WorldCAD Access

UN Whines About Progress

My cousin drove us down to Dresden about the time that UNESCO was warning the town's citizens against approving a new bridge, and so we understood firsthand the need for adding the bridge. The town is (now, was) a World Heritage Site, as designated by the UN body, and improving the quality of life for those living there -- and for those passing through as tourists -- was a apparently a no-no. The citizenry recognized that the reduction in travel delays offered by the new bridge was more important than the tut-tutting of bureaucrats located in distant Paris. Now the... Read more →

ASCON Strikes Back

Press releases are usually announcements, but once in a while companies use them them for other purposes, and then they become a bit of a puzzle. A press release from yesterday announces: ASCON Counts Real Cost of CAD Software Solution ...implying that somewhere an unreal cost is being counted. The company never names names, but the subhead gives us a hint:What are we really paying for when buying low-cost CAD. I suspect they are countering Alibre's temporary $99 offer, as well as the many offers of temporarily free software from Autodesk, SolidWorks, and the likes. Here is the list of... Read more →

Your Cheatin' PR

Gagan Biyani of MobileCrunch describes how interns at PR firm Reverb Communications are paid to write 5-start reviews of games, on behalf of game publishers and developers who use Reverb as their public relations firm. Astroturfing is nothing new; Microsoft uses it on and off, as do political parties. Entire magazines and sections of newspapers consist of editorial content written by ad firms. What's new this decade is that the anonymous "wisdom of the crowds" -- crowdsourcing -- allows impostors to slip in more easily. What the public demands, however, is the ability to distinguish between fake and real reviews.... Read more →

Is PR Communism?

While in Prague a few years ago, I picked up the local business paper. The front cover photo was of a gagged businessman. The article compared public relations tactics with those of the country's former communist regime. Considering how much pr firms seek to control the media, it was an interesting hypothesis -- see the early entries to "The Microsoft Chronicles" in the Gizmos Grabowski blog where I document of some of the pressure tactics employed by Microsoft's pr firms against the media. DS SolidWorks this month has been inviting bloggers and editors to its headquarters to preview SolidWorks 2010.... Read more →

A Canadian's View on Health Care

As right and leftwing Americans swing fists at each other over the government's proposal to change health care in the USA, we here in Canada watch in amazement at the misinformation being fed Americans by those pro and con the changes. For example, there was this subhead in one online publication this morning: Government medicine has proved an excruciating disaster in the U.K. and Canada. Actually, not. Let me explain how it works in Canada. I pay about $1300 a year for my entire family for health insurance to the government. (This is a provincial quirk; some province don't have... Read more →

WSJ: Exclusives Only, Pls

Rafat Ali describes the Wall Street Journal's new policy on embargoes and exclusives: no, and yes. And I like it. Enough to consider adopting it for upFront.eZine. The WSJ policy works like this: no embargoes unless they are exclusive. (An embargo is where a hardware company offers WSJ early information on a new product, but asks WSJ to not write about it until a specific date. This date is the same one all other media outlets are also asked to honor. We recently saw this when a large number of CAD and technology blogs all wrote about a new 3D... Read more →

Turn Your Entire Family into Minimoys

As Dassault's new Web page proclaims, "Don't wait 10 moons. Join us now!" As an editor says, "Keep repeating to myself: I will not comment on this... I will not comment on this... I will not comment on this..." Virtual reality cults? Scandinavian gods made human? Judge for yourself: minimoys.3ds.com/ Read more →

SpaceClaim to Autodesk: Bring It On!

Well, SpaceClaim doesn't directly address Autodesk in its Direct Modeling Challenge -- Bring it on! email blast of today. But the coincidence is uncanny: the same morning Autodesk announces general availability of Inventor Fusion TP1 [tech preview #1], the challenge appears in email boxes: If you have a modeling challenge, we want you to bring it on -- to us! Yes, thhat's [sic] right. Then, in a live webinar on July 29, SpaceClaim will demonstrate how their software solves the most compelling design problem submitted. The spin: that SpaceClaim's software is better at solving complex problems than the fresh-faced Fusion. Read more →

