WorldCAD Access

Preview: Teigha Developer Conference 2017

Back in Prague Alright, here we are in Prague, just waiting for the annual Open Design Alliance conference to begin. This is my fourth time in the city, and I am starting to feel like a local. Even the occasional tourist mistakes me for a local, asking for directions to such and such. TIP: When visiting Prague, the best thing to do is wander down side alleys to avoid the hordes of tourist groups that now plug up the pedestrian-only streets of the old city. Admire the beautiful buildings and scenes on the nearly-empty back streets, get yourself lost by... Read more →

How I access the Internet internationally

Global data roaming One of the headaches of traveling internationally is how to communicate using our cell phones in country to country. Roaming access (as it is known) can be expensive, whether to make phone calls, send text messages, or connect to the Internet. In the early days of the Internet, we would visit Internet cafes, or borrow the use of an Internet-connected computer from family and friends. With the advent of WiFi, we could tap our laptops into their home or office network systems, assuming they knew the password (some did not!). Today with our phones, we can access... Read more →

What's New and What's Planned for BIMx

Live from Graphisoft Key Customer Conference 2017 in Kyoto, Japan [Our coverage of this event earlier in the day was curtailed due to the WiFi failing to connect to the rest of the Internet.] BIMx is the name of Graphisoft's mobile app for viewing 3D models. It has probably the nicest user interface of all the ones on the market. It uses what Graphisoft calls a "hypermodel," which contains the 3D model, 2D drawings, viewpoints, and so on. Hypermodels can, of course, be brought over from the desktop to the mobile device using a cloud storage service (like Dropbox) or... Read more →

As Bricsys Expands, Autodesk Retrenches

The symbolism of Pixlr The same week that Bricsys held its press-only Insights conference, Autodesk announced that it was selling off one of its software packages, Pixlr acquired during the Carl Bass era. This otherwise innocuous announcement made a startling admission: "As part of our ongoing business model transition, Autodesk has decided to focus development resources on our core product portfolio." Autodesk is retrenching. I'll have more about what this means in a future edition of upFront.eZine. By coincidence in the same week, Bricsys is holding its first-ever conference for members of the CAD press, a two-day event. They are... Read more →

Bricsys Insights: How BricsCAD implements 3D differently

Bricsys Technical Russia "Our philosophy is dramatically different from other CAD vendors, and so we decided to spend some time on the details of this," we are now hearing at the @Bricsys Insights conference, which is running 30 minutes ahead of schedule -- Randall Newton wants you to know. Bricsys had the chance to start something new as it began seven years ago to add 3D, etc to BricsCAD, so that the mistakes of other CAD firms would not be repeated. The CAD world is different from 30 years ago when parametrics were first introduced [by PTC]. So they implemented... Read more →

Bricsys Insights: About the Intergraph Port

CADWorx Bricsys had contacted Intergraph ten years ago about porting some of its software to BricsCAD, but frankly BricsCAD could not do it at that time. Once it matured, Bricsys contacted Intergraph again (now owned by Hexagon). This time Intergraph agreed, but did not want to port just some of their software: they wanted all their software running on BricsCAD at once: 4 modules for doing plant design, structural design, equipment, and P&ID 400 commands 3.5 million lines of code Intergraph wanted a single codestream for BricsCAD and AutoCAD (on which it was running already), the same user interface and... Read more →

foto of the sunday: Where Nature Enhances Love

Kennedy River Rapids Read more →

Who's Attending COFES (and how many)?

200+ attendees COFES publishes the attendee list for its annual conference. They sort the list by attendee first name, so I resorted it by vendor name to see who is showing up, and the size of each contingent. The strongest showing is from the two top dogs in the CAD world, Dassault of France and Siemens PLM of Germany. Smaller firms showing in force include ZWCAD Software from China (including its CEO) and ASCON-C3D Labs from St Petersburg. Autodesk and Bentley Systems are sending just one employee each. The most significant no-show is PTC. Four or More Here are the... Read more →

How long does it take to put on a CAD conference?

