Issue #57: 29 April, 1997

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    • Intergraph Sues Bentley

    Intergraph last week filed papers in the Delaware USA Chancery Court to see the books and records of Bentley Systems. Court papers did not state the reason for wanting to see the records. 

    Want to Review Beta Software?

    The Beta Report, written by Tim Cassedy-Blum of BetaNet has found these Web sites for getting beta software: 

    Intuit -- http://www.intuitbeta.com 
    Microsoft -- betareq@microsoft.com 
    Apple -- http://www.info.apple.com/cqf/cqfdatasheet.html 
    AOL -- Keyword: betaapply 
    Creative Labs -- http://www.creaf.com/wwwnew/tech/ftp/ftp-beta.html 
    PKWare -- beta@pkware.com 
    McAfee -- http://beta.mcafee.com 
    Stardock -- http://www.stardock.com/update_beta.html 
    Bentley -- http://www.bentley.com/products/beta.html  
    Ambrosia -- http://www.ambrosiasw.com/TechWorks/Beta.html  
    Corel -- http://eng.corel.com 
    Nico Mak (a.k.a. WinZip) -- http://www.winzip.com/winzip/beta.html 
    Berkeley Systems -- http://beta.berksys.com  
    Symantec -- Telnet to seti.symantec.com or use your modem to call 1-800-424-1218 
    IBM -- http://www.austin.ibm.com/pspinfo//betahome.html  
    Novell -- http://support.novell.com/home/beta 

    For beta of R14, ask an AutoCAD dealer. To follow the discussion about AutoCAD Release 14 beta, configure your news reader software with the following news server address: 
     news://adesknews.autodesk.com 
    Then, if necessary, add this discussion group name: 
     autodesk.preview.discussion 
    There are currently about 2,000 messages at the site. 

    Fortune 500

    This year's Fortune 1000 for companies in the USA lists the following as the largest software and hardware companies: 

    Computer Software (1996 Revenues) 

    1. (#172 on the Fortune 500) Microsoft - US$8.7 billion 
    2. (#319) Computer Sciences - US$4.2 billion 
    3. (#320) Oracle - US$4.2 billion 
    4. (#388) Computer Associates - US$3.5 billion 
    5. (#674) Cognizant - US$1.7 billion 
    6. (#793) Novell - US$1.4 billion 
    7. (#979) Sybase - US$1.0 billion 

    Computer Hardware and Office Equipment 

    1. (#6) IBM - US$75.9 billion 
    2. (#16) HP - US$38.4 billion 
    3. (#51) Xerox - US$19.5 billion 
    4. (#60) Comapq - US$18.1 billion 
    5. (#78) DEC - US$14.5 billion 
    6. (#150) Apple - US$9.8 billion 
    7. (#190) Dell - US$7.8 billion 
    8. (#203) Sun - US$7.1 billion 
    9. (#284) Gateway 2000 - US$5.0 billion 
    ... 
    17. (#928) Intergraph - US$1.1 billion 

    Your Computer for 1998

    Microsoft and Intel have outlined their plans for what they hope computer hardware will be like in 1998. The typical PC sold in '98 will have the following specs: 

    CAD and Internet News Headlines

    Autodesk: After Release 14 begins shipping to paying customers, Autodesk plans an update version with the ACIS v2.1 kernel and a fully localized implementation of VBA (Visual Basic for Applications). Autodesk is "hoping/praying/driving hard" that they will not need to release endless patches, as happened with Release 13. 
     As for and R14-compatible version of AutoCAD LT, Autodesk plans to release a version based on Release 14 in the second half of the year. 
     Steve Cakebread was named vice president and chief financial officer. He comes from Silicon Graphics and previously from HP. 
     Safety Net is Autodesk-direct, pay-as- you-go telephone software support option for USA and Canadian buyers of the upcoming AutoCAD Release 14. The service is available Monday through Friday from 6:00am to 5:00pm PST. Price is US$65 per incident, payable by credit card. 
     ObjectARX SDK for R14 began shipping this week ahead of Release 14 itself. As happened with Release 13, Autodesk has commitments from the 30 largest independent application developers to have apps available for R14 within 30 to 90 days after AutoCAD Release 14 ships. 
     Autodesk View Release 1.2 software has the following features:  Bentley Systems: The Open Engineering Connectivity Conference is being held May 30,1997, at Bentley's offices in Exton PA USA. Conference will cover Engineering Back Office, ModelerServer, and Bentley Class Libraries. 