Autodesk: We're Kewl With Macheads

Autodesk marketing is ramping up its We-Are-Mac messaging. You may have noticed the initial steps, a few social-media releases, such as the Which-Features-Do-You-Want? survey for a possible Macintosh version of AutoCAD. (From the wording of the survey, Autodesk was hoping users would be fine with a less-than-AutoCAD-LT feature set.) More recent was the "Official: Mac Users Love Us" press release that rejoices at how much the Mac version of Alias is beloved of users. The headline and body contain "momentum" wording: "Alias 2010 Adds to Autodesk’s Growing Portfolio of Mac Design Tools." Alias Design joins the increasing number of Autodesk... Read more →

Real Politik: Not Doing Business in China

Nicholas Carlson of Silicon Valley Insider presents reasons for not doing business in China, never mind the one-billion+ customer base! These reasons are based on practical experience; here are a couple of them: Chinese users will drain your bandwidth without paying for it. Rupert Murdoch doesn't even see the point. You're above it. "That's what Wordpress founder Matt Mullenweg decided after realizing China would unblock his service if he, in turn, blocked certain words or topics." Read all of the reasons at Screw China! Read more →

SolidWorks Disses AutoCAD

From the "Keeping a Lock on Industrial Vault Design" press releases shipped by DS SolidWorks this morning: Using SolidWorks and SolidWorks Simulation helped us [Vault Structures] design and test the door about 70 percent faster than if we'd used AutoCAD, saving $150,000 in reduced prototyping costs. Who designs bank vault doors with AutoCAD? The time and cost savings comparison should have been, of course, with Inventor. Read more →

Not Just Me

Engadget publishes a photo of Steve Wozniak asleep during a Palm Pre demo: 1:05PM And it's official. This Palm conversation has lulled Woz to sleep. We kid you not. (A blogger had posted a photo of me snoozing off during the SolidWorks press event last fall in Barcelona. I blamed the jetlag.) Read more →

The Restless User Interface

A key aspect of productivity is to know intuitively the operation of software. This is no different from fingers memorizing the locations of keys on the keyboard -- and the reason the Dvork keyboard failed. Companies like Microsoft and Autodesk seem determined to impede productivity of users through frequent changes to their software's user interface. Case in point: AutoCAD's Dashboard. Lasted a mere two years. Last year: the new ribbon. This year: the very cluttered ribbon. Next year? Something even worse, I imagine. Bill Fane writes... I find it interesting that over the years we have changed from the rigidity... Read more →

Circle of Life: Bricsys-Flynn Hookup

There is irony in today's announcement from Bricsys that Global Force DIRECT is now handling distribution of its Bricscad software in India and North America. The head of GFD is Tony Flynn, former head of marketing for Bentley Systems. An earlier incarnation of the Bricsys corporation produced the architectural TriForma software, subsequently bought by Bentley. I heard the news direct from today's Bricsys press release, but CAD editor Randall Newton also passed on the news. Randall spent a season at Bentley, as well. After the manner of Bill Fane: "There are three kinds of people in the CAD community: those... Read more →

Quote of the Decade

When it comes to technology... "Play with everything but stick with what's works best for you." - by Mitch Joel Read more →

Angry Revit 2010 Customers

AUGI [Autodesk user group international] Revit MEP Moderator Matthew Danowski posts his longish letter of complaint to Autodesk. I'd been hearing from Revit upgraders on their dissatisfaction of the software. A few of his complaints include: It simply takes five times as long to do anything in Revit than to do it in AutoCAD or other drafting software. Revit didn't like that element, so it just deleted it, randomly, without any notice. Every time the arch [Revit Architecture] updates a linked model, anything hosted on the changed elements goes completely whacko. There were 33 responses at the time I wrote... Read more →

Not Dead: Constructware

Building Design + Construction is reporting that Autodesk is shutting down further development of Constructware. But, writes Autodesk sr director of AEC simulation product line Rick Rundell, the BDC report is incorrect: It is not true we are ending development of this product. In fact, we just released a new version of Constructware this week... Three years ago, the company paid $46 million for Constructware. You can still sign up at the www.autodesk.com/constructware page. Read more →

