Russia. It caused a keen interest of the readers. Time passed and it is now possible to total the results again. Especially as we do have results and they are largely satisfying, although in the recent months new concerns have emerged.

The paper originally was intended for Russian readers so it has links to other publications in Russian. Those links could not be replaced with the English ones in a translated version, so we decided to leave them as it is. An English reader should be able to get a grasp of those links through the illustrations. Or just use Google Translator which will not only give you an idea about the content of the publications but also put you in a cheerful frame of mind.

BIM is Bound to be Adapted in Russia

Every Russian remembers a famous phrase of an immortal character Ostap Bender from a famous novel of Ilya Ilf and Evgeny Petrov: “Things are moving, gentlemen of the jury”. It is also a perfect characterization of the core of the things: the BIM-mass accumulated during these years is finally reaching its critical level and generates results.

First of all, it concerns the decision of the Presidential Expert Council on devising a plan to adapt BIM in industrial and civil construction of March, 4, 2014. In a nutshell, it marks the beginning of government–controlled BIM implementation in Russia. It is precisely the beginning: the main work is ahead and it must be done.

To a considerable extent, such clear success was fostered by establishing and robust efforts of “BIM/IPD Group” certified at the International Academy of Architecture Moscow brunch (a special thank-you to IAAM from us for this), later transformed into "buildingSMART Rus". Among “spiritual sources” of sprouting and promoting the BIM idea in Russia www.isicad.ru undoubtedly is at the forefront. 

BIM in Design

I am pleased to observe that BIM has been increasingly adapted in design. Now hardly any design organization asks a question: “Do we really need BIM?” Mostly they ask how to implement the technology. Obviously, adapting BIM requires efforts and understanding from both the management and executors at all levels but then with proper performance informational modeling gives good results. 

Unfortunately Russia lacks BIM-statistics (in general there are no serious statistical surveys of design – building industry), so the number of design organizations that start adapting BGIM can only be evaluated by feel. And everyone feels differently. For instance, I mainly deal with those who adopt BIM, while my opponents – with the followers of “manual” drawing, which we still have plenty. Nevertheless, nobody challenges the trend of an increasing interest towards adapting BIM in Russia.

We are especially pleased that expert examination bodies started getting engaged in BIM use, and I know of some projects that Siberian designers submitted to ”Mosgosexpertiza” and successfully passed all necessary procedures. Currently, ”Mosgosexpertiza” is getting ready to accept models from designers without a considerable part of drawing documentation typically required in such cases.

The noted problems of adapting BIM in building engineering equipment become clearer and narrower, practically coming to naught. On the one hand, increasingly more engineering firms see direct financial benefits from adapting BIM to MEP since it cuts down project errors on a construction site, and they endeavor to use the technology. On the other, during this period BIM programs in MEP advanced soundly to the user side, although their electric parts in Russia still need refining.

BIM in Construction and Asset Management 

It is correct to state that “things are moving” although there is still a long haul ahead to a mass movement. But there is some success. First, builders and developers show interest in BIM. Second, information modeling is increasingly used even in such complex building projects as new industrial enterprises. I put “even”, but perhaps “primarily” would be more accurate because BIM advantages are especially effective in technologically complex facilities. 

I am especially pleased to point out that Russia has done well in such very complex operations as decommissioning nuclear plants, which is recognized internationally. 

A unique case – decommissioning Kursk nuclear plant will extend for nearly 70 years. During this period everything will be changed beyond recognition: computers, programs, files, work technology, not to mention that hardly anyone who today is responsible for process modeling will survive until it is completed. I suspect that project results will be summed up at the 100th anniversary of “NEOLANT”, the main project consultant. But the ball starts rolling: it is simply impossible to work with nuclear power facilities without information modeling.

Designing and building such facilities in Russia, with its huge distances, is a task of paramount importance. Here introduction of information modeling also ramps up, since in this sector pay-offs in speed and accuracy of design as well as model susceptibility to changes do make a significant difference. 

Sochi Olympics showed BIM advantages in work with linear objects pretty convincingly. It also revealed another interesting phenomenon to the world: after the Games were over several major Olympic developers went into bankruptcy. Obviously, in every particular case the reasons for large companies’ crashing are different and very specific, but it is possible to outline a general trend: low design quality, numerous errors exposed already at the stage of construction, poor economic estimates of a project.

All this is based on the decades-backed trust that the state would cover any shortage of money. And the state stopped paying for ineffective, money-losing works out of its pocket (sometimes it cannot event be called “works” but simply stealing due to poor accountability). Interestingly, I have had numerous but totally confused contacts with some of those bankrupt developers in the past two years: “Why on Earth do we need BIM when there is such an inflow of money!” Thus, they got some kind of an object-lesson. Draw the moral – adapt BIM! 

The Role of the State in Adapting BIM

As already mentioned, the state in Russia is making the first attempts to manage the process of adapting BIM or at least to stimulate it. I believe this was facilitated not only by the efforts of BIM-enthusiasts but also by some “appropriate” economic conditions: shortening of funds in the treasury, big blunders in estimating the construction costs of the major flagship facilities, a sharp increase in construction costs in general as well as external conditions that in the recent months turned out to be purely aggressive against Russia. 

It is too early, however, to talk about a radical changing of the game in the state approach in favor of BIM in design-building industry: not much is done, and there is always a danger that even the most cutting-edge ideas can be buried in the bureaucrats’ offices.

Estimated Leaders in BIM Software

It is pretty obvious that today Autodesk Revit is the leader among the main BIM-programs in Russia and this leadership is gained in a persistent competition. The reason is that Revit offers a simple and effective end-to-end solution for creating building information models. As they say “the program meets the people”. 

Nobody can be surprised nowadays with good work in Autodesk Revit. Still: my student Ilya Belen’ky, a graduate of Novosibirsk State Academy of Architecture and Civil Engineering (SIBSTRIN) in BIM (MA in construction) created a Revit family (I would call it a “superfamily”), which after inputting all necessary parameters generates a project of a single-storey shop-floor building. All work (except imputing more than a hundred parameters) takes ten minutes on an average-performance computer. Ten minutes – and the project is done!

I am not going to describe his work in detail because Ilya Belen’ky is presenting it at AURussia in Moscow on 1-2 October and we will publish an article on isicad. I just want to say that, first, one needs to be an excellent specialist and a devotee of one’s profession to magic up such a thing, and, second, it is a serious step already to automated information modeling – what is now a matter for enthusiasts, in a few years will become a large-scale practice. What’s more, the work became possible thanks to Autodesk Revit, since it does not require any knowledge of programming, just an interface available to ordinary users. But to solve this task one needs a wise head!

Among specialized BIM-programs intended for structural engineering, I would like to emphasize, first of all, a new round in advancing Tekla Structures, as this well-proven program now has new partners in Russia. 

Another important event in this field is launching AVEVA bocad on Russian market. The program is a comparable analog and a direct competitor of Tekla Structures, so designers and manufacturers of load-bearing structures, primarily, metal ones, finally have a real choice of software for their work.

Design and construction of a two-chambered pyrolysis furnace at “Kazanorgsintez” OJSC. “Cryogastech” Ltd.  The work was completed in AVEVA bocad, 2014. 

 

One more news is that Autodesk now owns Advance Steel and Advance Concrete and as expected they appeared in a bundle with Revit.

And finally, “crème de la crème”: this year an integrated BIM-package in Russian, adapted to our standards entered Russian market: Bentley AECOsim Building Designer. Bentley Systems is not a novice in Russia; it works closely with oil and gas companies and other infrastructure firms. It suffices to say that this year Russia demonstrates 14 projects at Be Inspired, which again takes place in London. However, in our design-and-building industry the company’s achievements have not been well represented.

And now a breakthrough: a Russian version of Bentley AECOsim Building Designer, and a plug-in enabling to combine models created in this program with Autodesk Revit models. Add here accessibility of Autodesk Revit libraries for Bentley AECOsim Building Designer, and it becomes clear that competition on BIM-program market in Russia is getting serious. Bentley Systems has a little left to do: form an infrastructure of training centers and a far-reaching user support system across Russia. 

In the near future other developers, including some Russian ones, are expected to release their BIM-programs, but we’ll talk about it later: let them do it first. 

Adopting BIM 

Two years ago I wrote that 30% of successful BIM adaptation depend on the right choice of software and its capabilities, and 70% - on the right in-house structuring of this process. Today I can make the figures more specific: 20% and 80%. Adapting BIM is a complex matter associated with changing plenty of habitual business-processes. The phrase “BIM is not CAD!” renders the essence pretty accurately. 

As expected, efforts of many vendors and their partners to promote BIM-programs now focus on implementation; the word “consulting” has become ingrained in our life, the time of simple sales is over. Those who failed to grasp the new reality are rapidly giving grounds and even withdraw from the market, sometime quite dramatically. It’s nice to point out that the marketing line “2D is better than 3D” is also gradually fading, although the latest talks about import substitution have slightly revived it. Another phenomenon is mushrooming: now all programs become BIM. The twist was quite predictable and I think that our design-building industry will also sort it out.

BIM Training in Universities 

Do universities train BIM specialists? No, nothing has changed so far – there are no pointed efforts in this field. The worst is that the Ministry of Education is not interested in the issue. 

There are exceptions, however, and the number of them is increasing. For instance, a BIM-laboratory is formed in Naberezhnie Chelny under the frame of Kazan Federal University; it is led by Oleg Pakidov. I guess, with the start of the academic year other good news will be coming from universities.

 

Vladimir Talapov holds a doctorate degree in physics and mathematics, is a professor of the International Academy of Architecture (Moscow branch), and a member of buildingSMART Rus Non-Profit Partnership. He is lead expert of Integral Consulting, and has been involved in design automation and college lecturing for over 30 years. He is the author of nearly a hundred publications on BIM and has translated three textbooks on Revit. He wrote the first (and so far only) book on BIM in Russian, “Basic BIM: Introduction to Building Information Modeling.”

