WorldCAD Access

What Statistics Can Tell Us About SARS-CoV-2 Test Results

by Nikolay Snytnikov

 

To better estimate the situation with СOVID-19 within our company LEDAS, we decided to make antibody testing available to our employees, all of whom had been working  remotely since March. Fifty-three of our 70+ employees were interested, and so we organized out-of-lab testing thanks to Invitro’s laboratory service. Both IgM (early antibodies) and IgG (late antibodies) were examined, and the results were simple: all had zero positives for IgM, and one employee was positive for IgG.

We were able to congratulate ourselves for the zero result in early antibodies, meaning we are quite safe. But now we needed to focus on the late antibodies, as they provide more interesting information. Since we at LEDAS are now involved in more medical software projects, we considered this an opportunity to apply statistics to our medical data.

 

Test Accuracy

It is important to keep in mind that the accuracy of SARS-CoV-2 antibody (ELISA) tests is not very high: the sensitivity (true positive rate) of our tests was ~95% and the specificity (true negative rate) was ~98%. These are due to the lack of a perfect verification procedure, because double-checking through PCR (polymerase chain reaction) testing is not precise either. The specificity could be increased more easily by using old blood samples collected before the coronavirus era, such as from 2019, which could be considered non-infected.

Statistics are more accurate when working with big numbers, and so results for groups are more meaningful. By contrast, individual results are not particularly indicative; for individuals, they could be even counter-intuitive. I’ll look at both cases.

 

Individual Results

Let’s assume that the general level of infection in the population is L=5%. This corresponds to results from a nationwide study in Spain published recently in the Lancet journal. Spain is one of the highly infected countries.

When someone gets a positive result, there are two possible reasons that are mutually exclusive:

• TP – there is an infection, and the test is a true positive (accurate)
• FP – there is no infection, but the test is a false positive (inaccurate)

The probabilities P(TP) and P(FP) are calculated in this way:

P(TP) = level of infection * sensitivity = 0.05 * 0.95 = 0.0475
P(FP) = (1 – level of infection) * (1 – specificity) = 0.95 * 0.02 = 0.019

The probability of getting a positive test P (Positive) is the sum of the two probabilities:

P(Positive) = P (TP) + P (FP) = 0.0475 + 0.019 = 0.0665

This means that if you are in Spain (or in another country with the same level of infection), and you applied for a test of this type, then you have a 6.65% chance of getting a positive result.

What can we conclude from this? That we should apply the conditional probability formula to measure your chances:

P(TP / Positive) = P(TP ∩ Positive) / P(Positive) = P(TP) / P(Positive)

The probability that you are actually infected in the case where you received a positive test will be approximately

P(TP / Positive) = 0.0475 / 0.0665 = 0.714…

So, before taking a test in Spain, you have a 5% probability of having been infected; after testing, despite getting a positive result, you still have only a ~71.4% probability of being actually infected. Your chance of being not infected after a positive result is ~28.6% – not so small!

So what is the benefit of testing for the virus? To understand this, we should consider how the probability of being infected changes when the result is negative. Once again, there are two possible reasons for testing negative:

• FN – a patient is infected, but the test was false negative
• TN – a patient is not infected, and the test was true negative

The probabilities are:

P(FN) = level of infection * (1 – sensitivity) = 0.05 * 0.05 = 0.0025
P(TN) = (1 – level of infection) * specificity = 0.95 * 0.98 = 0.931

The probability of getting a negative test is the sum of the two:

P(Negative) = 0.0025 + 0.931 = 0.9335

This conforms with the 0.0665 probability of getting a positive test result, as P (Positive) + P (Negative) = 1.

The probability that you are actually infected when you test negative is

P(FN / Negative) = P(FN ∩ Negative) / P(Negative) = P(FN) / P(Negative) = 0.0025 / 0.9335 = 0.0026…

So, while before test you had 5% of probability of having been infected, after getting the results you have either

• 71.4% of probability of being infected, if the result is positive, or
• 0.26% of probability of being infected, if the result is negative

In the one case, you increase the probability by an order of magnitude; in the other one you decrease it by an order of magnitude. The difference is significant!

It is easy to see that if the specificity of the test somehow decreases to less than 95%, then even after getting a positive result you will have less than a 50% chance of being truly infected, which is rather counter-intuitive.

 

Group Results
The results for our test group can be described using a binomial distribution. Let’s input our parameters P (Positive) and N=53 and see what WolframAlpha tells about this:

What is the probability that there were no infected employees in our company, given one positive? For this to be true, 53 test conditions should be satisfied simultaneously and independently:

• One condition (the only positive result) is actually a false positive; the probability of this is P (FP / Positive)
• 52 conditions (the negative results) of which each is actually a true negative; the probability of this is P (TN / Negative)

The product of these 53 Bayesian probabilities is

So we have a not-so-small 25% chance that no one was infected.

What is the probability that many employees were infected? This is not as easy to calculate, but it is easy to make an upper-bound estimate. To have more than N-infected employees, we should have at least N false negative tests, based the one unit of difference between them provided by the single positive result in all our antibody testing.

The probability of having N false negative tests is not more than

If N=2, it is already less than 1%, so it is highly unlikely that we have more than two infected employees. Using this formula, the probability of having exactly two infected employees is less than 14.2%.

Therefore, the highest probability is that there is only one infected employee at LEDAS, as we have a 60+% chance for this. This implies that there was no transmission of the virus inside our company.

 

Some Notes About Assumptions
I did the computations with these assumptions:

• The statistical selection was done independently
• The percentage of people in the population that contracted coronavirus is 5%

The first assumption is, of course, not fully correct, because our employees had been working from home for a long time, and so have a low probability of being exposed to the virus. So, the selection was not independent.

The second assumption of 5% infection does not correspond to the official data for Novosibirsk region, in which our staff is located. As of mid-July, there were seven thousand cases among 2.8 million people, for an infection rate of about 0.25%. On the other hand, it is well-known that official testing data don’t include asymptomatic and false negative cases; this is true for all countries, and so Russia and Novosibirsk are not exceptions here.

We can adjust the infection rate without doing extensive antibody testing, but instead using estimates from the infection fatality rate (IFR). Some studies suggest that it should be within the range of 0.5-1%. The official number of coronavirus-caused deaths in the Novosibirsk region is 142 (as of July 12). We can calculate the number of all COVID-19 cases in the range of 14-28 thousand.

Unfortunately, these numbers look underestimated, as the official number of death cases might not be correct. For example, some deadly pneumonia cases are “false negatives” or are not considered to have been caused by COVID-19 as the primary cause of death.

Better estimates of lethal COVID-19 cases can be calculated by comparing the mortality of this year with that of the previous year, as was done by the Financial Times for certain countries and regions. The raw data is available on Github.

For the Novosibirsk region, the data (available elsewhere) suggests there were an additional 400 deaths in June 2020 (when compared with the monthly average for 2019). Of course, not all deaths this year can be attributed to COVID-19, but very probably it is the primary reason of the increase. Assuming that 300-400 deaths were due to COVID-19, then the number of all cases can be roughly estimated as 30-80 thousand per 2.8 million of people. This is in the range 1%-3%, and much higher than official data of 0.25%.

 

Estimates from Dunbar's Number

The numbers can be double-checked with a very different consideration: sociology and anthropology. The so-called Dunbar’s Number proposes that people can comfortably maintain about 150 relationships with other people.

Dunbar’s Number can be useful in understanding the level of disease spread in the population: if you know of no one among your friends or relatives who contracted the disease, then the likely number of cases is less than 1%. But if there is at least one person you know personally, then the rate is higher than 1%.

In our case, it looks like the 1-3% estimate is correct, as for many of us we know of two to three COVID-19 cases among friends and relatives. Very probably during the next few weeks and months, some of our employees will contract the disease as well, due to the increasing number of infected people in the general population.

Below you can see how the probabilities of different cases for one person change if we decrease the parameter “infection level” from 5% to 2% (midpoint of the 1-3% interval). It is interesting that for the positive result you have nearly 50:50% chances of true positive and false positive:

Conclusion

We believe that there were no transmissions inside our company, because we implemented remote work in March, well before there were any cases reported in our city. Restrictions from authorities began more than ten days later. And we are taking care to not contribute to transmission of the virus in the future.

Stay healthy, safe, and take care!

- - -

Nikolay Snytnikov is the chief operating officer at LEDAS. He supervises projects in the areas of 3D cloud applications, medical software, CAD, and BIM, and the development of the LEDAS Cloud Platform. http://ledas.com/en/

 

 

RetroCAD is Hip

The DOS-based reawakening

 

Hipsters like old stuff, grungy stuff. Wrecked boards, worn out mugs. Best present I ever got for one of my daughters, according to her, was bringing back a slightly-damaged-looking camping mug from New Zealand. A present to end all presents. No doubt there is somewhere in China a factory with people whose job it is to make brand-new mugs look banged-up. Or maybe the look is part of the mould.

Never mind. Retro is hip, even in CAD. We have people restarting computers from the 1980s and 1990s running CAD software from those days. If you grok Nth Engine, then you're in the know.

 

RetroCAD Is a Thing

The RetroCAD YouTube channel, for instance, has 40 videos about getting software like AutoCAD 1.4 (my first version in 1985!) and KeyCAD running on old hardware like a Compaq 486 and Kurta tablet -- all under DOS, of course. https://www.youtube.com/c/RetroCAD/videos

I have a old '386 sitting under my desk, waiting for me to have time to tinker with it. It has the all-important 5.25" and 3.5" diskette drives. And my bookshelves groan under a large collection of 1980s-1990s software that encompasses everything from Quarterdesk Desqview to an early VersaCAD. The #1 killer in getting old software resurrected is whether the magnetic patterns on diskettes survive the decades.

Remember inserting 15 diskettes to install one program?

 

Generic CADD Renaissance

People keep buying the ebook version of my "Learn Generic CADD 6.0" book, even though it is 27 years old. That's because there is a renaissance in running the beloved CAD program on today's Windows and old time DOS systems. A purchaser from last week told me, "Just fired up my old copy of generic cadd to do some drafting and realized my memory is not as good as I thought it was in using it. This [ebook] will come in handy to refresh my brain cells."

You can get tips for doing this from https://worldcadaccess.typepad.com/blog/2013/01/running-generic-cadd-in-2013.html and its 46 comments. The ebook (PDF) is $14.50 from https://www.worldcadaccess.com/ebooksonline/2015/07/gcp.html

About Nth Engine

Nth Engine was an expensive, memory-laden accessory board that sped up AutoCAD by storing the display-list in RAM. As their ad copy put it, if you have to wait more than two seconds, then you're waiting too long. Nowadays, redraws and regens tend to be instant, so two seconds seems today w-a-y too long to wait. But not in the 1980s. I timed the famous nozzle.dwg drawing taking 4.5 minutes to regenerate on an 8088 (early PC); 30 seconds with the optional, extra-cost math co-processor. So, yah, two seconds was a breakthrough.

At the time, I was still technical editor  at CADalyst, and I got to review the Nth Engine board. I found it wasn't as fast as some of its competitors, and so the magazine lost the full-page ads as a result. By the end of the 1980s, hardware display-list processing was superseded by software ones, and then by the early 1990s Autodesk killed the thriving industry when it hired the main programmer away from Vermont Microsystems, got sued, paid $6 million in damages to VMI, and killed the industry anyways.

Remember bird's-eye view? Ya, that was part of that era as well.

Graphics used to be horrendously expensive. Think $1000 - $3000 per component for "high" resolution of 1024x768. That's a thousand or three for the graphics board, a couple thousand for the 19" monitor. And sync was fixed, so if you wanted the change one of them, you had to change both. A good, fast, large plotter was $15,000. Now multiply those prices by 2.5 to account for inflation today.

The CAD software was priced reasonably; the hardware was a killer. Today, the roles are reversed.

BNC connectors, anyone? How about configuring a serial port?

 

 

The Big Release from C3D Labs for 2020

C3D Toolkit 2020

 

In this era when it appears some CAD vendors really just want your money in exchange for not much, it's good to see annual releases that burst with improvements.

How bad is the just-give-us-money scam? (And it really is a scam.) At one CAD event I watched this year, the 2020 version of the software had exactly one new function -- and the marketing team didn't talk about it. [Audience cue: groan.] It almost seemed like the pre-event chatter at the firm consisted of "Since our software's update is so lame, let's tell reporters about anything but."

Others, I am pleased to report, are bursting with goodness and newness. Solid Edge 2021 from Siemens is one; C3D Toolkit 2020 from C3D Labs is another. 

'Course, the software from C3D Labs is totally out of your league. You and I wouldn't buy it, ever, 'cause it's meant for programmers. The "Toolkit" part of the name is the clue. If you want to develop your own CAD system or other software that works with CAD data, then you'd reach for a toolkit, like the ones from C3D Labs, Open Design Alliance, Siemens, Spatial, and others. C3D Labs says their toolkit, however, is the most complete one on the market, with these modules, and you can license each module separately, should you need the services of just one or two:

• Geometry kernel -- C3D Modeler
• Constraint manager -- C3D Solver
• Polygonal mesh to B-rep converter -- C3D B-Shaper
• Visualization engine -- C3D Vision
• Data exchange -- C3D Converter

Surface Modeling

The big addition to this year's release is surface modeling. Surface modeling is used for industrial design, when you want swoopy curves. Think car bodies. One of the new functions generates a variety of surfaces based on sections and control functions, as the figure illustrates:

1. Conic section curves
2. Sections in the form of NURBS
3. Sections in the form of arbitrary splines
4. Circular sections
5. Ruled sections

We get a hint of where C3D Labs is thinking of heading with surface modeling in future releases, with this sentence from its press release: "This is considered the high-end of CAD functionality and paves the way for solving design tasks in the aerospace and shipbuilding industries." So they seem to be aiming for the lofty levels currently handled by the Dassaults and Siemens of the world.

And why not: once you have all the math in place, geometric kernels are done. Really, the only new problem that Dassault (through Spatial) and Siemens (through Parasolid) are tackling these days are 3D models that combine solids and meshes, and how to edit them as if the two representations were the same thing. Progress is, on that front, slow, giving chances for competitors to catch up. I note that C3D Labs has a 'polygonal mesh to B-rep converter', which in some future release could well become a 'polygonal mesh to B-rep editor'. It is, after all, just math.

The other changes to this year's release of C3D Toolkit are in the areas of solid modeling, sheet metal, direct 2D editing, 3D visualization, interoperability (file translation), and the aforementioned mesh to b-rep conversion.

For instance, developers can now add a function that punches sheet metal with any arbitrary shape, and the punched portion can have a different thickness than the original sheet metal.

For the details, consult https://c3dlabs.com/en/blog/products/c3d-labs-brings-advanced-surfacing-to-c3d-toolkit-2020-update-targets-high-end-3d-engineering-softwa/

 

Updated: Lenovo announces first workstation with 64-core CPU

Lenovo ThinkStation P620

 

Summer used to be quiet time for user conferences, press events, and product launches. People were, after all, on vacation. Fall was the busiest time for me, but spring was busy for others who cover tech events. Then a thing called coronavirus happened, and people said that "afterwards everything would change."

For these events, it has changed. Last week and this week, I received invitations for five online events -- from Graphisoft (2 events), 3D Systems, Siemens, and Lenovo. In July! That I am travelling and on vacation during summer months -- well, that's not a factor. I have to miss three of them, precisely because I am travelling (annual visit to mother-in-law), but some events have replay enabled, fortunately. 

One live event I am missing is Lenovo's launch of what it calls the world's first workstation with  64 cores, thanks to AMD's new Ryzen Threadripper PRO CPU. For me this is a "finally" moment, as AMD of late has been blowing Intel out of the water. AMD always was a CPU maker and I seem to recall some law suit that forced Intel to share 8086 code with AMD so that its CPUs are compatible with Windows, et al. I've watched Intel since the late 1980s and have been amazed at its ability to stumble, most recently its inability to get its CPU size down to 10 manometers; competitors like AMD and Samsung are already down to 7 and 5nm. 

Update 1: Here are the specs for the three Ryzen CPU models announced this week (image source The Register):

So, yah, AMD is blowing Intel out of the water, according to what the tech publications say, in both advances and pricing. Lenovo is pleased to ride the wave by being the first to offer this new ThinkStation P620 workstation with an AMD CPU that offers:

• 64 cores
• clock speed up to 4.0GHz
• 128 lanes of PCIe 4.0 bandwidth
• 8-channel memory support

Outside of the new workstation (image source Lenovo)

In addition, Lenovo stuffs the box with

• 10GB built-in Ethernet
• support for up to two NVIDIA Quadro RTX 8000 or four RTX 4000 graphics cards
• up to 1TB RAM (or 512GB, depending on which Lenovo document you consult)
• 20TB of storage
• PCIe Gen 4 workstation

Back of new workstation 

So, this is the most cores ever offered in a workstation, according to Lenovo. This kind of a computer is meant for software that actually makes use of many cores, such as rendering and FEA [finite element analysis]. In addition, the software has to support 64 cores, as some are written for fewer. It is not too useful for CAD drawing and editing, which is strictly single-core work. Some CAD systems use more more than one core for a very few, very specific tasks, like loading drawing files and regeneration (which is reloading drawing files).

Inside of new workstation

This new computer ships in September, with a price that is unknown to me today. The liberal use of the words "up to" means that the base price will be reasonable (for a workstation), and then skyrockets. More info from http://www.lenovo.com/p620

Update 2: The ThinkStation P620 starting price is US$4,599 (USD) and includes:

• AMD Threadripper Pro W3945W (12/24-core model)
• 16GB RAM
• 256GB M.2 PCIe 3x4 SSD
• NVIDIA Quadro P620 GPU
• Keyboard and mouse
• Windows 10 Pro
• 3-year onsite warranty

 

Is saying Carbon Copy even legal anymore?

Not CO2-based

 

We have mainstream media and eager-to-please-greens politicians spouting the need to reduce carbon-this and carbon-that, never realizing that they are talking about the wrong thing. They mean CO2, but out of a plenitude of ignorance shorten "carbon dioxide" to "carbon." One is a molecule mostly found in the gaseous state, the other an element found most often in the solid state. I leave it as an exercise to the reader to determine which is which.

Perhaps the switch in scientific nomenclature is deliberate, because carbon is normally black and dirty, while CO2 is clear and clean. Better to appear to be seen calling for cleaning up that which is black and dirty, than that which is clear and clean.

We are reassured by those in the know that "carbon" is evil, evil, evil, and why hasn't lazy government spent enough on eradicating it yet. Never mind that CO2 is the chemical that allows vegans to remain vegan.

And so it is with that background that an auto blog that I follow made reference to carbon copy:

...focusing instead on building an updated model influenced by the utility vehicle, but not a carbon copy.

Surely some kind of genetic or chemical manipulation must be involved in making a carbon copy, no doubt. I suspect people even in their 40s might not know the meaning of the term.

In the days before computers made trivial the printing many copies of a document, we typed with typewriters. If we needed a copy of a document, such as for a committee meeting, we didn't want to type it over many times. Instead, we used carbon paper -- very thin paper coated with the graphite form of carbon on one side. We placed it between two sheets of paper, and then typed. Presto, two copies for the effort of typing one. Amazing productivity booster.

If we were desperate, we would use three or more sheets of paper, with two or more sheets of carbon paper. But the text would get increasingly fuzzy with each layer of paper, as they spread out the impact from the typewriter heads pounding away.

And so that is how the phrase "make a carbon copy" came to mean making a near-perfect reproduction. No CO2 needed.

 

PS: You can today still purchase carbon paper, but the embarrassing-to-some word 'carbon' has been removed, and so it is renamed "graphite transfer paper." Graphite is carbon, as is diamond. But you knew that.

PPS: Carbon paper would help detectives in 60s tv shows solve crimes, after the bad guy's secretary threw used carbon paper into the trash can, leaving a perfect copy of the incriminating letter for detectives to discover.

PPPS: If you were cheap like me, you would reuse carbon paper until it no longer could make reasonable facsimiles. From facsimiles we got the word 'fax,' which became the next generation of document copying. But then you knew that, too.

PPPPS: Because we couldn't edit letters when we wrote them (without rewriting them, and who wants to do that), the post script (PS) method was devised to add more material to letters to which we already had affixed our signatures. 

 

Q&A with Graphisoft Executives

ArchiCAD 24 launch

Graphisoft has for years held an annual by-invitation-only conference for its top customers, to which we in the CAD media were also invited. With this year's coronavirus canceling in-person events, Graphisoft opened this year's conference to all users.

Two days earlier, Graphisoft held a press conference moderated by Graphisoft senior manager of global communications Julianna Gulden with Graphisoft ceo Huw Roberts, Nemetschek Group chief division officer Victor Várkonyi, and vp for product success Akos Pfemeter.

We got an early heads-up on ArchiCAD 24 and new product logos, along with a extended question and answer session.

New logos for Graphisoft products

 

In brief, this year's release of ArchiCAD offers enhancements in the areas of

• Enhanced MEP modeler
• BIM change tracking
• Greater file support
• New surface materials and residential library
• Python API for automation
• Param-o as an easier version of GDL for driving parametric parts

The launch will be world-wide in all languages and includes updates to BIMcloud server and BIMx viewer, naturally, but also deep integration with Risa (structural design for North America) and Scia (structural analysis and design for Europe). We first heard about this Nemetschek-wide initiative last year, as well as during last week's interview with the Vectorworks ceo.

BIMcloud server is the core of integrated design for ArchiCAD and this year it gets

• Open for files from any source, making it interdisciplinary instead of just limited to ArchiCAD
• Connect to it from other software through a new API
• Performance boost

BIMx model viewer works on mobile devices and Web browsers:

• New 3D visualization engine that handles files of any size
• A single BIMx app with freemium and subscription options
• Free version offers all forms of viewing, smart measure, and presentation gallery
• Paid version adds large model support, and API, ability to save favorite

- - -

Q: Does the Graphisoft-Scia-Risa integration use the new internal file format? Or does it use OpenBIM?

A: The Nemetschek Group is using an internal data scheme but it also is being developed as an open format for data sharing and real-time teamwork.

There are couple of different layers for integrated design:

• Teamwork for connecting people and workflows -- managed by BIMcloud
• Parameter level, in whcih an element in a model is used by different people for different purposes, which cannot go out of sync or be misaligned.
• Schema is the SAF (?) schema, open, works with other software top

This makes it possible to integrate the structural model inside the BIM model, like MEPs checking that ducts don't go through columns, and the architect knowing from the structural analysis that the building won't fall down. They are- working inside Risa and Scia, which are integrated into a single model with ArchiCAD. BIMcloud ties it together

Q: Param-o looks like Grasshopper. Is it based on it, or a different product?

Param-o parameters driving the design of a table

A: They are two different products with two different purposes, but they can be connected. Grasshopper is for algorithmic design; Para-o is an ArchiCAD function inside ArchiCAD 24 to create objects for architectural products. They look similar but have different purposes and have different functions.

Our roadmap will allow Grasshopper algorithms to drive Param-o and so drive objects in ArchiCAD.

A: Architects are very familiar with visual scripting metaphor of Grasshopper. That is where the similarity comes form. At the technology level they are entirely separate things. Param-o creates parametric custom objects without needing GD, which can be difficult to program.

Q: How does open BIMcloud connect to non-Graphisoft CAD format? Does it handle CAD files from outside the Nemetschek Group?

A: [unanswered]

Q: Do GDL objects work with Param-o?

A: [unanswered]

 

Q: Can you talk about owner hand-off and digital twins?

A: Nemetschek plans to cover the lifecyle of the building, so we are getting into operations side of things. It is too early to talk about this.

A: Support for OpenBIM is a great means to anyone in any process. We think that is a real advantage we have in flexibility and processes we can support. When you think of hand-off, there is data handoff, data lockdown, things that are frozen for the record, things that stay live. The publishing from BIMcloud is very flexible for hand-off. It gets better when the Nemetschek portfolio is involved.

 

Q: Firms are developing their conceptual tools. How do these connect with ArchiCAD?

A: As an architect, I get it. Sometimes design driven by codes and compliance, sometimes by social drivers, by geometry drivers -- and so many tools are used as input to the design process.

Large firms have the resources to experiment with technology and that will always be the case. The challenge is making a custom tool that isn't a dead-end, that it integrates into the workflow. We ensure we have good APIs so that custom development can be interfaced with the heart of building design, which is BIM.

