www.upfrontezine.com
Inside this Issue
Readers
React On the Topic Of...
Readers of upFront.eZine had plenty to say about the
content of recent issues. As always, letters have been edited
for clarity and brevity:
... Magazine Awards
"Just a quick note to say 'nice one' on the recent thing
on awards by CAD magazines; I couldn't agree more. We used to
run a 'CADD'-endorsed award, but scrapped it because, to be honest,
the majority of tools out there perform pretty much the same.
Perhaps it would be better to have a 'don't touch unless your
life depends on it' award for the truly horrible products out
there."
- Al Dean, MCAD magazine
The editor replies: "Good idea. Here's my initial
list of products with such severe design deficiencies so as to
make them useless:
Delorme's TravelMate GPS for Palm
Seiko's SmartPad for Palm
Iomega's Clik Drive system"
"At some point we will start doing head-to-head reviews
in 'CADdesk AEC' magazine, but will probably handle it area by
area: sectioning, detailing, modeling, depth of content, etc.
We will end up with an Architectural Cup type of outcome, though,
which may be useless. Plus, it's almost impossible to track these
products since they are developing at such different rates.
"Revit and the others will have their hands full to take
any market share off Autodesk, since Architectural Desktop is
selling into a big, sticky, installed base -- even though users
may not be using ADT as it was intended: model-centric building
and all."
- Martyn Day, CADdesk AEC magazine
"'MicroStation Manager' magazine gave the title Editor's
Choice to two hardware products at A/E/C Systems 2000 for the
first time in several years. At the time, neither was an advertiser.
One has since advertised. The awards were not disclosed until
the magazine was in print."
- Randall Newton, MicroStation Manager magazine
"Although I agree that there may be a slight truth to
what you claim, I think it's unfair to make a broad generic statement
that all magazine awards are biased and ad-revenue based. You
wanted an example? Here goes:
"My company, ASPire3D.com, was awarded the 'Computer Graphics
World' Innovative Product of the Year Award for 2000 without a
single ad placement in their magazine. And yes, we are a tiny,
relatively unknown ASP that has been operating only for two months."
- Dr. Raj Ganesan, ASPire3D.com
"I think we are in violent agreement. You will find no
stronger supporter of increased objectivity in the industry than
SolidWorks. These awards should cut through marketing lingo and
buzzwords. They should be based on real technical innovations,
leadership, and production worthiness. Keep the CAD community
honest. Keep it up."
- Joe Dunne, SolidWorks
"Your article exposes what many readers have suspected.
I loved it. So provocative. It ought to get more than one editor
very defensive."
- Name withheld by request
... Aggressive Press Releases
"This issue was very useful for me on two fronts: (1)
keeps me on my toes and reminds me (and hopefully other PR professionals)
that one bad fact or misinformed press release can completely
shoot our credibility -- permanently; and (2) I'm saving this
to show to (future) clients who ask me to cast hype as news. It's
a constant battle!"
- Becky Stevens, Virtual Marketing
"Sometimes I think the world evaluates software based
on ads and what the media says, rather than which product produces
the intended benefit most efficiently. Have we forgotten that
the purpose is to use a computer to produce designs and drawings
that are of higher quality, at less cost, in a shorter time? It
would be refreshing to see a media evaluation on that basis."
- Tom Lazear, Archway Systems
"I appreciated your long rant about 'winners' and advertising.
I've pretty much given up on the print magazines -- they never
say anything! How do these people get to be editors, anyway? Thanks
for upFront; honesty is a good thing!"
- Michael Rogers
The editor replies: "For some editors, it's just a job; they are assigned that position within a large publishing company."
"Looks like IBM has a particularly aggressive PR guy.
Thought the letter might interest you."
- David Cohn
The editor comments: Mr Cohn attached a letter and a recent press release from IBM that trashes Sun's Blade 1000 computer: "News has filtered out that Sun continue to encounter difficulties with UltraSparc-III, its crucial new microprocessor," et cetera.
... CAD for Principals Study
"Your articles 'Users vs. Ad Sales' and 'Revit vs. CAD
for Principals Council' ring so true and have generated some activity
in my frontal lobe. It seems funny to see CAD venders still fighting
for the coveted BEST award from somebody. So what if a CAD package
has an edge over the others.
"Are users really forecasted to leave one package for another
just because of the promise of some 'new formulation'? At this
engineering firm, we're married to AutoCAD for better and for
worse; that's not to say that we won't be getting a divorce at
some point. We happily churn out documents in the format that
most of our clients use; we deal with the 25% or so that use other
formats without serious pain.
"It's like modern marriage in that we keep on going because
as many would say, they stay with the status quo because they've
invested a huge amount of time, customization, experience and
money to this point. And we have children to think about -- the
'children' are the documents we've produced in this format for
a decade or so."
- Ronald Powell, Jdh Engineering
"The coverage of the CAD for Principals Council software
study left me disappointed. The comments seemed intent on creating
a controversy where none should have existed. I agree that Revit
should have mentioned that they sponsor the CAD for Principals
Council in their press release, but upFront should have elaborated
for its readership what sponsorship really means.