[Reprinted with permission of isicad.net]

 

I perked up when I saw these CAD-related train pictures

I was heavily into model railroading in my teens, which I credit for keeping me sane through those insane years, and even today enjoy being delayed by freight trains thundering through our road crossings.

Which is why when a train-related CAD-oriented press release arrives in my Inbox (not very often) -- with photos! --, I take notice. Here a British firm mounted a brand-new point cloud scanner on what must have been the oldest gondola car they could locate on the rail system:

And here is a sample result from the rail-based scanning system:

 

From Their Cold, Dead Hands: How to Pry Users from their CAE Programs

by Roopinder Tara, Tenlinks.com

 

Autodesk’s acquisition of NEi Nastran gives the CAD company instant credibility in the CAE (computer aided engineering) community. No longer can CAE users dismiss Autodesk as that pretentious CAD company that did little more than assemble a rag-tag collection of little-known analysis applications.

Nastran is serious CAE. It's what the big boys use. It puts planes in the sky and cars on race tracks. I'm not sure I would have boarded the Boeing 737 on which I am writing this had I know Algor had been used in its analysis. (Algor was a midrange analysis program purchased by Autodesk in 2009. Although a general purpose solver, it never achieved the status of Nastran or ANSYS. It is currently named Autodesk Simulation.)

Nastran NEi used for Cessna body

But now the acquisition of NEi Nastran changes the game. Your PhD friends will not laugh at you for using Autodesk software. You can just tell them "It's Nastran, darn it!"

CAE applications garner loyalty beyond that of CAD users, owing to the fact that CAE applications take much longer to learn, are harder to use, require higher educational qualifications, and cost a lot more money. These factors combine to create an atmosphere of exclusivity and clubby camaraderie. No serious CAE user is going to switch CAE programs without a fight just to save a few bucks.

Autodesk admits it will not be able to pry current CAE users, except from "cold dead hands," but it shows no panic at the prospect. Autodesk can afford to be patient and wait, because CAE is not a core business. They can sell their CAE products all around the entrenched CAE users and to CAD users. But the lower price, when coupled a deep and protracted commitment to the market, can't help but over time erode the hold of CAE companies of even their most stalwart supporters.

CAE = Credibility + Commitment

Commitment is really is the key; that low initial cost of the software is secondary. Autodesk has not yet shown it can support CAE users in the manner to which they (hard core analysts) are accustomed. Will users be able to pick up the phone and get a reseller who has a PhD in mechanics and so can tell users when to use Von Mises failure theory -- from years of experience? Both ANSYS and MSC provide this level of support.

Should you have been paying attention in your Mechanics of Material classes, you may not need support for basic questions, but how many would you build the next Boeing aircraft without an advanced level of backup?

CAE companies instilled and maintained a culture that worships theory, academics with advanced degrees, deep knowledge, years of experience, cultivation of engineering judgment... -- qualities that narrow the field of prospective support personnel. CAD companies, on the other hand, set the opposite tone: ease of use, democratization ... --everything that CAE is not.

As the products of CAD companies and CAE companies converge (c.f. ANSYS acquires SpaceClaim), note that eventual success depends not only on product portfolios or the pricing (no matter how low they go), but on something that is much harder to establish: credibility, built on trust.

Market leaders establish trust after providing years of excellent service and great products. And so if indeed an analyst can nail that new composite tailfin panel analysis, if he or she really can do it in less time, or can run it from an iPad, if I can be cool and still hold my head up among my peers, or we can be sure the application has already kept planes in the air... yeah, then, maybe we will try it.

http://www.autodesk.com/products/nastran/features/all/gallery-view

[Reprinted by permission of CAD Insider.]

 

 

 

New numbers place Solid Edge #2 behind Solidworks

Solid Edge University 2014

 

Siemens PLM Software announced this week that they have over 500,000 commercial licenses of Solid Edge out there, a number that places the mid-range mechanical CAD software in the #2 position behind Solidworks (who has an estimated 650,000 seats).

As for Inventor -- who might be in #2 or #3 position -- well, it is a pity that Autodesk vowed to no longer report license numbers for its MCAD software. And so lacking hard data, we have to declare Solid Edge #2. 

In the slide above, the "Free 2D downloads" refers to  Solid Edge 2D Drafting, which is accessed through http://www.plm.automation.siemens.com/en_us/products/velocity/solidedge/free2d.

 

What's Inside? IntelliCAD 8

Exclusive Coverage

Now that the IntelliCAD Technical Consortium is over the huge, multi-year hurdle of rewriting IntelliCAD 7 (so as to plug in ODA libraries  remove all Microsoft-owned code found in IntellICAD 6 and earlier), its programmers have been pushing out updates several times a year like clockwork. No longer the "what ever happened to?" IntelliCAD, it's now the "what's new in?" IntelliCAD.

IntelliCAD 8 is now in beta, and if you ask extra nicely the folks at ITC might, might, might let you in on the beta. But remember: ITC does not sell the software directly; it licenses the code to its members, who pimp up the package with their own special treatments, and then sell it to end users. Here is what to expect when the software ships later this year:

Files

• Now in 64-bit version (as well as 32-bit) for handling larger drawing files and using all available RAM
• Read and write files in native DWG 2013-2014 format (and 2015, too, I would expect)
• Better handling of Microstation DGN files as underlays
• Reads Collada DAE files
• Attaches compressed MrSID MG4 files

User Interface

• New menus and toolbars; reads CUI files
• New dialog boxes for several commands
• Adaptive-sized grids with subdivisions, and lines or dots
• Lots of little additions to layer management, such as states and filters
• IntelliCAD Explorer updated
• Quick select of entities by properties and so on
• Real-time dynamic view rotation

Other

• Raster image attachments
• Advanced rendering component
• Civil3D API
• Improved multi-threading
• Licensing of components

http://www.intellicad.org

Inside Fusion 360

An in-depth look at Autodesk’s cloud-enabled, hybrid MCAD modeling software

Reprinted with permission of Design Engineering, October 16, 2013
by Ralph Grabowski

In response to the CAD industry’s direct modeling mania, Autodesk first announced Inventor Fusion—a desktop installed 3D modeler that combined freeform and solid modeling in a history-free environment—as tech demo on June 24, 2009. Four years later, Autodesk similarly picked June 25 of this year to publicly announce Fusion 360, a cloud-enabled version of the original, thereby adding a modeling component its line of 360 products (including Simulation, PLM and BIM).

Fusion 360 is hybrid software in two ways. For one, it’s not a pure cloud-only app running in a Web browser. Rather, the bulk of the software is still installed on a desktop computer. Some functions, however, are available only through the cloud, such as translation of foreign formats. In another sense, Fusion always operates for free, at a basic level; however, all options are available only as long as we keep paying for them.

When Autodesk introduced Fusion 360 to the media, the company said it felt in the middle of a perfect storm, created by the triad of new types of technology, new ways to access it and new demands for ways of working. And so, on the MCAD side of things, Autodesk’s answer is Fusion 360. Based on the response from beta users, Autodesk is convinced that everyone will want this next generation of Fusion, because it allows us to “design faster, work anywhere and share with anyone.”

What Fusion Does and Doesn’t Do
To start, Fusion 360 requires logging in to the software with a user name and password; no just launching the software with a single double-click. The advantage, Autodesk says, is that the software license is not tied to a single machine or a specific serial number. In this new world, user names are tied to accounts at Autodesk, which determine whether we are allowed to log in and which functions we can access.

Once inside Fusion 360, we can use direct modeling to make and edit 3D shapes from polygons, surfaces, features, assemblies and sketched prismatics. It does not do parametrics or history trees; these will be added later.

While Fusion 360 runs locally through a thin-client executable, a few of its functions, including foreign file translation, require a paid Autodesk subscription.

The software uses T-Splines—technology Autodesk purchased in 2011—that’s unique in how it performs sub-division modeling. Specifically, it can handle T-shaped intersections between faces with curvature continuity. It can start with curves and can match to exact curves, surfaces and meshes. This is in contrast to other 3D modelers, such as AutoCAD, which start from primitives.

While execution of modeling commands relies on local resources, some Fusion 360 functions are available only with Internet access. For instance, it translates 3D file formats only through a cloud server. Other cloud-based functions include collaboration and named backups (a.k.a. automatic archives).

What the FAQ
To flesh out the details, representatives from Autodesk answered the following questions on the particulars of Fusion 360 at a recent company press event.

Q: What happens when a Fusion 360 subscription lapses?
Autodesk: You still can log into the site, access your data and get data out in any format. You cannot, however, author or edit designs. You’ll get a subset of the experience but you own the design data.

Q: How would one go about using Fusion 360 from any other computer: Would the desktop component have to first be installed each time I move to a different computer?
Autodesk: There is a thin client, which users can download as many times as they like, on as many machines as they need.

Q: How much will Fusion 360 cost?
Autodesk: It is free for students and certain groups of enthusiasts. On an annual plan, the cost $25 a month [$300 a year, actually]—less than the price of a cell phone bill. There are also monthly and quarterly plans, which we have not yet announced.

Q: Does every user need the $25/month account?
Autodesk: Not collaborators, who can use a free 360 account. They would log in through their Web browser.

Q: Is the $300/year for all services, or does Autodesk expect to charge more for extras in the future?
Autodesk: We will be introducing monthly, quarterly, and annual plans throughout the year. Prices will start at $25/user per month, based on an annual contract commitment. [No answer to my question on charging extra for extra functions.]

Q: Is there a limit to the amount of data?
Autodesk: There is no data size limit, currently.