A: ArchiCAD can work as a conceptual tool, even though it is seen mainly as BIM for formal design. Its API is wide open for experimentation. Also, we partner with Rhino and SketchUp.

Q: Is Graphisoft using ODA libraries for Revit?

A: Yes, we are using the ODA's libraries.

Q: Can Revit use BIMx without ArchiCAD?

A: To use BIMx you have to go through ArchiCAD, because it keeps track of versioning and workflow.

Q: All firms tend to use other structural tools. How will you move these firms to Nemetschek tools?

A: Scia is best for use in Europe and Risa in North America. All of them work with open workflows, but if an engineer wants to use a different one, the experience won't be as good. It is up to Scia and Risa to offer deals to convince people to switch. It is not about price, it is about workflow.

 

Q: Is the CDE [common data environment] from Bluebeam still in the works, as was spoken about a few years ago?

A: The Bluebeam solution does not have the overarching vision that covers everything. Today we think of CDE as a "common design environment." Different firms have different workflows, and so being able to connect and work with as many of those workflows is in everyone's best interest. Our strategy is a universal approach.

 

Q: For which competitor products are you writing plug-ins?

A: We are first concentrating on Nemetschek Group products. We allow connections to other programs, such as other structural tools. We have the most control with Nemetschek brands, but then connecting with Open BIM with anything, even if it just at the IFC level. Revit will not have this level of granular integration.

A: Other firms are contributing data exchange -- there are solutions that are specific to regions. Structural engineers typically use more than on solution, to make sure there is not a problem in one software.

 

Q: Is the Nemetschek schema open? Is IFC granular enough?

A: The Nemetschek schema is designed to be open for other companies to design connections. The IFC scheme is a very rich schema that can contain any information related to BIM. In theory, IFC is granular enough; in practice, it is useful for connecting software to exchange information but our format is complete for designing with.

A: The same information could be in both schema; they overlap but are different topics. The shift is from a disconnected transaction mode, to a share experience where you work on one part of the model and I work on another part of the same model.

www.graphisoft.com

 

Navisworks vs ODA BimNv SDK

 

 

OpenDesign Alliance's BimNv SDK is a software development kit for dealing with Navisworks files and was developed independently of Autodesk.

 

About Navisworks from Autodesk

Navisworks is Autodesk's universal file format for viewing project files made with multiple software programs, such as AutoCAD, Revit, and Inventor, as well as neutral file formats (like IFC, STL, and PDF) and proprietary ones, such as Pro/Engineer, Solidworks, and MicroStation. (See figure.) For more info on formats, see knowledge.autodesk.com/support/navisworks-products.

 

Navisworks model (source: GrabCAD)

For instance, you are designing a building with Revit that contains a machine designed in Solidworks, all on top of topology from a point cloud (Recap). To view how it all fits together, the individual models are loaded and coordinated in Navisworks, from which clash detection, markups, project progress, and so are performed. (See figure.)

 

Navisworks UI (source Autodesk)

The native file formats of Navisworks are as follows:

NWD - contains all the models in a single, compressed file
NWF - contains links to model files, plus markup data
NWC - cache files created when an NWD file is opened, to speed up subsequent loading

When an NWD file is opened, it uses external file readers to view the different file formats; you can substitute your own readers, as the ones provided by Autodesk do not necessarily support all entities. The Autodesk Developer Network offers an API to members ($1,400 and up) for writing add-ons to Navisworks, as well as exporting data out of Navisworks.

 

ODA's Navisworks SDK

The ODA has its own version of a Navisworks SDK that it has named BimNv. The SDK [software development kit] allows programmers to write software that works with Navisworks files. An SDK includes APIs [application programming interfaces], which programs use to make calls that read and process data in the Navisworks files. The ODA says its API is similar to that of Autodesk's Navisworks API. The SDK is available only to Sustaining ODA members or higher ($5,000 and up).

Neil Peterson, the president of ODA, tells me that he sees three kinds of organizations that might prefer using BimNv over Autodesk's SDK:

• Those wanting to view and import Navisworks models in their own desktop software without having to depend on Autodesk software
• Those wanting to visualize and access Navisworks models on the Web without having to use a third-party service like Autodesk's Forge
• Those wanting to export Navisworks models from their applications with no dependencies on Autodesk software.

For example, some government agencies in Australia are mandating the use of Navisworks for certain civil projects, and so the ODA has members looking to BimNv for integrating an Navisworks export function into their products.

The ODA held a Webinar this week on the progress is is making with BimNv API, explaining that it really is a work-in-progress.

BimNv supports NWD, NWF, and NWC files from 2013 and newer. Older formats (2009-2012) are also supported but not as well, because, as they explained, "It is hard to find many Navisworks files from 2009 for testing purposes." Currently, the focus of ODA programmers had been on reading the format, and they have completed some initial editing functions of NWF files.

Navisworks contains data from many programs, so if ODA has already documented one of them, like DWG, then it is OK; if not, then it is more difficult for the ODA to support the data. So, designs made with DWG (AutoCAD and workalikes), DGN (Microstation), DXF, RVT (Revit), and IFC have "excellent" support.

To view Navisworks-style files, ODA offers its Visualizer Viewer (see figure). To view the files, ODA converts them to its own VSF format (Visualize Stream Format). The viewer handles the following functions (among others):

User interface of ODA's viewer (source: ODA)

• Cutting planes
• Multiple models in one viewer
• Save to DWG (quite large, as DWG has to represent everything)
• Export to PDF (when the ODA's Publish SDK is added) and OBJ

Autodesk has no Navisworks viewer for mobile devices, although third parties have viewers that export NWD files to their own viewer's format. So it turns out that the ODA's OpenCloud is the only way to view Navisworks files on mobile devices, through cloud.opendesign.com (see figure).

Mobile viewer from ODA (source: ODA)

What's Next for BimNv

The ODA's programmers are working on exporting VSF files to Navisworks format, reading the clash elements that are stored in Navisworks files, and support for sheets.

 

Q&A

Q: Are PDF files exported from Navisworks files in 2D or 3D?
A: Both, as they is generated by the Visualize SDK.

Q: Has Autodesk a Navisworks viewer for mobile?
A: No. Navisworks files tend to be large as they combine many formats, and so there may be issues loading them on mobile devices. With Autodesk, there are third-party plug-ins to convert the format and then view the files on a mobile devices.

Q: Does BimNv have any accessible BIM data in it?
A: Yes, we can contain data in the file as BIM data, such as those from Revit converted to Navisworks format. Here, some Revit properties are retained, such as colors, categories, and so we can access that data.

Q: Can it visualize without the Visualize SDK?
A: You would have to create your own viewer, such as with your own MSC or Qt application.

Q: Is rendering single-threaded?
A: Yes.

Q: Any plans for multi-threading?
A: Yes, but the priority is not high right now. Visualize SDK could handle multi-threading external to Nv but some output need may to be internal to BimNv.

Q: Is the loading single-threaded?
A: We have both, single- or multi-thread, so you can switch.

Q: Is a trial version of BimNv SDK available?
A: It is available in trial format for Windows only, which is sufficient for concept.

https://www.opendesign.com/products/bimnv

Three, no Four! OSes for Chromebooks

Is Chromebook becoming the ultimate computing device?

The question become relevant as Apple switches it Macs from Intel CPUs to its platform of the future, ARM, and so no more Boot Camp, no more Windows booting natively on Mac desktop computers and laptops. Until now, this was possible, because Windows and MacOS are both coded for Intel CPUs.

The death knell for Windows on new Macs is about two years away. Apple has shown Linux working on ARM CPUs through virtualization; MacOS is based on Unix. It could be the same for Windows, but running an operating system on a virtual machine slows it down significantly. 

Microsoft has an ARM version of Windows, but indicated that so far it is not interested in cooperating with Apple. Apple, likewise, shows no interest in reciprocating. Bifurcation may be the future of computing. https://www.theregister.com/2020/06/25/apple_gives_boot_camp_the/

Apple has shown iOS and iPadOS apps running on Macs, as both would be hosted by ARM CPU.

 

Four OSes, One Computer

Beside native ChomeOS, Chromebooks smoothly handle Android apps, have taken a stab at running Linux programs, and now Google says the lithe computers might in the future run Windows programs, too.

It may seem more complicated getting Android to run on Chromebook than what Apple plans to do with iOS on Macs. Normally, Androids run on ARM CPUs, while Chromebooks on Intel CPUs. However, Google has an Intel version of Android, which allows Android emulators to run on Windows PCs. There even are some dual-boot tablets out of China that run Android or Windows 10.

While I find my i5-based Acer Spin 13 Chromebook a wonderful machine, its lack of running Windows programs can be a practical pain. I took it as my sole computer to a software conference in Europe last year. When the software vendor released a beta of the next release of its CAD system, I could not download it and try it out; I had to wait until I was back home again.

(A workaround is for Mac and ChomeOS computers to use remote-access software, such as TeamViewer or Chrome Remote Desktop, to view Windows programs running on a Windows computer. But this, too, is not a speedy solution.) 

Details about Windows on ChromeOS are, at this point, ultra vague. Given how slowly Linux support is developing, I'd not be one to be holding my breath. androidpolice.com/2020/06/16/google-and-parallels-announce-plans-to-bring-windows-apps-to-chromebooks/

 

Siemens Media Conference: Q&A

 #SiemensMAC2020

 

The first day of the online Siemens Digital Industries Software Media and Analyst Conference 2020 ended with a lengthy Q&A session. All the questions I posted got answered, so that was cool. (That doesn't always happen.) Here are my notes on the questions that were asked:

- - -

Q: Siemens had a sketching app on Android a few years ago, which I notice hasn't been updated in over a year. Is NX Sketch based on this technology?

A: Good catch on that. We learned from CatchBook how people sketch, but NX Sketch is brand-new and is built into NX. It avoids over-constraints on sketches.

Q: Is NX Share available standalone or only in NX?

A: Right now, it is part of NX. It will be available standalone later this year.

Q: Regarding the $100 million AAR [average recurring revenue] of Mendix: why did revenues skyrocket?

A: The Covid crisis is making companies wanting to build apps quickly, to work remotely. Even before, Mendix provided local capabilities such as to Teamcenter. It grew 155% over last year.

Q: What is the pricing for Teamcenter X?

A: We have very competitive and attractive pricing with what's out there on the market.

Q: Is Teamcenter Share a rebadge of Solid Edge Portal?

A: Absolutely not. It is built on the Mendix platform. It adds CAD knowledge to a Dropbox-like platform.

Q: Will Teamcenter be replaced by Teamcenter X over time? Is this part of a roadmap to replace all desktop programs with cloud apps?

A: We are not one of those vendors who go to their customers who say, 'as of May 25 we will be completely SaaS'. This is not our approach. We are modernizing products by bringing them to the cloud. Customers can make the transition, if they want to, when they are ready.

We will never have to have that hard discussion with customers about them having to make a difficult transition of technologies.

Q: What market does Teamcenter X target?

A: Immediately, the mid-market. But there is interest from large customers as well.

Q: How is Mendix affecting development at Siemens?

A: We learn a lot from each other. We don't forget that Mendix began with business applications, such as HR and finance. So we can solve the complete solution across the board for customers [including non-CAD ones].

Q: How is your partnership with Bentley on CALM [Capital Asset Lifecycle Management] going?

A: It is growing business for data management of plant design, offshore platforms, and so on. We will be doing more together, as you will hear in the coming 12-18 months. We are bringing Teamcenter product configuration to these large projects. [See https://blogs.sw.siemens.com/teamcenter/introducing-teamcenter-for-capital-asset-lifecycle-management-calm/ for an introduction to CALM.]

Q: When will authoring [CAD] software like NX be on the cloud?

A: The cloud is a major trend and we are looking at how to bring more of it to our customers. We are working on the authoring side, but the real strength of the cloud is on the collaboration side. So, for instance, we are bringing more collaboration to the authoring software.

Q: What were the revenues of your division for the year?

A: Siemens does not report divisional revenues [such as for Siemens Digital Industries Software], but maybe that will change in the future, like in two years. We are outgrowing our competition every quarter.

Q: How is simulation, CD-Adapco doing?

A: Overall it is doing well. Simulation is core to the digital twin of vehicles and plants. Our simulation revenues are equal to the revenues of the market leader. That gets lost in our large portfolio of software. [ANSYS had $1.5 billion in revenues for fiscal year 2019.]

Q: How many attendees today?

A: Close to 300, our largest ever for a media and analysts day, made possible because of being online.

 

 

Siemens Media Conference, Day 1

 #SiemensMAC2020

 

The day that Siemens Digital Industries Software sets aside for we CAD media and analysts is this year online, instead of in-person in Las Vegas. To make it easier to digest, the conference this year is two hours online on each of two days -- a schedule that I greatly appreciate. 

The Conference interface in the Web browser

The two days seem mostly about how customers use Siemens software, along with overviews of the Siemens approach to the manufacturing industry. President and CEO Tony Hemmelgarn noted that it is surprising how many his competitors force customers into subscriptions. Siemens, he says, lets customers choose their own path, whether how to implement software or how pay for it. Except: I think that the new X-named cloud-based software is available only through subscription payments.

The primary slide is this one, which is an overview of the approach that Siemens takes towards customers:

Siemens Digital Industries Software's offer to customers

The CAD software from Siemens has one advantage that no competitor can offer: software like NX and Solid Edge are owned by a manufacturing company, giving Siemens an edge in knowing what is needed by customers, because it is its own customer. Siemens in its most recent fiscal year made $89 billion, down 8% from the year before.

Me, I'm mostly interested what's new in software. 

 

New Software Announcements

NX Sketch is new software for 2D sketching -- inside NX -- without pre-defined parameters or relationships. Instead, it infers relationships between tens of thousands of curves, including imported ones. In the figure blow, this means that Sketch figures out that all those small holes in the disc rotor (imported from a DXF file as just lines and arcs) are all the same diameter, and that the arcs are linked to the lines and so applies geometric constraints. 

User interface for NX Sketch

Siemens had came out with similar software originally for Android five years ago called Catchbook, but had not updated it in over a year -- I had even paid for it!, In it, you sketched lines and arcs by hand, and Catchbook turned them into basic entities connected by constraints. I suppose Siemens was working on this Windows version instead.

Also new is Teamcenter X PLM [product lifecycle management] software, the SaaS [software as a service] version of regular Teamcenter. (SaaS means cloud-based software paid for by subscriptions.) The new X version of Teamcenter uses modules that customers choose, such as working with BOMs [bills of material], ECM [engineering change management], and release management.

Interface for Teamcenter X

Both are part of the Xcerlator portfolio, Siemens' new (as of last year) name for its collection of CAD software, that includes stalwarts like NX and Solid Edge MCAD, Mentor ECAD, and Polarion ALM [application lifecyle management].

The following slide explains cloud-based Polarion X -- be clear that ALM is totally out of my league.

What ALM entails

Siemens bases its cloud offerings on it Mendix platform (which runs on Amazon cloud or on private servers), which last year made $100 million on its own. 

The capabilities of Mendix

 

More on Teamcenter X SaaS PLM

• Instant-on PLM, because it is runs on Medix cloud and comes with "out-of-the-box best practices"
• Base modules include document management, visualization, workflow, revisions & releases, and basic BOM
• Expandable and personalized with add-ons
• Fixed price
• 30-day free trial available from [to come]

This chart shows the difference between regular Teamcenter and new Teamcenter X:

Teamcenter vs Teamcenter X

Tomorrow we learn about Teamcenter Share, which looks like it runs on smartphones and tablets.

 

Siemens User Conference

Siemens holds their annual user conference online next week. Realize Live 2020 starts at 8:30am PDT over June 23 and 24, 2020 at https://events.sw.siemens.com/realizelive/teamcenter-plm-conference. Siemens expects ten thousand in attendance online. Hope the ON24 system doesn't buckle!

https://www.sw.siemens.com/

 

 

 

Nobody owns 3dconnexion

Gone in 2011

 

A letter to the editor in last week's upFront.eZine newsletter noted that Logitech's new top-of-the-line mouse is a loser. So, the letter writer instead bought a new 3D and 2D mouse from 3Dconnexion, after reading positive reviews. "I am grateful for Logitech's failure because it forced me to look deeper into my other options and allowed me to give my money to another company that I would not have otherwise considered," he said.

In the back of my brain, I recalled that Logitech had spun off 3Dconnexion, and so I let his statement stand. 

Some readers, however, wrote immediately to explain the reader was still giving his money to Logitech, because it owns 3Dconnexion. Did it? Clearly, my back-of-the-brain notion wasn't sufficient in the area of supporting evidence, so I investigated further.

 

Let's Ask the Horse's Mouth

First place to look: the horse's mouth.

The 3dconnexion Web site's Company Profile page has scrubbed any mention of its owners, instead waxes on about how great their mice are. No mention of Logitech. As well, no recent press release mentions Logitech, which a subsidiary would do in order to bask in reflected glory of a normally well-liked company.

 

Let's Ask Google

Next place the look: the oracle of the intertubes. Let's ask Google:

Google's answer

 

Clearly, Google thinks Logitech owns 3dconnexion. So why does 3dconnexion not declare the ownership with pride?

The cached version of every Web page Google finds is the one it has in its storage banks. This is the location from which Google shows you its search results and the information it displays. 

Accessing the cached version of the Web page

 

When I click on the cached version of the page, Google shows me the result from when it trawled the site six days ago. Problem is, the page in its cache from six days ago is the same one I saw today. It does not say who owns 3Dconnexion.

Complete reproduction of Company Profile from which Google should be getting its information

 

So Google is reading one thing, and telling us another. Chalk that one up for the ongoing investigation into the behemoth.

 

Let's Ask Bing

Actually, I use Bing all the time, because I don't care to give Google more information than my Android phone already does. Also, Bing pays me to search with them, Google doesn't. And so every few months I get to present my wife with a $5 Starbucks coupon, and she uses it to buy the biggest latte the chain sells.

So, let's ask Bing.Well, that seems straightforward. Bing does not, however, provide a link to the source for its assertion. It does have a Feedback button, which I clicked and told the microsofties about what I had found (see below).

 

Let's Ask Wikipedia

But what about my notion that Logitech sold 3Dconnexion? Let's ask Wikipedia:

Oops, that page hasn't been updated in ages.

 

Let's Ask Logitech

Let's ask Logitech. Here I credit Henry S, who helped me research this question. He came across the most official reference that there cam be regarding corporate maneuvers: the annual report.

Logitech's annual report for 2011

On page 241, we learn that...

In fiscal year 2011, the Company sold its equity interest in certain 3Dconnexion subsidiaries, and its intellectual property rights related to the manufacture and sale of certain 3Dconnexion products, to a group of third party individuals and certain 3Dconnexion employees.

A full valuation allowance of $2.2 million was provided for $5.7 million of capital loss carry forward from the sale of 3Dconnexion Inc. in the U.S. as the Company determined that it is more likely than not that the Company would not generate adequate capital gains in the next five years before the capital loss expires under the U.S. tax law. The remaining valuation allowance of $0.1 million represents a full valuation allowance for certain foreign tax credit carry forwards in the U.S. 

In short, 3Dconnexion was sold to its employees nine years ago, because Logitech determined it would not be making a profit from it any time soon.

 

I Cancel Twitter

So much like TV 

 

Last week I stopped reading Twitter, cold-turkey.

In the aftermath, most surprising to me was that I did not miss it. I had no curiosity as to what I might be missing. Kind of like when I quit tv cold-turkey at age 18, after realizing I was addicted to it. Not watching tv meant not missing tv.

In the case of Twitter, the urge to quit occurred just as suddenly. I had built up a modest following of 931 (as of yesterday), while I followed twenty or so active users, who  in their commentary were either smart or witty or both. As for me, I wrote about (as a CAD writer) CAD industry press releases, (as a non-fiction reader) philosophical arguments, and (as a media person) documenting hypocrisy in the mainstream media.

Twitter canceled me a few times. It blocked one tweet as "incitement to violence." In the tweet, I had suggested cruise ships could better cater by Millennials by offering bungy jumping out on the ocean.

Twice Twitter stealth-edited me. This is when Twitter shows your tweets in your timeline, but does not display them in the public timeline. I got around the blockage in both cases by posting screen grabs of the offending tweets. And then there were examples from others of Twitter coming to the end of its era in free speech.

One of my followers even demanded that I no longer engage in free speech. Well, that's not quite how he put it. He told me angrily what I shouldn't be writing about. Sorry, but that's not how it works.

For me, Twitter's second stealth-edit was the end. Reading and maintaining my feed took up a fair amount of time, as had tv watching. I did enjoy working out philosophical arguments, because 280 characters forced me to work through arguments very, very concisely. On the other hand, I was receiving no benefit from posting press releases, just as watching tv has no benefit.

So then I thought what if I unfollow most of the twenty, and just keep up with a very, very few uniquely-gifted commentators, like @wretchardthecat. Nope, back to the time sink again.

I still have my @upfrontezine account and will check it from time to time for direct notifications, as well as cross-post from this blog. Otherwise, it's as a girlfriend once explained to me, "It was fun while it lasted, but now it's time to move on."

 

LEDAS Reports on Business Through COVID-19

 

In my nearly 35 years writing about computer-aided design, I realized that CAD is largely immune to recessions. It seemed that each time economic activity declined, CAD use picked up as a way to benefit from the lowered costs. The sort-of recession caused by the rapid spread of coronavirus did a only small dip on the CAD industry.

Here is a report from LEDAS on how coronavirus impacted their business. The company provides software R&D [research and development] services for the engineering market, and released an update on its business in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. The firm is located in a somewhat isolated region of Russia, in the Siberian city of Novosibirsk -- 3,300km from Russia's coronavirus hotspot of Moscow.

Novosibirsk, Siberia

- - -

At the end of March and during April, a few LEDAS customers were forced to reduce costs by suspending or decreasing their projects with us. The decrease was caused by the general global decline, which affected CAD and manufacturing industries everywhere. Personalized digital medicine, a rather new but important sector for LEDAS, also declined, as healthcare changed its focus to fighting the coronavirus, and so other medical treatments were partly suspended.

The decline reversed during May and into the beginning of June from two sources of growth. Some projects returned to their previous levels of execution, and new customers began projects with us. In the area of digital dentistry, for example, one project essentially halted in March but then resumed in May, because dentistry took a big dip during the peak spread of COVID-19 in Europe and North America. Talking of new projects, in May we began a new project in specialized 3D modeling.

The coronavirus-related dip

One reason the impact of coronavirus was rather small on our business is due to our involvement in long-term projects. These projects have long roadmaps, with sales typically lasting years into the future. When you develop a 3D kernel, a constraint solver, or a complex algorithmic engine for polygonal meshes (all in development by our team now), you plan for decades, not for months or even years.

The spread of coronavirus in Russia is not yet in stable decline, but our Novosibirsk region fortunately was not severely affected. Both the infection rate and the lethal rate are considerably less than in the Moscow region and most western countries.

In any case, LEDAS employees began working from home in March. This was due to an internal management decision before the start of the official lockdown by the government. We will continue to work remotely, as our work processes have been adjusted to this new environment.

We consider the pandemic to be the highest level of global threat, and we address it seriously at both the corporate and personal levels.  

www.ledas.com.

[Reprinted with permission from http://ledas.com/news/859-ledas-reports-on-business-through-covid-19/]

How to Hack C++ with Templates and Friends

by Andrey Karpovskii

 

Templates are a very powerful feature in C++, because they allow you to write generic programs that accept a data type as an extra parameter. This feature of them means that we don’t need to repeat similar code for different data types.

When templates were first introduced in C++, their capabilities were unforeseen. Since then templates have grown into a separate functional language inside of C++. This language has its own syntax, rules, and huge number of specifics, one of which I will discuss later.

How Templates Work

Each template defines a family of functions. It is, after all, a functional language. But the family does not produce any code on its own. Instead, the compiler generates code only for functions that are actually used in the program. This process is a multi-step process called instantiation.

template<typename T>
struct Foo {
  T val;
};

template<>                      // generated code
struct Foo<int> {
  int val;
};

...
template struct Foo<int>;       // explicit specialization
Foo<int> foo;                   // implicit specialization
...

First, the user must request a specialization, either explicit or implicit. Seeing this, the complier starts the instantiation process which includes things like the substitution of template parameters. If the code with the substituted template arguments is valid, then the compiler generates the actual specialization.

