WorldCAD Access

My Notes from Qonic Talks 2024

Opinion User interface of Qonic About 136 people watched Qonic Talks 2024, brought to us by the folks who originally brought us BricsCAD. The intent of Qonic is to create a full BIM modeler, from concept design to detail design. But, they admit, that will take time. So, Qonic is working backwards: filling in details of BIM models and viewing existing BIM designs, which are imported from IFC, Revit, and Rhino. Qonic imports classification systems from bSDD [buildingSMART Data Dictionary]; importing of properties from bSDD will be available soon. However, no IFC spaces yet. In the model shown below, the... Read more →

Dassault Unveils 15-year Plan

Opinion Bernard Charlès proposing waste be designed into new products (All images sourced from Dassault Systemes) Dassault Systems has a master plan to take them through to 2040. The plan: integrate modeling, simulation, and AI to create virtual twins on virtual universes, through data-mining of design data that’s stored on the cloud. During his keynote at the 3dExperience 2024 conference, Bernard Charlès, executive chairman of Dassault Systemes, called AI “the big elephant,” because it reinvents the way design is done. Charlès calls AI “the magic of design”; indeed, he referred repeatedly to “magic Solidworks.” To be clear, when CAD vendors... Read more →

The Germany That Can Never Go Car-Free

Opinion I'm someone who has lived in Germany for much of my life, in a manner of speaking. With all of my relatives living there, and me visiting sometimes as often as three times a year, I live the real German life during my visits -- in my relatives' guest bedrooms, at their dinner table, going about in their neighbourhoods. Until this year, the visits were almost always in the bigger and biggest cities: Berlin, Hamburg, and others where walking to the local bakery and taking transit to the nearby train station was the way of life. This is the... Read more →

This new kind of clothes dryer is... worse.

Opinion Europeans tend not to have clothes dryers, which, for us North Americans travelling for a few weeks from relative to relative makes for a frustrating wash day. We get our stuff washed, but then it can take a couple of days for the now-clean clothes to dry, depending on the location of the clothes line, often in a damp basement room -- or a hotel room. TIP: To have clothes dry more quickly, buy quick-drying shirts and pants, which are not that easy to find. Try sports clothing stores. So we were pretty excited when one of the relatives... Read more →

Autodesk Wants To Save You From Uncertainty

Opinion Autodesk CEO Andrew Anagnost presenting keynote address at Autodesk University 2023 (source of all images: Autodesk) Autodesk University’s themes of the last several years seems to be that the future is uncertain, but Autodesk will save you from the uncertainty -- if you allow it to. "Though the uncertainty we are facing is increasing, so is the technology available to us... Ignore this disruption and you risk getting left behind," warned Autodesk CEO Andrew Anagnost during his keynote address at AU 2023 [source]. The year before, during AU 2022, Autodesk wanted manufacturers to replace their existing systems with a... Read more →

Graebert's neXt 2024 Online Conference

Opinion During neXt 2024's brief keynote, company CEO Wilfried Graebert told us that his ARES DWG editor has the second largest installed base, after AutoCAD. As well, the company last year opened a new Graebert Brazil office. A new Graebert Academy offers free training in English and German at https://www.graebert.academy/. Next up: A user case study of Toa of Japan, which replaced an unknown (to me) number of AutoCAD licenses with 170 licenses of ARES to help reduce the expensive cost of licenses. Two-thirds of Toa’s civil engineering department use ARES, because it handles 2D and 3D. AI in ARES... Read more →

A second cell phone number from Hushed

Opinion I heard about Hushed through a PC World promotion, which offered a lifetime subscription for US$26. I was intrigued enough to buy it. (If you buy it through PC World, then be sure to follow the instructions on the purchase page that has your redemption code; you can't redeem it thru the Hushed Web site.) Phone Numbers In short, Hushed gives your cell phone a second phone number, without your phone company knowing about it. You can choose your number from three countries (UK, Canada, USA), and then an area code of your choosing. I selected Canada, area code... Read more →

I Went To Liveworx 23

Opinion I’ve visited PTC in Boston a number of times, but this was the first time for their annual user conference, dubbed Liveworx (originally the name of one of their software packages). This was the first in-person event since 2019, owing to the covid lockdown. One of my earlier visits was for the 2011 launch of Creo, the “new” CAD program that combined the direct editing of CoCreate (originally ME/30, Hewlett-Packard’s in-house 3D direct modeling CAD system) and the parametric editing of PTC’s own Pro/Engineer. (Creo is Latin for create.) Both programs were developed in the 1980s. The theme for... Read more →