Q: What data formats are supported?
Autodesk: Fusion 360 can import Inventor, DWG, STEP, IGES, JT, NX, CATIA V5, Pro/Engineer, SolidWorks, Parasolid and PTC’s Granite. [For exports, the list is similar though shorter.]

Q: What is the future of Fusion for Mac?
Autodesk: We’re embracing the Mac, alongside other platforms. With Fusion 360, users have the ability to work on both Windows and Mac. [The demo we showed had two users working together in Fusion 360: One was running Fusion 360 on a Mac, the other Windows.]

What Ralph Grabowski Thinks
Direct MCAD modeling has been around for decades, and so Fusion is nothing new. After all, AutoCAD always has been a direct modeler, and still is.

But for 3D MCAD, history-based modeling was king until SpaceClaim’s 2007 launch made big vendors realize they could slap on direct editing to give their legacy software another bullet point on the spec sheet.

For example, PTC bolted CoCreate onto Creo; Dassault forked V5 into V6; Siemens PLM synchronized ST with Solid Edge and NX technology. Even little Bricsys purchased an entire direct modeling team from LEDAS. Only SolidWorks stumbled out of the gate, and badly. (It should be noted, all of these are still works-in-progress.)

I wonder if Autodesk got a little irked. They were still in the process of beefing up Inventor to take on Catia and Pro/E, when along came direct modeling. So, they created their own direct modeler, and named it “Inventor Fusion”, blending history and direct modeling. It was available free for two releases of Inventor and AutoCAD. Autodesk is always looking for ways to migrate users from slightly-cheaper AutoCAD to more-expensive Inventor and Revit.

My assumption was that Autodesk would merge Fusion into Inventor, seamlessly and eventually. This year’s release of independent Fusion 360, then, is a puzzle, because (a) it is not part of Inventor; (b) it doesn’t do history-based parametric modeling on its own; (c) it’s a separate pay-per-use product not included in a subscription plan. As best as I can tell, the original desktop Fusion will continue to be available free for Windows and Mac computers.

At this point, it appears that Autodesk is doing a sensible thing in providing customers with two options: Desktop Inventor and/or cloud-based Fusion 360. Large corporations will tend towards cloud-based pay-on-demand software, while SME’s (small and medium enterprises) will stick to desktop perpetual licenses.

http://autodesk.com/tryfusion360

 

Russians marketing to Americans

A Russian reader asks,

I don't know how the political sutuation changes our business. What you think from your side? Not about Crimea, but about business opportunities for Russian companies in USA?

I think it is very tough for Russian companies to make an impact in Western markets. So far, the best way has been to work as sub-contractors to American and European CAD vendors.

The problem stems from a number of reasons, not all of which are rational:

• Russia is still seen as the looming enemy from its Soviet era, and from how it is portrayed as the menace in movies (even today)
• Russian companies have odd names that can be hard to pronounce
• Russians don't do a good job of marketing themselves; perhaps lessons can be learned from Samsung? 

To build up mindshare, marketing in another county takes a long time. Unfortunately, this costs a lot of money. I was impressed at what Alexander Tasev accomplished while he was the head of Autodesk CIS. Today, nanoCAD has a North American presence through Evan Yares. In its early days, Autodesk did it by having one of its German-speaking employees live and market AutoCAD in Germany. 

Following my trip to Russia some years ago, I wrote a whitepaper that talks about the marketing problem. The Russian MCAD Market is in Russian and English, with translation by the fine folks at LEDAS.

In its 126 pages, I interview seven Russian MCAD software firms, and then travelogue my experiences travelling halfway across this immense country, from Saint Petersburg (shown above) to Moscow to Novosibirsk.

www.upfrontezine.com/rcm

 

 

Why LEDAS Labs is choosing C3D -- and other updates on LEDAS

by David Levin, isicad.net

After a 2-year break, in July 2013 LEDAS, not interrupting work on its main specialization - software development services for complex CAD systems and applications - returned to creating its own products and technologies. These pilot projects are exercised by a special unit - LEDAS Labs.

As we approach LEDAS 15th anniversary in April 2014, we asked Alexey Ershov, LEDAS CEO, to tell us about these new projects and how the work of LEDAS Labs correlates with LEDAS efforts, and to describe company’s contacts with Russian partners. 

How are things with geometry comparison technology, announced earlier by LEDAS Labs?

An announcement about our project LEDAS Geometry Comparison (this is a working title, in short - LGC) was met with a great interest, which was clearly manifested in requests and established contacts with a number of reputable companies and well-known specialists. 

The project has several technological and business components, so at this stage we are moving forward in many directions at once.

First, we are improving the algorithmics and are continuously refining our technology. In particular, we received from a well-known American company a valuable set of industrial models which serves as a basis for algorithm improvements. Also we are expanding the list of supported data formats and increasing utility of the data output for the users.

Second, we are hard at work on implementing a parallel version of our technology. Geometric model comparison is a pretty non-trivial task in the field of geometric modeling, so to achieve the best results it is necessary to explore every avenue that the modern hardware opens.

Third, we agreed to integrate our comparison technology with a cloud PDM-system produced by DEXMA and are actively working together with DEXMA team. On the one hand we announced from the very beginning that LGC project is oriented to cloud use. On the other, PDM is one of the natural areas for applying our new solution. Therefore, cooperation with DEXMA enables us to elaborate side by side on industrial versions in two areas of project development.

Forth, we agreed with C3D Labs to integrate our technology with C3D kernel. LEDAS is a reseller of this kernel so we already have had a possibility to see that this is a high-quality product, well-tested by several generations of KOMPAS users. At the same time, integration with LGC will give an example of using C3D in the tasks of another class, not typical for KOMPAS, thus increasing the status of C3D as a general purpose geometric kernel.

Talking about C3D, one could not but remember an ambitious project on Russian RGK kernel, in development of which LEDAS took part. So why C3D rather than RGK?

We analyzed in depth possibilities of integrating our geometry comparison technology with RGK, and this integration was very efficient in terms of both the architecture and the algorithms. In fact, we completed this analysis and planned integration much earlier than we started moving towards C3D. This integration actually was one of the methods of testing the correctness of RGK architecture and completeness of its set of functions. As I already said, the results of this proof-of-concept stage were truly promising, but moving in this direction was hindered by absence of RGK licensing scheme, which is not yet framed out by the Russian government. 

Also the C3D Labs policy with regard to developers of C3D-based products is very attractive, especially when a product is not yet commercialized. Foreign vendors of geometric kernels stick to more stiff schemes of cooperation.

DEXMA is one of the pioneers of cloud PDM systems. Did it affect your choice of the partner? Do you see any additional advantages from integrating two cloud services?

Certainly. For instance, the efforts on integrating DEXMA with Fidesys show that DEXMA ideology allows integrating this system with numerous web-services. You would agree that CAE/FEA is not the first that comes into one’s mind when thinking about expanding capabilities of a PDM system. 

In my opinion, comparing geometric models is fundamental function for PDM systems; or, in any case it is an important market advantage. The basic concepts of product data management, such as revisions, are closely connected to the task of geometric data comparison.

A cloud trend in CAD and engineering software is moving slower than in other software areas but it is not disappearing. It seems to me that the speed of its expansion is reduced due to complexity of our industry and the volume of already written code.

Mentioning a mysterious American firm that showed an interest in LGC is intriguing. Can you share any detail?

This American company attracted an increased attention to itself, particularly, this year. The company held a series of consultations with us at the top level, involving some persons that forever made their names a part of CAD history. In spite of it, we looked into technological and algorithmic issues in detail; together we tested the technology and discussed its various applications, including some truly innovative ones. 

Parallel computations are one of the global software trends. How far have you advanced in this area in the LGC project?

We advanced in both multithread execution on a single computer as well as in cluster work of a many units transmitting data between the main and additional processes. 

Initially we developed a multithread version of our code and the results proved high efficiency of parallelization. For medium- and high-complexity models (with at least hundreds topological elements) experimentally calculated acceleration coefficient for the standard quad core systems was close to the theoretical maximum. The execution time for a code that requires sequential computation constitutes single percents and decreases to below one percent with increasing the model size.

Comparing productivity of our algorithms with the most popular analogues, such as comparison bodies in SolidWorks, we are ahead of our competitors by dozens of times and more, even without clusters, just using a single computer.

Now we are developing a distributed version of our technology, which will be workable on clusters and cloud capacities. In spite of additional overheads associated with transmitting data between computational nodes within a distributed system, the acceleration coefficient is only insignificantly lower than for multithread computations with common memory. Our algorithms are well-scaled: there is no effect of disappeared productivity growth when new nodes are added, which is typical for many algorithms in computational geometry.

It is known that the issue of parallelism in general is one of LEDAS strong points, and a “parallel modeling kernel” project of LEDAS Labs has already been mentioned by media.

Yes, we also research acceleration of the base algorithmic of geometric kernels, Nikolay Snytnikov recently wrote a paper about it. Nikolay, who leads the LEDAS part of RGK project and who is an expert on parallel computations with more than 10-year experience (and, in particular, defended a PhD thesis on this issue), is a key contributor to our research. 

Very promising models and new approaches are being built in voxel modeling, which Nikolay characterizes in his paper as a revolutionary way of developing 3D kernels. What I would like to say is that we have made a couple of steps along the path leading from naïve voxel modeling of 3D data through more comprehensive octree to the future of voxel modeling.

Recently we got positive feedback on this paper from representatives of some reputable global brands, whose requirements to geometric kernels are not satisfied to a considerable extent by all existing kernels. Once again we were able to ascertain indirectly but conclusively that RGK performance is as good as the leaders of the global market and has higher performance growth on multi core systems.