Making New Friends

“Friendship” in C++ is commonly thought of as a means of granting non-member functions or another class access to private and protected members of a class. This is done to allow symmetric conversions on non-member comparison operators or to allow a factory class exclusive access to the constructor of the class, among other reasons.

void bar();

struct Foo {
  // bar now may use private members of Foo
  friend void bar();
};

Note that function bar is not required to be defined in the same translation unit. But what happens when we forget to define it?

struct Foo {
  friend void bar();
};

Well, it still will compile. This might come as a surprise to you, but the result is completely valid code.

This is called a friend declaration. It declares function bar, if it hasn’t been declared before. (If it has, then it redeclares one.) Such declarations do have some limitations as compared to regular ones, but the limitations are not essential to this topic.

Okay, so it declares a function. But what scope does this function have? When a function is first declared in a friend declaration within a class, it becomes a member of the innermost enclosing namespace of that class. But it is not a member of the class it is declared in.

struct Foo {
  friend void bar();
};

...
bar();		// error - bar is not declared
::bar();	// error - bar is not in the global ns
Foo::bar();	// error - bar is not a member of Foo
...

The only way to call the function is to use an Argument Dependent Lookup (ADL). ADL is a set of rules for looking up unqualified function names. These function names are looked up in the namespace of their arguments, in addition to the scopes and namespaces considered by the usual unqualified name lookups.

Let me change the example, as shown by the figure below.

struct Foo {
  friend void bar(Foo) { cout << "Got it!" << endl; }
};

...
Foo foo;
bar(foo);	// Ok - found through ADL
...

Note that friend functions can be defined inside class definitions. These are inline functions and, like member inline functions, they behave as though they are defined immediately after all class members are seen, but before the class scope is closed.

Down the Rabbit Hole

Let me now combine the techniques I described above.

template<typename T>
struct Foo {
  friend void bar() { cout << "Got it!" << endl; }
};

As before, we have a structure Foo and a hidden friend bar, only now the structure is templated. We know that to call bar we have to declare it in global namespace. Let’s try this.

template<typename T>
struct Foo {
  friend void bar() { cout << "Got it!" << endl; }
};

void bar();

...
bar();	// error - unresolved external symbol
...

Hmm... what happened? The compiler generates templates instantiations only when they are requested. Because there is no instantiation of structure Foo, the definition of bar also does not exist. The compiler doesn’t know about the content of the structure, and so we have to instantiate Foo explicitly.

template<typename T>
struct Foo {
  friend void bar() { cout << "Got it!" << endl; }
};

void bar();
template struct Foo<int>;

...
bar();	// Ok
...

And now it works! It’s all fun and games, but can you spot an issue? Well, there are actually two issues.

First, note that bar is a plain function (not a templated one) that refers to a specific specialization of the structure Foo. What this means is that we can use all the template parameters passed to Foo – even when the parameter is a pointer to a private member of another class. This feature is described later.

Second, whether the function is defined depends on whether the specialization of Foo is instantiated by the compiler. And this is the internal state of the compiler. Templates in C++ have a way to check this state: SFINAE, or “substitution failure is not an error.”

There are plenty examples of using this technique, but for ease of understanding we will look at the implementation of the compile-time counter. As this code is not production-ready, we will use a new feature of C++20 which I describe later.

Accessing Private Members

Imagine that you have a class containing two private inner classes, one of which is templated, and a public method func.

class Parent {
  struct ChildA {};
  template<typename N> class ChildB {};

public:
  void func();	// Do something with ChildB<ChildA> 
};

Imagine that the specialization ChildB<ChildA> is used in method func. You want to explicitly instantiate such specialization. How would you implement it? Simple question – simple answer. Just do what you always do:

class Parent {
  struct ChildA {};
  template<typename N> class ChildB {};

public:
  void func();	// Do something with ChildB<ChildA>

template class Parent::ChildB<Parent::ChildA>;

Here is a tricky part. The explicit specialization is in the global namespace, not in the class itself. But how does the compiler know that you are allowed to use private inner classes? The answer is, it doesn’t! For such cases the C++ standard contains the following wording:

§ 14.7.2/12

The usual access checking rules do not apply to names used to specify explicit instantiations. [Note: In particular, the template arguments and names used in the function declarator (including parameter types, return types and exception specifications) may be private types or objects which would normally not be accessible and the template may be a member template or member function which would not normally be accessible. – end note.]

In short, it does not check whether you allowed to do it, or not. This means that we can write an external getter for any class we want. Let’s try writing it.

class Private {
  int data;
};

template<int Private::* Member>
int& dataGetter(Private& iObj) {
  return iObj.*Member;
}

template int& dataGetter<&Private::data>(Private&);

...
Private obj;
dataGetter<&Private::data>(obj);	//error
...

Here we defined a function that is parametrized with a pointer to a member of the class Private with a type int. The fancy-looking syntax in the return statement is just a way to access a member by its pointer.

When we make an attempt to call this function, it will, unfortunately, fail. A call is not an explicit instantiation and the access rules will be checked.

Luckily, we can use a friend injection to make things work.

template<int Private::* Member>
struct Stealer {
  friend int& dataGetter(Private& iObj) {
    return iObj.*Member;
  }
};

template struct Stealer<&Private::data>;
int& dataGetter(Private&);	//redeclare in global ns

...
Private obj;
dataGetter(obj) = 31;	// Ok
...

And so we changed a private member of an arbitrary class.

Compile-time Counter

Let’s move on to the second part to see how a compile-time counter can be implemented. First of all, let’s look at the use of the counter.

template<int R = reader<0>(int{})>
constexpr int next() {
  return R;
}

...
static_assert(next() == 0);
static_assert(next() == 1);
static_assert(next() == 2);
...

Isn’t it beautiful? We just violated one of the fundamental aspects of the language! And yet, I emphasize, everything is in full compliance with the C++ standard.

So, what is happening here? Well, next is a constexpr template function with a single argument R that has a default value. The default value is generated with template function reader which accepts an integer as a parameter. If you are familiar with template metaprogramming, then you can guess that reader is implemented as a tail recursive function which iterates over all successive numbers starting from the number 0.

template<int>                                         
struct Flag {
  friend constexpr bool flag(Flag);
};

template<int N>
struct Writer {
  friend constexpr bool flag(Flag<N>) { 
    return true; 
  }
  static constexpr int value = N;
};

template<int N = 0>
constexpr int reader(float) {
  return Writer<N>::value;
}

template<int N = 0,
         bool = flag(Flag<N>{}),
         auto = unique()>
constexpr int reader(int) {
  return reader<N + 1>(int{});
}

The end of the recursion is controlled not by the number itself, but by the presence of the definition of a special function flag in the global namespace. If the definition has been generated previously, then the control is passed to the successive reader function. If not, then the definition is injected into the global namespace by Writer, and the current value is returned.

Note that the first overload of reader has a lower priority, because it accepts float. Choosing this overload requires an implicit floating-integral conversion.

The last thing worth looking at is an implementation of unique function. As the name implies, unique produces something unique on every call. More specifically, it produces an object with the unique type. It is necessary to bypass the caching of default arguments by the compiler. How can it be implemented?

template<auto T = []{}>
constexpr auto unique() {
  return T;
}

Starting with C++20, the list of types applicable as non-type template parameters has been extended, and now it includes lambdas. Every lambda is implicitly converted to a functor with a unique type. It even works with default arguments!

Current Status of Stateful Metaprogramming

Here is what the C++ Standard says about stateful metaprogramming:

2118. Stateful metaprogramming via friend injection

Section: 17.7.5 [temp.inject] Status: open Submitter: Richard Smith Date: 2015-04-27

Defining a friend function in a template, then referencing that function later provides a means of capturing and retrieving metaprogramming state. This technique is arcane and should be made ill-formed.

Notes from the May, 2015 meeting:

CWG agreed that such techniques should be ill-formed, although the mechanism for prohibiting them is as yet undetermined.

http://www.open-std.org/jtc1/sc22/wg21/docs/cwg_active.html

From reading this, it may seem to you that stateful metaprogramming ought to be illegal, and that the committee feels the same way. The problem is that they do not know what to do with this “feature” that they introduced accidentally. The technique was found back in 2015, and since then the issue has remained open.

Conclusion

Friendships and templates are powerful tools in C++. Like other tools in C++, they can surprise us with their behavior, behavior that can become confusing when combined together. Not that such aspects of C++ are rare, but they again demonstrate how complex the language has become.

[Reprinted with permission from LEDAS; original story at ledas.com/post/857-how-to-hack-c-with-templates-and-friends/]

Google Signals WFH is Acceptable From Now On (Updated)

Working from home

 

For corporations, working from home was a gamble. Could they trust employees to actually work when hanging around at home, instead of being supervised at the office. Some firms even deployed sophisticated electronics over the last decade to track employees and their productivity in the office.

IBM famously reversed itself some years ago when it insisted all employees had to show up in the office. A CAD vendor virtue-signaled by boasting how it had installed solar panels on its employee parking garage; I thought that not needing a parking garage would be the better approach.

Coronavirus changed that. Well, no. It forced change on corporations, at least those whose industries supported working from home. With employees telling surveyors that 40-60% of them wanting to remain working at home after the restrictions ended, executives were left scratching their heads over what to insist on once it was safe again to return to their normally-crowded offices.

On the one hand, keeping employees at home saves on costs arising from office and furniture leases, utilities, and coffee machines. Google spends $60 million a year on free food for employees. Moar profit! On the other hand, those 5- and 3-year leases don't end when offices are emptied. Businesses owning their buildings are in a greater bind: selling them on a free-falling market isn't a profit-maker. (Well, the capital losses could offset tax bills.) As PTC's CEO complained last month, "We have a lease on a brand new headquarters. It's been empty for six weeks. I'd like to renegotiate that, but the vendor doesn't seem to want to renegotiate it with me."

Breaking the Dam

Somewhere, an accountant is working out the costs and benefits. The first (that I heard) was OpenText, announcing it wanted only 50% of its employees to return to work, the remainder to remain WingFH (working from home). Then others expressed similar sentiments.

Finally, the 1000-tonne gorilla spoke. Google, announced that it didn't expect employees back until next year. That broke the dam, giving corporations permission to do likewise. Twitter said it never wanted to see its employees again, except for the few who needed to be in the offices -- custodial staff, I suppose.

As crowding is the way that the coronavirus is transmitted, one theory holds that cities will depopulate and suburbs will again become vogue. WingFH solves some of the dismal problems that seemed intractable as of last January:

• Rush hour traffic jams with hour-long commutes
• Overpriced housing relative to incomes
• Pollution from concentrated transportation and skyscrapers

But then WingFH creates problems:

• Loss of income for firms supplying corporations, such as meals and stationary
• Loss of relationships, as those who hang out together at work no longer do
• Loss of jobs related to office construction and operations

It will be interesting to watch how this shakes out, as computer-based industries make a shift that no one expected to occur this year.

What Will Become of Extroverts?

The mainstream media is these days concentrating on the psychological unwellness of those staying at home. About 50% of the population reports that. Those would be the extroverts, I expect. This is understandable, as the media is staffed by extroverts, and the media typically reports on what they know. The media don't report on introverts, who are glad to be "stuck" at home, with some expressing to me that, confidentially,  they wish this would go on forever.

Throughout this coronavirus virus, I could be smug, having WedFH since 1991, initially using fax, CompuServe, and FedEx to communicate with clients. It helps that I am extrovert-introvert: I like being around people, but then I need my me-time -- 50/50.

Also, I am a compartmentalizer, so that I can ignore home-related problems as I write (like kids screaming in the early days). One of my fondest memories is of my youngest daughter coming down to my office, crawling under my desk, and falling asleep at my feet.

A neighbor, an introvert, envious of me WingFH, tried it. After a week, he admitted failure, as anytime there was a noise elsewhere in the house, he had to rush out of his office to find out what it was. For him, me being able to ignore that sort of thing, was incomprehensible.

As my wife points out, however, where does WingFH leave the extroverts who need to be in the office, or those who need to be away from home for familial or psychological reasons?

All humans are different, much to the dismay of the behavioral psychologist community. And so I suggest that corporations may want to survey staff to see which ones prefer staying home, and which prefer being back in the office. This would fit in well with initial recommendations coming out from countries like Britain, that there be that 2m-distancing between office desks.

Update

Sarah Frier at Bloomberg points out more issues (with my answers in brackets):

• When employees leave for cheaper locations, do employers keep paying them the same high San-Francisco-level salary? (Yes.)
• How easy is to advance your career remotely? (Should be no more difficult than advancing in a global conglomerate with offices spread worldwide.)
• Do employers recruit for the next open role from anywhere? (Yes, that's a benefit.)
• Should employers give relocation bonuses to get employees to leave the city? (Interesting thought.)

 

 

 

 

The flyingshapes approach to VR CAD

Interactive d-sub modeling

 

flyingshapes held a Webinar to introduce the way in which its VR-based CAD software works. Here are my notes from it.

We are used to downloading demo software and minutes later working with it. 'Tis not the case with software like flyingshapes, because first you need VR goggles, naturally. Here are the ones supported:

• Oculus Rift and Rift S
• HTC Vive and Vive Pro
• Windows Mixed Reality
• Pimax
• Varjo HMD

Next you need a Windows 10 computer and then one with at least an i5 CPU, and then one that has one of the supported graphics boards:

• At least NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960 through to RTX 2060 
• Or at least AMD Radeon R9 380 thru to RX 5600 XT

For weaker systems, some special effects, like shadows, can be turned off.

With the hardware in place, go to flyingshapes.com/download to register and then download the software. I don't have the hardware, so I didn't do that. 

The UX

The user experience is nothing like you know from mouse-and-keyboard-based CAD. It is hyper-interactive. Just moving your head moves the viewpoint, kind of like 3D orbit mode.

A controller in each hand lets you grab objects and execute commands by pressing or holding buttons. Here is an overview of the interface:

The red-green-blue lines represent the x,y,z axes. You can see planar grids, but the software also offers a 3D grid with evenly-spaced crosses throughout 3D space.

The two controllers you hold in your hands are shown in front of you. To the side is a panel reporting the current x,y,z coordinates. You can zoom in and out, or else scale the model interactively.

Between the controllers is the gizmo, which lets you move and scale in each of the three directions. 

The figure below shows the popup menu through which you access tools and apply materials. Another popup screen shows videos of how to use the tools. Next to each controller is a flyout indicating the active tool.

The two primary drawing tools appear to be freehand sketch and spline. Splines have control points that are manipulated interactively. Surfaces are stretched between boundaries. You can apply G1 curvatures between splines and surfaces.

As you press buttons on the hand controllers, a text tip appears reporting the action, such as Trigger Released.

The idea of flyingshapes is to do CAD modeling, but in a sub-d manner (interactive editing of mesh-like entities). They plan to move towards more CAD-like editing, which I think means a 3D-solids kind of direct editing.

Why VR?

I gotta say that what the folks at flyingshapes (from Germany) have accomplished appears impressive. 

But is there a market? My argument has always been that humans are adapted to navigating by 2D in spite of living in a 3D world. Three-D CAD models are not just "one extra dimension"; they add five more sides to plan views.

There are 3D mice, which have not been overwhelmingly popular. There have been in my estimation only three advances in 3D modeling over the decades:

Multiple windows -- so that we can see more than one side of the 3D model at a time, with the drawback that the more windows we open, the smaller the model becomes in each.

Realtime shading -- so that we no longer look at puzzling wireframe models, trying to figure out what is outside, inside, front, or back.

Dynamic UCS -- so that the software anticipates the plane on which we want to draw.

The last one exposes the myth of 3D modeling: even in "3D", we still work in a 2D micro-environment.

Don't get me wrong: 3D modeling is important for efficiency; it's just that we are trying to shoehorn our 2D selves into a 3D environment that is virtual, and not one by which we experience the real world. The UX is the problem, not the 3D.

So, where does that leave flyingshapes. I see it as a test case to examine what is possible with CAD in an immersive 3D environment. 

https://www.flyingshapes.com

 

I Come to Praise USB-C

You can't do all this with an iPhone

 

We know USB-C mostly for no longer needing to think about which way to stick a USB plug when inserting a charging or data cable. That's convenient, especially in an era when trying to figure out which side is up on a microUSB plug is a challenge.

Male and female ends of USB-C cable

But USB-C does more than charge or transfer data. It is the all-encompassing port on which we have been waiting. It handles:

• Power
• Data
• Memory card read/write
• Ethernet cable networking
• External peripherals like keyboards, mice, and portable hard drives
• Sound output (sound input? I dunno)
• Print
• And it is fast at data transfer

Now, be sure that the capabilities of a port depend on the device, and so I tested it with my new Asus Android phone and new Acer Chromebook, both equipped with USB-C ports.

 

On the Phone

I had heard that USB-C headphones could sound better than ones plugged into a 3.5mm socket. (Don't get me started on wireless Bluetooth headphones: this protocol requires music to be compressed to an even greater extent that the damage MP3 already does.) I bought a couple USB-C headphones cheap off eBay and was instantly disappointed. The sound was very distorted. Here's why:

When you plug headphones into the 3.5mm socket, the D/A circuit inside the phone converts the digital music file into analog sound. The quality of the sound depends on the quality of the D/A circuit, which can be hardware and/or software.

When you plug headphones into a USB-C port, the digital music file bypasses the phone's D/A circuit and goes directly to the port. This can be good, because now it up to the headphones to convert the digital into analog. The circuitry is cramped inside the headphone's USB-C plug and with cheap headphones the result is terrible. Perhaps one day I'll be able to try a quality set of USB-C headphones.

I tried out an external SSD drive (by SanDisk) with the phone's USB-C port and it worked just fine: the phone immediately recognized the drive, and allowed me to access files from among the 1TB of data -- no problem. This drive is about half the size of the phone, and transfers data at 3GB/minute (when connected to a PC).

Sandisk 1TB SSD external drive with USB-C port

 

Vilcome Hub

I had read that newer Android and Chromebook devices could connect to ethernet cables, and decided to try it out by buying a multi-port USB-C adapter. The one I picked out from amazon is made by Vilcome (CAD$39) and is made of solid-feeling aluminum.

8-port hub from Vilcomme with USC-C connector

 

The hub from Vicome connects to a USB-C port and offers eight ports:

• ethernet cable
• SD card
• microSD card, which it labels TF
• three USB v3 ports, the rectangular kind, which can be used for USB drives, keyboard, mouse, printer, and so on
• HDMI port for an external monitor
• PD port, for which I needed to read the manual: this is an input power port, in case the hub takes up the only USB-C port on the device. My Chromebook has two USB-C ports, so that's not an issue, but it would be with my Android phone with its single USB-C port.

(Note that the phone or computer provides the power needed by the hub, again over the USB-C connection.)

I plugged the hub to the phone, and the phone instantly recognized that there was an ethernet adapter buried inside the hub.

Ethernet connection recognized by my Android 10 phone

 

Hooking up an ethernet cable to a phone lets you bypass potentially insecure WiFi and mobile data connections. I turned off WiFi and cell data, and could access the Internet with the ethernet alone -- the cable, of course, being connected to my office network.

I plugged a full-size keyboard into the hub, and my Asus phone immediately recognized it. I could type into a word processor. Next I added a wired generic mouse, and the phone recognized it too. An arrow cursor let me move around the screen.

I plugged the SanDisk drive into the hub, as well as an SD card. The phone recognized the extra drives. 

Android phone's file manager showing (1) internal storage (2) inserted microSD memory card (3) external hard drive and (4) external SD card

What did not work with the phone was the USB-connected printer. Lastly, I plugged in an external monitor to the hub's HDMI port, but the Android phone does not handle external monitors. Too bad, as it could become a portable computer while on the road (borrowing a keyboard, mouse, and monitor).

 

With the Chromebook

All the same things worked with the Chromebook, even though it has its own keyboard and trackpad.

In addition, the printer worked, although in this case it was not recognized immediately. I suppose ChromeOS had to download the driver for my aging HP 1320 laser printer, and so it took about a minute to be recognized by the Chromebook.

When I connected the hub between the Chromebook and the external monitor, the Chromebook immediately recognized the external screen, and now I can use a two-monitor Chromebook, in either mirrored or extended mode; see figure below.Update

This week I also tried the adapter on my ASUS 10" Android tablet, wondering if that could work as a portable workstation when I don't want to haul a heavier laptop around.

It works. And it doesn't. Here's why:

It works, in that the USB-C dongle and its inserted peripherals are recognized by the tablet -- ethernet, keyboard, mouse, etc.

It doesn't work, in that the dongle, corded keyboard, and corded mouse are bulky, and so it is more efficient to just take a laptop that has the keyboard and mouse built-in.

So I tried an uncorded keyboard and mouse, but the cordless devices were not recognized by Android. I suspect this is due to a lack of support for the 2.4GHz dongle that the peripherals depend upon.

Which brings me down to a Bluetooth mini-keyboard with integrated touchpad. It worked. No USB-C dongle needed, and the keyboard is just one-inch longer than the tablet.

 

 

Open Design Alliance Shows Off Its Revit Interface

Software development kit

BimRv SDK is the name of the Open Design Alliance's new interoperability software development kit for Autodesk's Revit files. It accesses data stored in RVT 2014-2020 files, and writes RVT files. Third-party developers  would use it to do the following kinds of things:

• Visualization to see models external to Revit
• Conversion to PDF and other formats
• Extract data to databases and so on

Because Revit hides some data, BimRv accesses it in two ways. Raw format returns all data and the programmer has to figure out what to do with it. The Custom API interprets the data, but does not expose all of it.

Internally, the ODA uses its own VSF format as the intermediate format, which allows it to convert geometry to multiple formats. For instance, BimRv can export geometry representations from a DWG file to a Collada DAE file, and then export that to an Revit RVT file. The result is, however, just the geometry in Revit format and so there are no parametrics. Revit models can of course be saved as 3D PDF files, which can be the preferred method of design sharing by clients with contractors.

Nevertheless, just having the geometry is good enough for lots of activities, such as visualization, geometry collision detection, slicing planes, and exporting to DWG. Models can be viewed in Web browsers using the ODA's Open Cloud platform, and so it also works with mobile devices, as shown below. The Web and mobile versions have all the same functions as the desktop version, such as cutting planes.

To be clear, ODA also handles RFA files, Revit families that define parametric parts, like doors and windows.

Next up for BimRv: blends and swept blends, not hosted and hosted family instances, Boolean operations, and more. Details about these new functions for Revit files will be detailed in an ODA Webinar planned for May: https://www.opendesign.com/webinars

The name BimRv implies to me that the ODA could consider addressing other BIM programs.

What's New in nTopology This Month

Lattices galore

 

nTopology is one of a very few independent generative design software firms; I know of just one other. Some of the others were last year snapped up by large CAD vendors: Frustum by PTC and AMendate by Hexagon. When I interviewed CEO Bradley Rothenberg last year, he maintained he wants his company to remain independent. This makes sense in terms of making the software available broadly. When a CAD vendor buys, say Frustrum, only PTC users from now on can access it.

What is unique about nTopology is that they wrote their own kernel, which models 3D parts in a manner different from nearly all other kernels. It defines precise boundaries of objects, and so allows their software to create unbreakable parts: "We don't worry about any modeling operations." This figure show the difference between in the mathematics between most other kernels (at left) and how nTopology does it:

The software that runs on top of the kernel is called nTop. Here's at what the user interface looks like today. The ruler at the bottom can be dragged to get an idea of the size of the model and its parts.

New in nTop

Models can be exported in STEP format as b-reps (boundary representations) for further editing in CAD software. Also new is 3MF, which exports models as meshes and lattices. nTopology recommends you use 3MF for CAD, as the data files are 3x smaller and more detail is exported.

To define parts, nTop now handles the following parameters:

• point constraints
• stress loads
• displacement restraints
• bearing loads (see figure below)
• constraint charts

Coming to a future release of nTop is parameterized lattice structures, driven by thermal and other variables. Here is a view of the upcoming parametric-driven capability:

nTop now supports multi-threading, using as many cores as the CPU sports. nTop does not (yet) support two or more materials in a single model.

https://ntopology.com

How I work from home

Spare not the efficiency

 

A reader asked if I could write about having to work from home. I was blase in my reply, as I've been working from home for 29 years now. 

Transportable Licenses

He was relieved, he said, that he could get a home-use license for his CAD software, which normally is locked to a computer at work. Siemens is one of the companies allowing that, albeit for only 30 days. I reckon an extension will be coming for that.