Q&A from Graebert neXt 2023 Conference

Q&A I captured the Q&A from Graebert's neXt conference, held yesterday. You can view the replay after registering at https://www.graebert.com/next. - - - LG: If you need to simplify a BIM model to remove windows or similar, does it automatically infill wall in location or leave hollow spaces ? Cedric Desbordes: In 3D view, if you filter out the windows, you will see hollow spaces. But in the drawings, you will generate you will see walls without any hole if you selected only walls without windows in your BIM filter. Ken H: Is there some place to go to learn... Read more →

Graebert: What's neXt for CAD in DWG?

Opinion Graebert Gmbh held its annual conference today, this year online again. Here’s some of the things I learned while watching the two-hour event. - - - Graebert puts 50% of its revenues into R&D, possibly more than any other CAD vendor. Now, I think that this is possible, because most of this company's sales are to third-party vendors, who resell the software under their product names -- such as DraftSight from Dassault Systemes. This means the company has lower sales and marketing costs than others. ARES Commander runs on desktop and laptop computers, and version 2024 came out on... Read more →

Solidworks 2023

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

Finding the Ultimate Travel Keyboard

Hardware review As a roving correspondent for the CAD (computer-aided design) world, I desire the lightest device for writing and communicating with. Carrying a multi-pound laptop, power connector, and additional cables and backup devices is not pleasant. I experienced the ultimate device back in 2000, of all things. Then, I had a Palm Pilot, a clip-on modem, and a Stowaway keyboard. This keyboard was comfortable to type on, yet folded down to a size that was the same of the Palm Pilot itself, with its 4” screen. (See image at left.) During a conference, I would type my report (in... Read more →

Autodesk’s Next Grand Design

Industry cloud x 3 Autodesk has, for the most part, been for architectural design. The favoritism was shown at last fall’s Autodesk University 2022 by numbers of sessions: 243 classes were offered on building design and construction, 74 on manufacturing. This is, in some ways, understandable, as the MCAD/CAE/CAM problem has largely been solved; building construction, by contrast, continues to be hugely under-digitized. Look at any building site: those aren’t iPads construction workers are carrying around. Digging into the AU presentations, we learn that Autodesk is using MCAD’s success to move along building design. Figure 1 shows MCAD as part... Read more →

CAD in Russia: February 2023 Update

Life after Putin The turning point, perhaps, in Russia's war to exterminate the Ukrainian state came in mid-January when Germany's do-nothing minister of defense stepped down, and to be replaced by a do-something politician. Germany got the big tanks moving, however reluctantly. Meanwhile, political attitudes within Russia are hardening, as this series of headlines attests to: Russian Tech Giant VK Orders Workers to Return From Abroad or face dismissal, as the company fears that remote workers could deliberately sabotage VK, if family members were drafted into the Russian army. Critical Russian Emigres Should Have Property Seized, said the speaker of... Read more →

PayPal is Replaceable

There is a wiser alternative PayPal was a brilliant idea, an way for people to send money to each other easily, and pay for things without giving online retailers our credit card information (and having hackers steal it from them). The convenience outweighed its high cost: just specify the amount to send to an email address! It was particularly useful for receiving payments internationally, such as for someone like me, as nearly all my clients are are outside of my home country of Canada. While PayPal costs nothing for buyers to use, sellers lose about 3.5% on every transaction, an... Read more →

Bricsys enters construction

The final frontier This week was the BricsCAD V23 launch event, during which new ceo Rahul Kejriwal announced his plan to go after the construction industry with his software, even though 80% has no interest in it. Listening to the several keynote addresses, Bricsys made it clear that it is definitely going after the construction market, as another CAD vendor, Autodesk, has. Bricsys displayed a slide showing that 95% of data in construction and engineering goes unused. Clearly, that needs to have a solution! The "why" behind the dis-use of reuse of data in construction was not explained by Bricsys,... Read more →

Live from Vectorworks Design Day in Vancouver Canada

Deep underground in Robson Square Prepping the skating rink at Robson Square, with steps leading up to the Vancouver Art Gallery Keynote Address Dr Biplab Sarkar, ceo of the Vectorworks company, flew here to Vancouver Canada to give the keynote address at Robson Square. Vectorworks Canada is three years old, and copies the modol of Vectorworks Great Britain. He gave unusually detailed sales figures, such as selling approximately 20,000 new licenses a year. (I am interpolating off graphs). In Canada, the company has about 140,000 users, with Vectorworks Canada selling around 350 licenses a year and roughly $3 million annually,... Read more →