How do you delineate LEDAS and LEDAS Labs projects? LEDAS Labs is probably addresses mostly those projects that involve a lot of research?

LEDAS Labs projects are always highly research-focused, but it does not mean that LEDAS is not involved in research. A recent press-release on joint development of geometry search technology with ASCON lifts the veil of this truly ambitious project, where the research part comprises no less than half of all works. 

All our service projects are executed by LEDAS and fully meet the highest standards of managing industrial projects, established in our company as far back as during our large-scale cooperation with Dassault Systemes.

You mentioned already a third important example of working with ASCON Group. Does it mean that the companies are forming some special prospective relationships?

To make the picture complete, let’s also remember integrating direct modeling capabilities to KOMPAS 3D, earlier performed by LEDAS. We are happy to work on a broad basis together with ASCON – a leading Russian CAD company that over the last years has paid much attention to implementing state-of-the art solutions. We hope that our cooperation will continue expanding. 

Overall, it is nice that recently capabilities of LEDAS as a service company specialized in high-tech development and consulting are sought-after not only by foreign but also domestic companies. Active LEDAS involvement in RGK projects strengthened our long-established contacts with Top Systems, the creator of one of the most technically advanced Russian CADs, is yet another example of not nearly exhausted cooperation. No doubts, such cooperation can be established with other Russian companies. At the moment, it seems to me that Russian companies heavily underestimate possibilities of accelerating their own development by using high-quality development services.

Discussing geometric comparison project, you use the term “Technology” more often that “Product”. Does it mean that LEDAS is not going to create its own products based on this technology?

We position LEDAS as a technology company, which focuses its efforts on innovations, sophisticated new algorithms and architectures. Although previously our main product - LGS was licensed by over than a dozen of engineering software vendors, including such market leaders as ASCON and Cimatron, in general LGS experience taught us that we know how to develop software better than how to sell it. That is why we sold LGS to Bricsys, which has a greater marketing potential. 

Now we develop our new ideas such as LEDAS Geometry Comparison to the level of “off-the-shelf” technologies and then we can offer them on the market as end-user products or components. We will be happy to find a software vendor that can become our strategic partner to push technologies developed by LEDAS Labs on the market, as we see our mission precisely in developing smart technologies that can be easily embedded in new or existing products.

[This interview first appeared at http://isicad.net/articles.php?article_num=16648 under the title "Geometry Comparison Technology, Parallel Computations, Cloud Systems and Much More."]

 

 

ASCON's new equation: C3D + Bausk = BIM

by David Levin, isiscad.net

The news that came out last Friday about ASCON, BIM, C3D kernel, and Alexander Bausk altogether was a kind of a sensation for the Russian CAD market.  This step by ASCON is not, however, a bombshell. The company's CEO Maxim Bogdanov presented last May the key directions of ASCON’s immediate developments, including BIM, CAM, and social PLM.

After his excellent simultaneous translation at isicad-COFES-Russia 2010, a series of analytical articles (such as "More or Less Optimistic Update on BIM"), participation in Arizona COFES 2012, moderating BIM-related round tables at AU Russia 2013 and COFES Russia 2013, Alexander Bausk became one of the most noticeable analysts on the Russian and CIS market. Also, he has a PhD in structural analysis, and is an expert in industrial AEC (specifically, nuclear power stations). 

Now an impromptu interview with Alexander:

- - -

Q: Is it true that you are now a full-time employee at ASCON?
A: Yes, it is true. It happened three days ago. 

Q: What is your position and what is the main focus of your tasks? 
A: I've got a position of a leading analyst in one of the new ambitious ASCON projects that uses ASCON’s modeler C3D. Joining ASCON, I have not changed the key point of my personal interests and work: it is still AEC engineering.

My plans to help advance BIM also have not changed, and I get an enthusiastic support from my employer. I believe that together we will present some new and remarkable AEC and BIM tools. 

Q: As far as I know, until now, you have been living quite far away from St-Petersburg. Do you work with ASCON remotely, over the Internet? 
A: No. Now I am living in St Petersburg, and my family will move here as soon as the school year is over. 

- - -

ASCON has sound competencies in MCAD, PLM, AEC, and supporting technologies. All of ASCON’s current solutions are very popular in the Russian market, and the company’s ecosystem is likely the most developed, in comparison with other vendors operating in Russia. ASCON has very close and efficient links with the Russian industry and is aware of its specifics everyday needs. Although developing and bringing a new BIM product to market is very risky, ASCON has a good chance.

Anyway, I believe that an attempt to use C3D for BIM is a promising project for the geometric kernel, because it might open some new (hopefully original or maybe innovative) directions of software development.

Finally, I am sure that actively entering  the BIM market is, among other things, an effective marketing move to better promote the flagship ASCON solutions.

[This article was reprinted with permission of isicad.]

 

Imaginit Technologies loses an outpost

The trend among AutoCAD dealers to to go giant size: fewer dealers, larger dealers. Imaginit Technologies is the branch of Rand Worldwide that does sales for Autodesk in USA and Canada. And until recently, Australia. Here's the story:

The Australian division of IMAGINiT Technologies rebranded as Redstack today. Phillip Amato and Michael  Lachs sold their technology and services business, Progroup, to the US-based RAND Worldwide in 2001, then repurchased it earlier this year.

Redstack sells software, services, training, and support in Australia -- and will act as the exclusive partner and reseller for IMAGINiT Technologies, including Scan to BIM, Clarity for Revit Server, Utilities for Revit and ProducitvityNOW eLearning.

- - -
I love the artwork at their new Web site, http://redstack.com.au

Exclusive: Evan Yares on nanoCAD USA

Evan Yares recently left his 3D CAD Tips column to launch Nanosoft USA. The head office of Nanosoft is located in Moscow, and describes its nanoCAD software as "Free CAD software with *.dwg support." The current version is 4.5.

 

I asked Mr Yares about his plans for Nanosoft and nanoCAD in USA:

nanoCAD is a well-proven DWG-compatible CAD program that includes AutoCAD-like APIs. It's totally free. No catches. No adware. No crippleware. No incessant nagging. Up until now, the free version has been the only version of nanoCAD offered to the USA. No doubt, the best value in the industry (even better than DraftSight [it lacks APIs in the free version]).

Starting in September with version 5, we will release nanoCAD Plus, a version that includes additional premium features and priority support. It will be available only via annual subscription; the price will be very reasonable. In short: the plan is a "freemium" business model.

While we expect that the vast majority of users will opt for the free version of nanoCAD, it's been our experience that commercial users -- particularly those using a significant number of seats of DWG-based CAD -- are willing to pay a reasonable subscription fee to be certain of getting good support. Hence, nanoCAD Plus.

By the way: If this was about "yet another DWG-compatible CAD system," I wouldn't have joined Nanosoft.  We have a much bigger vision. And it actually involves working with companies such as Grabert, Bricsys, ZWsoft, and even Autodesk.

We interview Autodesk about HSM Express for Inventor, beta

Autodesk shocked the SolidWorks world when it purchased HSMWorks, CAM software that worked only inside SolidWorks. Political reasons aside, Autodesk bought the software for two pieces of technology: (1) HSMWorks is CAD platform independent, despite being integrated into SolidWorks; and (2) it uses distributed computing, useful for Autodesk's cloud aspirations. 

Product manager for CAM Anthony Graves talked to me this morning about HSM Express for Inventor, which went into beta this week:

WorldCAD Access: Was it an easy port [from SolidWorks to Inventor]?

Autodesk: It was. We strategized for a while, because we wanted to make sure our CAD-neutral CAM platform was ready for it. Then it took us only two months to integrate it with Inventor. We launched our beta just last Monday, and we are targeting an early fall release of the public version.

HSM Express beta running inside Inventor 

WorldCAD Access: Do you see HSMWorks working on other MCAD software?

Autodesk: HSMworks for SolidWorks is still going strong, along with HSMXpress. Our kernel from day 1 has always been multi-core, not just for tool paths but also for simulation and post-processing. We have been working with multi-core CPUs for seven years now and so we know it all very well. [Mr Graves provided me with additional information off-the-record.]

As a result, we have distributed CAM, which lets us offload calculations to a LAN. We can move computing resources to wherever we need: calculations on the LAN, graphics on the desktop.

WorldCAD Access: When we last talked [in upFront.eZine #762], you mentioned HSMWorks working on 123D.

Autodesk: 123D CNC has evolved to the point that it is now generating tool paths and G-code. This has been out for a couple of months. 

WorldCAD Access: Microsoft is integrating rapid prototyping in Windows 8.1. How will this affect you?

Autodesk: We feel that if you design something, you should be able to make it. But how you make it is another thing. Microsoft is talking about 3D printers.

From my experience, what happens is inevitable: people make some prototypes on a 3D printer, but then reality hits them: in order to manufacture the product, they have to go to another process -- a CNC [computer numerically controlled] machine to produce the product in wood or metal, such as a lathe or cutter.

When the little hobby grows to a business that needs to make profits, making hundreds or thousands of parts a year, then it becomes more economical to do it in-house. A professional will spend $50,000 on a 3D printer with the speed, resolution, and size he needs -- which is the exact same price as a really-good CNC machine center. Most people who are doing prototyping regularly, they are probably going to own both. Some jobs are better on 3D, some on CNC.

I don't anticipate Microsoft getting into CNC soon, but you never know!

WorldCAD Access: Will both Express and Works be available on both CAD platforms?

Autodesk: Yes, but spelled differently:

• HSMXpress for SolidWorks is free and performs 2.5-axis strategies

• HSMWorks for SolidWorks is $10,000

• Inventor HSM Express (spelled differently) will be free

• Inventor HSM will ship in Spring 2014 with the same price and functions as for SolidWorks

- - -

Apply to join the public beta at https://beta.autodesk.com.