    Bolvad Communications: Demo version of Job Activities Time Tracking System is available from http://www.bolvad.com . 
    The software tracks time and resources for multiple engineering projects. Ten-user version is US$199.95. 

    CadPLUS: All CadPLUS applications now support AutoCAD R14, including:  HumanCAD is back -- MQPro is the PC-based human modeling and ergonomics design program for creating accurate, 3D humanoids with point-and-click simplicity. 

    ICEM Technologies: ICEM Surf v2.2 has 120 new functions and enhancements, including enhanced trimming of surface modeling, model diagnoses, stereo output mode, and seamless integration with CADDS and CATIA systems. The software will be available for UNIX systems in May and for NT systems by the end of the year. More info from http://www.icem.com 

    Intel: The 300MHz Pentium Pro will be released in early May at a cost of US$1,980. To compensate, the price of a 166MHz MMX Pentium is expected to drop to about US$100. 

    Intergraph Software Solutions: Thirteen new vendors have joined the Solid Edge Voyager Program. They join 41 vendors already offering applications spanning analysis and simulation to machining and fabrication for a complete product development solution. 
     I/RAS C v6.0 is a general-purpose, image-processing package that enhances the capabilities of MicroStation to input, display, enhance, warp, and plot grayscale and color images. New features include mosiac, image collage, density, slice, splice, value replacement, and image-to-image warping. 

    Kingston: The EtherRx PC Card (formerly PCMCIA card) is a mere US$85 --even for the BNC coax connector model. 

    PMS: ELCOVISION 10 is a 3D model generation from photographs, highest accuracy close range photogrammetry available in the market. Full automatic orthophoto generation. 

    Spatial Technology: ACIS 3D Viewer is an ActiveX viewing for 3D CAD models created with CAD software exporting the ACIS SAT file format. Viewing includes dynamic rotation, pan, and zoom, and controlling the background color, along with support for the Windows Clipboard. Available free in May.

    Letters to the Editor 

    In reaction to the XXCAL DWG Study commissioned by Autodesk, a competitor had these thoughts: 
         "Since when was _DWG_ the standard format for CAD file exchange? I thought that the whole point of DXF was to provide an open-architecture, non-proprietary format for CAD drawing exchange. 
         "The reason that DWG is becoming more important is because Autodesk has moved away from DXF. DXF is now no longer as complete or as rich as DWG. I believe that Autodesk has purposely allowed DXF to fall behind because it is too easy for other vendors to read and write. 
         "DWG is a dinosaur of a file format. It is 16 years old and still not a Compound Document. Our own CAD product's file format is a Compound Document complete with Summary Info and all the functionality of a well behaved MS Office citizen. 
         "Autodesk has an OEM product called DWG Un-plugged - but you can't license it for inclusion in a competing CAD product -- we have tried.  We have licensed ACIS to decrypt the AutoCAD 3D objects and we have licensed a library to read R13 DWG. Our older CAD product has good R12 DWG support; our newer CAD product now has good R13 DWG support. 
    We support AutoCAD layers, blocks, paper space views, line styles, and hatch patterns. We deal with Extended Entity Data seamlessly. Our filter reads and writes at an acceptable speed. Our support of XRefs and Attributes is still under construction but this should not present any technical problems. 
         "I believe that by openly using their proprietary format as a strong reason to exclude competitors from the CAD market, Autodesk is walking an anti-trust high-wire. If DWG is a 'standard' then it should be published and available to all competitors (and not just the night before a release, either)." 

    Notable Quotable 

    "Last year, IBM generated more revenue from selling software than any other company, some US$13 billion. What were the total revenues for Microsoft? Just US$8.7 billion." 
         -- Fortune Magazine, April 28, 1997. 

    Contact! 

    All contents copyright XYZ Publishing, Ltd. Inc., 1997 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.