"For instance it does not mean that anyone who volunteered
their time to help in reviewing the AEC CAD applications was contacted
by Revit during the evaluation in an effort to skew the results.
Sponsorship of the evaluation also does not mean that any of the
evaluators were compensated by Revit for their participation.
"Maybe the evaluation will be a catalyst for all vendors
to ratchet up their development effort. Maybe someday AEC CAD
products will actually perform the way the customers require.
Maybe CAD vendors will start over with their thoughts about data
structure and storage rather than continuing the Frankenstein
approach of patching up, plugging-in and extending those decades-old,
proprietary, stale, outdated file formats."
- Bob Ritger, The Hillier Group
"Congratulations to the winning sponsor."
- Yoav Etiel, Bricsnet.com
In
the Trenches of PR Warfare:
Revit vs Autodesk, Cont'd
Revit spent its pre-Christmas time sending gifts
of wooden bookcases to consultants who work with Autodesk Architectural
Desktop. The accompanying letter chortles: "Now that Autodesk
has finally shipped ADT 3, we wanted to take the opportunity to
send you what we are certain is the best hardware platform for
the software: a finely finished, 100% wood shelf." The letter
included instructions on how to "install" ADT on the
shelf, some stickers, and a copy of the Revit software.
Autodesk vp Phillip Bernstein shot back: "We hear
some startup is sending shelves in the mail. While an innovative
ploy to help you organize your office, we know you find substance
over hype far more appealing."
In addition to sending bookshelves, Revit sent editors, including
me, a duffel bag as a thank you for press coverage in 2000.
Trolls
Are People, Too
An debate had been going on at the TurboCAD forum. An anonymous
poster was hammering IMSI. He went by the pen names of "Mr
Bill," "Bando," and, in an email to
me, "Not_Real." In writing me, Not_Real complained
about TurboCAD's DWG compatibility, content of DXF files, and
IMSI share prices. Wrote the rather verbose Not_Real: "Why
am I anonymous? Well I am not sure of your allegiance to the CAD
companies as I only started reading your ezine recently so I cannot
take the change [sic] of have [sic] a CAD company
after hassling me as IMSI in it's [sic] forums has been really
defensive and knee jerkish which I would imagine is due to the
record low of it's [sic] now OTC traded stock around 15
cents when it has been as high as 18 dollars."
Forum regular Eric Muetterties summarized the events: "Mr
Bill unfortunately has not been here to receive help, but has
only bashed the product, ownership, management, policies, programmers,
beta testing, stock price, compatibility with AutoCAD, text included
in DXF format dumps, automatic connection to the Internet, old
timers on this forum that happen to like the product and help
others profusely, and -- I guess that is about it." <http://www.imsisoft.com/forums/Thread.cfm?CFApp=200&Thread_ID=20195&mc=21>
On 3 January, Mr Muetterties said he identified the anonymous
poster as an Autodesk employee by following IP (Internet protocol)
addresses in an email from Mr Bill. Replied another forum regular,
George McNamara: "I think the same people raided the
Visual CADD forum. Went by the names 'pc' and 'rd.' There are
a bunch of ex-IMSI people down the road at Autodesk. I can see
them all standing around someone's desk with evil grins on their
faces." <http://www.imsisoft.com/forums/Thread.cfm?CFApp=200&Thread_ID=20247&mc=2>
Normally, I wouldn't be interested in this sort of vendor bashing,
especially after IMSI called me for help in exposing Mr Bill.
But I thought it might be interesting for my readership to read
of the (sad) sort of thing that goes on in CAD forums. This is
the Internet, where no one knows who you are. There are, as I
see it, three possibilities:
1. Mr Bill is as he represents himself: a real TurboCAD
user with detailed knowledge of what shouldn't be in a DXF file.
If so, his comments are helpful in improving the product. Indeed,
IMSI has stated that some product fixes will be coming out in
February.
2. Mr Bill is what TurboCAD supporters suspect: an infiltrator
from Autodesk whose purpose is to expose weaknesses in a competitor.
If so, he should be fired from his job.
3. Mr Bill is an IMSI public relations stunt: he has been
created to make Autodesk look bad.
I asked Not_Real if s/he worked for Autodesk, but received no reply. I asked Autodesk about this matter, and they responded curtly: "Our product support group is investigating the issue and working with IMSI to resolve any problems." IMSI's Rob Berry reports that "A decision was made to ask the person making these allegations to discontinue posting any further messages on our forums." In the meantime, the controversial threads have been archived for forensic purposes. <http://www.imsisoft.com/forums/Thread.cfm?CFApp=200&Thread_ID=20279&mc=14>
Below
the Radar
A summary of press releases you may not have read elsewhere:
Autodesk will be announcing Inventor 5 and Streamline on March 5 at NDES. Streamline is a hosted service for sharing design data across the manufacturing enterprise.