Companies like Bricsys and Graebert allow you to easily move the license to another computer: just unlicense the first computer first. I won't describe how to do it as the process is different for each vendor.

Allow some time for the license to get moved at the software company's head office. Sometimes it takes a few minutes. Earlier this year, I needed a CAD license renewed for my writing work, and the employee in charge was out of the office -- for a week. The firm has since changed the way customers contact it for license changes.

My Rule

I have one rule that guides my software and hardware purchases and upgrades: I tolerate no product that slows me down. This means that all my computers are fast enough, my monitors big enough, my mouse with sufficient buttons, my keyboard having the exactly right clackiness, and my table-chair comfortable enough. 

I will spend whatever it takes to meet my no-delay criteria, and then I stop spending. Here are two examples:

• Last year I bought Logitech's upgrade to its wonderful Performance MX mouse. The design changes made it unwonderful -- dreadful, actually--, so I gave it away to a friend, and then found the original model (no longer made by Logitech) brand-new on eBay, and bought two. (I wear out a mouse every half-dozen years).
• I still use PaintShop Pro v6 (copyright 2000) because it loads in under a second, and has the function set I need. Newer versions groan under feature-bloat.

My Hardware

29 years ago, when I could only afford one computer, I realized that depending on just one was risky. Computers and monitors became cheap, and so now I have several arranged around me:

1. Primary 3.1GHz quad-core Acer desktop computer topped out with 16GB RAM, 1TB SSD, and 4TB HDD. It runs Window 7 and has an old nVidia 2000 board only so that it can drive the three monitors I hook up to it.

2. Secondary desktop computer is a space-saving 2.6Ghz dual-core Acer all-in-one computer with lower specs, and acts as the monitor for my Apple Mac Mini that I rarely use.

3. Primary laptop: Windows 10 on a 2.6GHz dual-core HP Spectre laptop with 8GB RAM and 1TB SSD. It also handles three monitors.

4. Secondary laptops: a variety in storage.

5. Printers: an HP laser printer for every day printing, and an HP color printer for special jobs.

6. Network: 1GHz wired ethernet for any device with an ethernet port, and a commercial-grade router for WiFi connections.

7. Internet: I have a business account with my ISP, which means no waiting for tech support and it has unlimited data. Backup provided by my ISP through a LTE modem that lets me connect to the Internet over the cell phone system, in case the wired connection fails (as it has done twice so far). It is an ADSL connection, meaning there are never any download delays, but uploads are slower.

8. Keyboard and Mouse. I use a keyboard from Azio that has brown K-switches, which I really like. It matches my typing style. For mouse, it is Logitech's Performance MX, because it is tall and it has that spin/clack center wheel that makes me more efficient.

9. Backups: I find I have little data to backup, as most of my of my work gets shipped off to clients. At the end of each day, I drag a copy of the folder I worked on to the 4TB backup disk using TerraCopy. Every so often, I use Windows Briefcase app to backup my crucial files (income spreadsheet, etc) to pCloud. Every half year I backup my online actives, such as this blog and my Twitter activity, to pCloud and a compact, portable drive that I made from a left-over 250GB SSD.

Another form of backup: A few weeks ago I realized that my ten-year-old desktop computer running Windows 7 might croak one day. Most of the software I rely on runs on Windows 7, and cannot run on newer versions. I found on eBay a lease-return Dell desktop that still runs Windows 7, bought it, and one day I will set it up with the software I use. Maybe I'll never need it, but at $350 it is cheap insurance.

Yet another form of backup: last fall, when I lost my laptop while in Europe, I found that my late-model Android cell phone was a pretty good replacement device. It doesn't work for writing and editing, but it handled all my other business tasks. (My laptop was eventually returned to me, some weeks later.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

What determines the end-game

Is there one?

 

News Item
Gov Cuomo: “We have to plan the pivot back to economic functionality” Says we may not have to isolate everyone. Could allow the healthy, less vulnerable to work. #COVID19 survival rate is 98%. NY Forward plan to look into restarting economic engine.

"What is the endgame?" is the question being raised by Cuomo and Trump as they say it's time to get people back to work.

We assume that one day this will all be over, because we assume the infection rate follows the bell curve. But perhaps this horror follows a sine curve, where false hope is followed by renewed infections, until we regress into a kind of Children of Men dystopia.

The total lockdown strategy is one based on least-harm ignorance. Leaders mimic each other over the correct approach. They apply the most extreme tactic that they hope will keep the most people safe -- biologically and economically -- until scientists finally get the opportunity to catch up with the coronavirus.

It's easy for politicians to place us into just-in-case lockdowns, but they are clueless as to the conditions under which to release us. Should we be let out of our homes after 70% fall ill, or after 70% recover, or once the number of new cases falls to 70% of the peak, or...

No one knows. Even the rallying cry "Flatten the curve!" is based on assumptions, not knowledge.

The first role of government has always been the safety of its citizens. But now leaders now face a Pontius Pilate-role, except today the question these events are dooming them into asking is, "What is safety?" Is it...

• Physical health?
• Psychological health?
• Family?
• Community?
• Economy?
• Prestige?
• Hope?

- - -

As creatures of habit, we fall into new patterns after sufficient repetitions, even void repetitions, such as avoiding each other. Once this is over, do we maintain our habit of social distancing, or will we fall with relief into a global group hug.

What if by the end the economy is irrecoverable, supply lines irrevocably cut, neighbors forget how to be neighborly, children's childhoods lost. Even as health officers calmly give us our daily update, society is breaking down. A nurse we know has three home-from-school pre-teen sons; social distancing means that no babysitter is allowed to help her, and so she cannot help society with her nursing skills.

The owner of a ten-store business found 14% of his staff no longer show up for work, because they took up the government's offer of free, no-questions-asked money.

A branch manager is under his doctor's orders to self-quarantine for two weeks, not because he has the virus, but because he was breaking down from stress over the virus breaking down his business.

Even as governments pour trillions (or billions, in the case of Canada) into society to keep it from falling apart, society is falling resolutely apart in ways government cannot foresee, nor detect. Perhaps one best-outcome will be recognition that our salvation does not come from government on high.

Nor does our salvation come from technology. We (a pair of tech-knowledgeable guys) struggled greatly yesterday to set up a Hangouts group video chat. (We nicknamed it "Hangups.")  One person's MacBook refused to allow its microphone to work, and so we could only see her. Another had never before installed an app on her phone and when I offered to help, had no idea what her Apple ID might be. Socially distanced by tech, and not even Google is mighty to save us.

All this was triggered by a printed sign I saw for the first time during this outbreak at a local grocery store:

"Out of Stock
Long Term"

 

Installing Linux on ChromeOS

It ain't easy

 

I was excited about running a tri-OS laptop. The latest ChromeOS computers run most Android apps really well (contrary to the nay-sayers) but Linux support is still rudimentary and in beta. Linux makes sense, because it's free and, more significantly, ChromeOS and Android are built on Linux.

Once you turn on Linux in ChromeOS, all you get is the command prompt of Terminal. I tried a few times to get a GUI running, such as a Linux desktop or a word processor. I failed, partly because the instructions I found online were old (tutorials from August are old) because Google has been updating the Linux system. After Christmas, I searched again, and this time was successful.

In my case, the solution took two steps:

Step 1. Remove a locked folder so that software would install:

sudo rm /var/lib/dpkg/lock

See https://itsfoss.com/could-not-get-lock-error/ for details, in case your situation is different.

Step 2. Install the Gnome package installer:

sudo apt-get install gnome-software gnome-packagekit

See https://computerworld.com/article/3314739/how-to-use-linux-apps-on-chrome-os.html for details.

With the Gnome package installer, I was able to install some GUI-based software. But in the end, I found that Linux support is not complete in ChromeOS, and so programs tends to run slowly and awkwardly.

 

About that ASUS Flip Camera

ASUS Zenfone 6 (2019)

 

Here are some specs you’d expect from a desktop computer:

• 2.8GHz eight-core CPU
• 8GB RAM
• 512GB solid-state storage

Except these describe my latest smartphone, the ASUS Zenfone 6 (2019). The ‘2019’ is important, as the Taiwanese company is reusing the name from another model a half-decade or so ago. I got the silver-blue model with 256GB storage RAM, and then added a 256GB microSD card. 

ASUS Zenfone 6 (2019) showing fingerprint sensor and flip camera

Other features important to me:

• 5000MHhr battery that lasts up to 3 days, and acts as a charger for other devices
• Dual SIM slot
• Updated to Android 10
• 3.5mm headphone jack

Full specs here: gsmarena.com/asus_zenfone_6_zs630kl-9698.php. Although it was "released" in May earlier this year, it generally has been hard to find in North America until the late in the fall. I bought mine direct from Taiwan through eBay in September.

 

Oh, That Camera

The highlight of this phone is its unique camera that flips from back to front in about one second. It takes excellent photos, especially at night.

Camera flipping from home position to front-facing position

 

The flip design offers these capabilities:

• The quality of cameras on the back are available to the front; on most phones, the front camera has lower specs than the back camera(s).
• The front of the phone is all-screen, much like my first smartphones that had no selfie cams.
• The flipping motion is further used to make panoramic photos and to adjust the viewfinder to any angle from 0 to 180 degrees

But how well does this work in practice? The Zenfone 6 has, after all, only two lenses -- regular wide (equivalent to 26mm on a standard 50mm SLR camera) and ultra wide-angle (11mm equivalent).

When Google released its Pixel 4 phone, the company excused the lack of a wide angle lens by claiming that very few people ever use it. In the past, I’d have agreed, as I was an analog zoom fanatic. But since September I’ve been using the wide angle lens on the Zenfone 6 -- especially during three trips to Europe -- and have become amazed at what it makes possible:

• Taking outdoor photographs where you can’t back up far enough
• Making indoor photos that take in much more area without needing to resort to stitch photography

Below are two photographs of the same locomotive in the Berlin Technical Museum. One was taken with the regular lens, the other with the wide-angle one. I think this makes my point better than any Google marketing slide.

Left: Photo taken with regular lens; right: photo taken with the wide-angle lens

 

In addition, taking selfies is much easier with a wide angle lens: no need to squeeze so tightly together anymore!

Selfie taken with wide angle lens

 

Using the flip camera to take panoramic images works well enough, but it is limited to taking them in landscape mode. However, I prefer taking them horizontally in portrait mode; this is not possible with flip phone. 

Taking a panoramic photograph

As well, I find I end up in the panoramic image as the lens rotates relentlessly -- I have less control than when I move the camera manually.

When the writer becomes part of the story

 

The camera doesn’t have to be just at the back or front. By sliding a soft button, I can move the camera to any position. In practice, the slider is touchy and so I find it hard to position the camera precisely. In theory, I could use this to take ground-level photos, such as of mushrooms, or overhead photos, such as of crowds. Again, I find that this does not work well.

Mushroom photographed from below with the assistance of the flipped camera

 

(I loved the swing viewfinder on early Canon digital cameras; the problem with the Zenfone 6 is that we are moving the lens, not the viewfinder, making it awkward to rotate the lens while trying to position it.)

 

How the 48-megapixel Lens Works

The primary lens uses a Sony 48-megapixel sensor, which a few years ago would be incredulous, but today is already obsoleted by the newer 64- and even 108-megapixel sensors. These high megapixel count sensors can employ all pixels, but typically don't.

When I select 48-megapixel as the resolution, the phone takes a photo, and that’s all. There is no zoom; the aspect ratio is 4:3; the resulting image is about 14MB, depending on the content. But realize that in selfie mode the camera also operates in 48-megapixel mode, and so you get very high resolution selfies -- which might be a good thing, or bad.

Camera set to 48-pixel mode

 

When I switch the camera to 12-megapixel resolution, notice that this is ¼ of 48 megapixels. This is no coincidence. The camera uses four pixels on the sensor to generate one pixel in the image. It means that difficult lighting situations result in good photos, as well as engage digital zoom that doesn’t lose any clarity until after about 4x.

Zenfone 6 has one aspect ratio that is rather unusual: 19.5:9. See below. This one is designed to utilize the entire screen. (Aspect ratios are traditionally made relative to ‘9’.) 

The camera saves images in JPEG and/or RAW format.

 

Other Camera Apps

Despite the unique style of camera (and I think that Asus uses its own camera API), other camera apps work with it, mostly. 

I have successfully side-loaded the port of Google’s Pixel Camera software; see www.celsoazevedo.com/files/android/google-camera/dev-parrot043, and installed Open Camera from Google Play store. In the case of the Pixel Camera, I also needed to install a configuration file that tells the app what is different about the Asus phone. 

By using the Google app, I regain access to features like manual panoramic mode and spherical mode. The much-vaunted night mode is not necessary, as Asus does such a good job. I've even taken streak-free night photos while walking!

 

 

Graebert Gets Into BIM

Graebert Annual Meeting 2019

 

Graebert is no stranger to BIM [building information modeling], even though the company is never associated with the ArchiCADs and Vectorworks of the world. It has a subsidiary named iSurvey whose SiteMaster software is used to measure and model the interiors of buildings and kitchens in a BIM context for six years now.

ARES Commander is Graebert's desktop DWG editing software, while ARES Kudo is its cloud-based DWG editor. The 2020 releases of both due early in the new year will introduce the first stage of a multi-year roll-out of BIM-related capabilities. The idea is to use ARES as an engine to generate accurate 2D drawings from 3D BIM models.

The 2020 release adds the following BIM-related functions:
• Import RVT, RFA, and IFC files; export IFC export format
• Examine BIM properties with Properties panel
• View and control BIM-format models with BIM Navigator panel
• Extract data in CSV format and to tables for quantity take-offs
• Generate 2D sections and views of BIM models

Once the BIM models (and associated data) are in ARES Commander, users can employ its drawing and editing commands to further annotate and edit the models as drawings.

For third-party developers, Graebert put together the BIMflow Pack which packages all of the new BIM functions for third-party developers using ARES OEM. The Cloudify Pack adds ARES Commander (including new BIM functions) to ARES Kudo for third-party developers.

Graebert is not alone in producing BIM-compatible DWG software, and so it sees a significant market into which it can step. The company found a number of reasons for why the market for DWG in BIM is still large:
• Fewer than 20% of users in AEC use BIM (the other 80% use CAD), indicating there is a great resistance to BIM, twenty years later.
• Despite BIM allowing firms to work in all-3D, they nevertheless produce large amounts of 2D drawings for use in shops and in the field, partly because 2D is still an accepted standard and partly due to liability reasons.
• There are roughly three to ten CAD users behind each BIM user.

Graebert has significant market presence in Japan, India, and parts of Europe. Where its general desktop and cloud software is already being used gives it an entryway to BIM adjacent drafting.

A Look at CAD Software R&D'ed in Russia

by Olga Kalyagina

 

What Russian CAD programs do you know? Perhaps nanoCAD from Nanosoft and possibly Kompas-3D from Ascon.

Russian developers also make their mark on widely-used products, such as CATIA, BricsCAD, and Altium Designer. Many global software vendors have established their own R&D (research and development) centers in Russia or else work with local outsourcing firms. Let’s take a look at who they are.

CATIA from Dassault Systèmes

Designed for modeling sophisticated shapes and multi-thousand 3D assemblies, CATIA from Dassault Systèmes is especially preferred by the aerospace and automotive industries.

Some program components in CATIA V5 and V6 were developed by LEDAS, a software programming company in Novosibirsk. The Russian team contracted with Dassault Systèmes to help create the CGM geometric modeling kernel and the Constraint Design Solver between 1999 and 2011. This was not just about writing code, but developing the complex mathematical algorithms that brought these 3D modeling functions to CATIA.

In addition to working on those two components, LEDAS contributed to a pair of CATIA end-user modules, CATIA Product Engineering Optimizer and CATIA Knowledge Advisor.

The 12-year partnership with Dassault Systèmes earned LEDAS its reputation as one of the top companies to hire for R&D outsourcing services in the area of engineering software. A list of some of its clients is available on the company's Web site, www.ledas.com.

We here at С3D Labs also work with the great guys from Novosibirsk. They helped develop our B-Shaper SDK that converts polygonal models to 3D solid models.

Dominique FLORACK, President, Research and Development, Dassault Systèmes,
in the LEDAS office, Novosibirsk, 2004

BricsCAD from Hexagon

BricsCAD is used for 2D drafting and 3D modeling and employs the industry-standard DWG file format. It was developed by Bricsys, a Belgian company, which was acquired last year by the Swedish IT giant Hexagon.

Bricsys has two R&D centers in Russia, one in Nizhny Novgorod and the other in Novosibirsk. It is interesting to note that the Bricsys team in Novosibirsk is closely connected with LEDAS. After LEDAS sold Bricsys the rights to some of the products and technologies they had developed, as part of the agreement some employees moved to the newly established Bricsys Technologies Russia subsidiary.

Bricsys is quite open about its ties with Russia and how it benefits from the relationship. The Web site of the company's Russian distributor informs visitors that "BricsCAD is the first alternative DWG-based CAD developed in Russia."

And journalists are happy to mention LEDAS in their articles about Bricsys. As Roopinder Tara wrote on engineering.com, “If you haven’t heard of Bricsys in Ghent, it’s even less likely that you’ve heard of LEDAS from Novosibirsk. LEDAS deserves more attention. Composed almost entirely by PhDs, some rocket scientists (they worked for the Russian military before the USSR meltdown, I’m told) were more than capable of creating entire, robust CAD programs of their own.” (“A Lean CAD Company Punches Above Its Weight”)

TurboCAD from IMSI/Design

TurboCAD software was developed first in South Africa but is now owned by the American firm IMSI/Design. Unlike Bricsys, it does not mention that its products were developed in Russia. For a long period, the SoftDev team from Saint Petersburg was taking complete charge of TurboCAD development.

ARES from Graebert

ARES CAD applications developed by Graebert GmbH (aka Gräbert) are fully compatible with DWG files. In the conservative engineering software industry where the benefits of cloud technology continue to be debated, Graebert is one of the few companies to develop cloud-based and mobile products that create and edit CAD drawings on the go.

Graebert has three R&D centers, one of which is located in Saint Petersburg, Russia, according to the company’s Web site.

The ARES Kudo cloud CAD solution for DWG drawings. Source: graebert.com

IntelliCAD from ITC

The CAD development platform from IntelliCAD Technology Consortium supports a family of AutoCAD-workalikes. IntelliCAD features a user interface identical to AutoCAD, native DWG format support, the LISP programming language, and similar user commands and options. Its development takes place mostly in Nizhny Novgorod, the city on the Volga River.

Altium Designer

It is not an exaggeration to say that Altium Designer is one of the most popular software packages for printed circuit board (PCB) design. It is developed by Altium Limited, a company established in Australia in 1985, which over the last 35 years transformed itself into a global software company. It has headquarters now in San Diego, Munich, and Shanghai.

In 2015, the company announced that it opened software development centers in Moscow and Saint Petersburg. The Moscow team specializes in developing PCB routing functions and the browser-based CAD solution Upverter.com. The team in Saint Petersburg focuses on merging the electronic and mechanical design functions within Altium Designer, and on data management solutions.

It is especially gratifying for C3D Labs that our C3D geometric modeling kernel, C3D Solver constraint manager, and C3D Converter data translation module are implemented in Altium Designer. They help design rigid-flex PCBs, mate objects, and export models to STEP and Parasolid formats.

Altium Designer 19

Mentor Graphics

Together with Cadence and Synopsys, Mentor is one of the world's top three suppliers of electronic design automation (EDA) software. In 2017, the company was acquired by Siemens for $4.5 billion and was renamed Mentor, a Siemens Business.

The Mentor R&D center opened officially in Moscow in 2008. At the time, the facility focused on two areas, wire routing algorithms in PCB design, and approaches for verifying and analyzing high-speed PCB design. The center had 45 employees.

In addition to EDA software, Mentor is famous for its fluid flow and heat transfer simulation solutions, some of which have their origins in Russia. FloEFD for 3D computational fluid dynamics analysis, for instance, was originally created at the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, and today is still developed in Moscow. The figure below illustrates the history of the Mechanical Analysis department at Mentor Graphics.

Source: cadflo.ru

Cadence Design System

Cadence Design Systems is the second largest supplier of electronic design automation software, and has an R&D center in Moscow. There, several teams specialize in different areas of product development, including extraction of chip layout data, microchip signal delay calculations, and physical verification.

Synopsys

And finally, the number one supplier of EDA software, with annual revenue of over $3 billion, also has ties to Russia. In 2010, Synopsys opened an R&D center in Saint Petersburg tasked with developing ARC processor solutions and photolithography tools. The center has 60 employees, according to the company’s Web site.

ESPRIT from DP Technology

The ESPRIT CAM software from DP Technology is designed for automating CNC (computer numerically controlled) programming. It is developed in collaboration with Rubius, located in Siberian Tomsk. Rubius is a talented high-performance outsourcing company that also writes its own software for AEC (architecture, engineering, and construction), task management, and GIS (geographic information systems). The company is currently looking for programmers to work on yet another ESPRIT project.

Rubius built ESPRIT ExtraCAD with our C3D geometric modeling kernel. The software program was designed to work with ESPRIT CAM. DP Technology decided, however, to not proceed with the project.

ESPRIT ExtraCAD based on the C3D geometric kernel

Open Design Alliance

Open Design Alliance is a nonprofit organization based on the idea of supporting DWG files without Autodesk. Over time, ODA transformed into a robust supplier of software development toolkits (SDKs) that provide interoperability with many CAD formats, visualization, PDF publishing, and more. At the beginning of the year, the ODA revealed its own solid modeling kernel, a kind of high-end program component.

These innovations were created with incredible speed by Russian programmers for the most part. ODA has R&D centers in Saint Petersburg and Nizhny Novgorod, while some of the work is performed by the LEDAS team in Novosibirsk -- yet another mention of LEDAS in this article!

Open CASCADE

Open CASCADE Technology is the only open-source software development platform on our list. The French company provides services and tools for 3D surface and solid modeling, visualization, and CAD data exchange. In an interview with the Linux Format Russia magazine, the company said that its administrative and management staff were based at the headquarters in France, while most of the development work was done by a Russian team comprising around 70 engineers. Open Cascade SAS’s Datavision production facility in Nizhny Novgorod is responsible for supporting the open-source SDKs and writing end-user software applications.

3D model visualized by the Open CASCADE Technology component
Source: opencascade.com

- - -

So, the next time when you run your fav BricsCAD or Altium Designer, think for a moment that their smart algorithms were probably developed in Russia.

 

[Olga Kalyagina is a head of marketing and communications at C3D Labs, a developer of C3D geometric kernel and other program components. She has over 16 years of marketing experience in the engineering software industry. She previously worked as an academic program manager, PR manager, head of marketing service department at ASCON, the parent company of C3D Labs. Olga holds a degree in management from the Moscow State Institute of Electronic Technology.]

This article was first published by isiscad and is reprinted with permission: http://isicad.net/articles.php?article_num=20905

ChromeOS Grows Up

Now with Android & Linux support

 

A number of years ago, I bought one of the very first Chromebooks out of curiosity. It was pretty lame. About the only thing I found myself doing with it was periodically booting it up to update ChromeOS.

Chromebooks run Google's Chrome Web browser as the operating system. This means that the only thing a Chromebook can do is run Google's Chrome Web browser, and any extensions supported by ChromeOS. Very limiting.

I was limited to using apps like Google Docs and lame photo editors, which held no interest to me. Further, the Chromebook was designed to be cheap, like netbooks, and so the specs were low-end: slow CPUs, low-res screens, no touch screen or backlit keyboards, small amounts of RAM and tiny amounts of storage space, like 32GB (extendable by an SD card). I liked netbooks, because at least they ran Windows; Chomebooks, not so much.

After a few years of trying to like the Chromebook concept and failing miserably at it, I finally sent it to the local electronics recycling plant -- partly also because Google expires support on old Chrome systems. 

 

Software Is the Killer App

I realized it was the papacy of software that killed my interest in the Chromebook concept, not so much the lame hardware. So I watched with interest the reports that Google was adding Android support to ChromeOS. I wondered if this would be Yet Another Failed Experiment is merging systems.

At the same time, Google took Chromebooks upscale. Too upscale, of course. Who wants to spend close to $2,000 on a system I consider still experimental. But now the hardware was getting serious and, better yet, more future proof.