Study Finds Software Piracy Statistics Growing

Software piracy grew last year, accounting for 41 percent of all PC software installed [up from 38% last year], with losses to companies estimated at $53 billion, the Business Software Alliance said on Tuesday. Clearly, this is an organization that needs to shut down. Year after year, software theft grows, yet the BS Alliance each year announces itself incapable of reversing the tide -- despite the millions member software companies pour into it. Never mind that the BS Alliance generates statistics imaginary enough to make a global warming alarmist proud -- such as "the U.S. has the highest single dollar... Read more →

Ouch! PTC Trash-talks Dassault Systemes

During last week's PTC quarterly conference call, Greg Dunham of Deutsche Bank asked, "If [the PLM software of] some of your competition became more CAD-agnostic, would that make it a little harder for you to win the kind of [Windchill] business that you're winning?" Executive vp James Heppelmann answered on behalf of PTC: I think Dassault doesn't even understand what the phrase "CAD agnostic" means. That is so far from their DNA that even if they said they were going to be CAD-agnostic I'm not sure they would know what they are saying. They are so homogeneous, closed minded, closed... Read more →

Numbers War: SolidWorks Claims 1,000,000 Seats

The number of seats sold by vendors is as contentious a debate as Mac vs PC. Problems with seat figures include: Licenses donated to educational institutes for free, and hence possibly unused. For instance, Siemens PLM Systems regularly donates tens of millions of dollars worth of their CAD software to universities. Licenses sold as educational site licenses, and so the number in-use is indeterminable. A single DVD is installed (legally) by tens or scores or hundreds of students. Licenses bundled with additional CAD software, which means some software can sit unused. Licenses purchased long ago and perhaps no longer in-use.... Read more →

Our Customers Tell Us...

In talks with marketing people about new software features, they sometimes use a phrase that runs along the lines of "Our users told us..." or "Responding to requests from our users...". It irritates me, because I know it's not true. Several hundred thousand people can't even agree on the time of day, let alone on improvements to software. Today I finally came across a good way to describe the flaw in the "Our users" phrase: it is a case of "alleged consensus." In the high school English class in which we studied various forms of propaganda, I figure "Our users"... Read more →

Twitter Hater

Randall Newton wants to have a no-punches withheld debate on the uselessness of Twitter (ie, he considers it useful, the fool.) At it's core, Twitter is the equivalent of passing notes during class -- in elementary school. "Tee hee hee. We're fooling the teacher with out discrete communication system." At the psychological level, Twitter is like a drug pump that injects endorphins each time you get a hit -- er, a Tweet. "Thank goodness somebody still likes me." Here's the part I find saddest -- when Randall is thrilled to show me he got one more follower in the past... Read more →

Earth Day Specials

I'm getting a chuckle out of the "green" earth-day specials landing in my email In box. It seems that marketing people have figured out that there are three requirements to qualify the product they represent to be green: Green must feature prominently in the email text and graphics. The product is download-able, and so is by default green. You are expected to buy the product because of these qualifications -- green text and downloadability. To be truly green, a company would have to go out of business. In other earth-day events, NPR is in fund-raising mode, and one of their... Read more →

Weekend Blog Readings

Dezignstuff Mat Lombard rants away at how poorly some CAD vendors treat their primary reason for existence -- customers: Here’s my measure: if you treat customers any differently than you would treat your own mother, you’re part of the problem. Or... It sucks when you pay for subscription, but you can't use what they offer. They won't let you pay for only what you use. When you ask why, you're told several things such as, "We need that money to develop the next new thing you won't use and don't want"... Read it all at "We suck less." Outside The... Read more →

Autodesk In BW Top 50

Nestled in the rolling hills just north of San Francisco, Autodesk is no Silicon Valley mover and shaker. Business Week includes Autodesk among its annual ranking of top 50 companies that are the "best in class from the 10 sectors of the Standard & Poor's index of 500 stocks." In this year's listing, Autodesk ranks #45; in this year's Business Week article, it ranks #1 by being mentioned first -- with that rather oddly-worded introductory sentence. The Business Week 50 (for 2009) Read more →