Six months I came across one of my older posts, in which ZWCAD Software Company thanked its staff for the hard work they put in to a ZWCAD conference. Up to 100 employees worked for three months to plan the conference, according to the press release. Think of the myriad of details involved, such as sourcing name tag holders, choosing menus for meals, booking venue(s), and deciding what to talk about. All along hoping enough people show up to cover the cost, or if the conference is free, to justify the effort. Photo showing four of the things things that... Read more →

What’s New in BricsCAD V17 Communicator

Translation from MCAD files In addition to the new Communicator features described earlier, the V17 release adds these functions. ALTERNATE PATH You can now specify alternate paths for all supported CAD formats. This lets Communicator find standard parts that might be associated with assemblies being imported. HIDDEN PARTS When parts are designated as “hidden” in the original CAD files, you can now decide whether to import them or ignore them, depending on your preference. Not importing hidden parts makes the resulting file smaller. PRODUCT STRUCTURE When an assembly has components that are nested (both locally and externally), the entire structure... Read more →

What’s New in BIM for BricsCAD V17

Building Information Modeling This partial list of new BIM features in BricsCAD V17 is provided by Bricsys. They are in alphabetical order, followed by improved functions. For the full list, look at https://www.bricsys.com/common/releasenotes.jsp?i=4471 A SITE WITH MANY BUILDINGS AND STORIES To give you greater flexibility in developing BIM designs, a single drawing file now contains a “site,” which can have multiple “buildings,” with each building holding one or more “stories.” The default drawing holds one building with three stories. You specify properties for the new site, building, and story elements. BIMPATCH The new bimPatch command allows you to specify a... Read more →

What’s New in Sheet Metal for BricsCAD V17

Optional add-on This partial list of new sheet metal functions in BricsCAD V17 is provided by Bricsys. The new commands are in alphabetical order, followed by improved functions. For the full list, look at https://www.bricsys.com/common/releasenotes.jsp?i=4471 FORM FEATURES BricsCAD V17 adds parametric form features to the sheet metal module. “Form features” mimic the process when a forming tool deforms a piece of sheet metal. After the form is applied (using the new Form Features tab of the Tool Palettes panel), you can edit it directly and parametrically through the Properties bar. The library contains most commonly used form features, such as... Read more →

What’s New in BricsCAD V17

New and Improved for 2D drawing and 3D modeling This is a partial list of the new features in BricsCAD V17 provided by Bricsys. It lists new features in alphabetical order, followed by improved functions. For the full list, look at https://www.bricsys.com/common/releasenotes.jsp?i=4471 3D DRAWING COMPARE The new 3dCompare command opens two drawing files and then reports the differences in 3D solids and 3D surfaces using color coding. This lets you quickly see the changes made to otherwise identical-looking drawings. The differences are represented as separate entities displayed in two viewports – red entities for additions, green for subtractions. 3DCompare dialog... Read more →

Exclusive! Open Design Alliance opens up the Revit file format

Teigha BIM For the first time, CAD users will be able to access Revit model files independently from Revit. This was the motivation to open up Revit with the new API from Open Design Alliance: Competitors want to interoperate with Revit files in a standalone solution through an independent organization. The only API currently available is based on dot.Net and requires a seat of Revit. Reads, displays, and writes RVT and RFA files, and works on Windows, Mac, Linux, and mobile. As of January, there will be new license options: binary or source-code; fees to be determined. Get updates through... Read more →

Multi-user editing for DWG files

Also, persistent transactions (Check out the Twitter stream on @upfrontezine for additional coverage of the ODA 2016 conference, as well as Randall Newton's coverage at @RSNatWork .) The ODA has figured out how to make DWG files suitable for client-server computing, where it is important to know who made which changes. Every entity in the DWG file is history-aware. History also makes it practical for multi-user editing. To reduce collisions when more than one person edits the same drawing, ODA is figured out a way to integrate collision checking. This alerts users to the conflict, but it is up to... Read more →

Large Data Sets in Teigha Cloud

Multiple formats, too Coffee is over (or, in my case, break for tea), and now Ilya Zavyalov is telling us about large data and multiple format for Teigha Cloud. To handle large drawings on the cloud, some rendering is done on the server side and some on the client side (ie, in the Web browser). The server must, however, must have access to view accelerators, which is not common and so expensive. For rendering to happen on the client, however, it must be powerful enough, especially for large drawings. There are, fortunately, techniques to make this easier: Graphic format --... Read more →