ITC ships IntelliCAD 7.2c update to clients

IntelliCAD 7.2c has over 200 improvements in the areas of of performance, multiline text, selection, entity snapping, and tracking, plus a bonus: an update to new ACIS libraries. Update 'c' comes just two months after 'b,' and so, says IntelliCAD Technology Consortium's development director David Lorenzo, this is proof of how fast the ITC can turn around updates.

The ITC had been criticized by me (and others) for the long delay in shipping IntelliCAD 7, crucial  because this was the release that stripped out all code owned by Microsoft (who had bought Visio who had bought IntelliCAD). So it's good to see the guys pumpin' out the code.

End users do not, however, get IntelliCAD direct from the ITC. They need to wait for members to update their own branded versions of the software.

 

With this beta release, Bricsys is back in the architectural biz (updated)

Bricsys has been hinting at getting back into the architectural design market, and today they released the first beta of the BricsCAD BIM Module. Here's what you need to know about it:

• Addon loads into BricsCAD Pro and Platinum versions only (not Standard version)

• Works with 32-bit BricsCAD v13.2 only (not 64-bit or earlier releases)

• For Windows only (not Linux)

• Free download from https://www.bricsys.com/common/applications/application.jsp?app=70&apploc=1123

• Will add Bricsys' direct modeling technology to a future release, and links to the Chapoo portal for project management and file translation

Bricsys ceo Eric DeKeyser tells me, "It is a beta version that can be used in day to day work. We are very ambitious in our plans for the coming years regarding BIM."

(The Bricsys staff has experience with architectural CAD, through the earlier development of TriForma software, subsequently sold to Bentley Systems, and Architecturals software.)

Expect the BIM module to be developed slowly, and not rushed out as today's mobile apps are. Bricsys' thinking is long-term. Their idea is to build an entire CAD ecosystem based on solely the DWG file format: 2D, 3D, MCAD, and BIM.

Updates

Added clarification that direct editing will be added in the future

Added direct link to download page

Added screen grab

 

 

Graphisoft announces ArchiCAD 17

In all modesty, upFront.eZine was going to be the first to announce what's new in ArchiCAD 17. We did the interview and demo last Friday, but logistics prevented the story running in yesterday's issue of the newsletter. Gosh, editors hate it when we lose an exclusive!

(I notice that Graphisoft, a division of Nemetschek, does not call itself "Nemetschek Graphisoft," the way that "Nemetschek Vectorworks" does.)

Anyhow, the big deal in 17 is details, with Graphisoft harnessingg multi-cores and background processing to automatically generate details of junctions (intersections of walls and floors), even slanted ones, through a new super attribute that prioritizes materials, so that the software knows which to trim and which does the trimming.

I hope to run the story on Graphisoft 17 when upFront.eZine returns from vacation on May 27. Meantime, here is the official page: www.graphisoft.com/archicad/archicad_17/overview.

 

 

BricsCAD V13.2 released today with 64-bit support for Windows

Bricsys keeps putting out frequent, significant updates of BricsCAD, and today they began shipping V13.2. Well, not so much "shipping" as making available for download. Semantics aside, this free, point-2 update adds the following functions to the Windows version:

• Version for 64-bit Windows

• Read and write DWG 2013 file format

•  Connect to Chapoo file sharing and project collaboration, and keeps tracks of xrefs. (Vew 
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KgOJ0l6jv0Q for more info.)

• Improvements to visual styles, changes to sheet set dialog boxes, more options for splines in the Properties panel, fixes for 3D assembly design and direct modeling.

You can read the full set of release notes at  http://www.bricsys.com/common/releasenotes.jsp. Download a 30-day demo version from http://www.bricsys.com/en_INTL/.

 

 

 

 

ZWSOFT updates ZWCAD and ZW3D

Regular updates are a good sign that a software company has staying power in the CAD industry, and my rather bland headline tells us that in the past month China's ZWSOFT has shipped updates to its ZWCAD+ AutoCAD work-alike and ZW3D CAD/CAM packages.

(The "+" in the ZWCAD+ name indicates that the CAD program is no longer based on IntelliCAD code.)

ZWCAD+ 2012 service pack 2 improves image underlays, handling 1GB raster files easily (see figure), according to the press release. There's also enhancements to hatching, such as dynamic preview and boundary editing.

ZWCAD+ 2012 SP2 showing off a big raster underlay

ZW3D 2013 offers automatically generated constraints, constraint resolving, and drag'n drop actions inside the History manager -- plus a bunch of improvements to the CAM and mould modules.

As a bridge between ZWCAD and ZW3D, the company offers ZWCAD Mechanical for 2D mechanical designs. On iOS devices, they have their free Touch software for viewing drawings downloaded from Dropbox or email.

ZWSOFT has moved itself from an object of curiosity to a CAD vendor to watch as they aggressively expand -- and improve -- their software packages.

•  ZWSOFT+ demo: www.zwsoft.com/products/zwcad+.html

• ZW3D demo:  www.zwsoft.com/products/zw3d.html

• Touch download: itunes.apple.com/us/app/zwcad-touch 

 

WikiHouse aims to destroy the building industry -- or so The Register believes

WikiHouse wants to create sets of downloadable dwelling designs for CNC-milled houses that can be assembled without connectors. The parts are interconnected, like cardboard cutout.

The introductory pages on the site promote a grand plan:

Click 'Make this House' from within Google Sketchup and WikiHouse will generate a complete set of milling drawings from your model, which can be used by a CNC cutter to fabricate the house parts.

 
It's just that simple. Some 1/6-scale models have been built. Problem is, the site doesn't have any plans that are structurally tested, and the most sophisticated model (version 3.0) looks like this:

So, not so building-industry destroying. The group is looking for a million in funding (as we all are), but there doesn't seem to be much going on at the site -- some designs, few comments.

Sources: http://www.wikihouse.cc

Article on The Register: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/03/01/wikihouse_architect_pitches_print_your_own_house_project/ 

 

Your beta invitation to Russia's only AutoCAD clone

Nanosoft of Russia has been quietly developing an AutoCAD work-alike for several years now, improving its abilities with each new release.

It appears the next one is due out next summer, for today they sent out an open beta invitation:

Nanosoft has started a free beta tester program: http://nanocad.com/news/Be-a-nanoCAD-beta-tester

 

Graebert ships tri-OS ARES 2013 on Linux, OS X, and Windows

Graebert's ARES software might be better known to you by names like "DraftSight" and "CorelCAD". This company specializes in providing CAD systems to software companies that don't want to write their own -- kind of like a commercialized version of the IntelliCAD Technical Consortium. 

Last Friday Graebert quietly released ARES 2013, and revamped its Web site, and revised its logo, and issued a new tagline -- "Custom CAD" -- to emphasize that they are foremost an OEM business.

ARES 2013 has the usual list of new and improved functions. But there is a bigger change; whereas the original ARES had provided customers with several years of free updates, Graebert has changed the model to (a) annual updates with (b) two mid-release updates per year.

The software is shipping now for several dialects of Linux, for OS X, and for 32- or 64-bit Windows, and is certified to work with Windows 8. $495.

Download a 30-day version from www.graebert.com. For the official list of changes in ARES 2013, consult www.graebert.com/templates/haase/pdf/2013/NF_ARES_2013.pdf.

 

---

Look for an exclusive interview with Graebert in this Monday's upFront.eZine, along with an exclusive insider's report on Geomagic's new Spark software that encompasses that other cloud. Subscribe to our weekly e-newsletter by sending 'subscribe upfront' to editor@upfrontezine.com.

[Disclosure: I write ebooks for Graebert, including 'ARES 2013 for AutoCAD Users' and 'Inside ARES'. Purchase these ebooks from https://secure.graebert.com.]

 

Geomagic offers to blow away MCAD with points-to-assemblies Spark software

One problem still unsolved by MCAD vendors is how to get initial concepts to a full assembly.

If you are not working with an initial concept, then you are working with existing parts. If the existing parts have no drawings, then you need to convert them into drawings, somehow. There are a variety of methods, such as measuring distances and entering them into a CAD package.

Another method is to scan the parts with a 3D laser scanner, creating a file of 3D points. Software converts the points into surfaces, which can be edited into 3D solid models. The models are imported into an MCAD system, cleaned up further, and then assemblies and drawings are created. While the system is not perfect, software is getting better at recognizing features in amongs the billions of scanned points.

Geomagic announces today in Europe new software that handles everything, from controlling the 3D scanner to outputting assemblies and drawings. Spark is the name, and it combines Geomagic's existing software (point data editing) with SpaceClaim (3D  modeling).

In the figure below, I combined two screen grabs provided by Geomagic, showing the scan data converted by Geomagic (blue) and 2D drawings generated from 3D parts by SpaceClaim (green). Because the result is a solid model, all the other tasks are available, such as dimensioning, rendering, and analysis.

No pricing yet, and no software shipping yet. Spark won't ship until end of January, after which a free demo will be available for download.

http://www.geomagic.com

 

ZWCAD+ 2012 vs AutoCAD 2013

ZWSOFT has been over the last decade working diligently to produce a respectable AutoCAD workalike. Like many other reasonably-priced CAD packages, ZWCAD was for a time based on IntelliCAD, but then the company rewrote the code to make it faster. And so in 2012 they delivered ZWCAD+ 2012-- the '+' indicating the new code base.

All along, ZWSOFT emphasized ZWCAD's compatibility with AutoCAD -- the subject of this article. But it is not their only CAD system. The company made in 2010 the surprising move of purchasing VX of Florida, USA, a firm best known for its CAM (computer-aided manufacturing) software. ZWSOFT renamed VX "ZW3D," and then put it through an aggressive upgrade schedule. More recently, the company release ZWCAD Mechanical, an add-on for doing 2D mechanical design. Today, its line of CAD software is sold by dealers in 80 countries to 320,000 customers.