Amazing but True: CAD Magazines Exist in Print

With all the anguish over CADalyst's near-demise, it's hard to keep in mind that numerous CAD magazines still exist in print form. There is CAD&RITNYTT from Sweden (I have Februari issue on my desk), and AutoCAD MAGAZIN from Germany (they continue sending me copies). I'm sure there are more; it's just that I'm not sure who they might be. Here in Canada, Design Engineering continues in print and on-line form. I know about this one, because twice in the last year they've asked me to write for them. Considering that writing and editing a CAD magazine is all that I... Read more →

"Autodesk To Design Beijing Auto's Own-brand Car"

Well, not really. The headline writer of The Auto Channel got carried away, leaving out a crucial word, "Software." As in... Autodesk Software To Design Beijing Auto's Own-brand Car The confusion might stem from this sentence of the article, which appears to be a rewritten press release: Under the cooperation deal, Autodesk Software will deliver all-around support to Beijing Auto in auto-design solutions, service, and training. ...especially if you don't know that solutions is a codeword for "software," and not design services. Read more →

Saved: CADalyst

Current CADalyst magazine owner Questex Media Group is licensing the 26-year-old CAD publication to Longitude Media. The entire CADalyst staff gets to keep their jobs, apparently. Longitude Media appears to be recycling itself. Its president Seth Nichols is described as the previous "CEO and President of the CMP Media Internet Group and founded Longitude Media, an online media distribution company." The new publisher is not to be confused by the non-profit of the same name. Read more →

Word Process Mangles Text

Microsoft Word has many drawbacks. One of them is how it tends to mangle that most important of all documents, the press release. Here is a particularly mangled one that just arrived in my In box: Customers Give Print Audit An “A” In Technical Support [?XML:NAMESPACE PREFIX = O /]* The point of a word processor is to help, not hinder. *) I replaced angle brackets with square brackets. Read more →

Headlines Generalize, generally

Headlines that generalize irritate me, like this one from Reuters writer Melanie Lee: Nine-year old whiz-kid writes iPhone application (Or maybe we should blame Reuters editor Bill Tarrant.) Generalized headlines make rare events seem regular, such as the one above and the others that appeared today. I've added qualifiers to each one, to turn them back into rare events: [A very few] Teens who `sext' racy photos charged with porn (AP) [One or two] Experts question fallout from new Monster hack (AP) Maliki Allies See [Some Specific] Gains in Iraq (WSJ) [Certain] Stocks Fall on Retail, Jobs Data (WSJ) Drought... Read more →

Autodesk Gets More (and More) Notice

Thanks to former ceo Carol Bartz now heading up Yahoo, Autodesk is getting more attention as business writers delve into the history of its Bartzian decade-and-four-tenths. For free! Fer instance, Kara Swisher of BoomTown reports on an unhappy Yahoo-ee complaining of Bartz's cutting manner: "She is like a buzzsaw..." Wait for it, wait for it... A little Google, and. Ding! Ironically, Buzzsaw is an "on-demand collaborative project management solution" offered by Autodesk, the software company that Bartz ruled for 14 years until 2006. See? It makes sense when you know the code: Latch onto key words spoken by anonymous disaffected... Read more →

Dualing Headlines

CADwire.net had this pair of competing headlines in its daily summary earlier in the week: ArchiCAD START Continues to Deliver Breakthrough Price for Building Information Modeling (BIM) CADDIT Releases 'Anti-BIM' AEC, MEP AutoCAD Add Ons To BIM, or to not-BIM. It certainly is a philosophical question. Graphisoft argues in favor, because now... ...architects with tight budgets can deploy a powerful BIM solution they could not previously afford. So, Graphisoft is intimating that BIM is otherwise expensive. In contrast, CADDIT argues in favor of... ...building design without the overhead involved with Building Information Modeling (commonly known as BIM). (PS: Speaking of... Read more →

Designers: The Stars of a New Movie

Dan Frommer writes about a new movie that stars industrial designers: Objectified. His blog entry includes the movie's trailer. We see CAD being used, prototypes being STL'ed, and products being stamped in factories, but initial designs are done with pencils. Source. Read more →

Say What You Mean

Sony Announces Initiatives to Improve Profitability and Enhance Operational Efficiencies in its Electronics Businesses. - Sony Corporation press release Sony to shed 16,000 jobs, increase prices. -Thomas Ricker, Engadget Read more →