Q&A from ODA Summit 2022

Live on the desktop The Open Design Alliance held its annual conference this year online again, and during it attendees asked questions, which I reproduce here. You can watch the replay of the event at youtube.com/watch?v=6P93f4IVZJA&t=3266s. A few days later, I interviewed ODA president Neil Peterson. Here are the two Q&As. - - - Q: Will we be able to join [two or more] IFC [industry foundation classes] models in order to have a [single] federated IFC model? A: Federated models are planned for later this year. Q: Does the Scan-To-BIM roadmap includes the generation of cloud points using photogrammetry?... Read more →

Spatial's 3D Insider's Summit conference 2022

Live from Munich Alright, here we are in Munich, my first trip overseas in 2.5 years. For a decade or two, it was normal for me to commute to Europe and other fascinating places in the world several times a year. Heck, I timed my shopping trips in Europe to replenish those things that aren't available or are more expensive in North America. So, I am in Munich for the Dassault Systems Spatial conference, while most of the rest of the CAD media is in Detroit. Dassault Systemes (Spatial) and arch-rival Siemens planned conferences for the same day, coincidence, I... Read more →

Practical Help for Ukraine

Mission Without Borders Back in upFront.eZine issue #1,126, I wrote... "If you would like to donate to an agency that has already been helping people in Ukraine, Moldova, and Romania for decades now (“boots on the ground”), and which upFront.eZine supports annually, then I would like to suggest Mission Without Borders at mwbca.org/ukraine. We did. Donations are used to provide emergency aid and food packages for people in eastern Ukraine. (Tax receipts available for Canadian donors only.)" Late last week, Mission Without Borders provided this update on their activities in the area: Inside Ukraine: Our Mission Without Borders team in... Read more →

I found an international debit card

Killing the exchange rate The only benefit to the EU was its original function: a single currency for many countries. Never mind that my German relatives were disgusted by stores switching DM to Euros, leaving the numbers unchanged, meaning everything doubled in price, overnight. For us non-European travelers, having a single currency is so-o-o convenient. Unless, of course, we also went to England. Or to Switzerland. Or to Sweden... Over the years, I employed a variety of ways to pay for things with our Canadian dollars in Europe: American Express travelers cheques -- remember those? Withdrawing Euro cash from European... Read more →

Why we love not flying

It is Cancel culture, but in the real world With all my international travel over the decades, we actually got to the point we were planning shopping trips in Germany: "No point buying it here [in Canada], we'll get it next time we're in Germany." Then the WHO shut down the world, but after 2.5 years we are finally booked for Germany again. Quite frankly, as much as we love travelling overseas, we found not-flying a rather pleasant experience. But, as we have family in Europe, it was time to see them again. When it comes to flying across oceans,... Read more →

Why people left the workforce

Rat race status: no longer normal One of the puzzles of our era is over the large numbers of people who didn't go back to work. As someone who was laid off (during a recession in 1984) and quit a regular job (to become self-employed in 1991), I find the puzzle fascinating. Of those not returning to the workforce following the Great Coronavirus Lockdown of 2020 Why did they not go back? What are they doing instead? - - - GCL'20 was a disrupter, an event in history so significant that it dramatically changed human behavior for good: what once... Read more →

Online Conference Burnout

The more we get the less we want Attending CAD conferences in-person is a costly affair. There is the $$$-cost, which can amount to thousands of dollars for something lasting just a couple of days; and there is the time-cost of being away from productive work. Never mind the cost to the body from jet lag (twice, once each way!), food poisoning (happened to me at a hotel in Disney World), trudging for miles from hotel room to conference center, whether within a Las Vegas monster hotel or in new city, losing a laptop (in Stockholm), waiting days on lost... Read more →

Bands at the 9th Annual Musical Walkalong

Galiano Island, Canada Each year the Galiano Conservancy Association puts on an afternoon of hiking, music, and art. The fundraiser subsidizes 1,500 children to come to Galiano Island to live in nature, which they might otherwise not experience. The last number I heard was $23,ooo raised at this year's event, which did yet not include the amount made from the silent auction. The walk goes through the forested trails and rocky cliffs of Galiano Island, on the Pacific coast side of Canada. Here are photos I took of some of the performers at this year's event. Kurt Ward-Theiss playing Irish... Read more →