About ZWCAD+

ZWCAD+ is a cost-effective AutoCAD workalike. When AutoCAD users fire up ZWCAD, they will find it similar to that with which they are already familiar. (See figure 1.) Indeed, ZWSOFT claims their software "has the closest user experience as AutoCAD, compared to alternative products." Let's take a look at how ZWCAD+ compares with AutoCAD in the areas of user interface, commands, drawing display, and customization.

(Because Autodesk uses the year+1 method for release numbers, the current version of AutoCAD is 2013 even though the current release of ZWCAD+ is 2012.)

User Interface Compatibility

As you gaze around ZWCAD+, you'll find the application menu (under the big Z), quick access toolbar, ribbon, palettes, scroll bars, layout tabs, command prompt area, and a status bar that's not quite a feature-packed as AutoCAD's.

ZWCAD+ does come with toolbars, but they appeared when only I switched to Classic mode, which replaces the ribbon with the menu bar. I found that menus are always available in ribbon mode by clicking the Menu button in the upper right corner. While ZWCAD+ does not have workspaces, clicking the adjacent button lets me switch skin colors.

My favorite feature is the "document head," those tabs that let me switch instantly between open drawings. Right-clicking one of these tabs presents a menu of common file-oriented commands. See figure 3. (In contrast, AutoCAD has awkward drawing switching systems involving toolbar buttons or the application menu.) The Ctrl+Tab keyboard shortcut works in both CAD systems.

One curiosity is that to switch between the ribbon and menu bar (aka the "Classic" interface), I have to restart ZWCAD+. In AutoCAD I need only enter a system variable to toggle the menu bar on and off. After I activated Classic mode, I found the menu bar to be very similar to that of AutoCAD, the only differences being those that relate to ZWCAD+'s extra and missing commands.

Power users tend to as much as possible employ the keyboard to enter commands and options, and here ZWCAD+ matches AutoCAD in command bar functions. It has command history, and so I can press the up arrow to recall earlier commands. When I start to type a command name, ZWCAD+ presents a list of similar names. There is, however, no dynamic input; for me, that's fine, because I don't like it in AutoCAD.

Among palettes, there is Tools, Design Center, and Properties; of other palettes found in AutoCAD, you can use dialog boxes for accessing layers, external references, and so on. There is no block editor environment, nor are there the related dynamic blocks.

ZWCAD+ takes the user interface lead over AutoCAD with something it calls SmartMouse: by holding down the right mouse button and dragging the cursor in the shape of a letter of the alphabet (or in a specific directions), I activate a command. For instance, when I drag the mouse to draw the letter E, the Erase command starts; I drag to the left, and Copy starts. Best of all, the SmartMouseConfig command fully customizes any of the movements.

Command Compatibility

ZWCAD+'s commands, express tools, and system variables use AutoCAD names. All of ZWCAD+ commands are identically named to those in AutoCAD, except for those that are unique to ZWCAD+. I didn't do a thorough check of which commands are included, except to note that there are over 500 of them in ZWCAD+ -- as compared to around 1,200 in AutoCAD. Once you leave out the AutoCAD commands dedicated to 3D, the numbers compare more favorably. (It can be hard to decide precisely which should be included in AutoCAD, because it has many duplicate and undocumented commands).

ZWCAD+ supports command aliases; you edit them through the zwcad.pgp file in Notepad. I do wish ZWSOFT would include more workalike aliases, such as having an 'externalreferences' alias for the Xref Manager dialog box.

The ACIS modeler is part of ZWCAD+, and so I am able to create and edit 3D solid models. Hidden line removal and shading of 3D drawings are included, but not rendering.

Drawing Compatibility

ZWCAD+ reads AutoCAD drawings made by releases as recent as 2012.

I sometimes consult on compatibility for competitors to Autodesk, and from this I have a collection of tough drawing with which test DWG files. Here ZWCAD+ scored excellent, displaying every test drawing correctly. Now, this is largely due to the diligence of the Open Design Alliance, from whom ZWSOFT licenses its DWG read-write capabilities.

So the question becomes, "What happens when I import an AutoCAD drawing that contains entities not supported by ZWCAD+?" For instance, it does not do constraints or point clouds. Well, the full answer involves a lot of detailed, time-consuming investigation for which I charge clients thousands. But for this article I opened an AutoCAD drawing containing a point cloud; ZWCAD+ displayed it correctly, with the Properties palette reporting it as a "proxy entity." This means that I perform simple editing tasks on it, such as move or delete it, change its color or layer, and print it; being a proxy, I cannot edit it with command specific to point clouds.

When I opened a drawing containing xrefs that could not be found, ZWCAD+ reported them as such, but unhappily gave me no opportunity to find them on its behalf. An icon in the lower-right corner shows that xref files are attached; it also warns when they are lost. On the positive side, however, ZWCAD+ places drawings, raster images, OLE objects, and WMF hybrid images into drawings.

Customization Compatibility

In terms of user interface customization, most of this is done through the Customize command, and not the CUI command. This command works simply, the way I liked it in old releases of AutoCAD, before Autodesk switched to the overly complex CUI command.

To add and remove buttons from toolbars, for instance, I need only drag them from and to the Customize dialog box; the same goes for customizing Tools palettes. As for menus, well, I think we are stuck customizing them old-style, by editing the source MNU file.

This dialog box also handles the creation and editing of keyboard shortcuts, like pressing Ctrl+N to execute the New command. You cannot add "commands" through macros, as in AutoCAD; also not customizable is the ribbon.

The Options command lets you tweak user interface elements through a tabbed dialog box that looks like the one in AutoCAD, through with fewer options, which may well be a good thing as AutoCAD's become more overwhelming over time. This dialog box lets you customize the action of right-clicks, interface and selection colors, smart snap settings, and more.

The Drawing Settings dialog box in ZWCAD+ is not as comprehensive as AutoCAD's; nevertheless, it lets you choose options related to object snaps, snaps and grids, and polar tracking -- all crucial for creating accurate drawings.

ZWCAD+ reads many AutoCAD customization files, including the following: menu MNU and MNS; linetype LIN; hatch pattern PAT; font SHP and TTF; script SCR; plot style CTB and STB; and plot configuration PC5. It does not read CUI or CUIX files.

When it comes to programming, ZWCAD+ handles LISP, DCL, Diesel, COM, and script files. It does not support .Net or DVB, and it lacks the VLISP integrated development environment. It has its own version of ARX called ZRX, and it has its own SDS (not the one from IntelliCAD), which is compatible with ADS. ZWCAD+ supports VBA through its own ZPVB format. LISP routines can be encrypted, something no available in AutoCAD; this protects the source code from being stolen.

ZWCAD+ Bonuses

In addition to encrypted LISP, SmartMouse, and drawing tabs, ZWCAD+ includes FCMP, the awkwardly-named command that displays the differences between two drawings. It's short for "File CoMPare" and is found in the Express Tools section.

Not only does it illustrate differences through colors, I can use it to discover differences that are not obvious from the geometry, such as properties.

Summary

There is much more to ZWCAD+ that I did not have the room to write about in this review, such as viewing and editing commands, dimensions, and the full range of AutoCAD-compatible plotting controls – ZWCAD+ supports eTransmit, plot stamps, plotter configurations, batch plotting, publishing of drawing sets, and outputting drawings in PDF, DWG, and raster formats.

While AutoCAD costs $4,000, ZWCAD+ Pro is priced at around $1,000, depending on which country you buy in. ZWCAD+ costs a quarter of AutoCAD, which means your office can run CAD on 4X more stations, which is pretty cost-effective.

You can download a 30-day demo of ZWCAD+ 2012 from http://www.zwsoft.com/products/zwcad+.html

(This article first appeard on CADdigest.com and is reprinted with permission.) 

Bricsys updates sheet sets in BricsCAD v13.1.10

While sheetset-using customers were thrilled that Bricsys added sheetsets to BricsCAD V13, complaints appeared promptly that the function was not implemented fully; i.e., it didn't do everything AutoCAD does.

(Well, I am not sure I'd want it to do everything that AutoCAD does, because I find sheetsets so difficult to figure out that I never use them. I am never sure which area the Sheetset Manager palette to right-click to access what function. I think Autodesk would have been better to have rolled out additional functions with subsequent releases, allowing users to get used to the complexity in smaller steps. Anyhow...)

Bricsys has a habit of shipping a major release, like V13, but then shipping major updates throughout the following year as tiny update numbers, like 13.1.10. I mean, would you take 13.1.10 seriously? You can read all that's new in yesterday's update at http://www.bricsys.com/common/releasenotes.jsp?i=3054, but here is what is added in sheetsets:

Edit Custom properties: adding, editing and removing sheetset and sheet custom properties.

When a sheet is opened, paths are now being resolved (dst: NewSheetLocation, DefDwtLayout; dwg: AcSheetSetData).

A sheet can now be associated with another layout, when it is opened and the drawing is not found.

When creating a new subset, the parent subset's properties are now copied into the new subset.
Sheetset fields sometimes failed to update correctly.

When changing a property in a subset that contains nested subsets, the user is asked if he wants to apply the same change to the nested subsets.

Added automatic backup of DST files upon opening, controlled by the 'SheetSetAutoBackup' preference.

Added sheetset XML import/export.

Drawing Explorer, Sheetset tab: 

• removed "Prompt for Template" property from sheetset/subset property view.
• added "New Subset" to the sheet context menu for inserting a new subset between existing sheets.