Last week, Google announced it would provide longer support for Chrome systems, and that was sufficient for me to pull the trigger. I liked what I saw:

• Long-term ChromeOS support (until 2025)
• Runs Android apps
• Support for Linux
• High-end hardware

I wanted a reasonably-priced high-end Chromebook for under $1,000. I found what I wanted in the Acer Spin 13 model # CP713-1WN-53NF:

• i5 CPU 1.6GHz, peak 3.4GHz
• 8GB operating RAM
• 128GB storage RAM
• 13" touch screen that rotates 360 degrees, 2256 x 1504 resolution
• Backlit keyboard
• Includes static stylus (and slot)
• ChromeOS updates to June 2025
• Handsome looking; the color is called "steel gray," but it looks dark brown to me

It is taller (and narrower) than most of today's laptops, owing to its 4:3 screen ratio, and so almost looks square when closed -- adding it its intrigue.

Regularly $1,344 in Canada (incl. taxes), I found it for $910 (after GST rebate). Curiously, it was $80 cheaper than the lower-spec'ed model (4GB RAM, i3 CPU).

 

Running Android, Stumbling Linux

The first thing I did was to install Android apps, like Opera Web browser, OfficeSuite word processor, and Netflix. They all worked, worked well, and worked in full screen mode. The only one to insist on running in a narrow, vertical phone-like mode was a game, Monument Valley.

TIP: To find the Android apps you've installed, press the Search key on the keyboard, then swipe up.

I enabled Linux, but wasn't able to get much further than seeing the terminal prompt with its four commands. Installing a Linux OS hasn't worked for me yet, so I need to research that further. Having a Linux like Ubuntu would allow me to run CAD programs, like BricsCAD and ARES, and office software like Libre Office -- presumably.

 

About the Hardware

The keyboard was an unexpected pleasure. The one on my primary laptop, the top-end HP Spectre X360, is pretty good for having so little key travel, but I find myself mistyping on it -- a frustration when typing at high-speed during conferences. The keyboard on this Acer is better.

Since the era of Palm ended, I've never used a stylus any more. While I appreciate this computer including one, I still don't use it. There's a keyboard, I am a touch typist, and I am a terrible free-hand sketcher.

Having 2256 x 1504 resolution on a 13" screen is overkill, and so ChromeOS (by default) scales it down to nearly half that. I do wish it were brighter, but otherwise it is good to look at.

The charger plugs into one of the USB-C ports; as there is one such port on each side, you can plug it in on the left or the right, whichever is more convenient. All the ports are

• 2x USB-C (powered)
• 1x USB v3 Type A (powered)
• MicroSD slot
• Headphone/microphone plug
• Power and volume buttons
• Stylus slot

I am disappointed at the weight. I was hoping for a lighter travel computer, but it feels as heavy as the HP Spectre. With my next overseas business trip coming up next week, I am weighing whether to take only the new Chromebook, and leave Windows behind.

Did I mention how handsome it looks?

What Ralph Grabowski Thinks

Being able to run Android apps well makes the Chromebook experiment a success. Android allows us to escape the Google prison, ironically enough.

https://www.acer.com/ac/en/US/content/professional-model/NX.EFJAA.005

 

 

Heppelmann and Hirschtick on PTC's Acquisition of Onshape

From yesterday's meeting with financial analysts

(The Onshape acquisition closes in November, following normal regulatory approval and certain closing conditions.)

 

Jim Heppelmann (CEO, PTC): PTC and Onshape share a common vision around helping organizations transform the way they develop products. Onshapes peer multi-tenant SaaS [software as a service] platform is a perfect complement to our market leading on-premise product development solutions and coupled with our industrial IoT [internet of things] and AR [augmented reality] solutions, we can address an even broader part of the waterfront of digital transformation that’s sweeping across the industrial market.

Now if you step back and look at the PTC portfolio in fiscal ’19, you see that on top of a strong and stable core business, we have two great growth engines in ThingWorx IoT and Vuforia AR. As we head into fiscal ‘20 with the Onshape acquisition, we're now bringing on a third growth engine.

As part of our diligence process, we commissioned a market study from McKinsey that suggested the SaaS based CAD market would grow more than 35% year-over-year and represent nearly 20% of the total CAD market in five years. While Onshape is new, it sure feels familiar to us, because Onshape lives in the same CAD and PLM market space as our core business. It's simply a next generation SaaS version of a technology concept the PTC itself pioneered 30 years ago.

Onshape is not a distraction for us, but rather a doubling down on CAD and PLM to ensure that these core businesses will continue to grow and thrive over the longer term as the industry moves to SaaS.

As you know, we at PTC have been talking about the renaissance of CAD for some time. We realize that along with generative design, real-time simulation, augmented reality, IoT and Azure manufacturing, SaaS will surely play a role in this industry renaissance.

Once you realize how important SaaS will be and why, then you can't avoid the realization of how important Onshape, the only peer SaaS player will be to this industry. Onshape is the first and only from-scratch native SaaS product development platform that unites CAD, data management and collaboration tools in the next generation package.

Onshape is a very unique asset, because of the incredibly high cost of entry into the well-established CAD market, you simply won't find another CAD SaaS start-up out there. The only people who could even attempt to start up this bold are those with the track record so strong that they could raise nine-digit amounts of venture funding and pull in some of the industry's best talent, which brings me to Jon Hirschtick, John McEleney, and Dave Corcoran who founded Onshape and run the company today.

I think it's fair to say that Jon, John and Dave are some of the most accomplished entrepreneurs in the history of the CAD industry. They created SolidWorks to capitalize on the Microsoft Windows wave in the mid-1990s and then turned it into a grand slam after it was acquired by Dassault, helping to still position SolidWorks as the primary growth engine over the past two decades.

Ultimately these guys came to the understanding that SaaS would be as disruptive to the CAD establishment as windows was and that the CAD and PLM industry would surely move to SaaS just as nearly all other software industries already have.

I agree with their premise that SaaS is inevitable in our world and there are many strong reasons why. Onshape is a bona fide growth engine that will allow PTC to take share in the growth-iest parts of the CAD market. I'm eager to share the benefits that SaaS brings to the world of CAD and PLM, but since we have Jon Hirschtick here with us, I'd like to give him a chance to tell you first-hand what he and his team have been working on.

 

Jon Hirschtick (CEO, Onshape): I've spent my entire career since the 1980s in our industry working on CAD and other software for product development. I've been lucky enough to be part of some of the biggest moments in the past in our industry and I feel like today is perhaps the biggest moment I've experienced in our industry.

When Jim and I met earlier this year, it was so exciting to me that he had this strong clear vision we share for the power that a pure SaaS platform could bring to the product development world. It was so refreshing for me to see also Jim's understanding of and commitment to pure SaaS, pure cloud since so many others in our market are pursuing partial cloud approaches and frankly partial cloud has been shown to fail time and time again in other markets.

Beyond just Jim’s vision, he also obviously has resolved to take bold action to pursue his pure SaaS vision. And thank you Jim for the kind words about me and my fellow Onshapers. I'm very fortunate to be working with a lot of the great team that was with me when I founded and was CEO of SolidWorks. My Onshape co-founder John McEleney has also worked in our industry since the '80s, most notably as my business partner and another former CEO at SolidWorks.

Another Onshape Co-founder Dave Corcoran is a former VP of R&D at Solidworks and is one of the key minds that shaped several of the greatest products in our industry, including Solidworks and of course Onshape. I wish I had the time here to tell you more about each of the rest of the 100 or so people on the Onshape team, the fantastic group.

We founded Onshape because we saw the problems product development teams have with installed software applications and sharing data by copying files, often thousands of files among different people and tools. Whether product developers realize it or not, they are all losing time, efficiency and innovation to these problems. At the same time we saw how companies using pure cloud, pure SaaS technology like Salesforce, Workday, NetSuite, Zendesk -- basically everyone were reinventing other software markets.

We saw that we could solve many of the problems in product development, but we would need as Jim said, to build a clean sheet, new generation system to do it, and that's what we've built with Onshape. Today we have thousands of customers using Onshape with story after story of them developing products faster than they ever could, being more innovative. The great products that they are developing with Onshape is our ultimate reward.

So it's probably easy for you to see why I'm excited to be partnering with PTC. PTC is going to help us dramatically grow the number of customers we can reach with Onshape. PTC is also going to draw on their strong technical breadth and depth to further broaden the scope of what we offer on the Onshape platform. 

 

Jim Heppelmann: Let me share a few important thoughts about how Onshape fits with PTC's core CAD and PLM strategy. Our near term goal is to increase our participation in the growth-iest part of the CAD and PLM market, which really represents an adjacency to where Creo and Windchill play today.

Jay Vleeschhouwer pointed out in a recent report that last year there were 174,000 new seats of [high- and mid-range mechanical] CAD sold in the market globally, with Dassault Solidworks business taking about 80,000 and Autodesk Inventor business capturing about 40,000. Creo, CATIA, and NX fit the bulk of the rest.

In the near term and midterm it is that 70% of the market drove by Solidworks and Inventor that’s most interesting to pursue with Onshape. Onshape gives us an opportunity to both participate in and then disrupt this part of the market and we can enter and play with a very strong hand.

Thanks to the massive advantage in Innovation Velocity that Jon spoke up, plus some great new technology like generative design that PTC can share within the portfolio. We expect Onshape will quickly mature into a full-featured SaaS CAD Solution. There will be no glass ceiling on Onshape capabilities like SolidWorks endured over the years, because PTC's positioning will be that we have the best of two different worlds. Creo and Windchill are best in class in the On Premise world and Onshape CAD and PLM are best in class in the peer SaaS world.

It’s happened time after time that disruptive new technologies gain traction first in the SMB [small- and medium-sized business] space, where customers generally have more flexibility to switch and then proceed up market over time. We expect that any SMB buyer who looks at Onshape will stop dead in their tracks due to its amazing capabilities, plus all the fundamental SaaS advantages it offers.
I'm referring to cost of ownership, support for any type of client device, including phones and tablets, ease of getting started, collaboration that works like Google Docs, and plus no need for upgrade the patches, no file servers and software.

Of course in addition to SMB customers, Jon’s going to take orders from companies of any size, because in the long run the SaaS benefits are even more pronounced at the high-end. Like salesforce.com, we expect to get there overtime and believe the high-end competition will be very vulnerable to what Jon and his team of built. That's why we all have the axiom that death comes from below in the software industry.

I want to stress that PTC remains 100% committed to long-term aggressive development of Creo and Windchill. We want to be best-in-class with either deployment model. So we will continue our pursuits of real time simulation, generative design, additive manufacturing, IoT, AR, and all the other great things that we've been working on with Creo and Windchill.

But in parallel I expect you'll see many of the same capabilities that appear on Onshape and surprisingly quickly, giving the fundamental innovation velocity of a SaaS model. When the day comes that any Dassault, Siemens, Autodesk, or PTC customer wants to move to SaaS, we will be there ready to guide them.

But our real focus in the near term and midterm is on playing are strong to hand in the growth-iest part of the market where we simply don't show up today. If you back up to 50,000 feet, you can see that Onshape represents a huge and invaluable injection of SaaS technology, business processes, knowhow, and culture into PTC. Onshape will dramatically expedite PTC's own transformation to SaaS. The industry is most certainly headed there and PTC is now positioned to pave the path with Jon and his team up front leading the way.

I think this acquisition, PTC's biggest ever, will transform the industry, while both solidifying and accelerating PTC long term growth opportunity in CAD and PLM. We are excited to welcome the Onshape team to PTC.

Q&A

Matt Hedberg: First of all, do you have a sense for how many of your customers have expressed interest in a SaaS based offering? I'm trying to get a sense for you know that customer migration over time from Creo and Windchill to Onshape.

And secondarily, I think you noted that you're going to continue to invest in CAD and PLM on your legacy products or your core products. How should we think about that gap in functionality closing over time, if in fact that these SaaS based CAD market is growing as rapidly as you suggest?

Jim Heppelmann: McKenzie did a study of around 230 customers. They reported very strong interest in the concept of SaaS. You know, some concerns that SaaS products weren't mature enough yet, always some concerns about switching costs, and the larger the enterprises the stronger their concern, but huge amount of interest. And now I would say, you know one of the things PTC came to realize is that this Onshape product is actually much better than we thought it was, much more advanced than we thought it was.

So we sort of think that the world hasn't processed how fast this product changes. You know while we weere talking to the Onshape guys, they did their 101, 102, and 103 upgrade of the entire customer base. So there's an innovation velocity here that's amazing and I think it's probably fair to say that you know Onshape is a mid-range product today, but on a very fast improvement vector, and you know we at PTC would be incented to offer up any of the great technology we might have to put into that improvement vector.

So this is a product that is better than what most people think it is, and improving extremely fast, and there's a very large amount of interest. You know the kind of punchline result of the study from McKinsey was that they think that we see a 35% CAGR [compounded annual growth rate] over what's there today and that would lead to slightly under 20% market penetration by true SaaS in the next five years.

----------

Steve Koenig: Any comment on how Onshape competes or differentiates with Autodesk Fusion?
Also, what channel would you use to see it, and is there an existing Onshape channel or will be building one what’s the go-to-market going to look like?

Jon Hirschtick: You mentioned our competitive position with Autodesk. I think their vision aligns with ours. They say that the cloud future is SaaS, it's just they don't back it up with the goods yet. We align completely on the idea that you have to have a pure cloud, pure SaaS platform and offering. Autodesk today offers a partial solution, mixing installed software with cloud, partial cloud services, and so forth. You know those strategies are not things that we believe are the way to deliver the value we seek to deliver to customers and so we think we have a big advantage there.

Jim Heppelmann: Our studies showed that Onshape pretty much goes toe to toe with features and functions against Solidworks, but beats then for anybody who wants SaaS, because SolidWorks doesn’t have SaaS. And our studies said that against Fusion it’s a better, much cleaner better more complete SaaS model and blows them away on functionality. So we think we're in a very good strong competitive position against both of those with the Onshape Technology.

---------------

Sterling Auty: So with Onshape, if it's 1%, it sounds like this is about a $10-million revenue generator in terms where Onshape is and if I take 5,000 or so subscribers times the printed pricing that kind of supports that idea. For $470 million net cash, it’s a big multiple to pay. And I don’t think anyone disagrees that they've got the leading technology on the market, but they’ve been around for a number of years and we're seeing slow adoption at this point. Just to play devil's advocate, what was the buy versus build decision, $470 million invested internally.

Jim Heppelmann: It cost Jon, with an incredible team of the best guys in the industry, six or seven years and $100 million to get to where he is right now. So for me, it would be a little harder to do that entrepreneurially-efficient thing. So our estimate is it would take us at least five years and several $100 million to build what he has. So there are several $100 million of synergy here.

Now the second thing I’d tell you about the price is that this is a unique asset. It’s the only one out there, which gives Jon of course some negotiating leverage. Another point is it's the same revenue multiple that we paid for Frameworks and it’s the same revenue multiple that Dassault paid for Solidworks at the same size if you adjust the difference between multiples on perpetual versus multiples on subscription revenue streams.

So I think you and I both would agree that $100 million ARR [annual recurring revenue] stream is worth more than $100 million of perpetual one-time streams. So if you take the difference in those multiples and gross up what Dassault paid for Solidworks by that factor, you get to what we paid for Onshape. So I think I can triangulate on this many different ways, and I think this is a very good buy at this price. It's a win-win for both parties.

--------------------

So to help further unpack all the moving parts, we're hosting an Investor webcast on November 18 where we will reveal our long term financial targets, show you how we plan to get there and provide more insight as to how Onshape plays in the picture.

To Our Detriment, A.I. Locks Up Knowledge

The wrong kind of black box

 

In an earlier musing, I surmised that we would know that A.I. had attained truly human-like thinking (also known as the singularity) when it lies to us. This is a sign of free will, the most important of human attributes.

But perhaps not. It's possible A.I. could lie to use because it has no free will. Philipp Tuertscher writes on Twitter that A.I. is "increasingly relying on machine learning, which involves identification of patterns without having to understand them." If A.I. doesn't understand what it is doing, then it can lie without knowing that it is doing so.

The problem is that AI/ML [artificial intelligence using machine learning from large amounts of data] produces results which do work, but it doesn't know why; worse, we don't know why. The link between result and reason is lost to us.

It's much like the kid punching the _COSH (hyperbolic cosine) button on a calculator and the calculator displaying the accurate answer. He doesn't know how the answer was arrived at, but in this case the answers have been confirmed by hundreds of years of experience in mathematics. (Cosh defines centenaries catenaries, the gentle curved shape of a wire as it droops between two posts, which is crucial to electrical installers determining clearances, the stretch and contraction during summer and winter months, and how much total wire is needed.)

This week we had a documented case of AI/ML making life worse for a corporation. Canada’s largest grocery chain reported lower than expected revenues, blaming it on AI/ML. The grocery chain had been pushing "to transform itself into a company driven by data... using historic customer data to help set product prices." That's the ML part.

"But when your algorithms [the AI part] focus on profit margins," they push out higher prices for products meant to be on sale. Shoppers, not being pre-programmed A.I. bots, noticed, and adjusted by spending less. The grocery chain did not realize what AI was doing to it until the accountants arrived to do the year-end books.

Jonathan Zittrain asks, "What happens when A.I. gives us seemingly correct answers that we wouldn't have thought of ourselves, without any theory to explain them? These answers are a form of intellectual debt that we figure we'll repay, and too often we never get around to it."

He was writing in an article in New Yorker magazine that reported on AI/ML finding medications that helped people, but pharmaceutical companies don't know why: "The mechanism(s) through which modafinil promotes wakefulness is unknown."

A.I. locks up knowledge in its block box, to our detriment. If we do not know what causes something, we cannot build on that knowledge.

This is not a new problem, as it turns out. Science fiction long ago wrote stories of humanity falling into the trap of allowing machines to do the thinking for us. These kinds of stories, such as Dune and The Foundation Trilogy, show the hero regaining the ability to think independently, to do arithmetic on his own, to live outside dependent society.

(Well, not always. I recall one sci-fi story in which those who figured out how to do arithmetic without calculators were locked into missiles, to help guide them against enemy targets, solving two problems: accurately targeting the enemy, and eliminating independent thinkers.)

To fend off the A.I. takeover of our independent thinking, we ought to distinguish between Tool and Device:

• A tool, like a hammer, helps us with our work
• A device, like a nail gun, does the work for us

A computer tends to be a tool; the tablet tends to be a device. Devices destroy man's need for fulfillment thru work. The promise of A.I. is to do precisely that.

 

 

On Who Would Buy OnShape

Speculation runs rampant

 

Who would be interested in buying OnShape? Well, it needn't be a CAD vendor; it could be an Oracle or a SAP (both of who have long offered PLM) looking for a cloud-based CAD file editor. Both already have CAD viewers.

Or it could be a peripheral CAD vendor, like Hexagon or Trimble. Hexagon is keen on the cloud for its new line of Smart bundles, but doesn't have a cloud-based MCAD offering; on the other hand, it already owns nearly a dozen CAD packages. Trimble doesn't have an industrial strength (M)CAD system but is more into AEC.

Most traditional CAD vendors wouldn't be interested in OnShape, because they either already have such a product (Autodesk with Fusion, Dassault with V6) or else they can't afford the $169-million price tag. Two firms that don't already have cloud-based CAD and have the money are PTC and Siemens PLM -- which makes them possibilities. Of the two, I'd put my money on PTC.

But technology is not the only rationale a CEO makes to his board for an acquisition. Other reasons include:

• Eliminating a competitor (something Autodesk or Dassault might consider)
• Getting the staff and technology (valuable in its own right)
• Accessing the customer list (probably not that useful)

Here's a thought out of left field: a consortium of smaller players buys OnShape and then adds tech to it as the basis of a universal CAD system. Here I'm thinking of IntelliCAD Technical Consortium getting together with Open Design Alliance to make the acquisition. The ODA already works closely with OnShape, and ITC has a CAD development-testing-distribution system in place.

So, why would OnShape even want to sell itself. Here's my opinion:

• "Only" thousands of commercial (paying) customers after four years on the market
• Investors want their $169 million back, with growth
• Retirement planning

Image source http://isicad.net/articles.php?article_num=20677

 

The Determinism Future of AI

You will be harmonious

 

I've told my kinds, if you don't like where you're working or who you are working for, quit. (In my job, I get to fire clients who are too annoying.) And so we read that "Organizer of Google Sexual Harassment Walkout Leaves The Company." Actually, organizer Meredith Whittaker is one of four out of the six organizers who have left Google by this point.

Meredith Whittaker is not the only whistleblower speaking against Google mis-culture. James Daemore did, too. For the mainstream and tech media, however, Whittaker is a martyr to be hallowed; Daemore is an abnormality to be shunned. She aligns with their Overton window; he doesn't.

Then we come across this tweet by Chris Lu (an engineer at Google) that gives us pause: "Watching her experience as a whistleblower at Google and a victim of retaliation cannot signal good things for how A.I. institutions will react to negative criticism."

Advocates for A.I. (such as Google) and the singularity (also Google) tend to be hardcore determinists. A.I. is short for "artificial intelligence"; the singularity is the day when computer becomes so good that they can substitute for human brains; determinism insists that humans have no free will, because all our actions are predetermined by the chemicals in our bodies -- just like computer code.

A.I. is based on the same determinism-materialism philosophy as communism, and so we can expect our A.I. future to mirror today's totalitarianism under Xi. (Materialism insists there is no transcendental, only the material, things we can touch and see. Heh: some, like Plato, imagined the opposite: it is the material world that is unreal.) I image that an AI-dominated future will tolerate only positive social credit scores, as happens today in China. Be harmonious, or be banned.

The banned ones of the future will be the aware ones who understand that free will is our true nature. The flaw with living in a harmonious society is that it stagnates; it is discord that seeds change, and discord comes from having a free will. Change is repugnant to dictators, and so their need to suppress free will -- whether a totalitarian Xi or a totalitarian Google.

 

 

 

I Bought a $275 Lossless Music Player, then Returned It

F.AUDIO FA1

I've looked for years for a huge capacity music player, one that could hold my entire music collection, which is about 122GB. I got a 64GB iTouch (which one of my daughters took over), and then a 120GB iPod, but Apple's big, big failing is it doesn't allow playback by folders. I suspect the failing is due to how it sets up its protection system.

(So create playlists, Apple-hugging friends tell me. Why, I ask, when I already have all my music sorted into folders. No need to take the extra step of creating dozens of playlists.)

My fav music player brand is Sony, especially after I bough a high-end player in Tokyo some years back with built-in electronic noise reduction and fab sound through its Apple-shaming headphones. But it holds only 16GB. None of Sony's reasonably-priced players go beyond 16GB; I think they reuse their OS and chips from long ago in all their non-expensive players, limiting them to 16GB or less. For big capacities, you're into their high-end line that costs $1,000.

So I perused eBay's collection of lossless music players that are around $200-$300. I was looking for something to reward myself for the hard work I put in each Winter in my business. I settled on one that was elsewhere reviewed positively as "smaller than I expected, heavier than I expected" -- the F.AUDIO FA1 lossless music player. (Image source player.ru.) I liked the sound of that. I wanted small and hefty.

It handled lossless file formats, as well as the usual compressed ones like MP3, came with 32GB RAM but accepted up to 256GB in a microSD card. It was $275 but one site had it on sale for $210, with free shipping that took nearly three months to arrive. While waiting, I bought the 256GB memory card.

When it arrived, I found it was bigger than I expected and lighter than I expected. Solid aluminum case but plastic back. It came with a USB cord and a remote controller. No headphones, no instructions, and a Chinese interface. After being spoiled by touch screens, it was hard for me to use the click-wheel to navigate. I perused the settings until I finally could click the English interface language.

I loaded up my 122GB of music on the 256GB card, and settled in to enjoy the sound. Ugh. Constant hissing noise. Otherwise, the sound was good, and I am picky about sound. But then a bigger problem incurred. I actually timed it: it took the unit nine seconds to start a song. I don't know what it is doing during those nine seconds, but that long a wait is intolerable. I wonder if the software and/or CPU are too weak to handle processing my 18,592 files.

Then a light came on.

I have a few spare smartphones laying around, and so I wondered if any of them would take the 256GB memory card AND could handle 122GB of music files. (Some phones are limited to 128GB and many take no microSD card at all.) One did. Coupled with Neutron's idiosyncratic (see figure below) but fab music player (http://www.neutronmp.com/), the sound is wonderful. There is no hiss, it has the touch interface ('natch), and songs start immediately.