Ellen Finkelstein has posted an "AutoCAD 2000i Update" on her Web site. The Word document details features new to 2000i, including instructions and figures. It is available free at http://www.ellenfinkelstein.com/autocad.html
Archway Systems has released VersaCAD Mac 2000 to Premium Service subscribers (US$595/yr) and new purchasers (US$995). Features include larger symbol capacity, compatible with PowerMac math coprocessor for 5x-speed improvement, and a direct translator to/from all versions of AutoCAD DWG or DXF. http://www.archwaysystems.com
GDS Engineers' CADQC for AutoCAD (US$495) is a drawing standards checker that runs stand-alone or with AutoCAD 2000/2000i. CADQC checks drawings created with any version of AutoCAD for compliance with project, client, or company drawing standards. A free working demo available at http://www.cadqc.com
Integrityware's royalty-free TSLib 4.0 trimmed surface library features: Silhouette curve creation, surface-surface intersection, precise and fast ray tracing (up to 30,000 ray/surface intersections per second), STEP support, solid primitive creation, SMP support, and assembly structure. http://www.integrityware.com
Alibre has partnered with CADalog.com to provide Alibre Design customers access to a library of one million 2D and 3D standard hardware components and manufactured parts. http://www.cadalog.com
ASPire3D and QuickParts.Com are offering each other's Web services. ASPire3D is an ASP provider of 2D-to-3D CAD conversions, while Quickparts.com is a Web-based supplier of rapid prototypes via their online instant quoting system. http://www.ASPire3D.com and http://www.Quickparts.com
Unigraphics Solutions released Parasolid v12.1, which allows CAD users to feature edits a model that has not been defined with feature modeling; visualization for assemblies made of over 10,000 components; XML export as defined by http://www.extxml.org . More features at http://www.parasolid.com
Geomagic Qualify from Raindrop Geomagic allows automatic graphical comparisons between a CAD master model and the built part or object. Due to ship 15 Feb. http://www.geomagic.com
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
Conferences
The
Collaborative Product Design & Development Conference,
February 26 and 27 at Sunburst Resort in Scottsdale AZ USA
National Design Engineering Show, March 5-8, 2001 at McCormack Place, Chicago IL USA.
Congress on the Future of Engineering Software, April 26-28 in Scottsdale AZ USA.
The first annual GeoSpatial World, June 18-20, Atlanta GA USA.
Redo
The "all-new CAD architecture" and "merging component
technology from HOOPS, etc" that I reported for Cadkey 19
were in fact meant for Cadkey 20. Reader Robert Shreve reports
"These are promised for Cadkey 20. The release date for v20
was at one time scheduled for fall 2000; is now said to be sometime
in 2001."
"Cyco's new search technology is code-named 'Aqua' and
we are in the process of coming up with another unique name. We
are aware that Apple is using the term 'aqua' as well to refer
to its new user interface. Thought it was important to clarify
that."
- Arjan Timmermans, Cyco
Computer
News Summaries
Barnesandnoble.com will pay authors 35% gross for
electronic books sold through http://www.bn.com
and affiliates.
Palm's new eWallet software has the backing of Visa.
It beams your debit card information at the retailer's IR terminal.
Garmin has licensed PalmOS for use in a PDA that will
be aware of its location and able to provide the user with information
relevant to their current environment. The device is to be released
next year.
Devices using the next version of Windows CE are due out in
2002.
Windows 2002 (Whistler), to be released late this year, is due
to replace Windows Me (for consumers) and Windows 2000 (for businesses),
and is based on Windows NT. New features include "pretty
new icons [which blend into the background], reloacted Recycle
Bin, Internet Explorer 6.0, and Media Player 8..." as well
as anti-piracy code, which keys Windows 2002 to one PC. - CNET
Market
News
Bentley has completed its acquisition of Intergraph's
civil engineering, plot services, and raster conversion software
businesses for about US$40 million, included a cash payment and
installment note payable over three years.
Mechanical Dynamics has completed the acquisition of ESTECH,
a CAE service provider, from Nissan Motor and SDRC.
At the close of market Monday, some share prices were:
The
WorthWhile Web
http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v2.4/
Linux kernel v2.4 download site.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/media/317.jpg
The Register
Handdrawn "blueprint" of Xbox game console.
http://www.rex.net/rex/cda/tourmain
Xircom
REX 6000 Virtual Tour
http://www.progroup.com.au
ProGroup Australia
Slickly produced CAD-oriented Web site.
Brand
New CAD Books
"Official
DataCAD User's Guide" by M Smith and RC Morse
Written for 9.0 release by DataCAD experts; published by McGraw
Hill.
List price: US$49.95
For more info, or to purchase online:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0071363564/XyzpublishingltdA
"Architectural
AutoCAD" by David Madsen
Published by Goodheart-Willcox
List price: US$13.00
For more info, or to purchase online:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1566377498/XyzpublishingltdA
Notable
Quotable
"By choosing an off-brand browser, you can reap rewards in
speed and simplicity. You dodge the bugginess of Netscape Navigator
6 and the feeling of slavery some people feel when using Microsoft's
browser."
- New York Times
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