New Sheet dialog: 

• added browse buttons for folder path and layout template.
• new number is entered automatically, based on current number of sheets and using the new 'SheetNumberLeadingZeroes' preference
• import from existing drawings: new sheets are automatically numbered, the sheet title can now be the drawing name, layout name or both.
• when creating new sheets, custom sheet properties are now copied into the new sheet(s).

At its developer conference last month, Bricsys told us that writing the sheetset function was almost as hard as writing a whole new CAD system!

'Autodesk PLM is no competitor to us' - PTC CEO

During PTC's Q4 conference call yesterday, Blair Abernethy of Stifel, Nicolaus asked about the impact of Autodesk's upstart PLM service on PTC's Windchill:

Just want to get a sense of the competitive landscape on the PLM side. Particular over this past year, where we've seen Autodesk move more into this space, become more vocal, more higher profile. How is that impacting PTC in terms of your going to market?

PTC ceo James Heppelmann replied in the negative:

I'm unaware of any competition between PTC Direct Sales and Autodesk PLM. I'm completely unaware of any. I think where the competition would exist, if it did exist, would be in the reseller space. ...So I guess my view would be I don't think Autodesk is a competitive factor for us.

 

Source:
http://seekingalpha.com/article/968631-parametric-technology-management-discusses-q4-2012-results-earnings-call-transcript?part=single

 

 

 

First! Dassault first to support Windows 8, officially

With the release of Draftsight V1R3, Dassault Systemes announces official support for Windows 8:

• We're ready for Windows 8 on 64-bit only. 
  
  
• DraftSight now runs on tablets that run Windows 8 Pro 64-bit. 

The bigger thing to note, however, is that only 64-bit versions of DraftSight will be supported on Windows 8, and so no 32-bit computer can run it. A downer for those counting on lowering their CAD costs with DraftSight.

http://www.3ds.com/products/draftsight/download-draftsight

 

Brcisys beware, Solidworks wants into lower cost 3D CAD market

A survey from Dassault Systemes asks Draftsight users their opinions on low-cost 3D CAD packages, like which ones do they use now, why  they are using it, and what features would they like to see in a lower-cost 3D CAD package.

The survey was released ne day after Bricsys announced at the annual developer conference its intention to add more 3D modeling features to its under-$1000 BricsCAD Platinum package, a package that last year already did what SolidWorks still does not -- direct modeling.

Packages named in the survey include Alibre, Bricscad, Ashlar Vellum, Inventor LT, Rhino, Sketchup, and Solid Edge Foundation, among others. Including Inventor LT and Solid Edge Foundation strongly indicates to me the market at which Solidworks Lite could well be aimed.

 The survey asks which feature users might be interested in. They are

• 2D drawings
• Parts
• Interference detection
• Import-export to IGES, STEP, DWG, DXF
• Mold design tools

• Assembly motion
• Assemblies
• Rendering
• Surfacing
• Sheetmetal
• Check for manufacturability

Most of the functions on this list are found in advanced packages; on the other hand, Bricsys is promising some of them, such as assembly motion, parts and assemblies, import/export to and from proprietary packages, and interference detection.

As for pricing, the survey asks about numbers that range from under $100 to over $2000. Those who fill out the survey can leave their contact info for further follow-up. 

The first question in my mind is, who is writing the CAD package? I figure that candidates include Graebert (who wrote DraftSight), Geometric (who writes a bunch of software for Dassault, such as eDrawings), or Dassault itself. 

Source: https://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=uM0RDkegG%2fYcHtpR%2fgr%2f7Q%3d%3d

 

Autodesk's pricing for running simulation jobs on the cloud

Here are the deats on Autodesk's Simulation 360 pricing -- in USD, 'natch:

• 
  Autodesk Simulation 360 (mechanical and CFD) = 120 jobs for $3,600 in 12 months
  
  
• Autodesk Simulation 360 Unlimited (mechanical and CFD) = unlimited jobs for $7,200 in12 months 
  
  
• Autodesk Simulation 360 Ultimate (mechanical, CFD, and Moldflow) = 120 jobs for $10,000 over 12 months
  
  
• Cloud Capacity Pack adds 100 jobs (approximately 1 month of usage) for $100

What do you think of the prices?  (They work out to about $30-$80 a run.) In my opinion, they would be more attractive if we didn't need to commit to a minimum of 120 runs.

 

Siemens PLM to Dassault: we can rule the air, too

Siemens PLM is issuing a press release a day from the Farnborough Air Show this week. Big deal, because it's Dassault's Catia software that's traditionally used by Boeing and AirBus to design aircraft.

But just as Siemens is getting bigger in automotive design, they're now wanting more of aircraft design using their NX CAD software, along with Teamcenter for project management, and Fibersim for composite material design. JSC United Aircraft Corp signed a long-term agreement, extending and expanding a previous agreement (so, not "new," as the press release implies).

But jet planes are so 1950. Siemens PLM is going beyond infinity to sell its software to NASA for the Mars Exploration Program. Now, wasn't NASA a stronghold for PTC?

While Dassault currently holds the position of largest CAD vendor in the world (by revenues), Siemens PLM has the backing of a mother corp that's 15x bigger than Dassault and Autodesk combined.

Siemens PLM is engaged in a trifecta, betting its software lines against Dassault (Catia/Solidworks and Enovia), Autodesk (Inventor), and PTC (Creo and Windchill).

 

Synergis Q&A

Roopinder Tara and Ralph Grabowski of CADdigest.com interviewed Scott Lamond, VP of sales and marketing, and Chris Fabri, director of solutions engineering at Synergis Software.

Q: Tell us about the history of your company. We seem to recall that Synergis  has been around since the 1980s?
A: We were incorporated in 1985 after the company founders figured that AutoCAD would take off, and so we became one of the first resellers. We are based in Pennsylvania, selling to the mid-Atlantic region of the United States. As we gained customers, we found many of them were looking for a way to manage CAD drawings, as they transitioned from paper and the print room to electronic CAD documents.

Our breakthrough came when Scott Paper contracted Synergis to write version-control software for CAD drawings. We added an audit trail after another company became worried that an employee was handing drawings over to competitors. As a result, we first released the software as “Network File Manger” (later renamed Adept) in 1991. We offered Adept as an add-on for our AutoCAD clients, and over time began to see it become a larger part of our business.

In 2000, we split the company into 2 business units. Synergis Technologies, Inc. is the umbrella over 2 independent divisions housed in separate buildings within a quarter mile of each other. Synergis Engineering Design Solutions is a Platinum level Autodesk software VAR [value added reseller], while Synergis Software is responsible for Adept development, sales, implementations and support.

Q: Adept being 20 years old, how has it changed over the decades?
A: The software has evolved a lot over time, and yet still helps customers address many of the same fundamental challenges – finding drawings and documents quickly, check-in/check-out, version control, management of CAD file relationships -- but it has grown in what it does. Today, there is a greater need for customers to share and collaborate with users in different departments and across different sites. Corporate acquisitions have resulted in disparate data sources. The biggest difference from 1991 is the need today to collaborate and share data securely and efficiently.

Another difference is that back in the 1990s, we needed to explain to customers why they needed to manage their documents; today, it is taken for granted that such software is needed, even at firms that still use Windows folders to organize their drawings. They realize it is not if, but when, they implement a system like Adept.

Another change is that customers today are looking to automate processes, because they need to become more efficient. This is especially true for manufacturers who are looking to reduce the time and expense involved with the engineering change process. They want the software to facilitate routing documents through approvals, tell them when there are delays, and notify others when the process is complete. They don't want to have to wonder where something is in the process, or to have to track it down at someone's desk.

Q: Adept works with Autodesk software, as well as those from other CAD vendors. Does Autodesk compete with you?
A: Yes, we compete with the higher tiers of the Vault solutions, primarily when a potential customer’s primary interest is in managing their Inventor files specifically. We compete less with Vault solutions when potential customers are looking not only at the needs of the CAD department, but also at the document management needs of the rest of the organization.

We seem to compete more with Autodesk in discrete manufacturing for managing Autodesk-based product or machine design information. However, Adept is also a really good fit helping companies across many industries manage their facilities engineering information or plant floor layout and equipment maintenance.

There is certainly some overlap between the solutions, but we are also an Autodesk partner and registered developer; and we are also a SolidWorks Gold Certified PDM Partner.

Q: Is Autodesk's PLM 360 a competitor?
A: It's so new that we haven't seen much activity around it yet. In any case, PLM 360 does not address the same problems as our software; PLM 360 is not PDM [product data management] at all; that is what Vault is for.

Adept is a powerful, mature enterprise data management solution, and we have more PLM [product lifecycle management] capabilities than many competitors. However, when it comes to some tasks offered by PLM vendors, our approach is to integrate with best in class solutions already providing that functionality. We do enterprise PDM [product data management], and believe that PDM is 80-90% of PLM.

Q: How would a company prepare before taking on Adept?
A: They don't need to do a whole lot. We have a series of prepared questions from which we learn about their workflows, the folder structure; department goals; and how they interact with each other. We bring in their legacy data, and train their users.

We have tools that eliminate duplicate files; that take their existing processes and incorporate them into Adept; that automate manual processes. For some customers, we spend time helping them document and refine their existing processes. At this point, customers begin to realize that Adept's general document management is good for non-CAD areas of the business, such as purchasing, quality and human resources.

Q: How long does it take to implement Adept at a business?
A: We’ve had some customers do it themselves with just a few days of hand-holding over GoToMeeting. It can absolutely be done, but is not generally recommended to get the best value from the solution. Many take advantage of our Quick Start program, in which we essentially get them up and running and very functional, with some or all of their legacy data imported, and a few of their processes automated with our workflow capabilities in about 5 days. A large portion of our clients will have us do a full implementation which generally begins with our administrator training class (4.5 days), which is followed by 2-3 days of implementation planning and design; the implementation, configuration and user training typically takes another 4 to 10 days -- so implementations can take anywhere from 4-5 days to 3-4 weeks.