Siemens PLM Media Q&A

CAD? We've heard of it Siemens Digital Industries Software last month held a user group meeting online, and then invited the media to a Q&A with execs the following day. The few times I have interacted with ceo Tony Hemmelgarn, I found him to be a realistic leader who doesn't do the painful-to-hear isn't-everything-amazing?, we're-really-excited! marketing schtick. There was, however, one embarrassing moment when during the keynote he referenced Lordstown Motors using Siemens software to design their electric pickup truck -- the day after Lordstown announced it was cutting this year's production from 2,500 to 1,000 pickups. Research had earlier... Read more →

Spatial 3D Insider Summit

VR only Well, it's 7:00am here on the West Coast of North America, and Spatial 3D Insider Summit should be starting right about now. I've attended a couple of them before, once in Colorado at at resort so high in the mountains I had a day of splitting headache (from the lack of oxygen) until I got my hands on some tylonol. Then again in Munich. The Spatial 3D Insider Summit has nothing to do with geographics or mapping. It's the component arm of Dassault Systemes, which'll sell you an ACIS or CGM license for your budding CAD project. Attending... Read more →

Pay people to attend online Webinars

It's happening CAD conferences have done the pivot thing several times in the course of the history of our favorite software. In those early days, there were general CAD conferences, like AEC Systems, where lots of CAD vendors showed up and tens of thousands of users thronged the aisles. Those were delicious times. The problem for CAD vendors was that in such an environment customers could see, hear, touch, and learn about competitors. The stories of the Autodesk booth being mobbed in the mid-1980s are legend -- and true, for I was there. Competitors scowled at the sight that meant... Read more →

Online Event Fatigue

No immediacy, no intimacy, no humanity One of the benefits of online conferences is that they cost corporations much, much less to mount. Instead of one annual physical conference that deals with everything companies want to cover, they now mount frequent mini-conferences. This is gone to the extreme with phone vendors, who now have a separate launch event online for each new model as each chrysalis emerges from its factory throughout the year. Some CAD vendors engage in this multi-event approach, too. The result is event fatigue, in which the intended audience, after a while, says, "I really don't care."... Read more →

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,... Read more →

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... Read more →

Archive: My tweets from the Berlin 2019 Graebert Annual Meeting

November 7, 2018 Getting ready for the Berlin Graebert Annual Meeting here in the Humbolt Box, a temporary structure in former East Berlin overlooking the reconstruction of the Berliner Palast (Berlin Palace) torn down by communists. The view outside the Humbolt Box reminds us we are in former East Berlin, with the modern tv tower next to centuries-old buildings -- and construction cranes as Berlin continues to rebuild itself. The Berliner Palast at night - - - At #Graebert18 we'll be hearing about what's new in ARES, Touch, Kudo, Dassault Systemes DraftSight, Corel Software CorelCAD, Onshape, and third-party add-ons. As... Read more →

Archive: What I tweeted about Bricsys 2018 London

London Calling Theme music for the London conference of Bricsys 2018 is "London Calling" by The Clash. "Who's that?" asks the young-ish 61-year-old CAD journalist sitting next to me. "I bought the [double] album when it first came out," I replied, smugly. BricsCAD Beyond V19 Learning about the future plans of Bricsys at BRICSYS 2018. It involves practical jobs performed by the CAD system on behalf of the human designers. Computer are best at repetitive, boring work; humans best at the creative side. Bricsys sees one assisting the other. Bricsys sees the problem with Autodesk's dynamic blocks are being too... Read more →

Bricsys 2018 London: Day 2

#bricsys2018 OK, here we are on day 2 of the Bricsys 2018 London conference and we are just waiting for the BLADE session to begin, BLADE is the BricsCAD LISP advanced development environment for interactively programming with the LISP programming language. BLADE was introduced last year with BricsCAD V18. While we wait, here is an overview that I gleaned from yesterday's session for third-party developers: BricsCAD V19 is is compiled with Visual Studio 2017 and uses Teigha 19.5 A public API is now available for sheet metal. It uses ARx syntax in BRx (API previously worked through LISP). BIM API... Read more →