After a couple of weeks, I decided to return the F.AUDIO lossless music player. It was bigger than I wanted, had a clunky interface, hissed, and was slow. That's not worth $210 to me. The vendor accepted the return, but would not pay for return postage. Fortunately, the same week, PayPal instituted the new policy of refunding up to $30 towards return postage.

My cost in the end: $40 for the memory card. The phone, I had got free, due to circumstances. Its 2GHz CPU handles the 18,000 files effortlessly, and Neutron makes the music a pleasure to my ears.

 

The Snake in the Garden

Free, as in not-free

I find Apple and its products painful to use, but their closed system has a better handle on security, potentially. If there is a problem of data leakage, it is at the Apple side, such as allowing Google to access data from iPhone, iPad, and Mac users through its search engine. "Google will reportedly pay Apple $9 billion in 2018 and $12 billion in 2019 to remain as Safari’s default search engine," says Business Insider. These are not amounts that anyone pays for mere market share; Google is paying for data collection with a search engine that searches us.

Never mind. Apple locks its operating system to its own line of devices. Google does not.

It licenses the Android operating system to just about anyone, and on top of that gives away a free version that "anyone" can modify, named the Android Open Source Project. We've been the beneficiary of the ASOP version, such as in projects that run Android for Intel CPUs directly on desktop computers.

Give-aways are traditionally seen as a way to increase market share. But Google doesn't need more market share on portable devices: any share Apple doesn't have (and its share percentage is eroding), Google has -- Android runs on 88% of smartphones and tablets worldwide. When the $12 billion Google pays Apple is added in, it has near 100% marketshare, competitive search engines notwithstanding.

Instead, Google's give-away is to ensure world domination in data collection, directly from our pockets and purses, homes and automobiles, offices and stores.

The snake promised that with new information (what happens after we eat forbidden fruit?) "ye shall be as god." Google tempts us with the same offer: having access to all knowledge and so become neo-gods. Being like god has god-like consequences, it turns out.

Data Borkage

Brandishing a wide-open kimono has ramifications the free-as-beer software movement hasn't been philosophically prepared able to tackle. Its assumption -- people do nice things when the software is free -- is false, even for hackers only curious about what happens when they try this thingy.

So it should comes as no surprise, then, that Google confirmed that "criminals in 2017 managed to get an advanced backdoor preinstalled on Android devices before they left the factories of [smartphone] manufacturers."

The good news is that the smartphones were Chinese brands we've never heard of, such as Leagoo and Nomu. I think that Blackberry secures its secure Android phones differently from Google; on the other hand, I could see a security intrusion inside the Chinese factories that manufacture Apple hardware and adds the iOS operating system.

It is further discouraging to know that Android is worse than Windows in needing multiple patches every month -- eight just last month alone. Unlike Windows, Android patches are probably not available for your phone, once again precisely because Android is freely available to all. Some smartphone manufacturers provide updates for two years; many give up after a few months in their rush to punch out new models. There is no penalty for not keeping customers secure, neither on Windows nor on Android.

I've wondered why Microsoft has never been sued for the billions and trillions of damage their achingly insecure operating system has done to business, government, and even households -- especially following its claims before and after the initial Windows NT launch of how secure the "new" operating system was, claims that were eventually proven misleading. (NT was not new, it was based on Digital Equipment Corporation's VMS operating system, and today Windows remains the only operating system not based on Unix.)

Looking for a Headmaster

The whole free software movement suffers from the lack of a headmaster to keep the students in line. IntelliCAD Technical Consortium and Open Design Alliance originally followed that model, but subsequently whipped things into shape following the institution of a strong, top-down leader.

Social media platforms such as blogs and Twitter were designed to bypass gatekeepers like editors, letting people speak directly to people. But in addition to another era of freedom of speech (like this blog posting), it exposed people's irresponsible loathing, which generates overreactions like exploitive fear and encouragement by governments and activists (who formerly were all in for free speech) to endorse censorship.

Joel Kotkin writes, "We have been accustomed to think of technology entrepreneurs as bold risk-taking individuals who thrive on competition, but now we know that it is more accurate to see them as oligarchs."

The plan always was to be monopolies, as Peeter Theil gave away in his 2014 book, Zero to One. The "zero" referred to starting a new firm from nothing; the "one" referred to turning it into a monopoly.

He argued in favor of tech monopolies, saying they could charge more to ensure better products and better service. I wonder if he still thinks that, given that the point to becoming a monopoly is to charge more, and then to do less and eventually eliminate customer service. Do you get great custom service from firms he helped establish, eBay and PayPal?

"Rather than idealistic newcomers, [technology entrepreneurs] increasingly reflect the worst of American capitalism:

• Squashing competitors
• Using indentured servants from abroad
• Colluding to fix wages
• Dodging taxes

...while creating ever more social anomie [def: the lack of ethical standards] and alienation," adds Mr Kotkin.

The success of tech giants drove up wages, which drove up real estate prices, thereby blocking new upstarts from affording those iconic Silicon Valley garages from which to launch their game-changing products. They've increased homelessness, set people against people, and endangered the security of humanity.

All for free.

 

The First Exciting New Phone in Years, from ASUS

Zenfone 6 recycles its name

 

I have the three-year-old Zenfone 3 Zoom with its 2.3x optical zoom and amazing 5000mAHr battery that lasts 2-3 days, but I am thinking of a 10x zoom phone next. I already have the old Samsung K Zoom, with its 10x optical zoom, but its primary flaw is that the power button is so sensititve that I often find the battery dead. (I use it to snap photos at conferences and transfer them quickly to my laptop through Dropbox.)

Nevertheless, I was interested to see what ASUS plans for this year's phone, the Zenfone 6. See asus.com/Phone/ZenFone-6-ZS630KL for the official site.

Be aware, however, that ASUS released a ZenFone 6 in 2014, model Z600CG. The new ZenFone 6 is model ZS630KL. If you go searching for 'zenfone 6' on the Internet, you might arrive at the wrong one. 

I find that GSM Arena does the best job of summarizing specs for phones, and so you can read their list at gsmarena.com/asus_zenfone_6_zs630kl-9698.php.

• Eight-core CPU operates at 2.84GHz
• 6 or 8GB operating RAM
• 64, 128, or 256 storage RAM
• Triple slot, meaning it holds two nanoSIM cards and a microSD card of up to 2TB capacity. I find the dual-SIM function so very useful when traveling.
• Stereo speakers
• Headphone jack (I dispise Bluetooth connections)
• Spare button that can be customized to activate functions like the flashlight or camera.
• Dark UI mode, without needing to wait for the next release of Android
• Guaranteed to get Android Q and R (ASUS has been updating my three-year-old Zenfone 3 every second months for the last year)
• Stacked motherboards to make more room inside (ASUS designs its own)
• And one of the more important specs for today: ASUS is located in Taiwan, and not China

The Zenfone 6 gets back the 5000mAHr battery I have in my Zenfone 3. While ASUS says it's good for running for two days, I love it for a different reason: at the end of the day, the battery is down 1/2 or 2/3s at most. This means I never have to worry about recharging it in the late afternoon or evening. And when I am in a situation where it's not easy to recharge the phone, such as while flying, then I don't need to panic.

Camera unit rotating around to the front

The highlight is the camera system: a motorized two-camera unit that rotates to the front to become the selfie camera. One camera has a 48-megapixel lens, the other a 125-degree wide-angle lens, which is equivalent to a 9mm lens on a standard 35mm DSLR. (See bobatkins.com/photography/technical/field_of_view.html for more about wide angle lenses.)

The motor takes about 1 second to rotate the 180 degrees, back to front. Now, I don't care about selfies, so this speed doesn't matter to me. Instead, what I find exciting is that ASUS thought about all that a rotating lens could do for us:

• Rotate to any angle between 0 and 180
• Stop at 90 degrees to take overhead photos or pictures close to the ground
• As the camera rotates, it can take 180-degree panoramic photos, vertically and horizontally
• And apparently it works with any app that can take pictures.

ASUS says the 48-megapixel lens will allow cropped zooms to simulate optical zooms. I'll be interested to read about the Oppo phone due this summer with an actual 10x optical internal zoom. As well, the 48-megapixel sensor is already obsolete, as Samsung has announced a 64-megapixel one that is due to ship this fall.

The camera also takes 4K-resolution videos at up to 60fps [frames per second] with electronic image stabilization.

Price starts at US$499 and euro 499. You can watch the launch event at www.youtube.com/watch?v=VBk8c1oHUcA

Your move, Apple.

 

CIMdata on PLM Status & Trends

Hosted by CIMdata president Peter Bilello

 

CIMdata last week hosted a Webinar on results from its annual global PLM [product lifecyle management] Status & Trends research, and here is my transcript of the Q&A. 

To listen to the entire Webinar, go to https://register.gotowebinar.com/register/7009086853856478209, register, and then be ready to download and install GoToWebinar.

To just view the slides on their own, download the PDF from https://www.cimdata.com/images/Webinars/CIMdata_Webinar_PLM_Status-and-Trends_9May2019.pdf

 

Q: Why has it taken so long for PLM to be adopted?
A: The education system is the biggest problem. Management understands paying people for transactions, but the nuance of product information escapes them. The value of information is not being taught well in MBA schools, which don't talk to engineering schools. People don't understand the life-cycle.

Q: Is PLM growing in chemicals and personal care?
A: Yes, it is growing. It used to be mostly about packaging, but now it is more about labeling and composition of products inside the packaging.

Q: What are the key things keeping companies back from implementing new technology?
A: The legacy systems are not upgradeable. Systems are so customized inside businesses that they can only upgrade by replacing the entire system. Also, there is a disconnect between engineering and the rest of the company.

Q: Can you define S&A?
A: Simulation and analysis, historically called computer-aided analysis.

Q: Why do companies not use the full features of PLM, usually only the PDM [product data management] part?
A: If it is owned by engineering, then it is unlikely to be used outside of engineering.

Q: What is beyond PLM?
A: Nothing, except maybe in nuances. However, change is inevitable. AI [artificial intelligence] is just scratching the surface in having insight from all the smart-connected devices.

 

Google Music is a disaster

Hidden From You

 

I had been using iTunes for many years, as it is the only good way in Canada to purchase music. There were other services, but some of them have gone under. Amazon.ca doesn't let us download tracks or albums, and eMusic.com has a limited selection.

Further bonuses for Apple's service are that Apple made its AAC proprietary music format open, so just about any music player handles it; no need to convert to MP3 format. Also, hidden in iTunes is the ability to burn albums to CDs. Also, BestBuy  sells four-packs of $15 iTunes gift cards with a permanent 15% discount.

TIP.  To burn a selection of songs to a CD, you first have to create a playlist of them -- either a selection of songs or an entire album. Then, right-click the playlist name, and choose the CD burning option.

But the iTunes software is a lumbering dinosaur, and I don't like multi-billionaire Apple pocketing 30% of the artist's revenues for itself. Five or 10% would be reasonable.

So I searched for other solutions. Some artists, I found, let you download their music from their site, but this too is limited.

Google Doesn't Like to Play

The only other solution in Canada seems to be Google Play, so I gave it a try. What a disaster.

Google Music desktop interface is listen-only (no downloads)

To buy from Google Music, I had to enable Google Music on my phone. I find its user interface odious, and far prefer the superior sound quality of Neutron Music Player (www.neutronmp.com).

The only straight-froward part of the process was buying the album (Amanda Lindsey Cook's House on a Hill), as Google accepts PayPal for payment, but after that it went nuts.

House on a Hill track listing

Neutron Player could not find the newly downloaded tracks, so I went looking for them. No dice. I looked online, and found that Google hides the tracks in a hidden folder that is accessible only on rooted phones.

I've rooted my phones before, but found no great advantage, so I don't do that anymore. I kept looking (using Bing) to see if there were other workarounds.

It turns out that the tracks are visible if you save them on a device with a memory card. So I enabled Google Music on my tablet, directed it under Settings to save tracks on external memory (microSD card), and downloaded the tracks again.

This time the folder (Android/data/com.google.android.music/cache/music, obviously) and the tracks were visible but they were anonymized with names like 33.mp3. While the numbers are sequential, they do not match the song order on the album. (Google Music displays the correct names in its UI.) 

What Google thinks the track names ought to be

So I spent time renaming the 10 files. Now finally I could put the album on other music players and/or burn it to a CD. The entire process took about a half-hour. So, never again.

I plan my future tactic as: Attempt to purchase the album direct from the musician, then resort to iTunes otherwise.

At least Google doesn't use a proprietary file format for the music it sells, although I suppose streaming is a kind of locked proprietary format. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Today we are talking about the same computer stuff as in 1985

Byte, June, 1985

 

A friend was moving and was throwing out stuff, when he came across his collection of Byte magazines from the early- to mid-1980s. Back then, Byte was the premier computer magazine, nerdy, and thick with ads -- until it was eclipsed by PC Magazine, which for a while was so popular that it came out twice a month, running over 1,000 pages each issue. Ah, those were the days.

I read Byte in those days as well, although never a subscription, just buying it from time to time from the newsstand. One of its ads and product reviews prompted me to buy Turbo Pascal, which was amazing for its time: $50 for an instant run (no compiling) programming language when a such a thing typically cost $500 and compiled slowly on our slow computers. I recall phoning the Borland office in Silicon Valley to place my order, and the receptionist apologizing: "It's crazy around here!" she exclaimed over the noise.

So what was important to computer users in 1985? We learn about it from reading the ads, not the articles. Advertisers targeted our hopes (for better computing) and our fears (over things going wrong) in a way the Byte's clinically-written articles couldn't.

The Agony of 1980s Computing

The #1 problem with computing in the 1980s was that it was expensive. We recognized in that time that there was much power latent in those chunks of hardware, but buying into it in the first place was a terrible decision because of the #2 problem with computing in the 1980s:

Compatibility. The 1980s featured an explosion of possibilities at the cost of spending a lot of money on a home computer system that was in danger of being incompatible too soon with whatever standard would eventually emerge. The explosion of possibilities was even more severe in Europe than North America, especially in England, which even to this day features Cambridge as the world center for new computing ideas. (Own a smartphone? Thank Cambridge.)

In the US, in the early 1980s, the Z-100 bus running the CP/M operating system on an 8-bit Zilog CPU was the closest there was to a standard for personal computers. Both Zilog and CP/M stumbled in the transition to 16-bit computing, which is when Intel's 8088 CPU and Microsoft's MS-DOS took over, running on IBM's bus design.

We forget that it actually took quite a few years for IBM's PC (August, 1981) to become the standard to which we still hold onto this day. Despite its use of off-the-shelf parts, the PC (short for Personal Computer) was very expensive. When I bought my own personal computer (April, 1983), I paid $6,000 for the computer (on sale at $4,500), a dot-matrix printer ($750), a box of tractor-feed paper, a box of 10 diskettes ($100), and the parallel printer cable ($100). I was paying for a computer that had much better specs than an IBM PC that would have cost me 25% more. Allowing for inflation, it was like paying $15,000 today.

What Ads Tell Us

So, in the 1980s, we suffered from the angst of investing in incompatible systems that cost a huge of money.

Flipping through the ads in the 540-age June, 1985 issue of Byte magazine, we learn that the hot topics were:

• Floppy diskette security
• Data modem speeds
• Programming languages
• The speed of dot-matrix printers
• A. I.
• The costs savings of multi-function boards
• Robots
• Smart homes
• Smart terminals

There even was a small ad for a home robot. One technical article in that issue explained how to wire your own home automation network for turning lights on and off, and so on. The biggest advertiser? Borland.

Compare that list of concerns with what we are concerned with today, 34 years later. Advertisers assure us that we need to worry about:

• Data security
• Computing and Internet speed
• Programming languages
• The cost of ink cartridges
• A. I.
• Hardware specs of the latest laptop-cum-tablet
• Robotics
• Smart homes
• The cloud

https://archive.org/details/byte-magazine-1985-06

 

 

MX Performance 2S is Logitech's expensive mouse mistake

The MX devolves

As a professional technical writer who often puts into 12-to-14-hour days writing and typesetting, I rely on an excellent keyboard (currently loving AZIO's MGK 1-K backlit, aluminum-bodied brown-switch that is such a joy to use that it makes me just want to type more) and Logitech's MX Performance mouse; see figure 1. I use the MX, because it is a big, tall mouse on which I can rest my hand; has plenty of buttons; feels hefty; and it...

Figure 1: Logitech's (old) MX Performance mouse with its band of steel

... switches between freewheel scrolling and clicked scrolling. I keep that mouse mostly in freewheeling scroll mode, because it lets me get through documents and Web pages faster -- much faster than the 3-lines-per-scroll-click that most other mice offer.

But I wear out my keyboards and mice, and replace them every few years. The down-press of the scroll wheel on my current MX mouse no longer works (meaning I can't easily pan in CAD drawings), and so it was time to get the next one.

Perusing the available range of MX mice from Logitech online, I noticed that the top-of-the-line ones were (a) much more expensive and (b) looked somewhat different. No matter, the last two MX mice I bought were identical; this new-styled one couldn't be different. Plus, I was intrigued that it claimed to handle up to three computers at once -- intrigued, because I usually use two (and sometimes three) computers when I am in high-speed writing mode. Having one mouse for all three would be convenient.

I found a returned MX 2S mouse (see figure 2) online for half the usual $190 price (in Canada, incl. tax), and two days later it arrived. The first puzzle was that the box said Logi but the  mouse still read Logitech. Looking online, I could find no explanation for the name change; Logi also is Logitech's stock symbol.

Figure 2: Logitech's MX 2S mouse

 

Bad Bluetooth, Proprietary Battery

The first worry came while unpacking it. A slip of paper offered to monitor my Bluetooth connections to help if there were problems connecting the mouse. Looking online, I found reviewers complaining about its Bluetooth connection being poor. No biggie for me: I don't use Bluetooth for mice or keyboards, as I find the slow communication speed too slow for my typing and mouse movement speed, and so I use Logitech's wireless connection.

I let the new mouse charge until its third green LED stopped blinking. Next worry: the old mouse uses a standard AA-size rechargeable battery; the new one uses a proprietary, rectangular battery block. I wondered how expensive it would be to (eventually) replace this battery; maybe it wouldn't matter. The AA battery in the current MX mouse hadn't held a charge for a couple of years, and instead of replacing it, I have the old mouse connected to a very thin USB cable full time. I really don't need a wireless mouse, but that's what gets sold these days.

I plugged the mouse's wireless connector into my desktop computer, and there was no reaction: no cursor movement on the screen. Aha! I wondered if I needed to change channels. Under the mouse is a button with an LED each for 1, 2, and 3; see figure 3. I pressed the button, #2 lit up, and the cursor began moving.

Figure 3: Underneath the Logitech 2S mouse

 

Options Replaces Setpoint

$190-mice no longer include the software needed to fine-tune their movement, so I needed to locate it online. (Logitech's Setpoint traditional software does not work with the new mouse.) I downloaded and installed Options, the new utility software; see figure 4. This is where the first big letdown occurred.

Figure 4: Yes we have no more acceleration

I normally set the mouse for fast movement and fast acceleration. I want that cursor to zip across cross my high-resolution monitor with a single 2-to-3-inch movement of my hand. But now I had a hard time finding the exactly-right-for-me Pointer Speed setting with Options. Worse, there was no setting for acceleration (how quickly the mouse gets up to speed and then slows down). Acceleration is important for when moving the mouse at high speed (it moves faster) and at low speed (it moves more slowly).

At least the Options software retained the double-click setting, which Logitech had foolishly removed from some editions of Setpoint. Yet, that is where the next big letdown occurred: I could not find a convenient button to press for double-clicking among the mouse's six buttons. (I can't map double-click to the scroll-wheel's built-in button, because that eliminates the ability to pan in CAD software.) On the old MX, the side of my thumb taps one of the side buttons; that exact position is no longer available on the new MX.

 

Side-to-side Scrolling Goes Awful

No convenient double-click was the deal-breaker, compounded by Logitech's misguided relocation of the side-to-side scrolling. Instead of being part of the big scroll wheel, the new MX moves side-to-side scrolling to its own mini-scroll wheel on the side of the mouse; see figure 5.

Figure 5: Side-to-side scroll wheel on the side of the 2S mouse

Side-to-side scrolling is a crucial function for me when I am typesetting my books in InDesign. It obviates the need for the scroll bar in the program. On the old MX, you push the big scroll wheel to the side, holding it for as long as you need for the other parts of the page to come into view.

On the new MX, you need to move the side of your thumb upwards (or down) repeatedly, repeatedly rolling the small scroll wheel until the page comes into view. This wasn't going to work for me. It was the final disappointment.

While using the new MX for the hour or so I had it plugged in, I began to also notice how cheap Logitech's very expensive mouse felt. The old MX boasted a band of curvaceous metal. The new one is all-plastic, with the two main buttons feeling thin. The new one is a triumph of form over function.

Later I heard from a Twitter follower that he too threw his Logitech MX 2S in the trash.

 

Summing Up

A pattern I've noticed repeatedly is that when technology in a certain area reaches a peak, it then worsens as the marketing department takes product development over from engineering. I first found this after buying a new cassette deck in the late 1980s, and being horrified at how bad new ones had devolved. Devolution has attacked the MX. 

The Logitech MX 2S mouse is a throw-away:

• Feels cheaply made, for a $190 mouse
• Unknown future status of the proprietary rechargeable battery
• Utility software does not offer acceleration
• Side buttons are placed too far away from my thumb
• Sideways scrolling irredeemably moved from the main scroll wheel to the side of the mouse

Solution

I went onto eBay and found someone selling the same MX mouse I had been using for a decade or more. Being a discontinued model, they are going for US$40. I bought two.

 

 

How to resurrect your old Pebble smartwatch

Users arise

 

For 19 years, I appreciated my titanium Citizen Eco-drive with its perpetual calendar (see figure 1). Titanium, because I don't want the weight. Eco-drive, because it never needs a battery (a solar panel on the face recharges a capacitor). Perpetual calendar, because I never need to set the date, even in leap years.

Figure 1: Kind of like this, but in titanium

 

I tried a few other watches, and even some smartwatches, but always went back to the Citizen as it was reliable. Until it wasn't. One morning I noticed that its hands weren't moving. Now, this could be because the face hadn't had enough light, but one day in sunlight apparently powers it for months. This was kind of the last straw, as I had been irked already for some months by perpetual calendar no longer working.

What now? Searching for a replacement, I found that Citizen no longer makes any models with exactly the same functions my aging one has. Then I though, "Hmmm... what about my now-obsolete Pebble Steel smartwatch?" (See figure 2.) It dates back to ye olden days of 2015.

Figure 2: Pebble Steel smartwatch

 

I thought that resurrecting it might be an interesting exercise. Would it still run after Fitbit bought the Pebble company and abandoned this old line of smartwatches last summer? I found the watch and its charging cable, and left it for a day to charge.

As a basic watch, it worked, offering a digital watch face that displays the date, day, and time. Another built-in watchface offered to simulate an analog watch, but the coarse resolution of the Pebble screen made it untenable.

From my experience with Umidigi's basic smartwatch, I wondered how long the Pebble would last with all radio functions turned off. Recall that the second biggest drain to a smartwatch's battery is the set of radios they harbour -- GPS, WifI, Bluetooth, and/or cell. (The biggest is the bright, colorful display.) The Pebble, however, was the biggest selling smartwatch for a time precisely because its battery lasted about a week, due to its use of digital paper -- a monochrome screen that was always on, and only consumed power when it needed to change, such as once a minute to update the time.

With the watch fully charged and the only radio (Bluetooth) turned off, I was pleased to see the Pebble Steel last two weeks. Recharging took under an hour.

This was a possible replacement for the Citizen.

I wondered what sort of support was available for the now-discarded Pebble, and found that Google Play Store still offered the official app. I installed it on my phone, set up the Bluetooth connection, and you can imagine my surprise when it announced there was an update for my watch! I allowed it to be installed...

...and immediately regretted it. The two functions I actually use from time to time were disabled -- stop watch and timer. Messages were replaced by cartoon images that irked me. And, nothing else worked -- the connection to Pebble's online store was broken.

Eventually I found someone who had archived nearly all Pebble apps for the watch, but I couldn't figure out how to install them. The official Pebble app on my phone wasn't particularly interested in handling them.

