Issue #20: 6 February, 1996.
Hyperlink to the previous issue of Upfront: Upfront #19 | Upfront #20 | Upfront #21 is the next issue of Upfront.
The Autodesk Goodwill Tour
Autodesk marketing visited the editorial office of XYZ Publishing yesterday as part of a "building relationships" press tour. With Release 13c4 out the door, the relief of finally shipping an excellent version of AutoCAD was evident on the faces of Ken Welch (Director, AutoCAD Product Marketing), Robert Carr (Vice President, Engineering Group), and Jennifer Reidy (Corporate Marketing).
Also attending the meeting was David Cohn (former Senior Editor of CADalyst magazine) and Shelly Chapman (Editor of the Canadian AutoCAD User magazine). We editorial types agree that Autodesk finally got Release 13 right with the c4 release (for myself, I now have a version of Windows-based AutoCAD that I prefer to a DOS-based AutoCAD.) We also pointed out that AutoCAD needs to beef up its 2D drafting tools to compete better with MicroStation 95.
The primary disappointments in c4 are:
- The incompatibilities with earlier versions of Release 13 affecting ARx apps, ACIS solids, and OLE objects; and
- The slow speed of the new solids modeling commands, SolDraw and SolProf. These two commands are slow enough that I think my 60MHz Pentium has locked up.
Items of interest gleaned from the meeting include:
- c4 will be the last version of Release 13, other than bug fixes.
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- AutoCAD OEM for Release 13 and AutoCAD LT Release 3.0 will be released in six months, some 6 months late. After shipping R13 too soon, Autodesk seems to have learned its lesson and is determined to ship product that works.
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- AutoCAD LT Release 3 will be based on AutoCAD Release 13 and will use ARx to add functions. I was disappointed that LT R3 is recommended to run on a 16MB computer.
- AutoLISP will not be removed from AutoCAD, nor will ADS. Autodesk recognizes that ADS and ARx are both out of reach for the average user, hence AutoLISP's permanence. A link to Visual Basic is a possibility for Release 14.
- Autodesk feels ARx is superior to Visual Basic because: (1) ARx lets the programmer get into the DWG database and appear to be integral to AutoCAD itself; and (2) Visual Basic is seen as only useful to automating user tasks.
- While Autodesk is releasing vertical versions of AutoCAD, they do not intend to step on the sales of third-party developers. Instead, AutoCAD A/E/C, AutoCAD Map, AutoCAD Mech, etc, will create basic standards, such as layers, symbols, etc, that third-party developers can adopt.
- AutoCAD Map will come out in one month.
- 174,000 _new_ licenses of Release 13 were sold in the first 9 months of FY '96 -- ie, Feb '95 through Oct '95. (For an extimate of upgrade sales, see below.) Total licenses of AutoCAD now number 1.4 million.
5% Upgrade to R13
In his newsletter, The McNeel News, Robert McNeel bob@mcneel.com reports that, "1995 was the year of CAD chaos and confusion. AutoCAD Release 13 shipped but less than 5 percent of our clients upgarded."
His company, Robert McNeel & Assoc., is one of the largest AutoCAD dealers, supporting more than 20,000 AutoCAD installations. Despite the low upgrade rate, Bob predicts that, "Release 13c4 ... will be a winner later in the year [1996] when the add-on products catch up."
VRML v2 Proposals
Last Friday, 2 February, was the deadline for anyone to submit their proposal for VRML (virtual reality modeling language) version 2.0 http://vag.vrml.org/rfp.html. So far -- as best as we can tell -- the following proposals were submitted:
The C4 Handbook
The C4 HANDBOOK by Carl Machover has been completely revised, expanded, updated and
republished as The CAD/CAM Handbook For more information, contact Jennifer Holt DiGiovanna 2251512@mcimail.com or 73361.2636@compuserve.com .
Misc. Notes
Sun Microelectronics (used to be called Sun's SPARC Technology Business) this week showed their new microprocessor family for Java. Sun figures the chip will be used in Internet appliances, cellular phones, security systems, entertainment systems, and low-cost network terminals.
NetScape 2.00 NonBeta is now available as n32e20.exe (Win95 & NT) or n16e20.exe (Win 3.1). Mac version also available at Netscape's Web and FTP sites.
Apple Computer has fired its chief executive officer, Michael Spindler, replacing him with Gilbert Amelio, who comes from the semi-conductor industry.
After selling WordPerfect to Corel Corp., Novell has closed down the Quattro Pro spreadsheet operation in Scotts Valley CA USA.
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All contents copyright XYZ Publishing, Ltd. Inc., 1996 and all rights are reserved. No material may be reproduced electronically or in print without written permission from XYZ Publishing, PO Box 3053, Sumas WA, 98295-3053, unless otherwise noted.