www.upfrontezine.com
Objecting to the Marriage of ACIS
There's a wedding taking place in the CAD chapel, but another
suitor has stood up to voice his objection. Dassault "we
are the king of the CAD world" Systèmes has proposed
to marry ACIS, given by Spatial "we want to become a pure
Web player" Technologies, with the blessings of Autodesk
"we're really happy for you, honest" Incorporated looking
on. After the wedding, Spatial would take on the name PlanetCAD.
The wedding was set to take place in September. The society page
editors were all chattering, however, over the low price of the
dowry. Where were the competing suitors? An obvious suitor, bestfriend
Autodesk, said the ACIS lifestyle didn't suit him. Other moneyed
suitors were, ahem, of a different religion. It took some prompting,
but another suitor came forward with a larger dowry just weeks
before the marriage was to be consummated.
Last week, Dassault raised its offer for Spatial from US$21.5 million to $25 million cash because of a competing offer. Neither Spatial nor their pr firm, however, would confirm the new suitor, but it would appear to be SDRC.
Dassault's new offer also includes new technology agreements, in which Dassault offers:
In exchange, Spatial will:
Both companies share engineering data translation and healing technologies. And reseller agreements where Dassault sells enterprise versions of PlanetCAD's 3Dshare.com model interoperability service, and PlanetCAD will sell the IntraVISION Viewer to end user markets.
Archrival Unigraphics Solutions (UGS) countered with its announcement of a new "Make No Payments For One Full Year" offer. Its new Innovator program offers ParaSolid to smaller companies with "no financial commitments for up to one full year." UGS notes that licensees of Parasolid include SolidWorks, a subsidiary of Dassault.
Ch-Ch-Changes
at Bentley
Last 31 August a Bentley pr person offered to email me a press
release early. "I wanted to let you know that Bentley has
made some organizational changes this week. Due to the Labor Day
weekend holiday, we will not be issuing the press release about
it until Tuesday. If you are interested in including the news
in your next eZine we would be happy to send you the release ahead
of time." But the press release never materialized in my
In basket. And, as of Monday evening -- more than a week later
-- it was still not posted to the http://www.bentley.com/pressroom
page.
Delayed press releases are a sign of tumult within a company.
It had been rumored for several years now that Bentley will "for
sure" going public, selling shares on the stock market. The
whispers about the changes at the top include the change from
a technology-oriented ceo to a financial-oriented ceo -- Keith
Bentley is now CTO and Greg Bentley is CEO -- along with the loss
of vp of marketing, Yoav Etiel.
Next week's upFront.eZine will have reaction from our readers to eCADLite, that new clone of MicroStation.
Under
the Radar
A summery of press releases you may not have read elsewhere:
Starting 12 September, Imagecom has a new ASP portal called ASPire3D.com powered by FlexiDesign. The first pay-per-use application is 2Dto3DCAD.com, which automatically converts 2D CAD drawings to 3D parametric models. Service is initially free. http://www.aspire3d.com
Heron-Technologies released the latest demo-version of WATT Mechanism Design Tool Release 0.7, a conceptual design tool for mechanism and linkage design. http://www.heron-technologies.com
Unigraphics Solutions announced it was recognized by CIMdata, a strategic consulting firm, as having the fastest revenue growth among all leading CAD/CAM vendors -- a 21% year-to-year growth rate for its CAM software revenue between 1998 and 1999.