ODA 2016: Graphics Engine Improvements

Teigha Kernel Here are a set of slides shows how the Teigha graphics engine works: ODA chose OpenGL ES2 because it is cross-platform, supports mobile devices, is a strong standard, and is compatible with WebGL. This last item is important, because WebGL is used for cloud-based apps. The adoption of OpenGL allows for an immediate improvement in rendering quality of visual styles, like realistic, hidden, and so on. ODA has several dozen predefined visual styles employing 60 properties - including obscure ones like Jitter effect, opacity override, and shadows type. It also allows per-face, per-vertex, and per-pixel lighting. Visual style... Read more →

Live blog: Open Design Alliance 2016 in Prague

Keynote Neil Peterson heads up the Open Design Alliance, and started off the two-day conference here in Prague with several assertive statements: "We have been known as 'the DWG guys', but today we support seven file formats. We promote open standards, and not just for DWG. We don't set standards, we are active developers; we are not a legacy organization, we are not a maintenance organization." With Autodesk not updating the DWG format for several years, ODA has been able to redirect resources to other areas. Members get access to Teigha Kernel (new term) Teigha Drawings (DWG, DXF, DGN) Teigha... Read more →

Eva Franch keynote at Vectorworks Design Summit

Storefront for Art and Architecture OK, here we are back in the Imperial ballroom of the Fairmont hotel, downtown Chicago, for day 2 of the Vectorworks user conference. The keynote speaker is Eva Franch, who, it appears to me, combines art and architecture. In a few minutes we will find out... Her's is to question: how do we build, how do we construct. She sees three types of architects. Those who just repeat what has been done before (not ones she would approve of), those who try to destroy what was done before (avant gardes, also disapproved of), and those... Read more →

What we saw at the Vectorworks night in Chicago

Destination Chicago Museum of Art Chicago skyline at night, looking across Millennium Park Inside the art museum, admiring the work of the Impressionists Inside the hall, inside the museum, in which the party was held, with a live jazz band, featuring the new Vectorworks logo, painted with light Second night in a row on which pizza was served and it wasn't Chicago Deep Dish pizza (Photos by Ralph Grabowski, taken with the Samsung K Zoom camera) Read more →

Live blogging: Vectorworks Design Summit Keynote

Day 1 Alight, here we are, awaiting the start of the keynote address by new CEO Biplab Sarkar. He was the previous CTO, being at Vectorworks for 16 years, taking on work like integrating Parasolid into the software. Before this, he worked at PTC and Intergraph. He replaces Sean Flaherty, who is now cso (chief strategy officer) for Nemetschek Group, the Germany company that owns Vectworks, Bluebeam, Graphisoft, allPlan, and other CAD-related software. Left: new ceo Biplab Sarkar; right: former ceo Sean Flaherty (In addition, Darick DeHart is new vp of product management, and Steve Johnson is new vp of... Read more →

What's a Vectorworks User Conference?

Live from Chicago This being my first time at a Vectorworks user conference, what's it like? (Previously I was at press-specific events hosted by Vectorworks.) Well, we have about 600 users here from a lot of countries. At yesterday evening's social event I heard a lot of German -- and so I could practice my German. Six hundred seems to be number common to several user events I attend, such as from Bricsys and Siemens PLM. The number seems rather tiny compared to the eight or ten thousand that show up at Solidworks World and Autodesk University. But 600 is... Read more →

Blogging Live from CanBIM Conference in Vancouver Canada

Alight, here we are in what is normally beautiful downtown Vancouver, but the low cloud and light rain is hiding the snow-covered mountains and making the harbour front generally gloomy. No matter, we are warm and dry inside the Pinnacle Hotel's three ballrooms, a hotel that's old and therefore has character missing from shiny new ones. Here's the view from the conference area after lunch... The theme of this conference is Beyond BIM, looking beyond just design. So we have topics like Augmented Reality, Mobile, and Computational Design. Beyond BIM The first suspension bridge was designed in 1570 in Italy,... Read more →

foto of the sunday: frozen leaves

First frost Frozen leaves covering the ground of Canada's Bateman Park. The photo is unretouched. Read more →

