www.upfrontezine.com
Is CAD Dead?
Editorial opinion by Martyn Day
Another day, another corporate re-branding. You are hard pressed
to find the word "CAD" on any of the home pages of traditional
CAD vendors, e.g. Autodesk, PTC, Bentley, Unigraphics. Instead,
you find a new breed of three-letter acronym: Bentley emphasizes
EEM (Enterprise Engineering Modeling); PTC is the collaborative
product commerce (CPC) company; Autodesk recently announced its
future roadmap is "idesign."
"CAD" has been a dirty word for a few years now in the
stock market. The reason for this is the double-whammy rise of
Internet tech stocks, combined with the CAD market maturing and
offering less opportunity for growth. For the stock market to
like a tech stock, your software house had to be producing a revenue
growth in excess of 20% per year. This was consistently achievable
for a number of the key players, like Autodesk and PTC.
With CAD sales looking unlikely to enjoy the growth the stock
market would reward, CAD companies diversified into developing
other tools to leverage the engineering documents created by their
design software solutions. The area of greatest interest is electronic
document management (EDM), where each player already has incumbent
installed bases and the sale was to the whole enterprise, not
just the CAD department.
In this era of "if you can touch it, it's worth nothing,"
the companies that provide the tools for the manufacturing industry
are busy remodeling their businesses along Internet lines so at
least they can improve their market capitalization. To back this
up, the marketing departments have clearly been burning the midnight
oil, reinventing the direction and rejuvenating the images of
these apparently 'tired old CAD companies'.
I'm pretty sure I'm not the only person that feels this way. I
have yet to talk to a marketing contact that doesn't at least
manage a snigger when I mention the roughage-quality of their
latest Net-centric press release. They know it's bobbins, I know
it's bobbins. In short, Internet re-branding has already become
a joke within our industry. It transpires that the target audience
for this posturing, however, is the tiny stock analyst community
-- the folks with the power to mark stock as Buy, Hold, or Sell.
Above all else, expect to see more Internet functionality in your
design software this year, whether you need it or not.
Alibre Design provides a 3D parametric, feature-based solid
modeler that supports the design of both parts and assemblies,
as well as the automated and associative generation of 2D engineering
drawings. Alibre uses STEP as its native file format, and supports
other CAD formats, such as SAT, IGES, DWG and STL. Alibre is working
with Spatial Technology to support their new 3Dshare.com Web-based
translation service. This allows Alibre to import (via translation)
drawings from Pro/ENGINEER and CATIA.
Pricing is via subscription. Online collaboration and data sharing
is US$100 per month, per seat to individual users. Offline use
of the Alibre Design 3D solid modeler is available at no charge.
Larger companies can contact Alibre for pricing information.
Two more events, Philadelphia Area DataCAD User Group Meeting at AIA Expo '2000 (May 2) and DataCAD Training Sessions (May 1-2) are at Radisson Valley Forge Hotel, 1160 First Avenue, King of Prussia PA USA.
During A/E/C Systems '2000, the Washington DC Area DataCAD User Group Meeting (June 10) and DataCAD Training Sessions (June 9-10) at Holiday Inn, 8120 Wisconsin Ave, Bethesda MD USA.
For user group meetings, RSVP via email to info@datacad.com or call +1 (800) 394-2231 x14. For training sessions (US$395), register at +1 (800) 394-2231.
Internet Business Systems announced the addition of Amy Rowell as Managing Editor and Bill Wallace as General Manager of the MCADCafe.com Web portal. Amy was one of the first editors of Cadence magazine.
Autodesk
Inventor 2 began shipping last Friday with 400 enhancements. Autodesk
will announce downloadable "product extensions" next
week.
Bentley Systems
GeoGraphics SELECT Series is available as of April 1 to all Bentley
Geoengineering subscribers. The series combines some of the existing
Geoengineering software products. GeoParcel, GeoAddress, and GeoCoordinator
will no longer be sold as add-on products, but will become integrated
into MicroStation GeoGraphics.
CADKEY
HighRES is shipping
a new release of advanced 3D reverse engineering software products
for CADKEY 99 including HighRES SuperLite, HighRES SmartPlanes,
HighRES Studio, HighRES SuperSpline, and HighRES SmartChain.
IMSI
In 1997, Corel sold CorelFLOW to IMSI, and now is licensing it
back again. Core last week made a non-exclusive worldwide licensing
agreement with IMSI for FLOW (flow chart and diagraming) and TurboProject
(project management) software. Corel will port the software to
Linux for release in the second half of 2000.
Intergraph
The company is teaming with RTSe (formerly Enabling Technologies)
to provide its geospatial metadata tool, Spatial Metadata Management
System to Intergraph's GeoMedia
customers. SMMS for GeoMedia integrates spatial metadata capabilities
within GeoMedia.
Spatial
The first ACIS-enabled design products on the Linux operating
system are Gambit 1.2 by Fluent
Inc, and MeshSim 3.0 from Simmetrix..