Dassault Drafts New Meaning

I've been trying to make sense of recent documents emanating from Dassault Systemes' marketing department. They contain words whose meaning is lost in these new contexts. Here's a sampling of the "new" words, what I think is their meaning, and how they appear in-context: Chart (noun) -- contract or agreement? -- "Blog Chart" (1) Offer (noun) -- software product? -- "DS Design Studio has been working with CATIA R&D to create an offer that directly adresses... This offer, the CATIA Design Studio Solutions Portfolio, includes..." (2) Sharp (adj) -- clear? -- "Exact shape outputs are immediately available as sharp and... Read more →

CAD Vendors Fight Recesion with Offers

Earlier today I posted on the buy-AutoCAD-get-a-computer-free offer from nVidia (of all people). Now here's an email blast from Bentley Systems, allowing me to not pay any back subscription fees -- if I join their Select subscription system by the end of the year. Plus, enter for a chance to win a Nintendo Wii! And arriving some 42 minutes earlier, an email blast from SolidWorks with a less exciting offer: Pay $199 a month for three years. 0% interest (*) No payments for the first three months. Gee, guys, can't you throw in a free big-screen tv? (*) Plus security... Read more →

Long Tail Debunked

The Register's Andrew Orlowski reports on researchers who refuted Chris Anderson's theory of the long tail. See Chopping the Long Tail Down to Size (The Long Tail theory claims there is much money to be made in selling a few copies of many things.) I'm a long tail kind of guy (no crude jokes, pls), selling modest amounts of over 40 titles of ebooks, plus other publishing activities. After reading Mr Anderson's book, however, I had found a fundamental flaw in his reasoning: An Amazon or a Rhapsody might make a wack of $$$ from selling just 1 or 2... Read more →

Not Our Press Release

I am on the mailing lists of CAD vendors, and this morning I received a press release with a politically-oriented headline. I would not have expected that from the usually politically-neutral CAD companies: Bush Dismantles Economic Programs for Small Business as Economy Continues Downward Spiral The press release was sent under the CAD company's email address. Only when I read to the very end of the press release (which I rarely do) did I learn it was issued by American Small Business League and not the hapless CAD vendor. After some research, I found that the mailing list is handled... Read more →

The Real Meaning Behind Release Numbers

Look, it's simple: 3.0 is not really 3.0, but it should be considered 3.0-developer-alpha-gold. The next release will be 3.2-beta-silver-GTi, followed quickly by 3.1.1.0-gold-gold-always-believe-in-your-soul, which may (or may not) be ready for end users. Provided no show-stopper bugs are found in that (& if they are they'll just be re-classified as "WORKSFORME" and the submitter flamed), the final 3.0.1.45 version will be released to end users (apart from those in Arizona and Ohio. They have to wait for 3.1.5). by Anonymous Coward from slash.dot Read more →

PTC Issues Warning: Get Off Time Bomb, Now!

Today's email blast from PTC urges its unwilling-to-sign-that-cheque CoCreate customers to get back onto subscription: "Sitting on a time bomb? Upgrade now at a special price." It's not, however, about the money PTC needs flowing into its bank account, people: it's about staying current. How current? Try out these newfangled features described by PTC in late 2008 as "exciting innovations": Support for new data exchange standards like DXF and DWG. Enhancements like Undo and Redo. [Replaces] older versions of software ... that don't offer the look and feel of Windows. These bullet points are sufficiently exciting to give some CAD... Read more →

The Election that Matters

For those of you wondering about how the election in here in Canada is coming along, columnist Andrew Coyne presents a summary of polling numbers: Unweighted average, first three polls (Ekos, Harris-Decima, Angus Reid) taken after the first day of the campaign: Con 37 Lib 26 NDP 18 Green 9 Bloc 9 Unweighted average, four most recent polls (Ekos, Nanos, Harris-Decima, Strategic Counsel) as of Sept 30: Con 36 Lib 25 NDP 19 Green 10 Bloc 10 All those polls (more than 50 in all), all those breathless headlines, all that instant analysis, all that money… And they are all... Read more →

Industrial Design: The Movie

A movie about industrial design, from the maker of Helvetica (the movie about typefaces), Gary Hustwit:Objectified is a documentary about industrial design; it’s about the manufactured objects we surround ourselves with, and the people who make them. On an average day, each of us uses hundreds of objects. (Don’t believe it? Start counting: alarm clock, light switch, faucet, shampoo bottle, toothbrush, razor…) Who makes all these things, and why do they look and feel the way they do? All of these objects are “designed,” but how can good design make them, and our lives, better?I wonder if any software will... Read more →

Autodesk Consolodates Mac Architecture Market -- Really?