Time passed. I used the watch on a trip overseas and delighted in how much easier it was than the Citizen to change the time for new times zones. But I would have loved to have a dual-timezone watch face, which I recalled having the first time I used the Pebble many, many years ago.

Every so often, I'd do another search for how to install apps onto Pebble, run into a wall, until I found Pebble Alternate App Store Helper (see figure 3). This awkwardly-named Android app guides you through the steps needed to access an archived Pebble server, and so installs apps and watch faces.

Figure 3: App for getting access to Pebble apps again

 

I tentatively followed the steps and was amazed that it actually worked. Be sure to follow all the steps, except for the optional ones. Finally, I got my multi-time zone watch face, along with alternative apps to replace the missing stopwatch and timer. Remember to access apps through the Watchface category if you actually want them to be displayed; watchface apps accessed through the Apps category don't work property.

The only catch was that I found was this: it was hard to make and maintain the Bluetooth connection between the watch and the phone. I dunno whose fault it is, but here is the inconvenient workaround I used, repeatedly:

1. Make sure the Pebble watch is waiting for the Bluetooth connection.
2. On the phone, go to the Bluetooth setting.
3. Hold down the entry for the watch ("Pebble 355D," in my case), and then tap Forget. This forces the phone to look anew for the Pebble.
4. Tap the ... menu button, and then tap Refresh.
5. Within a few seconds, the two devices should recognize each other
   - On the watch, tap OK
   - On the phone, tap OK

I kept having to renew the connection while setting up Pebble Alternate App Store Helper and installing fresh apps. But once I had everything on the watch, I no longer needed the Bluetooth connection.

What about notifications? Hate 'em.

 

Facebook Asks Government to Protect It

The Man Who Would Be A Monopoly

 

"I believe we need a more active role for governments and regulators," says the man who can't be bothered to show up when governments and regulators have been asking him about his company's role in distributing information.

When huge corporations call for specific government interference in their markets, it means they've identified weak spots in competitors. The best role of government, sadly, is to erect barriers to competition by generating onerous regulations, such as requiring 1,500 hours of training for hair braiding. It can have the effect of preventing small firms from growing, and large firms from entering new markets.

"Mark Zuckerberg calls for global regulations in four areas: policing harmful content, election integrity, GDPR-like privacy framework, and data portability." Could Zuck's proposals be designed as attacks on competitors? Here is one set of possible attack vectors:

• Policing harmful content => YouTube
• Election integrity => Twitter
• GDPR-like privacy => all smaller sites, like independent blogs
• Data portability => Google

For instance, new pre-election regulations caused Google to sit out Canada's upcoming federal election, while Facebook is all-in with the advertising during it.

And could Zuck be thinking of making the following proposal to the world? We here at Facebook are the only government-approved safe harbor for your videos (Facebook), your messages (Messenger), your independently-written content (Facebook), and your advertising (Facebook).

BBC notes that Zuck's proposals do not address the biggest problem with Facebook: tracking users and [and non-users] so that it can sell their personal data to advertising agencies. 

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/mark-zuckerberg-the-internet-needs-new-rules-lets-start-in-these-four-areas/2019/03/29/9e6f0504-521a-11e9-a3f7-78b7525a8d5f_story.html

Live blog: Australasia BricsCAD Conference 2019

Live from Brisbane, Australia

 

Alright, here we are, waiting for the conference to start. A bit of background while we are waiting. This the first Bricsys event officially promoted by BricsCAD, and so is the inaugural one. 

The agenda is to introduce BricsCAD to executives looking for an alternative to AutoCAD, as well as highlight the add-ons with which it works. The biggie is CADWorx, of course, the full-fledged plant design and analysis program -- primarily oil and gas facilities -- but also inside buildings (known as pharmaceuticals). Hexagon has already announced that the next release of CADWorx will include BricsCAD Platinum free, so that'll drop some of the AutoCAD license numbers. 

Welcome

We are getting the welcome from Damien Harkin, the BricsCAD dealer in this part of Australia, and a bit of history. BricsCAD is short for "building-related interactive computer systems), and the first software was called BricsWork running on an BIM RISC workstation (1990), then ported to working with MicrosStation on PCs., which lead to TriForma 3D solid modeler, which Bentley Systems purchased.

Brics|Net Architecturals in 1998 ran on AutoCAD and IntelliCAD was a 2.5D modeler, but then the dot.com bubble crashed things. (Brics.net had gone public earlier.)

So then came the new plan became BricsCAD IntelliCAD (2002) but then in 2010 left ITC with 100% new code -- code-named DDCAD, named after DwgDirect libraries from the Open Design Alliance.

In fall of 2018, Hexagon PPM acquired Bricsys.

The base of BricsCAD is the ODA Drawings SDL. WxWidgets is the GUI so that it works the same on Linux, MacOS, and Windows. Next comes the ACIS solid modeler, followed by LEDAS geometric, parameters, and solver. On top of this are the APIs, with wrappers to make TRX the same as ARX -- all 26,000 calls. 

Bricsys uses extreme programming, where two programmers work on the same code. Write the tests first, then write the code. 

Migration

Jason Bourhill is a BricsCAD dealer and programmer in New Zealand with a background in mechanical engineering. He's talking to us about the pain from (unnamed Autodesk) CAD system with high cost, little development, restrictive licensing (only subscription licenses that phone home every 30 days, and licenses prevent you from using the software outside the country of purchase), running old software if you don't want to for forced on subscriptions, and so on.

BricsCAD is kind of the anti-Aut0CAD, where licenses are permanent, and you can even use old versions of BricsCAD in case that is needed for third-party applications. The cost is lower, and third-party apps and your customizations migrate over. And it gets a ton (tonne) of new features every few months. 

Whereas Autodesk's BIM and mechanical software is not particularly compatible with AutoCAD, BricsCAD uses the DWG format for the base program and its BIM and mechanical extensions. Jason has created a spreadsheet into which you can plug in your own numbers to determine the savings. With one user, the payback period is 0.46 years and the ROI (return on investment) is 400% over five years, and a savings of $10,000 per seat.

What to do with the savings: buy more seats, new hardware, training, pay for customization, get third-party applications, and/or throw a party.

Heidi Hewett formerly with Autodesk is now with BricsCAD as user success manager. As the case history, we are going to hear about KCL Engineering, who specializes in making buildings safe against earthquakes. They use Revit, Tekla, and AutoCAD. But engineers use a PDF editor to mark up drawings, but needed something more. Instead of AutoCAD LT (due to inability to customize), they went with BricsCAD.

Here is the aspects they looked at to do the migrations from AutoCAD to BricsCAD:

And here is what happened:

 

While much of AutoCAD and BricsCAD is the same, there are improvements in how BricsCAD handles things:

• Quad cursor (context-sensitive commands at the cursor)
• Drawing Explorer (single dialog box that handles all named entities, such as text styles and section styles)
• Settings (single dialog box that handles all variables, with an interactive search)
• CUI (streamlined customization)

BricsCAD Platinum

We've finished our morning tea break, and hearing from Damien about how the new style of MCAD software is better than the old-style that needs a history to understand the 3D model -- still used by Pro/Engineer, Solidworks, and Inventor. It gets worse when trying to move a model from one system to another, in that all intelligence is lost.

New MCAD systems, like BricsCAD Platinum and Onshape, don't use a history tree, and so an add intelligence to imported models using the variational solver.

One of the hidden features in BricsCAD Platinum is the animate function that moves a constraint through a range of values, so that you can see how changing the radius of a cylinder head or an angle changes things.

Platinum is a bit of an unfortunate name, as it used to refer to the fullest-feature version of BricsCAD. But with V19 (released last fall) Platinum is the version that has all the MCAD functions, such as 3D parameters, and is necessary for the add-ons, such BIM and Mechanical. (The BIM add-on uses 3D solid modeling.)

Tip: Enter the inspector function to get a dialog box that lists the DXF data, COM properties, and LISP details of the selected entity. The Show Modification option alerts you when an entity is changed, and then shows the changes. 

: (inspector)
Select entity:

h/t Steve Johnson

Wrap It Up

We're ending the day with Michael Smith from Hexagon, the new parent of Bricsys. Intergraph is now 50 years old, albeit under the name of Hexagon PPM. "Little did I know as a small boy enchanted by the [NASA] rocket program, that one day I would be working for a company involved in it [guidance software]." They figured out how to send the telemetry (the rocket's position) data to screens in realtime -- instead of plotting on paper. 

Intergraph introduced its first plant design software in 1978, and so is mostly known for this software. Their first 3D software was InterAct and InterPro in 1983. Even though Intergraph retired PDS (Plant Design System) 10 years ago, many firms continue to use it today -- but the software today is database-based and is known as SmartPlant 3D for mega projects ($20 billion). Most projects, however, are between $5 million and $20 million, so Intergraph acquired CADworx from Coade, which ran on AutoCAD and now on BricsCAD.  Simulate the plant before constructing.

What was exciting for Hexagon is that there was a better platform out there than AutoCAD. Twenty products were evaluated, and then it turned out -- "undeniable" -- that Bricsys would be the choice. 

Output (point clouds) from Leica laser scanning can be opened in BricsCAD, and then processed by CADworx. 

The next generation of DWG is AI (artificial intelligence) and ML (machine learning), says Mr Smith. "We see Bricsys as the innovator of DWG products," especially in BIM. Bricsys has its own head of R&D and AI. But AI must be reliable. 

Growth of Hexagon is driven by population growth, whether desalination plants or semi-conductor manufacturing. "Using all-in-one DWG to get our work done, instead of a mishmash of products. We don't leave the DWG workflow."

Hexagon thinks subscriptions are bad business, because it alienates customers; it's only there to satisfy shareholders in the short term. Hexagon offers subscriptions, but considers permanent licenses the way to go.

"You can rest assured we [Hexagon] are backing Bricsys all the way."

http://www.bricsys.com

(Disclaimer: ABC provided me with airfare and some nights hotel)

 

In our brave new world, our cell phone number is the new SIN

Our IMEI is your SSN

 

When governments rolled out social security numbers in the 1960s, privacy activists warned it would allow bureaucrats to learn everything about us. (SSN in USA, SIN in Canada.) End-times enthusiasts warned that this was the 666-like "mark of the beast," without which, the Book of Revelations apparently predicted, no one would be able to buy and sell -- buy, like food, and sell, like hold a job.

With sufficient government oversight, SIN numbers are now required only for financial transactions, such as holding a bank account and doing our taxes. Laws prohibit unnecessary use, such as by rental landlords and grocery store points programs.

Which is a problem for pan-national agencies like Facebook, who want to track us everywhere. A SIN is good only in one country and is illegal for them to use, in any case. What in the last decade has steadily replaced the SIN as a world-wide identity number? Our cell phone numbers (h/t Dare Obasanjo). 

While many sites suggest (or require) that we enter our email address as our uid [user identification], the cell phone number is even better at identifying who we are, what we do, and where we go.  The IMEI-as-SIN problem lept onto the front pages after Facebook screwed us over our privacy, again. (IMEI is the unique serial-style number assigned to every cell phone ever manufactured.) I think Facebook is averaging an oopsie, what, one every six weeks now?

Two-factor authentication (2FA) is a better way to keep the unwanted out of your accounts. The first factor is that you give the Web site a password; the second factor is to provide them with your cell phone number so that they can text you a query: is it really you wanting access?

2FA is better than 1FA, although it fails should someone get access to your phone, which isn't all that unlikely. Privacy Matters notes that the 2FA-failure problem get worse due to cell phone number recycling.

The solution is to have a second set of email addresses and phone numbers for 2FA use. It is easy to have burner email addresses because they are free, but it there is a cost to owning a burner-style phone with an active number. Here in Canada, the cheapest plan is $100 a year. Subrahmanyam Kvj suggests tech companies hostile to Facebook should hand out free numbers, such as from Google Voice.

Nevertheless, we can count on Facebook to turn our (somewhat private) cell phone numbers into advertising beacons. Once you provide your phone number to Facebook for 2FA purposes, advertisers have access to it within two week (h/t Gizmodo). Once you realize your mistake in giving Facebook your golden keys accidentally, TechCrunch found that Facebook does not permit you to completely hide it from friends and non-friends alike.

In its traditionally robot-like manner, Facebook says it's not sorry: “We appreciate the feedback we’ve received about these settings and will take it into account.”

Even when you avoid giving the mothership your phone number, Facebook gets its Instagram subsidiary to innocuously ask, "Hey, by the way, would this happen to be your phone number?" And then you find yourself handing out the same phone number to your car repair place and the electrician, all of whom may or may not be feeding the info back to Facebook.

As Facebook becomes ever more frantic at undermining our personal lives, I fully expect them to access the motherload of all cell phone numbers, WhatsApp. So far, they haven't, but only due to technical problems, not moral ones.

Antonio Garca Martnez says, "It's not just bad, it's dumb. The fraction of users that have 2FA enabled must be small, so the usage gain is minimal, while the PR risk is huge. Dumb trade-off. Assuming it wasn't just: team A writes 2FA #s to database; team B, 'Oh lookie here, new data to use!'"

Ryan Ford summarizes what happens with Facebook:  “Give us a number to secure your account.”

Okay, here you go. “Cool. So we're going to use this for ads and make everybody able to look you up with it too. Also security, I guess.”

No, that's not what you said. “Sorry can't hear you la la la la la.”

 

Archive: PTC introduces live FEA from Ansys

Creo Simulation Live

 

Last year, ANSYS released Discovery Live, a real-time FEA analysis program. Last fall, PTC announced it would incorporate the software in their Creo CAD program. In February, it was released as an add-on to Creo, called Creo Simulation Live. PTC and ANSYS held a Webcast to describe how it works. Here are my notes from the event:

- - -

Taking in this morning's Webcast on ANSYS integrating its simulation and analysis software into Creo CAD software from PTC, starting with the real-time Discovery Live. Over 2,000 are listening in on the Webcast.

If you thought Dassault Systemes was leading the new Industrial Renaissance, it turns out PTC is leading the new Design Renaissance. Also, did you know over 2,000 are listening in on the Webcast?

Over 2,000 are listening in on the Webcast.

Some 50 years ago, ANSYS brought the first structural solver to the market; since then they have been working on simulating every physical process. As well, they are trying to expand the number of people who can use their software from just a small group of specialists. "It is rocket science, after all."

Simulation is the last technology that needs democratization, says ANSYS -- and repeating a line Autodesk used at one time. (Some would argue that simulation is too important to leave for anyone to run.) A $500 graphics card today has more compute power than a Top-10 supercomputer in 2005, and that is the technology ANSYS uses in Discovery Live, its real-time FEA software.

"We sped it up by 1000%", says ANSYS, speaking of the analysis speed of Discovery Live, which uses the GPU, not the cloud; in addition, they gave it a simple user interface: "Simulation being used by every engineer." The next gen of engineers will say, "Of course" and take realtime FEA for granted.

The manufacturer of giant LED billboards describes how real-time FEA saves weeks in back and forth between structural engineers and the analysis team. "It's going to be a powerful product, once we introduce it throughout the organization." It allows engineers to play with what-ifs.

Using Creo Simulation Live to see if the I-beam used for static billboard hangers can also be used for a new design that rotates the billboard. In this case, a slightly beefier I-beam was needed.

Now we are getting more demos of real-time analysis by PTC in Creo Simulation Live, five of them in a few minutes. Probably the main benefit is that the model does not need to be prepared for FEA (meshing, cleaning up, translation), as is currently normal.

As I see it, the next step is for the software to adjust the model to eliminate the red zones automatically (areas where the danger of breakage is greatest). Right now, the engineer has to manually make the changes, do another FEA, make another change, do another FEA... 

In some cases, "real-time" analysis takes a few seconds to calculate for a complex model like the one shown below, but still it is fast.

Disappointing that PTC did not discuss its future plans for integrating more of ANSYS software into Creo, as the company's ceo has already stated. Also, no Q&A session was allowed.

https://www.ptc.com/en/products/cad/creo/simulation-live

 

Archive: Graitec vs Autodesk

The Insurance Policy

 

Last summer, Graitec Group released AdvanceCAD, an AutoCAD workalike. although I did not hear about it until another editor learned about it during Autodesk University. Here is an announcement from June:

Like other large software companies that sell specialized applications for CAD verticals, Graitec depends on AutoCAD to run their software. But over the decades, Autodesk undertook undesirable tactics like cutting dependent vendors from its API program (as happened to Cyco Automation) and switched to subscription-only licensing, which is at odds with developers whose policy is to provide permanent licensing (such as Hexagon). Or maybe the developers want to be more competitive in the marketplace by reducing the cost of licensing fees (Autodesk w.r.t. ACIS).

And so it comes as no surprise that large third-party developers think about underwriting an insurance policy on themselves -- as DCA Engineering did in the past -- as now Graitec appears to have. The insurance policy works like this:

If Autodesk were to cut us off at the knees, we will put on our AutoCAD-DWG-API prosthetics.

Why Insurance Policies Are Needed

I downloaded the AdvanceCAD software and found that it is based on IntelliCAD, no surprise.

Why did Graitec customize IntelliCAD for itself? The opinion of one insider is that maybe if Autodesk were to pay its dealers less to do the same amount of work, that would be perhaps a reason to bolt? Graitec is an Autodesk Platinum Partner, developer, and training center with 50,000 customers.

But now the link to the download is gone (h/t MD). No surprise, given that it probably shouldn't have gone up in the first place. An industry insider relates that Autodesk told Graitec to deep-six the AutoCAD clone.

(While the link from the main page to the AdvanceCAD 2019 download is removed, the download files are still available on one of Graitec's sister sites. If you downloaded it before, you can return there. I'm not saying any more than that.)

(Screen grab from video by Graitec Italia
at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SmTx0TI6dj4&t=2s)

 

Why the Insurance Policy Was Announced

It is interesting to me that Graitec revealed the existence of AdvanceCAD in the first place. Might it not have made more sense to keep it a skunkworks project, as DCA Engineering did? Well, keeping the original AutoCAD replacement a secret didn't turn out so well, as the messy history of IntelliCAD's birthing relates. In my opinion, two factors are at play.

Graitec saw how three years ago Hexagon ($4 billion in sales) worked with Bricsys to port CADWorx to BricsCAD, and then last fall bought the company outright to replace AutoCAD. CADWorx users can keep on using AutoCAD, but the next release of CADWorx will include a copy of BricsCAD to save customers $1,575 annually.  

The other factor is that Graitec is sending a message. Graitec is letting Autodesk know that it has a contingency plan in place, should Autodesk pull a Cyco on Graitec:

• "Don't mess with us."
• "No, you don't mess with us."

You can pick which side is saying which line.

 

This is what it's like using a $30 smartwatch

100 calories an hour

 

After Apple taught manufacturers in China how to design and build smart watches, the market over there became flooded with sub-$100 models. During Black Friday weekend, Umidigi offered their new smartwatch for US$30, instead of US$50 -- with choice of rubber or metal mesh strap. Apple charges $100 for its metal strap alone, so this was a deal!

I wanted to see what the very latest in smartwatch could offer me, albeit cheap. This would not be my first, but my fourth. My first was Sony's original one came out in 2012 and barely worked. A couple years later, and Autodesk handed out Nike's version to the media as their thank-you gift for coming to Autodesk University.

The Nike recorded steps and calories burnt. The rubberized band irritated my wrist. But worse,it became useless, after I determined I burned 100 calories an hour and walked 6,000 - 8,000 steps a day. It gave me the same report every day. And then Nike cut support for it.

I next bought the Pebble, which was space age in comparison, except for the monochrome screen. The battery lasted 5-6 days, it reported alerts from my phone, it reported alerts from my phone, it reported alerts from my.... After a year, I got rid of it, and then Pebble cut support for it.

So I blew the 30 bucks on a color model that was brand new. Could a smartwatch finally prove useful?

It took two months to arrive. I suspect it had not yet been manufactured when I ordered it. But at least it arrived.I don't like big watches, and so I was pleased the Umidigi was not much bigger than my Citizen Eco-Drive watch I've worn for 19 years now. The tiny Umidigi instruction booklet was written in legible English, but still puzzled me. 

After touching here and there, I realized it had one touch-sensitive spot (at the bottom of the face) and supported two touch motions:

1. Swipe right - to move rightwards through functions and settings (you cannot move back, ie leftwards)
2. Long tap - to select a function or setting (going back a level usually does not work)

It measures steps, calories burned, activities (not sure that that means), and sleep time. It had the traditional green laser underneath for measuring heart rate -- which I found to be accurate. It can read messages from the phone, control the phone's media player, and the camera's shutter. It communicates with the phone through Bluetooth.

There is a separate app to download to my Android phone, which I downloaded, got frightened at all the permissions it wanted, and uninstalled it.

It comes with only three awful gaudy digital faces, no analog ones, because while the watch might be round, the display is square. The only customization it offers is to select a photo from my phone as the wallpaper on the watch.

Remarkably, the watch's battery lasts a week or longer. One reason is that it has just one radio (Bluetooth), where as one-day watches like those from Apple have lots of radios that burn through the power, like GPS, cell phone, WiFi, and Bluetooth.

There is one more reason why the battery lasts so long. It's hard to turn on the display, so it's off most of the time, even when I want it on.

Speaking of battery, attaching the charging cable is a challenge. Like with other watches, the cable attaches with a magnet. But the charging port is next to where the strap attaches, a tight location. So it invariably snaps to the metal strap, instead of the watch's body.

Anyhow, this brand-new, hot off the assembly line watch told me what that Nike strap told me years ago: I burn 100 calories an hour and I walk 6000-8000 steps a day -- not that useful, so after a week I took it off, and added it to my collection of watches.

 

 

 

Archive: Visualizing Trans-humanism Differently

Mormon Transhumanism

 

While  reviewing Charles Simon's book 'Will Computers Revolt' in the December issue of upFront.eZine, I conducted research on the topic of The Singularity. This is that moment when computer are smarter than us, and so it could make sense to transfer the contents of our brain to a computer. When paired with a robot, we could perhaps live forever -- or so goes the theory.

For some atheists, The Singularity is an article of faith, because they are not allowed to believe in any kind of afterlife. People who believe religions are valid have no such problem: they are pretty much uniform in their thinking. First you die, then you gain eternal life in some blissful state -- although some religions, like Hinduism, don't guarantee nirvana as much as other religions do.

So it was pretty interesting for me when I came across an article in Medium about religions trans-humanists. These would be people who want to gain eternal life before they die -- while they are still alive. 

Meet the Mormon Transhumanists Seeking Salvation in the Singularity describes a group of about 1,000 Mormon trans-humanists who wonder whether they could become like God through technology and live forever now. (The article is written by a former Mormon missionary.) A now-controversial doctrine of Mormonism is that God was once man, and so man can become like God. These folks wonder if they can shortcut the process. Interesting: while trans-humanism uses technology to enhance human capabilities, the humanism part rejects religion.

So that got me to thinking. Imagine a future when, following The Singularity, trans-humanist atheists have their doors knocked on by trans-humanist Mormon missionaries, like forever.

I figure fantastical goals like The Singularity and flying to Mars are ways for people who don't like other people to avoid those other people, and then live as robots or on Mars until the people they don't like die off. Or something.

But then I mix that in with the chance that the people you don't like also becoming robots and living forever, or landing on Mars with you, and so instead of arriving in the heaven of your design, you end up in the hell of your making. That'd be annoying.

(Image source from Willzhu of the Mars Home Planet 3D Modeling Challenge)

 

 

 

Alexander Yampolsky: A Third-generation 2D Editor

Guest editorial by Alexander Yampolsky

 

It is strange, there is much talk about digitalization, but nothing about how does it end? How do big data, virtual reality, generative design finish? As a rule, they result in the decision that a person takes using a model built in his head.

Apparently, creating models in a human head is not considered as a big problem, otherwise building universities would have a special course introducing students into the basics of semiotics and linguistics. What will it take? Approximately, learning languages at schools achieves the similar result - elimination of illiteracy. Future constructors will understand that there are no other tools allowing reach the foreign brain other than linguistic ones and will learn to express their thoughts in professional language of constructors - in drawing language.

 

Interaction between models

Let keep in mind three types of models.Subjective models are models in the human head.Digital models are models in computer memory.Linguistic models - notional drawings (including texts) on any flat surface – are transitional bridges between subjective and digital models.Consider options for models interaction.

