WorldCAD Access

Recent patents applied for by Autodesk

USPTO After several years of being quiet on the patent front, Autodesk filed a pile in the last months of 2014. Here are the patents that Autodesk applied for in November and December 2015; they have not yet been granted: Method for semi-automatic quantity takeoff from computer aided design drawings 3D Print Adhesion Reduction During Cure Process Animatable graphics lighting analysis reporting Physical Object For Intuitive Navigation In A Three-Dimensional Space Interactively shaping terrain through composable operations Three dimensional volumetric display input and output configurations Intelligent 3D Printing Through Optimization Of 3D Print Parameters Dynamic Real-Time Slice Engine For 3D... Read more →

Eli Attia's patent vs Google - Vannevar

Alexander Bausk digs deeper into the Attia-Vennevar controversy, and finds the patent filed by Israeli architect Eli Attia. Read Mr Bausk's blog posting at writandraw.org. The patent filed in 2008 describes automated design, fabrication, and construction management. Basically, you input a CAD drawing and it figures out what parts to cut how in the shop, which are quickly assembled in the field. Now, Mr Bausk feels this is an idea and not a method -- only methods are supposed to be patentable. Mr Attia names his system "Engineered Architecture" and calls it "ea" for short. Figures from the patent application... Read more →

Recently patented by Autodesk: '973 "Click to Accept As-Built Modeling"

A method to augment an as-built model (aka project): A CAD drawing of a project is obtained, as well as a digital representation of a physical implementation of the project. A relationship is established to map the digital representation to the CAD drawing. A component of the digital representation is identified based on the relationship (e.g., and a database/catalog). Information about the identified component is transmitted to and displayed on a computer or mobile device. The idea here is to coordinate what the technician sees in the field with the drawings of the project. It is meant for brownfield plants,... Read more →

Bluebeam patents drawing compare

Bluebeam Software got patent #7,971,149 for the document comparison feature in its PDF Revu software. It does the following: Automatically scales, rotates, and aligns the selected base and revised drawings. Highlights differences with cloud annotations on a copy of the modified PDF. PDFs are synchronized; as you pan or zoom one, the other follows. Batch compare multiple revision sets. Select portions of drawings to compare. Read more →

Apple beats Dassault at patenting 3D virtual stores

One demo at SolidWorks World was Dassault demo'ing a 3D virtual store experience. I dunno DS is patenting it, but Patently Apple yesterday reported that Apple received a patent for just such an experience. Patent 7,660,749 here. Read more →

Autodesk files to patent flood filling of anti-aliased boundaries

Filed a year aog, patent application number 12/352,801 describes: A method of performing a flood fill on an image, the method comprising: determining image points to be flood filled based on the color of a seed point; and deblending this seed color from image points among the image points to be filled, where an image point is deblended based on its color and based on the seed color. From the figures attached to Autodesk's application, it appears that the company is trying to solve this problem: how do you flood fill into a boundary made of anti-aliased lines? The problem... Read more →

Apple applies to patent multi-touch viewing and moving of 3D objects

Gus Sentementes of The Baltimore Sun reports on a patent application filed by Apple last month, which explains a problem that 3D CAD users face: There is a need for electronic devices with touch screen displays that provide more transparent and intuitive user interfaces for navigating in 3D virtual spaces and manipulating 3D objects in these virtual spaces. The solution that Apple patented covers all devices, including multi-touch sensitive tablets, and involves the following manipulations by finger gestures: Simultaneously zooming and translating (moving) 3D objects. Zooming objects to a predetermined size of the screen, and then returning to the original... Read more →

What's New in Autodesk Patents

Autodesk last summer applied to patent the navigation wheel found in some of its newer software. Link to patent application More interesting is their patent application for a presumptive drafting solution: ...a relevant geometric entity is identified based on how the cursor is moved over the drawing. A presumptive drafting solution is then provided [such as object snaps] based on the identified... entity. In addition, prior drawing solutions... are obtained and compared to the... geometric attributes. Patents are hard to read, but this one seems to do the following: Select geometry by the way the cursor moves over it (selection... Read more →

Killing Software Patents Softly

The law suit against software patents grinds along. Well, it has nothing to do with software except in an inverted manner. Engineering News-Record's Melissa Traynor and Tom Sawyer report that a case involving business patents will be heard in December by the US Supreme Court. The US Patent Office rejected Bernard Bilski’s patent for a risk hedging method. The US Court of Appeals last October said that business-method patent applications must be tied to machines, or else transform one article into another. The former test required that patents produce "useful, concrete and tangible results." Traynor and Sawyer do a good... Read more →

Execs to Obama: Reform Patents, Pls.

24 tech execs, including Carl Bass of Autodesk, signed a letter asking for the American president's support on patent legislation now in the American congress, which would: Rreduce damages for patent infringement. Reduce court shopping. And other things not specified in the Reuters article. Autodesk is apparently the only CAD vendor to be a member of Coalition for Patent Fairness. Source. Read more →

Geometric Patents 3D Searching

The USPTO grants Geometric patent #7,397,473 for searching 3D models based on shapes. 3DSearchIT works like this: Prior to the search, the software generates 3D grids of the 3D models, and then computes 2D projections. The 2D projections are combined into 2D hierarchical representations, and then stored. During the search, the software determines the similarity between two 3D shapes by comparing key coefficients of corresponding 2D hierarchical representations. Want to write your own 3D search engine? You’ll need to be familiar with discrete Fourier transforms, the Harr wavelet transform, and principal component analysis. The patent lists other systems of 3D... Read more →

Do Little CAD Companies Patent?

We expect the IBMs and Autodesks of the world to generate patents, but what about the smaller CAD companies. I looked for and found a few: Alibre "Modeling three-dimensional objects on a computer system via a high bandwidth distributed network, facilitating the computing of intensive computer-aided design (CAD) tasks to take place on a series of servers." Patent number 6748419. IronCAD "...editing handles for solid shapes." Patent number 6781597. Cadkey, Keycreator, Kubotek, Datacad, Graphisoft, VectorWorks None. But some of these vendors might have patents in other countries. Other smaller CAD companies, like Bentley Systems and CoCreate/HP, have a dozen or... Read more →

RevCloud Patented

Autodesk in 2003 received a US patent on the RevCloud command's ability to draw a redline shape made of arcs. The patent describes a method of determining the arc's size by the first arc drawn while the mouse button or Shift key is depressed: the bulge spacing function comprises setting the bulge spacing for the multiple arc segments equal to the bulge spacing of a first arc segment when: * a first point of the first arc segment has been selected; * an arc defining key has been depressed and held down; and * a second point of the first... Read more →