Live blogging Solid Edge University 2015

#SEU15 on Twitter Alright, here we are in Cincinnati for the annual Solid Edge University event. Usually, it's in June to coincide with the annual release of the namesake software, but this year it's in October, and maybe later we'll be able to find out why. We're starting this morning with the keynote by John Miller, he the senior vice president of mainstream engineering software -- which is the way Siemens says that he is in charge of Solid Edge and FeMap. The theme this year is "Design without Boundaries." Better yet, this is the 20th anniversary of Solid Edge,... Read more →

foto of the sunday: German rail worker

Munchen Hbh I snapped this photo using my Galaxy K Zoom smartphone, which welds a 10x zoom lens onto an Android phone. In this case, I used a 4.9x zoom to foreshorten the trains, making them seem more massive. The zoom brings closer the lone Deutsche Bahn worker between the tracks at Munich's main train station. Before posting here, I modified the image using Picasa's Cinemascope filter that emphasizes the red color through saturation, and brightens the scene. Read more →

3D IE Forum: Tips and tricks for 3D InterOp

Scalability The next session at the 3D Insiders European Forum is a tips and tricks session for 3D InterOp. This is Spatial's translator, translating between various 3D CAD and standard formats. For this session, I think I'll post some of the slides, as the topic is a bit beyond me. Read more →

3D IE Forum: What's Next in 3D Modeling

#3dief on Twitter As I mentioned in the previous blog posting from 3D Insiders European Forum, new features that appear each year in CAD programs are first often times developed by technology providers like Spatial. For While 3D modeling currently uses precise modeling (b-rep) successfully, it is not so good for organic models, like bones, point clouds, voxels (volume pixels), additive manufacturing (ie, 3D printing), and geology. What's next for 3D from Spatial is polyhedra: polygonal modeling.CGM Polyhedral is an add-on to the ACIS modeler, and so is licensed separately. Today, however, working on both precise (traditional 3D solids) and... Read more →

3D Insiders European Forum: Live Blog

Dassault Systemes Spatial Here we are at conference #4 in Europe, this time at the European Forum for 3D users of Spatial's toolkits. This division of Dassault Systemes is best known for the ACIS modeling kernel, but also is the "retail" source for the modeling kernel used by Dassault's software, CGM, the 3D Interop collection of translators, and additional software. I miss Day 1, because I was on the other side of Munich taking in the Bricsys International Conference. Imagine my surprise, walking into the meeting room on Day 2 and seeing the ceo of Bricsys (from the conference earlier... Read more →

Live from the annual Bricsys CAD conference

Bricsys International Conference 2015 The conference facilities here are the best I've even sat it, which is a relief to us in the CAD media who have had to deal with no tables; tight seating; bad sight lines at some conferences of other CAD vendors. CEO Keynote With my rant out of the way, we are hearing the keynote from the ceo of Bricsys, Erik de Keyser. Both he and the ceo of Graebert Gmbh represent the most under-rated software systems in the CAD world. Well, maybe one day the rest of the CAD world will clue in. Whereas Graebert... Read more →

Announcing ARES Map: live announcement from Graebert Annual Meeting

Linked thru Esri Final presentation of the day, and we have ceo Wilfred Graebert telling us how ARES Map came about. He surveys companies, asking if they use DWG files. If so, "then we talk." We have a competitive product that they can use to establish themselves in the market. "Sometimes it works." When the discussions are getting "warmer," we discuss branding. Which brings him to a new partner, Esri -- the GIS people with 350,000 customers and the 200 largest US cities. For a couple of years the two firms have been working on integrating GIS and CAD. Today... Read more →

Graebert expands to GIS

Esri cooperation Last year at its Annual Meeting, Graebert surprised us by announcing a 2D MCAD addon. This year's surprise is GIS. More specifically, Graebert GmbH announced ARES Map is ArcGIS Online running on top of the company's ARES Commander desktop software. "Maps, floorplans, and any infrastructure created with ARES Map are saved natively in DWG, and also contain smart GIS-enabled information associated with entities," they say. The software is currently in "early access" mode. More info at http://www.aresmap.com Read more →