-- Mar 29 --
Martin-Baker
Orders $500k of Unigraphics iMAN
Intergraph,
RTSe Will Metadata System for GeoMedia
Network
Appliance Approved by SDRC for C3P
Mentor
Launches Dynamic Power Analysis Tool
-- Mar 30 --
Spatial
Announces ACIS-enabled Products On Linux
GrafiCalc
Available for Geometry Calculations
ACNielsen
Introduces SPACEMAN for Floor Planning
-- Mar 31 --
Autodesk
Ships Inventor R2
Linde
AG Selects Solid Edge
-- Apr 03 --
PTC's
Preliminary Q2 Results Below Expectations
Graphisoft
Acquires Drawbase
Changchun
Railway Selects SolidWorks
Delcam
Sales Up 15%
Synopsys
2000 Announced for Circuit Design
StereoGraphics
Opens Michigan Office
Triple Boot
Fri 24 Mar -
Not much to report this time, except that we now have a triple-booting
computer. My son, Stefan, has one of our computers loaded with
Windows 98, Windows 2000, and Corel Linux. The best part is that
he didn't have to do anything to create the triple-boot feature.
Here's how it works:
Recall that he had installed a new 15GB drive with two partitions.
If you install Corel Linux in its own partition, then Linux installs
LILO, which is a piece of software that controls the boot process.
LILO gives us the choice between booting variants of Linux (such
as VGA mode, command mode, etc -- just like Windows offers Safe
Mode, etc) or to boot Windows.
(LILO doesn't appear to be available when you install Linux in
a Windows subdirectory, rather than in its own partition. In this
case, we would boot the computer holding down the Ctrl key. When
Windows gave us the menu of boot choices, we would select Command-line
Safe Mode, then start Linux from the DOS prompt.)
With Windows 2000 installed, it too has a boot manager, which
gives us a choice of booting the Previous Version of Windows or
Windows 2000. Between the two boot managers, we can start three
different operating systems:
Stage 1: Start Linux or Windows.
Stage 2: Start Windows 98 or Windows 2000.
Re: Autodesk's Internet Initiatives
"I really hope the line between desktop and Internet doesn't
get lost. At times I really think about buying an Internet-only
computer for browsing, and pull the phone line out of my desktop.
I especially don't want any of the newest MS products on a machine
with a working modem."
- Monte Westlund, The Synthesis Company
"As a dealer, the first thing we noticed [about Autodesk's
Redesigned Web Site] is that there is no longer an obvious way
to find a reseller The only way to find one is to act like you
want to purchase a product. Eventually you'll find a link to
Authorized Resellers."
- Randall Maxey, CAD Associates
"Have you noticed the similarity between Autodesk's new
logo and Altavista's new logo? Considering Altavista's support
for the online version of AutoCAD 2000, maybe we should look for
'Autodesk, a CGMI company.'
- David Edwards, Dave Edwards Consulting
"That lead peace was so thoroughly enjoyable. Thanks for
making me smile yet again and having the guts to say what is on
your mind. You give voice to the silent thousands disillusioned
and deserted by an industry overly focused on Wall Street and
an industry press that is concentrating on chasing dwindling advertising
revenue."
- Roopinder Tara, TenLinks.Com
"Thanks again for a wonderful newsletter, your comments
and insight of the CAD marketplace."
- Ken Dellenbach
Re: Linux
"The many references to 'lack of unification' in the Linux
distribution market is true, but only to an extent. Part of the
UNIX problem was the kernel was fragmented -- there were commands
that didn't even work on each other's system. I don't see this
happening with Linux. The distributions are daily more diverse,
but they all run on the same kernel. The commands are all the
same. Few indeed are the programs that run on one distribution,
but not another.
"At this point, it's primarily the 'install & setup'
and 'user interfaces' that are different between distributions.
The install routines are all getting better but all getting more
and more different. The user interface is gradually becoming more
standardized, however. Everybody seems to run Gnome or KDE now.
All other window mangers boil down to the same thing.
"But even under the different displays, all the core parts
of Linux are the same from one thing to the next. Different drivers,
perhaps; different releases of Xfree86 & the kernel; but all
the same thing. If I give you a string of command line entries
your system is going to respond the same as mine."
- Caleb Maclennan, The 3D Design & Build Center
Re: Vendor Blocks
"I recently read in your upFront about vendors providing
blocks of their products. Great! So I went to Swagelok Web site
looking to find blocks of their products. Couldn't find anything.
Parker Hannifin: nothing. Searched using search engines: nothing.
Followed resources from Autodesk Web site: nothing.
"I totally agree, though, if we were provided accurate blocks
of products the time saved redrawing the components from product
catalogs would easily encourage the purchasing of that item from
that manufacturer. Win-win for
all. I do not understand why manufacturers would not make that
information easily available. If they are worried about competitors
stealing designs the drawings only need to be accurate in overall
dimensions and to fittings and connectors as well as being visually
representative.
"If I had the money I would start up a large Web site dedicated
to the posting and downloading of blocks. I am surprised that
Autodesk or another CAD vendor had not done this already.
"Thanks for the eZine, it is great."
- Mick
Other Topics:
"I am currently studying final year BSc (Hons) CAD &
Construction at The University of Wolverhampton. My dissertation
subject looking at the viability of Virtual Reality within the
construction design process. Could you please point your readers
to this link <members.tripod.co.uk/dawes>
where they will find a brief questionnaire to aid my research."
- Rob Dawes
"This may be is a relatively inexpensive way to get site-topo
information without getting an expensive survey. If it does what
I think it does, it should be of interest to architects and engineers
and others. http://homepages.tig.com.au/~robk/datalogger.html
"
- Jerry Bragstad