This headline caught my eye for its strangeness:Mac architecture market consolidatesI found it on a Web site called MacNn, which runs this as its lead sentence:Autodesk has acquired the assets of Green Building Studio, further consolidating the market for Mac-based architecture software.The Mac angle is this: GBS has a link to Graphisoft, which has a version that runs on Macs. Commenters figure that Autodesk will cut off the Graphisoft link, and eliminate the Mac version of the software -- all false speculation, since Autodesk states that the Graphisoft version will be running again: "ArchiCAD add-on is temporarily unavailable while we... Read more →

Strategic Research Suspends Operations Today

I thought was the most successful pr and marketing firm in the CAD industry, but that's not stopping owner Rachael Taggart from taking a rest from the biz. As the email bounceback reports:SRPR is suspending its operations as of June 30 2008. "Suspending," because Rachael will hang onto the Strategic Research name -- just in case, you know. Read more →

PR Sez

...one of my people just talked to Katie Cotton and she says Steve is in extremely good health and isn't frail at all and this whole thing about losing weight was just made up by the filthy scumbags in the media to stir up controversy and it was all just caused by the way the lighting was done on the stage at WWDC because they put in special lights to try to make Phil Schiller look less huge and the side effect of that lighting was that it made everyone else look thinner too but in fact Steve weighs more... Read more →

BW Interviews CB

Today's Business Week web page has an interview with Autodesk CEO Carl Bass. Nothing exciting to learn from Matt Vella's interview for those of us experienced with CAD -- other than Autodesk software designs the Mercedes Benz S-Class car. Not fully. I think the important phrase there is "with the aid of" and I am certain the unmade reference is to Alias, not Inventor. Read more →

X3DMEDIA acquires AEC magazine

They used to work there, now they own it. Martyn Day and Al Dean used to work at EDA, a magazine publisher in England. Earlier this year, they left to form their own publishing house, X3DMEDIA, and quietly launched the x3media.com blog and related properties. Today the duo announced that they acquired AEC Magazine ) from EDA Ltd. The print publication will continue as before, with an issue every two months available in print and online. X3DMEDIA plans to launch Product Development and Manufacturing in late-June. Read more →

SolidWorks Replaces Pro/E

It is typical for a CAD vendor to announce that their software has replaced that of a competitor's. It is atypical to name the competitor. Dassault didn't mind doing that during their most recent conference call with finanacial analysts: Here you can see a win for SolidWorks, which is called Leviton -- one of the leaders in electrical and electronic components. They are producing 25,000 different components and have decided to standardize on SolidWorks and replace both the combination of PTC and CoCreate. Is it significant that Dassault's home page now lists SolidWorks first the lineup of its software? DASSAULT... Read more →

PTC's Reaction to Dassault's V6

During PTC's quarterly conference call with financial analaysts, Jay Vleeschhouwer of Merrill Lynch asks: Are you seeing any customer piloting activity at all of Dassault’s V6 architecture? PTC's chief product officer James E. Heppelmann responds: I think most customers I've talked to are highly skeptical about that. A lot of them think that it's an out-there idea based on some questionable architectural approaches. For example storing CAD data in the database rather than a file system, which has been proven by several vendors not to work that well. I'd say I see a huge amount of skepticism from customers and... Read more →

3D Not For All

After hearing yesterday about Dassault's 3D app running in Facebook, I asked my daughter to hunt down 3D Collage. It's (apparently) a photo integrator: pick a 3D background, provide a photo, and the two are somehow merged. She quickly found it, and click the big green START button. But the next page was a disappointment, for it read: The 3D Life Player is not supported under Microsoft Windows Vista and this Web browser. Please use another Web browser. She was running Facebook in FireFox 3 on Vista. As I have said before, Dassault needs to stop using the tagline, "3D... Read more →