All about the drafting component in OnShape

(It was written by Graebert) Now we are hearing from Robert Miner of OnShape 2000: Wrong database (from Microsoft), and market not ready 2009: Operations expertise missing, and funding faded 2011: Funding fading again What's needed to get server-based CAD working: Need CAD experts Need databases that can scale with the Web; use NoSql, SQL not good enough Need 3D graphics in the browser, like WebGL Need fast Internet everywhere, and cheap Need to be able to provide 24/7 support Need faster JavaScript, like V8 from Google Need support and funding Need to do all of the above on a... Read more →

MobileCAD is more than mobile: SiteMaster

Lunch is over, and it's time to hear about SiteMaster by product manager Felix Graebert. SiteMaster is the quietly successful secondary business from Graebert, for cataloging the contents of buildings -- from measuring floor plans to designing kitchens. For example, Bank of America used it to survey 3,000 branches in the USA in eight months. Also,10 million square feet of government buildings for the City of Berlin. Felix Graebert is arguing that mobile CAD is better for site measurements, as the data collection is more accurate. The SiteMaster collection consists of SiteMaster Building for 2D (still the most popular) SiteMaster... Read more →

Graebert first CAD vendor to cover all viable platforms

Six platforms We're in Berlin this week for the annual Graebert meeting. Leading up to the conference, the company promises some surprises, and here they are. Graebert GmbH is now the first CAD vendor that will be providing a drafting program on all viable platforms. I'm the one using the word "viable" to emphasize that the program doesn't run on platforms like Blackberry or Windows Mobile. The list now consists of the following OSes, in alphabetical order: Android iOS (iPhone and iPad) Linux desktop OS X (Macintosh) Web browser (OS-independent) Windows desktop New to the list is iOS, meaning that... Read more →

ARES Touch 2016 on Android

And soon on iPad Graebert's strength is OEM'ing its software, and here at the Annual Meeting it has announced the first OEMer of its ARES Touch software for tablets: CorelCAD Mobile will come out soon, and be linked to CorelCAD 2016: get a one year license of one, get the license for the other product free. Back to Mr Desbordes taking about mobileCAD. Questions he gets asked about it: 1. How to ensure a good workflow for PCs? 2. Will users want to use a tablet for more than viewing? 3. Can I get enough precision on a tablet? 4.... Read more →

OEMs at Graebert Annual Meeting 2015

8+ million The ceo of Graebert Gmbh tells me that his emphasis is on OEM sales, not necessarily their ARES desktop software. OEM sales means that the ARES software is rebranded and perhaps even modified, and then sold by another company. The best known OEMs of ARES are: Dassault Systemes rebrands ARES as DraftSight, with 8 million downloads and 3 million activations Corel has CorelCAD, for creating CAD files used by all their other graphics software. and so on. A third one OEMs ARES Kudo, the Web-based drafting package -- Onshape. All these OEMs are at this conference, and Read more →

Graebert theme: Breaking the walls of CAD

Desktop, mobile, and Web Cedric Desbordes is in charge of marketing at Graebert, and he's now telling us what his company is working at. (See photo at left.) They have taken a huge gamble in being the first to have full CAD on Android, and first full DWG-based CAD in Web browsers. In brief, they now offer: ARES Commander - desktop Linux, Mac, and Windows ARES Touch - Android, iPad, and iPhone mobile devices ARES Kudo - Web browser Much of the same API can be used on all three: LISP, C++, and DCL. Further, each platform has APIs specific,... Read more →

Live from Graebert Annual Meeting 2015

News about mobileCAD and webCAD Alright, here we are in former East Berlin in the Soho House, a very retro pre-wall-fall building, up on the second floor. Here's what the digs look like: The head of the company, Wilfred Graebert is reporting on company results. Growth is 30%, mostly from ARES and OEM business. Business in Japan has doubled, and Graebert is holding an event in Tokyo end of November. In India, the company has several offices supporting 50 resellers in India. He is now describing Soho House, rebuilt for software firms and the art and design scene. Three unicorns... Read more →

Next, we take Berlin. Munich, too

Four conferences in six weeks Last year's light festival in Berlin during the Graebert conference If two weeks ago was Prague, then next week is Berlin. We are looking forward to seeing what AutoCAD workalike powerhouse Graebert Gmbh is up to as they invite users and the media to Berlin, Germany for their annual conference. The significance: Graebert is second only to Autodesk in the number of DWG-based CAD users. That conference is happening Oct 7 and 8, and we plan to be there. Then we're off to Munich to take in the annual Bricsys International Conference at the BMW... Read more →

Next week in upFront.eZine: we report on the Teihga conference from Prague

1,250 members strong We extend our summer break into the fall as we march off onto the conference circuit. If last week was Prague, then it must have been the Teigha Developer Conference put on for the second year in a row by the Open Design Alliance. The next issue of upFront.eZine appears September 28 with our review of what was said at the conference about the state of Teigha and the ODA's plans for the API. - - - Join the 7,500 subscribers who enjoy reading about the business of CAD. Email 'subscribe' to [email protected] Read more →

Teigha Architecture, Civil, and [Shhh!]