Q: How does Adept differ from competitors?
A: Well, there are several ways. One of our biggest advantages is our vaulting method. Unlike our competitors, Adept does not scramble file names and folders. We provide all the security they need, but leave files in their native format. We’ve found that customers don't want their mission-critical, proprietary designs locked up in a in a vault that scrambles/encrypts file names and folders. By leaving them in their native format, they can be linked to by other business systems and documents – something that does not work well when documents are encrypted or scrambled. Even more important, customers want the peace of mind of knowing their documents and folders are still there in an intelligent format should they ever need to access them outside the system, or should they ever need to move them to a different system in the future.

We also offer unique vault replication capabilities, which ensure all users have fast, local access to the documents they need. This is especially important when customers are collaborating across geographies with large AutoCAD, Inventor or SolidWorks assemblies. Unlike other solutions, Adept replicates only the binary changes between documents that have changed, instead of replicating the entire file across the network. This method speeds file transfers and reduces bandwidth impact on the WAN.

We support multiple CAD systems really well, including AutoCAD-based applications, Inventor and SolidWorks. Adept is tightly integrated inside each of these applications. This allows CAD users to search for files, check them in and out, open/insert/replace and copy files, view related information, file status and much more -- without leaving the CAD application. Adept has a bi-directional link with Inventor and SolidWorks properties and AutoCAD attributes – and manages file references, like parts, assemblies, drawings, configurations and XREFs throughout their lifecycle - so as files are edited, moved, renamed, routed through workflows and so forth – Adept keeps all references intact. An audit trail is maintained for each document throughout its lifecycle. Our integration with MicroStation is also really strong, with similar property and relationship tracking capabilities, however we are not integrated inside the MicroStation window.

Every one of our licenses of Adept includes and is tightly integrated with Oracle's AutoVue 3D Professional that which offers native file visualization for hundreds of formats including AutoCAD, Inventor, SolidWorks, Pro/ENGINEER, Solid Edge, NX, CATIA, ECAD [electronic CAD], and office and graphical formats. AutoVue can do advanced markups, 2D and 3D comparisons where it highlights the changes between 2 files, sectioning, layer toggling, convert to PDF and more. It’s integrated with Adept, so administrators have control over viewer functions, like who can view, print, markup, convert, etc. And markups made in AutoVue are integrated into the Adept database, so users of Adept can quickly see what files have markups. Other PDM solutions recommend many separate viewers for each of the different formats that users need to view, and along with them being less functional, they are difficult for IT departments to deploy and maintain when compared to a centralized visualization solution.

We put a lot of effort into a transmittal automation feature that helps clients create, distribute and track document transmittals that are sent to vendors, contractors or clients. Most of our competitors don’t offer this functionality at all. Transmittals can be routed through workflows before being distributed, and files can be sent in native format or automatically converted to PDF before distribution.

Finally, a big factor is that we have a direct relationship with customers; we develop Adept, we implement it, and we support it directly. We find that clients with more complex implementations, where they have several sites, perhaps global sites - or pre-exisiting systems that need to be migrated into a new solution, feel a sense of confidence working directly with us, rather than working with a local VAR. Through talking with us, they come to realize this is our entire business, and that we have the depth of expertise and focus to make them successful.

Q: What are your target markets for Adept?
A: Well, some 65% of our sales are into manufacturing. Discrete manufacturers use it to manage product design and machine design data with Inventor or SolidWorks. Process manufacturers, such as chemical, and oil and gas companies use Adept to manage plant floor layout and equipment maintenance, and for plant design in some cases. Their EPCs [engineering procurement construction] contractors use it as well.

Another big market for us is organizations that want to manage facilities engineering information. This may include large manufacturers, universities, insurance companies, hospitals, and government agencies.

Q: Is Adept the only solution sold to large corporations, or does it coexist with other EDM systems?
A: Some large customers have local decision making, so there are different EDM solutions installed at different offices; sometimes, the central IT [information technology] office dictates one EDM company-wide, especially in the large chemical and oil and gas firms.

We can coexist and exchange data with other business systems, and so can integrate with ERP [engineering resource planning] systems, project management systems and so forth. Adept can export data on specific triggers, and we also have the ability to import data. More advanced integrations can be created using our API. Most data is in a SQL [structured query language] or Oracle database, which makes it easier to exchange than proprietary CAD data.

We have a broad range of customers: 20% in small firms (under 100 employees); 40% in mid-size (100 - 1000), and 40% in larger firms (over 1000 employees). It works well in in different sized companies and across many industries. Adept is a somewhat horizontal application – not specific to one industry or CAD application.

Q: Is it easier for a customer to go with PDM from Autodesk or SolidWorks? After all, both offer with their MCAD software a free version of PDM in the box.
A: Autodesk offers a version of Vault for free, which may be good enough for initial use if a customer just wants to manage Inventor data in a small workgroup. Free could certainly be perceived as easier, however it typically comes down to the requirements of the organization. Most companies want to find the best solution for their requirements. We have found that the more educated the buyer and the more complex the environment the client is coming from, the stronger we are. If their needs for document management span multiple departments, and they have global sites, we do especially well.

Q: Are you an EDM or a PDM system?
A: Both; some even call us "PLM" or "FEDM" [facilities EDM]. The acronym depends on the audience. On our Web site, we say, "Data management for the product, plant, and facilities lifecyle." We provide both general and CAD-specific document management capabilities. 98% of our clients do use Adept to manage CAD as part of the scope of our implementation. It is typically our entry into an organization as engineering often has the most complex and demanding needs.

Q: What is the pricing?
A: We have three clients:

• 
  Desktop client is for power users and does everything, such as administration, and CAD integration. $1,850 per concurrent license 
  
  
• Web client called Adept Reviewer allows users to find, view, markup, compare, assign, copy. Users can fully participate in workflow and edit metadata. $1,295 per concurrent license 
  
  
• Lighter Web client called Adept Explorer is the same as Reviewer but without the workflow and metadata editing capabilities. $995 per concurrent license 

Everything is included: the API [applications programming interface] is free; there is no fee for visualization; no server fee. Annual maintenance is on top of this, and includes unlimited support and all upgrades.

Q: What is the hardest part to convince a customer, the price?
A: Price is not as much an issue as it used to be. The biggest issue is focus, where customers are busy with other projects.

Any change within an organization causes some hesitation. But when they have more than 6-7 CAD licenses, work in a couple of locations, deal with remote manufacturing plants or remote design teams, then something like Adept is a must-have to handle revisions, file relationships -- these things becomes a mess quickly if our system is not in place.

[This article first appeared in CADdigest.com] 

After it launches next year, does SolidWorks V6 stand a chance?

Judging from the negative commentary and comments on Matt Lombard's Dezignstuff blog about SolidWorks and the company behind it, you'd think it was pretty much dead. Or dying. Or with one foot in the grave and the other on a banana peel. [Cue the peal of laughter.]

SolidWorks the software isn't, of course, and in just the last half-year brand-owner Dassault Systems has grown to become the biggest CAD software company in the world.

Nevertheless, people who have built their small business on the success of SolidWorks are concerned of its future due to the vague statements made by Dassault, such as this by-now-classic:

The existing SolidWorks tools will continue to be actively developed (not just supported) until customers no longer express a need for them, and will continue to be based on the Parasolid kernel.

On the surface, it reads positively, but the problem lies in the word "customers," a word as meaningless as "they." (As my English 12 teacher reprimanded us one day in class, there is no "they.") Dassault needs to work in the same reality as their customers: how many need to express a need for SolidWorks tools for Dassault to continue developing them? Two represents the plural of customer.

Dassault will not continue developing SolidWorks for two customers. Nor for 10. Or 100. Or a thousand. Doubtful even for 10,000. (History: Autodesk stopped developing Generic CADD, which had 300,000 apparent customers.)

In the provocatively titled posting "[Former Solidworks ceo] Jeff Ray Killed SolidWorks, [current ceo] Bertrand Sicot Embalms" at Dezignstuff, a vigorous discussion is now at 39 comments. There is the group of regulars long-faced about Solidworks having no future, if not already dead; others, however, talk up the positives of V6. As Dudi put it, if you are today designing a CAD package, you have to design it with the cloud in mind.

Knut F asks, "But let’s say that everything works out just fine (for sake of the argument), and there is a bug free SWv6 available from day one. I’m curious about what level of functionality will be available in SWv6."

When I asked this question at a SolidWorks media event last year, a DSSW exec told me that V6 would have tools "suitable for the needs" of the targeted person using V6. This is code for a subset of design tools.

This makes sense, because you cannot launch a full-blown CAD package in version 1.0. Even SpaceClaim gets annual updates that fill in missing features, like sheetmetal design. We know that V6 will launch less capable than SolidWorks 2013, and so it will look like an immediate failure to current SolidWorks users -- along the lines of that n!Software (whatever it was called).

Missing functions is one crucial issue; the other is pricing. For Dassault to give V6 a chance at success, it needs to price it free initially, by making it part of the SolidWorks annual maintenance fee. (History: Autodesk included the first two releases of AutoCAD for Windows free with the DOS version.) I predict, however, that Dassault won't; the extra monthly/annual fee imposed on top of SW's annual fee will make it as successful among Solidworks users as that n!Software was (whatever it was called).

If the CGM-based [nee-Solidworks] V6 will have a chance, it will be in the large customer market; it will bypass SMB.

It won't be called Solidworks, but will be subsumed into the 3DEXPERIENCE brand as a cloud-based, Envoia-linked, lightwight modeler suitable for seats adjacent to Catia.

Product managers for Creo and Inventor are salivating as Solidworks faces being GenericCADDed.