For readers who want the CAD headlines delivered to their desktop on a daily basis, you can subscribe at http://www.tenlinks.com/News/subscribe.htm. And if you prefer to bookmark a live page, go to http://www.tenlinks.com/news/cad_news.htm
Conferences
MicroStation Metro Atlanta Community is an Atlanta
GA USA MicroStation users group, and is organizing a conference
with seminars, workshops, exhibits, and a mixer called "Third
Annual MMAC Mixer and Second Annual Bentley Forum Sponsored Event"
to be held November 1-2 at the Sheraton Colony Square Hotel. http://www.atlantatmc.com
Harness Software is hosting an event in conjunction with ESOFT Global to launch its CAPITAL H v3.0 software October 13 at Hotel Elysee Palace, Nice, France. http://www.harness-software.com/invitation.htm
The International Society on Virtual Systems and MultiMedia presents the 6th International Conference on VSMM2000, 3-6 October 2000, in Softopia, Gifu, Japan. http://www.vsmm.org/vsmm2000
SolidWorks International User Conference held in Orlando FL USA is being held February 11-14, 2001. http://www.solidworks.com/swworld
Topocad Systems AB is arranging a user group meeting, November 8-10, at the Golden Tulip Hotel in St. Julians on Malta. http://www.chaos.se
CATIA Operators Exchange 2000 Fall Conference and Technifair from October 1-5, in St. Louis, Missouri, USA. http://www.coe.org
SolidWorks announced its 2000 Student Design Competition. Degree-seeking students using SolidWorks 2000 Student Edition software are eligible to enter their original designs. http://www.solidworks.com/education
People
& Companies on the Move
SolidWorks appointed Joseph Esposito as chief financial
officer. Most recently, Mr Esposito was financial director of
New Business Ventures at Polaroid Corporation.
Nemetschek North America relocated to a larger facility at 7150 Riverwood Drive, Columbia MD 21046, USA. Phone numbers remain the same. Pictures at http://www.nemetschek.net/news/newbldg.html
Computer
News Summaries
The Pentium 4 CPU will become available later this year
in limited quantities. For the first nine months, the more expensive
Rambus RAM will be the only memory that works with the new Pentium.
In mid-20001, lower-cost SDRAM-compatible motherboards will become
available.
The Ricoh RDC-i700 (US$1,500), due out next Spring, is a 3.34-megapixel digital camera that also handles e-mail, faxes, and Web browsing via its 3.5" touch-sensitive LCD screen, stylus for text input, and PC Card slot that accepts cards such as a fax/modem or wireless LAN. This would allow you to transmit photos to an FTP site. For faxing, you take a picture of the document, and the camera coverts the image to pure black-white Group 4 file. - http://www.pcworld.com/shared/printable_articles/0,1440,18403,00.html
Foveon has produced a prototype for a 16.8-megapixel camera, allowing a resolution of 4096 x 4096. The chip has 70 million transistors, twice that of a Pentium III. Current digital cameras top out at about 4 megapixels. - CNET
Market
News
Unigraphics Solutions is acquiring Engineering
Animation for US$205 million. The agreement has been approved
by both companies' boards of directors.
The
WorthWhile Web
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/1/13128.html
Keyboard grime analysis
http://www.ihateapple.com/realsoonnow.html
Mac OS delay clock
Letters
to the Editor
Re: Metric Revit
"Revit has always supported work in either metric or imperial
units. Revit's working units are determined by a template file
that a user selects when opening a new Revit project. Our upcoming
international releases of Revit will offer to set the default
to the metric template at installation.
"In terms of metric content within Revit's library of components
(building elements such as wall types, doors and furniture), Revit
1.0 was limited. However, Revit 2.0 includes a robust library
of hundreds of new metric components that users can access, which
is now comparable in scope to the imperial content."
- Alex Neihaus, vp marketing, Revit Technology
"I have been a subscriber to your very helpful upFront.eZine
for a long time. As a CAD software house/user, I would like to
draw your attention to http://www.xdsoft.com/explorer/
. I find this product is very useful, good price/performance,
and they provide a fantastic support."
- Joseph Freund, ceo, Idan Computers
Spin
Doctor of the Moment
"The ultimate goal, [Palm] decided, was to make the Pocket
PC go down in history as a modern Edsel..."
- http://www.msnbc.com/news/443135.asp.
"Palm Puts Up Its Fists as Microsoft Attacks the Handheld
PC Market" is interesting in how it describes rumors and
myths directing a corporation's efforts.
Notable
Quotable
"For the corporate entities that currently monopolize popular
culture, such a solution is not welcome news: The idea of directly
connecting the artist with their audience all but sends them scrambling
for a reason to exist."
- http://www.linuxports.com/mp3_article.lxp
Contact!