A, C, & ? Now we are hearing about Teigha Architecture, not Teigha's architecture, which we heard about before the break. This one is for architectural design planning and is an extension to Teigha Core: design a building model with intelligent objects, and then take 2D sections and elevations. The objects are compatible with AutoCAD Architecture, and so objects can be used in both programs. (Intelligent objects are like walls, windows, and doors. They contain data that identifies the manufacturer, size, stock number, and so on. They are intelligent: if you move a wall, the embedded windows move with the... Read more →

C3D Kernel for Teigha

Reduced functionality C3D is the fast moving 3D modeling kernel from Russia. No, not the one funded by the Russia government that no one uses (so I am told), but privately developed some 25 years ago for the KOMPAS-3D MCAD software by ASCON -- the largest CAD developer in Russia. Couple of years ago, they decided to make the C3D kernel available generally, and formed a new division to adapt it to outside use, license it, and market it. As it now normal for ASCON, they spun it off as a separate division responsible for its own profits and losses.... Read more →

What do ODA users want?

Survey results The primary purpose of the Open Design Alliance is to keep up with advancements in the DGN and DWG file formats. In addition, the technical organization branches out into other areas, like PDF import-export and other libraries, such as those from C3D Labs and Ledas. A survey found that ODA members are most interested in the following future technologies: 40% - doing renderings on remote servers (cloud) 40% - 3D PDF (no surprise, PDF has become the ASCII format of graphics) 30% - Point cloud data stored in DWG files 30% - Model documentation (where 2D drawings are... Read more →

At the ODA's annual developer meeting in Prague

Teigha Developer Conference Alright, here we are in beautiful Prague. Geographically, we are in Prague 6, the diplomatic area where many embassies are located, just north of Prague Castle. No wonder the hotel we're in is the Diplomat Hotel. I am here along with fellow CAD journalist Randall Newton, typing madly to keep up with the 16 presentations today, a new one every 20-30 minutes. As Randall says, we have to remember that this is a developer conference, not a user conference. This means that some of the things we hear about we cannot report. (Before I forget, my disclosure... Read more →

We're gonna go to Prague, gonna meet with the ODA

Annual Open Design Alliance Conference I'm planing next week to be in Prague for the annual Open Design Alliance developer conference. I was last in this beautiful city in 2006 (see the photo I took, at left), and so I am looking forward to being back. September 8 is going to be a jam-packed day with these topics on the agenda: Teigha Core Teigha Cloud framework Teigha 3D PDF Teigha Architecture Teigha Civil ... and new stuff not yet announced! Day 2 is time for one-on-one interviews, where editor Randall Newton and me plan to chat with ODA execs and... Read more →

Battle of the CEOs!

Develop3D Live 2015 The British organizers of the annual Develop3D Live conference are pretty excited that they will have a bunch of CAD vendor ceos on their stage later this month: Carl Bass, Autodesk ceo Gian Paolo Bassi, Solidworks ceo Jon Hirschtick, Onshape president Dan Staples, Siemens PLM vp Brian Thompson, PTC vp Sadly, I will not be there in Warwick England, but you and I can be there in spirit. Develop3D Live will be webcasted live to you and I on March 26. To watch the live stream, register at http://www.develop3dlive.com/register-for-develop3d-live-2015-live-stream-access More info and recordings of last year's talks... Read more →

foto of the sunday: Barcelona Hostel

September, 2008 Read more →

foto of the sunday: take my handbill

Wellington, New Zealand (August, 2003) Read more →

foto of the sunday: tokyo train station

Triple symmetry Ceiling of train station in Tokyo, Japan 23 March 2014 Read more →