upFront.eZine issue #847
Neil Peterson recently took over as the president of Open Design Alliance, and so Ralph Grabowski interviewed him to learn about the organization and his plans for it.
upFront.eZine: Open Design Alliance is best known for its programming library (APIs) that lets software developers access data stored in DWG files. Besides you and Autodesk, does anyone else produce a set of DWG APIs?
Neil Peterson: There are no other comparable solutions for accessing DWG data.
upFront.eZine: So if you didn't exist, Autodesk would have a monopoly in this area?
Peterson: Yes.
upFront.eZine: How many customers do you have?
Peterson: We have 1,300 members, spread across 50 countries world-wide.
upFront.eZine: What do members typically do with your software?
Peterson: ODA members develop a wide variety of applications. There is the traditional CAD user base who import/export DWG and DGN data from various CAD-related products. We have companies building rendering applications, such as viewers and markup solutions. Members use it to automate tasks, like searching for text, checking drawings against standards, and batch editing of drawings.
More recently we are seeing growth in the areas of Web application development and even full CAD systems based on Teigha. And we have a significant number of companies using Teigha for internal purposes.
upFront.eZine: Your programmers have to investigate and implement support for the DWG format every year, because Autodesk makes changes to it. Why would a company prefer your APIs over Autodesk's own RealDWG APIs?
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Article now continues...
Peterson: There are a number of reasons:
- Teigha is a full development platform, while RealDWG is just an import/export library. This means that ODA members can create sophisticated applications, such as rendering solutions and even full Teigha-based CAD systems. RealDWG doesn’t support complex functionality, such as rendering.
- Teigha is a cross-platform solution available on all major desktop, server, and mobile platforms. RealDWG is Windows-only.
- We use the same code base on all platforms, so members don’t see issues like the one you recently reported with AutoCAD 360 having rendering bugs on Windows 8.
There is a clear difference in focus between Open Design Alliance and Autodesk. Leadership in any large publicly traded company must place a strong focus on shareholder value; maintaining shareholder value requires constant growth, an emphasis on new products (often obtained through acquisitions), close attention to quarterly revenue numbers, and so on.
As a not-for-profit consortium, we can afford our singular focus to build the best CAD development tools on the market. As a result, we work cooperatively with members, and put a clear priority on quality and support issues.
When we deliver new features, even substantial ones (such as our recent cloud rendering support), we include them in our standard SDK at no additional cost.
upFront.eZine: What formats other than DWG do your APIs read, edit, and write?
Peterson: On the CAD side, we also support DXF and DGN, and can import DGN files into DWG databases.
We export to PDF, SVG, STL, DWF, DAE (Collada), and various raster formats, and we import DWF and DAE. We read, render, and do conversions for ACIS, plus we have a bridge module available for integrating the full ACIS modeler from Spatial. (This requires member to purchase a separate license from Spatial.)
upFront.eZine: What other software does OpenDesign Alliance produce?
Peterson: We recently started a new initiative for collaborative development that we call a Special Interest Group (SIG). Teigha is designed to meet the shared needs of our membership, but in many cases a handful of ODA members have a strong interest in a specialized area. To address this need, ODA members can form SIGs. The first SIG was created to address the civil engineering market. It is separately funded by a small group of ODA members, leveraging our existing infrastructure and expertise but not interfering with our core development. ODA is in a unique position to support this type of collaborative development.
upFront.eZine: Before you took over from Arnold van der Wiede as president, you were the chief technical officer. Who replaced you as CTO?
Peterson: My CTO duties have been split between two development managers, Sergey Vishnevetsky and Vadim Kosarev. Both have been with our team for many years, so it was a smooth transition.
upFront.eZine: Tell me about some of your future plans.
Peterson: Cloud technology is a primary focus this year. We released a beta version of Teigha Cloud in December, which supports the development of browser-based client-server rendering applications. In the coming months we will be phasing in some editing functionality to supplement the core rendering support.
Another key area is 3D PDF. We started work on PRC-based 3D PDF export last fall, and expect to have a production version of Teigha PRC ready in the second half of this year. This will be a general-purpose PRC library, and not just an export.
We are also looking at additional projects that might be suitable for Special Interest Group initiatives.
Bigger picture, I see ODA as the focal point in a growing ecosystem of high-quality Teigha-based products. While our members compete with each other outside of our platform, by supporting ODA they are supporting open access to CAD data, open APIs to encourage third-party development, and collaboration within the Teigha core.
These goals are in the best interest of the end-user community, as well as the majority of companies who build CAD software. We will continue to work closely with our members to support these goals.
And One More Thing...
Fidesys is developing CAE Fidesysm as a next-gen CAE-system for engineering strength analysis that uses a spectral elements method for addressing complex tasks that require a high accuracy in dimensional discretization. Fidesys developed the core code itself, which offers functions like automatic hexahedral and tetrahedral meshing.
The software runs on Linux and Windows computers, as well as on network clusters and BricsCAD. The cloud version at http://www.sim4design.com is priced at $10 for two compute hours (until March 31) . Download a 30-day trial version from http://www.cae-fidesys.com/en/download/login
Even More News
WorldCAD Access is blogging nearly every day about the CAD industry and tips on using hardware. (The feed is available on RSS and through email alerts.) The following articles appeared during the last week:
- Why VR is the next 3D
- Hardware review: Logitech K480 triple-Bluetooth keyboard
- Beta test the new 2D mechanical nanoCAD
- What Trimble Thinks About CAD Software
- Loyalty by Owen Wengerd
On Twitter, @upfrontezine offers CAD news, late-breaking updates, and wry commentary throughout the day.
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- Chris Hannukainen
Notable Quotable
"When asked to pinpoint when everything went wrong, they [the ex-CEOs] fell into two main groups: those who argued that it happened right after they left, and those who say the damage was already done when they arrived."
- Joshua Brunstein, Business Week
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2015-02-02/inside-radioshack-s-slow-motion-collapse
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