Bricsys 2018 London: Day 1

London skyline from near my hotel Alright, here we are waiting for the official start of Bricsys 2018 conference here in sunny London. We've already had a developer session, where we learned of some of the nuts and bolts about developing add-ons for BricsCAD. The big news, of course, is that Hexagon of Sweden has bought Bricsys, making it part of its PPM devision that also houses Intergraph, famous for being one of the oldest CAD programs ever. To challenge the "A" company (Autodesk) is going to take more resources. By being acquired by Hexagon (which has a major presence... Read more →

How to send email from overseas when your ISP blocks you

VPN to the rescue When I want to send email from outside of Canada, the outgoing email is filed to Outgoing, the purgatory mailbox. It is never sent. The problem occurs whether I want to send email from my Android phone or my Windows laptop, using a desktop client like Eudora or eM Client, or mobile app, like AquaMail. Who blocks the email, and why, I don't know. I asked my ISP's tech support. They had no clue, suggesting that I instead use their Webmail client, which is only slightly worse than Gmail's Web client. (The Webmail client is, admittedly,... Read more →

New MCAD features in BricsCAD V18

BricsCAD Platinum BricsCAD Platinum is the top end version of BricsCAD, and as such offers 3D constraints, design intent, and other high end functions. Naturally, it costs more than basic BricsCAD, but still far less than AutoCAD that doesn't have them. For V18 (to be released in November), BricsCAD Platinum get the following new functions: ...and: Communicator is the extra-cost translation add-on for Bricsys Pro and Platinum for translating drawings. MCAD and BIM Editing in One At this conference, Bricsys is making the remarkable claim that BricsCAD is the only CAD system in the world that can do MCAD and... Read more →

Why Hexagon PPM Chose BricsCAD

So many reasons Hexagon PPM (ex-Intergraph) ported seven million lines of its CADworx code from AutoCAD to BricsCAD. Here are the initial reasons why they decided to make the effort (image credit Rakesh Rao‏ @rakesh_rao): But from the porting process and afterwards, Hexagon found so many more reasons to like BricsCAD as the platform for CADWorx: https://hexagonppm.com/products/3d-product-family/cadworx Read more →

Bricsys Developer Conference 2017

Paris, France Bricsys likes holding its annual user conference in a different city every year. In the past we've been to places like Brussels, Barcelona, and Munich. This year, the event is being held near the center of Paris. I know, because the price of a Caesar salad at the adorable, tiny French restaurant is $22 or so. Day 1 is the developer conference, and so we are hearing about items of interest for third-party developers, less so for users. (Tomorrow is the user conference.) Here are some of my notes of what is being said: Keynote Bricsys CEO Eric... Read more →

New from Graebert: ARES Sketch

This new software was requested by an OEM partner, who did not want to develop it himself. ARES Sketch is floor plan sketching for tax assessment, especially in the USA where property tax is based on square footage and what each square foot is used for: patios, fireplaces, offices, etc. It uses Graebert's CAD experience from SiteMaster, GIS from ESRI. It is meant to be integrated into CAMA, computer-assisted mass appraisal systems. It will be released by the end of the year. It is not a sketching program like SketchUp, but does offer a simplified user interface. As a rectangle... Read more →

Vectoflow, a user of Onshape

The drawings tab of Onshape uses technology from Graebert that then formed the basis of Kudo. Both Onshape and Kudo work inside Web browsers. Here at the conference, Onshape listed the top improvements made to Onshape Drawings in 2017: Unified dimensioning Dual dimensions Surface finish symbols Weld symbols New view types: broken views, partial sections, and shaded views Now we are hearing from an Onshape customer from Munich that designs flow meters, Vectoflow. They redesigned them to make them more robust, make a wide variety of shapes, and so on. They use powder 3D printing to make the flow probe... Read more →

The Strategy of Corel

Corel is best known for CorelDraw, but it also rebrands ARES as CorelCAD. The primary user of CorelCAD is a CorelDraw or CorelDraw Technical Suite illustration users, who need access to DWG files. Corel adds a converter to bridge the two sets of programs. Apparently CorelCAD has brought hundreds of thousands of new users to Corel. The company also licenses ARES Touch as CorelCAD Mobile. There will be a CorelCAD 2018, although it is not being announced today. It will have all the functions announced for ARES 2018, including 3D editing, something CorelCAD users have been wanting. CorelCAD Mobile currently... Read more →