Person to Person. The owner of a subjective model creates a linguistic model as an integral, structured, multi-page document - a set of drawings. This process may be compared to writing software using a high-level language. The main purpose of this software is to create and spread understanding. To understand, how a complex object is arranged, it is sequentially split into simple blocks. The upper splitting levels are intended for a general understanding; the lower ones are for the detailed one. It is clear that this is not a literal split like engine dismantling at a car repair shop. This is a conceptual analysis using step-by-step object detailing method.

The recipient interprets (compiles) the linguistic model as a whole. During compilation, the reverse process takes place - the object conceptual synthesis. As a result, an understanding - a subjective model in the recipient mind - emerges.

Thus, drawings by their nature are an algorithm for constructing a subjective model, i.e. algorithm of understanding.

Person to Computer. The owner of a subjective model sequentially enters commands as separate linguistic sentences using the command line, menu or toolbar. The computer interprets each command at the time of its entry. As it is known, interpreter-programs operate according to this algorithm. As a result, a digital model is formed in the computer memory.

The main purpose of the digital model is to verify the subjective model, perform digital experiments, and generate new data.

Computer to Person. Similarly to the option "a person to a person", the computer should automatically generate a drawing set. The problem is that this task is absolutely irrealistic.

The computer cannot independently choose an understanding strategy, assign steps of detailing, and determine the abstraction degree at each step.

There are attempts to solve the problem by embedding linguistic model elements (views being stored, annotations, drawings, etc.) into a digital model. The result is a hybrid model, or BIM-model - a kind of digital models.

It is believed that a hybrid model can be used as a unified environment, a reliable support for making the right decisions by all construction participants. For the design phase, this is a new idea, a new application area for digital modeling. Let check feasibility of this idea for a real episode.

A model (digital twin) of a one-storey industrial building was created (see Fig. 1). Checks were carried out, clashes were eliminated, and specifications were calculated.

Fig. 1. An industrial building model

 

The next step is an expert meeting to assess the project quality. It is a form of collaboration which should be based on the data got from the model according to the new technology.Expert opinions were different.Those, for whom the presented model was the only source of truth, assessed the project as excellent. However, some experts arrived at another conclusion - an absolutely amateurish project. All manipulations with its data were a waste of time.

What is the reason that the “source of truth” has turned out into a source of false?

In my opinion, the reason is the dubious worth of the collaboration based on a single model. Because of a defective model, collaboration on its basis leads to a dismal result.

Being inside the model, it is impossible to test its correctness. But having left the digital reservation, we will enter the world of normative documents, reference books, textbooks, and scientific articles. It turns out that collaboration in this world is based only on the knowledge (concepts) while the talk is carried out using only the language of drawings. The skill to play with toy blocks is not enough; it is necessary to “write” and “read.”

The ability to “write” allows a person to abstract his/her understanding of the building structure to the conceptual level - simple schemes. For the building shown in Fig. 1 the ordinary frame scheme will look like the one shown in Fig. 2.

Fig. 2. An ordinary frame scheme (original design solution)

 

The ability to “read” allows making a realistic image of an object based on simple schemes (like ones shown in Fig. 3).

Fig. 3. An ordinary frame scheme (recommendation from designer's handbook)

 

Without such schemes (Fig. 2 and Fig. 3), it is impossible to make the right design solution.

Designing is collecting of the knowledge acquired in different ways from different sources. Knowledge, as we know, is abstract and fragmentary. Each new knowledge may devaluate (sometimes, in an unobvious way) the previous one due to the incompatibility problem. To eliminate this issue at the final design stage, a single digital model of building should be made and verified.

If conceptual design solutions are found and properly formalized, creation a single model on their basis does not require high qualification and can be automated. This issue is already being solved.

Computer to Computer. Everything is simple here. If two models can interact with each other without human intervention, they may be considered as a distributed single model. With regard to a gradual decrease of the human role and responsibility in the designing process, I do not see such a trend. As 40 years ago, "disclaimers" is a mandatory paragraph of any license agreement for the software purchase.

 

Extracting drawings from a hybrid model

BIM software developers promise to automatically receive drawings of excellent quality. The following statement would be more realistic: the higher automation degree of obtaining drawings, the lower their quality. Fig. 4 illustrates the technology drawing obtained from the hybrid model.

Fig. 4. A drawing extracted from a hybrid model

 

It is an overloaded ("dirty"), hard-to-perceived drawing resulting from too textual copying of the model. It is not clear, for whom this drawing is intended, and for what purpose.

For example, a designer needs to obtain from a technologist a formalized assignment, which indicates loads and apertures for the equipment transportation. Instead of Fig. 4, I would prefer to obtain something similar to the one shown in Fig. 5.

Fig. 5. A technical assignment from technologist

 

Difference between a linguistic model and a digital one

Any tool other than its primary purpose has also to “teach” a user how to work properly. This means that the tool should be based on an ideology, which dictates the correct way of using and developing this tool.

A drawing board was the first generation of 2D editors.

Everything was perfect with the drawing board ideology. It took into account specificity of visual perception, understood indispensability of the paper carrier, set the clarity and definiteness of the intention above the graphical accuracy. In other words, the drawing board targeted a designer to create just drawings - linguistic models.

"Autocad" was the second generation of 2D editors. The history of this generation is an example of how an erroneous ideology leads a tool into a deadlock. Wrong orientation, misunderstanding of the drawing essence was the main mistake. Instead of a tool intended for the linguistic presentation of the knowledge, "autocad" gradually turned into a digital modeling tool, first in 2D and then in 3D. As a result, it lost face in a foreign field and is considered now as an anachronism, which exists only due to habit of using it.

What did the second generation editor get and what did he refuse?

Fig. 6 illustrates a digital model of a ship at an anchorage, Fig. 7 – linguistic model of the same ship. Let try to find differences.

Fig. 6. Digital model of a ship at an anchorage

 

Fig. 7. Linguistic model of a ship

 

1. The highest accuracy is the motto of a digital model. Correspondingly, objects in Fig. 6 are shown with a plenty of details. (Objects in Fig. 7 are shown notionally.)

2. When measuring the distance from the sea floor to water surface using a “ruler” in the digital model, we get the value 20. It is possible to extract additional parameters directly from the model, such as horizontal projection of the anchor chain.

All measurements are meaningless in the linguistic model since they will give unpredictable results. It is possible only to read what is written in it, in particular, that the anchoring depth is 20 m.

3. The filled polygon in a digital model (for example, an anchor) can turn out to be a set of merged lines.

In the linguistic model the polygon will remain a polygon when any approaching. Details of the anchor design may be viewed on a separate sheet depicting the anchor in a large scale.

4. If the image in Fig. 6 is a view of a three-dimensional model, any change in it will automatically result in changes in Fig. 6.

The linguistic model is completely independent of external changes. It does not reflect something; it declares what should be. Fig. 7 is a fragmentary knowledge, concept, standard solution of anchorage. No doubt, concepts should be linked to each other, but this goal is not achieved automatically. Any change in the concept may be made only after a profound analysis of the causes and consequences for the proposed change.

At first glance, an accurate “data-rich” digital model is much better than a linguistic one. However, everything has a downside.

1. You have to pay for the accuracy. We simply correct the value 20 to the desired one in the linguistic model when the anchorage depth increases; and this ends the editing.

In the digital model, it is necessary to raise the sea level, shift the ship, move the anchor, and edit the chain sagging curve.

2. Data abundance of digital models (for example, of buildings) ends up at the level of rebars, embedded parts, bolted and welded joints.

Linguistic models do not have boundaries. The explanation is simple. Designer's handbooks, typical projects, national standards are usual linguistic models; references to them are a natural continuation of a drawing. If desired, we can trace the structure of the object (for example, the anchor in Fig. 7) up to the crystal lattice of the steel used for object producing.

3. It is easy to determine in linguistic models, what the author of the model ensures exactly and is responsible for.

In a digital model, the boundaries of responsibility are not so clear. We are proposed to recover data from the model by ourselves, for example, using measurements. Those persons, who offer doing so, seem to be confident that:

• The user is so proficient in the modeling tool, as the author of the model;
• Aa measurement operation is so simple and clear that it is impossible to make a mistake when performing it;
• The user will understand himself/herself, which elements of the model may be measured, and which ones should not be measured since the accuracy of their modeling is not guaranteed;
• And so on.

4. Fig. 6 is a view of the model and, at the same time, imitates a drawing explaining the concept of anchorage. Such duality is dangerous. Automatic changes are required for the view, but they are not allowed for the concept.The structures of the digital model (assemblies, sub-assemblies, components) and design documentation (sections, sheets, schemes on sheets) are interconnected by the “many-to-many” relationship. One sheet of the documentation can describe many elements in a digital model, and one element of the model may be described in many sheets. The puzzling task to harmonize two structures is assigned to a user. Hypercomplexity, confusion and substitution of notions are inherent for hybrid models, and it is so-called a systemic propensity for errors. It was necessary to rely on hybridization because of despair, since drawings did not want to "die". Apparently, the variant of automatically model creation using drawings was not considered.

Conclusion

I foresee the question: where is the new editor description?

All the issues covered above are an attempt to clarify the common situation, to identify fundamental problems.

In my view, the principal task is to draw a clear boundary between digital and linguistic models. It is also necessary to ensure problem-free transition of this boundary at any place, at any moment in time. I see solution in the wide use of machine interpretation of drawings.

From the software engineering viewpoint, drawings are the universal independent format for exchanging information, the same as IFC, for example.

IFC language is more formalized but, as a result, it is clear only to programmers. The language of drawings includes pictures; it is less formalized and, as a result, is clear to any engineer.

As you can see, the task is to update the language of drawings, to add the missing feature - machine interpretability with simultaneous preserving its main advantage – human perception.

This is the main challenge of the next, third-generation of 2D editors.

 

Why my mother-in-law's new laptop is a desktop

So much cheaper

 

My mother-in-law's laptop was getting so slow that even she was complaining about it. It's a Toshiba I got for her from Staples many years ago; it still runs Vista.

As I thought about how to replace it, the high cost of decent laptops put me off. Browsing black Friday sales I came across an offer for a reconditioned mini desktop. That was it! I realized that she never moves her laptop from the desk in her office, so a desktop would (1) save her lots of money and (2) be more powerful.

A Dell, it had excellent specs, such as a 2.8GHz dual-core CPU, 4GB RAM, and Windows 10 -- all for only the equivalent of US$105, plus $4 for shipping. (How can a company ship a heavy desktop computer for only $4 in Canada?) It's like paying for a license of Windows 10 and getting the computer free.

Monitor Connection. When it arrived, I found it included the keyboard and mouse, but no monitor. No problem, as I have several spare LCD monitors laying around. But this desktop, being older, didn't have an HDMI connector: just full-size DisplayPort and VGA. I ordered a DisplayPort-HDMI adapter from eBay, but in the meantime hooked up the monitor using a spare VGA cable.

Huh. The monitor was just fine using "just" VGA (a spec invented by IBM in 1987), and so when the $6 adapter arrived a few days later I set it aside. Maybe it'll come in useful some other time.

BTW, the largest monitor on a laptop is 17", but by using a separate monitor I can go 21", 23", whatever.

Starting up the computer, it then took hours to install Windows 10 updates. Even now, weeks later, there are updates that aren't updating. Oh well.

More RAM. But it did feel sluggish, so I went about fixing that. I happened to have two full-size RAM modules laying around that I had thought of throwing out; until this computer came along, I didn't think I would need the two anymore.

This being a business-class Dell computer, it opens with no tools. As I looked about the innards, I found the DVD drive was held in place with a couple of dabs of silicone. Oh, dear. On the better news side, I found that there was room on the motherboard for two more RAM modules; I checked the notches on them, and they fit! So, a free upgrade from 4GB RAM to 8GB RAM.

It was a bit disconcerting to find a jumper bouncing about inside the cabinet. I wonder where it came from. Its absence from the motherboard did not seem detrimental to the operation of the computer.

Switching Drives. The computer still felt sluggish, taking forever to start up. Fortunately, I had a spare SSD (solid state drive). Job 1 was to remove the existing hard drive -- not so easy, as it was kind of jammed into the mounting pins and sheet metal. I wonder if a slow, small hard drive has been quickly jammed in by the store that sold me the computer.

Drive Cloning. To clone the existing drive to the new one, I have an Inateck drive cloner hardware. Using it is easy but slow:

1. Insert the source drive in the A slot
2. Insert the destination drive in the B slot
3. Plug in the power
4. Hold down the Clone button for exactly 3 seconds (and not too much longer)
5. Let go, and then immediately press the Clone button briefly a second time
6. The blue clone LED lights up, and then progress LEDs show the slow progress

It took nearly an hour to clone one drive to the other. Note that this is hardware cloning, and so there are these limitations:

• The destination drive has to be as big or bigger than the source. My destination was 240GB, the source 160GB
• The clone is made 1:1, so a bigger destination drive loses any left over space; in my case, this was 80GB. Given that this computer is being used by my mother-in-law, large disk storage is unnecessary

Never mind, When the job was complete, I connected the SSD to the computer's power and data cables, and then wraped in a bit of cardboard. SSDs don't need to be mounted like HDDs, as they have no moving parts, but the SSD's metal body might short out something on the motherboard, so the cardboard acts as an insulator.

Booting up the computer, the BIOS noticed a new drive, and then booted into Windows 10 in a much faster 25 seconds.

So, now my mother-in-law has a speedy "new" computer that cost me nothing to upgrade, and that cost her just over $100.

 

Tips: What to do when your color prints turn out horrible

Ink and paper

 

I was on the most crucial of deadlines: getting pictures printed for an upcoming wedding reception. They have to be perfect. The bride-to-be stipulated 4x6" prints, white border, while the groom-to-be noted that Staples does a better job than London Drugs.

As the number of pictures was not that large, I started printing them on my HP photoprinter. I have counted on HP inkjet photo printers for more than a decade to output prints reliably. I buy whatever model has the second tray for 4x6 paper.

But this time, the output was awful. Shady areas in prints were muddy, often brownish, instead of their true colors. 

Being short on time, I put the images on a spare USB drive and went to the closest store that did in-store printing. I waited in Wal-mart for the line-up to let me get to my turn at the machine. Waste of time, as Wal-mart does not do 4x6 prints with borders; oddly enough, only 6x6" prints can be made with borders.

Back home, I figured I'd upload them to Staples.ca. But their uploading software didn't work with Opera. So I switched to Chrome. Also didn't work. 

After puzzling over this for a time, I switched from my desktop computer (running Windows 7) to a laptop running Windows 10. This time, the uploading software worked. Bonus! And Staples does 4x6 prints with borders. Double bonus! And they are  half the price of Wal-Mart (19c vs 38c). Triple bonus!

A day went by, and no email from Staples saying my prints were ready. Then I read their fine print at the bottom of the ordering page: they promise to get the work done within 7 business days. Yuck! [Update: it took Staples two weeks to complete the prints, well after the wedding day.]

So I tried to upload the image files to Walmart.ca but that also didn't do prints with borders. I tried Londondrugs.ca, same problem.

So, back to my printer. Perhaps it was the paper, I reasoned. The 4x6 paper had been on the shelf for several years. I tried different brands, different paper stocks. If there was an improvement, it was too minor to be appropriate for a wedding reception.

After making so many trial prints, the printer announced that the black cartridge was running low on ink. I replaced it, and then the images printed perfectly. This irritated me, as the printer had waited too long to warn me of the problem.

Bad Prints Reason #1: Muddy shadow areas result from the black ink cartridge being low, and so isn't squirting sufficient ink.

So I happily began printing en masse, but after a while a print came out looking mostly magenta (pink). This time around, it was the color cartridge that was too low on some of its three colors.

Bad Prints Reason #2: Wrong colors result from the color cartridge running out of one of its colors sooner than the other colors.

I went to the closest store to get more cartridges, but Wal-mart only stocked #63 and #65, not the #64 that I needed.

So off to the other side of town to Staples. I decided to buy two of the black and two of the color, so that I would not run out, as the deadline got closer. Staples had just one of the black, but they have a policy of a $10 discount if they fail to have any ink cartridge in stock. 

Nice, but then it took three employees to figure out how to make the computerized cash register give me the $10 discount. Nevertheless, the bill for three cartridges came to $139. 

Back at home, I finished the print job. As my wife looked through the stack, she asked why these two prints looked odd. I immediately realized why: two sheets of paper were upside down in the paper tray, so the printer printed on the back. Worse, the ink does not dry, and so the wet ink got onto the backs of one other picture, as well as on our hands. 

Bad Prints Reason #3: Printing on the wrong side of photo paper result in messy ink, because the back lacks the clay on the front that absorbs ink.

After hearing my story, the bride-to-be said, "They didn't have to have borders, if that would have made things easier."

Now it's been three days, and still no word from Staples. At least the print order cost so little I can afford to throw away whatever prints they finally let me have.

 

Archive: Which corporation should own the Web?

Slaves to anarchy

 

In the beginning...

The Internet was designed for anarchy. It bypassed countries. Corporations were ignorant of it. Anyone with a modem could visit a telescope in Italy without buying an airplane ticket or look at dirty pictures without having to trudge to the nearby corner store.

(I still have Wired magazine issue #2, which featured masked anarchists on the cover, while inside editors mocked MacDonalds for being willfully clueless that some little guy had snatched up the macdonalds.com domain.)

With Web 2.0, the Internet became corporatized. Wired magazine, too. Those who once sang praises to the obvious goodness of The Network Effect today find themselves stumbling over stanzas 3 and 4.

2018 will mark the year Google and Facebook flipped from benign providers of information and communities to becoming Microsoft version 2.0, Evil Incarnate. Every week -- every week! -- new scandals splay across the the pages of Tech-meme as the technorati tweet their collectivist outrage over Yet Another Privacy Invasion. It wasn't supposed to have become like this.

So, it's easy to muse what-if. Like this thought from earlier in the week:

Google isn’t the company that we should have handed the Web over to.

True. But any other company that ended up owning the Web becomes would have become just as envious of our privacy; c.f. Facebook.

The thing is that young people don't know that Microsoft in the 1990s was headed the same way with its break-the-Web Internet Explorer browser and accompanying IIS server software. In the long run, the corporation's attempt to put the Internet under its heel failed, as incompatibilities introduced by Microsoft turned around and bit it. Be thankful for the folks behind Firefox who pluckily overcame the convicted monopolist. 

During that time when it still thought it could control the Internet, Microsoft even had the first version of SSO (single sign-on) for its Web properties. Oh, the ruckus, the horror, the robe-tearing the day Microsoft announced it. It backed off. With SSO, Microsoft could have conceivably collected so much more data about each one of us.

Goggle learned from that experience, and so slid SSO in silently, incrementally, and efficiently. More recently, it attempted the same tactic with Project Dragonfly, which it had been working on since 2008, it turns out. Project Dragonfly, Google's attempt to slide into the censor-rich Chinese search market of potentially 800 million Internet users, was exposed from inside. "Exposed," because the CEO had earlier proclaimed it was morally wrong for Google to work with a brutal dictatorship, and some of his employees had believed him.

In any firm, a tiny portion of employees are sufficiently horrified by corporate policy to speak up/whine. Normally, they go unheard. Now that Google has nearly 100,000 employees, it suffers/benefits from that tiny portion achieving a voice loud enough to effect change. Doubly so, as Google find its home in the woke San Francisco area. 

'Course what the "Is Google wrong for the Web" article is referring to is other Google employees making slight changes to YouTube code forcing Microsoft's Edge browser to run slow. Very slowly. This occurred after Microsoft trumpeted that Edge was faster than Chrome. It was Grade 8 boys letting off a stinkbomb in the Grade 12 jock change rooms.

Thinking back to when those of us who refused to use Microsoft software, while our non-IE browsers stumbled over Web pages, we smirk.  The Googlers paid back Microsoft for fiddling with Web code so that only its IE browser could work correctly. But now Microsoft has given up on its own Web engine for Edge, and will switch to the Chrome engine. With Microsoft making most of its income from the corporate sector, building a different Web browser is no longer the way to win sales. 

So Google racks up another win. But by winning, it loses. Facebook, too:

"Back in the day you had the city, with a million homes and secrets, each protected by its own lock," says Richard Fernandez. "To burgle the city you had to pick a million locks. Now the data is behind a server with one ginormous lock. You only have to burgle one lock. No wait, they'll sell it to you."

 

 

Archive: 'State of the PLM Economy' webinar

Growth, growth, growth

 

Taking in CIMdata PLMNews' Webinar "The State of the PLM Economy" this morning with Stan Przybylinski.

Stan reminding us that PLM is different for different industries. Companies that make automobiles don't care about the problems toothpaste makers face. Hexagon AB is of greater interest now that they no longer only make measuring devices. They have a strong position on the shop floor, says Mr Przybylinski.

Siemens PLM working on "generative engineering": generative design that will eventually be applied to more than just single parts, but to entire sub-systems in mechanical and electronic designs.
In part, this is to support all the tech they've acquired for autonomous autos.

Last year's revenues:

• Multi-discipline MCAD = $3.7 billion (like high-end @PTC_Creo )
•  Design-focused MCAD = $2.8 billion (like @Solidworks, low-end Creo)
•  CAM without CAD bundled in = $1.4 billion
•  AEC CAD = $3.6 billion

Many more billions in other areas of CAD. Where CAD vendors get their revenues from:

Big changes in IT affecting CAD:

• Changes in license models, affects revenue flows
• Cloud changing how IT is maintained
• Mobile changing types of engagement

The other big impact is the heaving (my term) fluctuation changes in currency exchange rates.

Acquisitions over the last year:

Pages 2, 3, and 4 of acquisitions. I did not know Siemens PLM had acquired Lightwork Design.

 

Q&A

Q: How is Microsoft Azure vs. AWS playing out in the PLM space?

A: The adoption of PLM on the cloud to date is still a small percentage of the overall comprehensive cPDm segment based on our market estimates. More practically, many of the leading players are partnering with AWS and Azure, and some with both.

 

Q: What is the role of cloud computing platforms like AWS in the future?

A: Most of the existing solutions are available on the cloud in some form, from hosted to single tenant to multi-tenant. Some providers have stated that the increasing availability of new services from providers like AWS is decreasing the amount of new services they need to develop in-house to provide their complete solution. Going forward, there are emerging providers that are assembling their complete solutions from services offered by the cloud service providers, e.g., FusePLM.

 

Q: As you described CAM as standalone, is the Simulation and Analysis (S&A) number standalone or included tools owned by DS, PTC, Siemens?

A: We have separate estimates for all of the Tool categories for Dassault Systèmes, PTC, and Siemens, including CAM and S&A.

 

Q: In what category do you count software for PLM collaboration?

A: Depending on the provider, it could be in either comprehensive cPDm or focused cPDm applications.

 

Q: Are you aware of any major customers of Dassault Systèmes not wanting to upgrade to V6 due to architecture changes and migration concerns?

A: Yes.

 

Q: Will you include takeaways regarding PLM in the F&B industry?

A: CIMdata does consulting in companies interested in formulation PLM, including Food and Beverage (F&B). Some of the key issues facing that space are

• Food safety, much in the news, particularly in emerging economies where they may not have many digital tools. This goes to both formulation and packaging.
• Packaging itself is a huge issue as products go more global.
• Access to global specifications for large F&B companies is a huge issue. Many companies use single instance solutions that can be hard to access from far-flung factories and value-chain partners. A minute or two delay means a lot of out-of-spec product.

Q: Do you think ANSYS is a competitive bidder to purchase PTC?

A: They could be. They are about the same size. To date, ANSYS has been more focused on the S&A [simulation and anaylsis] space and maintaining good partnerships with all of the tools players. Combining ANSYS and PTC puts more co-opetition in play, much more complex.

 

Q: Are we at or close to a tipping point for Cloud PLM to takeoff in the market? Which industries in particular are advancing quickest?

A: There are certainly more people expressing interest and more solutions available. I would point you to our cloud PLM study last year on CIMdata.com for more information. The full whitepaper may be downloaded at
https://www.cimdata.com/en/resources/complimentaryreports-research/white-papers. Non-discrete industries are moving faster. Their IP is less bulky and complex. Among the discrete it is more about supply chain and BOM, like high tech electronics than those wanting to manage engineering work in process.

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You can listen to the Webinar (following registration) at https://register.gotowebinar.com/register/7123717532016177409

And view the accompanying slide show (PDF) through https://www.cimdata.com/images/Webinars/CIMdata_Webinar_December_13_2018.pdf