The Strategy of DraftSight

Dassault Systemes licenses ARES from Graebert, changes some of its functions, and renames it DraftSight. It has worked with Graebert since 2010, and is finding that the 2D side is exploding. Dassault itself is focusing on cloud-based CAD but also desktop-based CAD. And so products by Graebert fit into this. DraftSight has a G-code module, which is needed to communicate with computer-controlled machines. DraftSight Floorplanning works with smartphones that have 3D scanners to scan the world, turn it into a point cloud, and then into DWG. Import that into DraftSight as planes and surfaces. Geovia is integrated with DraftSight to... Read more →

Real-time rendering from Graebert

Graebert has licensed the real-time physics-based renderer from Unicorn, for only its 64-bit Windows version of ARES desktop. Price is 149 pounds or Euros. Until now, Graebert had been using the render engine from Artisan. "Real-time" means that we can make adjustments to the scene before the rendering is finished. "Physics-based" means that materials are stored in layers, entities, or colors. The light calculations take them into account. Now, there are two versions of the rendered available, quick and full. Graebert licensed the quick one so that customers get a rendering fairly quickly. We were shown the full render, which... Read more →

The Graebert CAD Software Collection

More than just desktop CAD I've mentioned earlier that Graebert OEMs their software to several other software companies. It is rebranded as CorelCAD by Corel, DraftSight by Dassault Systems, and so on. The OEM versions can have different functions; as chief technical officer Robert Graebert told me, generating a custom version of ARES for an OEM customer involves pushing a few buttons and it is generated in five minutes -- that's how finely tuned they made their OEM business, I'll talk more about OEM customers later, but for now I want to list all of the software Graebert offers: ARES... Read more →

ODA Teigha Conference, Day 2

Vendor Presentations Day 2 of the Teigha conference traditionally has been for 1-on-1 meetings, where members can meet with ODA programmers. This year, we have a spillover, however. Several vendors are holding side conferences to talk technically about their software: C3D Labs, LEDAS, and Visual Solutions. C3D Labs C3D Labs offers a 3D modeling kernel to ODA members at a reduced price. This is, in fact, the third solid modeling kernel available to ODA members. The ODA has one it developed on its own, a free stop-gap that is good enough for simple 3D modeling, but not good enough for... Read more →

Teigha Cloud SDK

(For coverage of Teigha Publish SDK for 3D PDF output, see my twitter stream at @upfrontezine .) Switching over to the Teigha Cloud presentation, this is for viewing and editing drawings in a Web browser, where the code is stored on a remote server computer. It uses Web Assembly format, which reduces the size of files needed: Library size is half the size, initializes 10x faster, and parses data, such as a 5MB drawing, 30% faster. The Update Manager opens large drawings on any client device, meaning PC, tablet, or phone. As the user zooms and pan, the Update Manager... Read more →

Teigha Revision control for DWG

Sergy Stepantso, cloud team The Open Design Alliance has been leading Autodesk. The CAD vendor initially refused to release a DWG read/write API, saying DXF was sufficient; but when it saw that ODA was doing well, it countered with its RealDWG API. There is no stand-alone API for dealing with Revit data, until the ODA began developing it; Autodesk has not (yet) responded to it. Now the ODA is extending DWG's capabilities with revision control. This is essentially an unlimited undo-redo system but with a few more functions -- such as check-out, submit, merge, and update to revision. The idea... Read more →

Teigha Visualize general purpose graphics engine

Alexander Federov, senior software engineer Prague art for sale in Prague So now we get into the nitty-gritty details of new APIs from ODA. The first is the new Visualize API. It is a file-independent module meant for handling display duties. It is not tied to DWG or any other file format. It handles the following tasks: overlays, such as cursors, traciers, snap points partial graphics cache regeneration (for faster display of large drawings) metafiles for hatches, text, and block references spatial filters to cull entities not on the screen multi-threaded metafile preprocessing The Visualize API is implemented in object-oriented... Read more →

Live blog: Open Design Alliance's 2017 Conference

Day 1 Keynote: The Evolving Mandate ODA began in 1998 with a crystal-clear mission to work with .dwg files, to keep pace with new releases of .dwg, and set up as a non-profit. "We take care of member needs, and respond to their needs," says ODA ceo Neil Peterson. The first release was R2000 .dwg in 1999 based on Marcomp code, but the quickly began a rewrite. By 2003 it was no longer just .dwg but now had complimentary functions like importing other file formats and displaying drawings. TIP: ODA uses the word "rendering" to refer to displaying drawings in... Read more →