www.upfrontezine.com
Inside this Issue
Letters to the Editor
This week, I clean out the In basket. Here are letters
received over the last few weeks:
Re: Advances in Hardware, NEC's 61" plasma display.
"In '79, I made a presentation at an Automation Technology
symposium held in Monterey CA on my idea for a future CAD terminal.
It consisted of a high resolution, full color, flat panel display,
large enough to display an E-size drawing; a low-level laser eye-movement
tracking device to place the cursor; a function key pad; and a
regular key board. I thought something like it would happen within
the next ten years.
"Missed it by a few years.
"Still like your newsletter better than all the others I
know of."
-Ken Dellenbach
Re: CEO/CTO Lingo
"A few weeks ago, SDRC posted a press releases. I edited
it to remove excess verbiage, retaining only each marketing buzzword
and the useful factual content. Below, I set off the message with
rows of asterisks. The rest of what's left is meant to appeal
to managers, vice-presidents, analysts, and the like. Actually,
come to think of it, the entire press release is meant to appeal
to that group of people, not us engineers."
- Andy Wells
Here's the press release: http://www.sdrc.com/newsroom/corporate-0403a.shtml
And here's the list:
revolutionary
strategy
collaboration
market leader
PDM
accelerates
virtual enterprise
Collaborative Product Management
new
collaborative strategy
global product development
open
web-native
product development initiative
driving business results
unique
product centric paradigm
reduce costs
enhance productivity
getting products to market at record speed
********
SDRC is hosting a symposium, May 29-June 1 in Orlando, Florida.
********
comprehensive strategy
leverages
experience
mission-critical applications
knowledge
technology
critical elements
product lifecycle
tremendously improves
open solutions
scalability
interoperability
performance
distributed virtual enterprises
positively enable
global market
market definitions
collaborative product commerce (CPC)
product lifecycle management (PLM)
collaborative Product Definition management (cPDm)
enable
competitive excellence
product development process
customer requirements
product retirement
open
standards-based
solutions
industry-oriented applications
align
achieving strategic business results
leading edge
product design
data management
driving results
enabling
maximize their return on investment
delivering
innovative products
on time
within budget
with a high degree of quality
comprehensive response
changes
evolve
excel
today's marketplace
productivity levels
cost reductions
major drivers
demanding business environment
value chain collaboration
collaboration
development, supply, and support chains
implement solutions
proven business value
product creation solutions
escalate
global collaborative solutions
best-in-class systems
launch
product-specific
initiatives
symposium
software solutions
propel
increased business competitiveness
web-based
collaborative
environment
product development
Re: The Cost of Miles
"I am fairly sure that the bulk price is $0.008 per mile."
- Leo Schlosberg
Re: Evaluating 3rd-Party Software
"Since a few months we have a new third-party catalog and
store on autodesk.com. It does not do what some people are asking
for in your newsletter -- comparisons -- but it does give a good
overview of what is available per industry, and many developers
have put extensive product descriptions on our Web site. The catalog
lists over 3,200 products, and we have 124 product available in
the store: http://www.autodesk.com/partnerproducts "
- Guido Haarmans
Autodesk
Re: Software Upgrades
"It's funny, this 'barely-any-upgrade' upgrade business.
I'm amazed that people will actually fork out money. I think buying
upgrades (or supposed upgrades) is now being done with much more
thought about value for money. Hence all the hoo-ha about subscriptions
etc.
- Geoff Harrod
The editor replies: "That's an interesting thought: software vendors switching to subscriptions because they can see people are less interested in upgrading 'automatically.' My son recently upgraded some software on his computer, and now regrets it because the taskbar icon acts differently. I lectured him: 'Let that be a lesson to you: never upgrade if the software is running fine!'"
Re: IBM eLiza
"Hmmm... it reminds me of eliza running on a Victor 9000."
- David Cerruti
Perkins & Will
The editor replies: "I tried booting my Victor 9000 (still stored under the stairs) a couple of years ago, but it wouldn't go. Could be the diskettes are loosing their magnetic flux patterns."
Re: RealArchitect
"I was just wondering if you knew what happened to RealArchitect?
It is an add-on for AutoCAD LT that provided a bunch of architectural
features. Their Web site has disappeared. Just curious as I was
in a discussion with some other architects and no one had a clue."
- Tim Peck
Shoreline Design Group LLC
The editor replies: "You're right: no response for the Web site, and email is returned as undeliverable. Perhaps a reader knows?"
Re: Revit on Sony Viao
"On the VAIO, I am sorry you think we didn't answer your
question, so let me try. First, let me say that the architects
in Revit who have tried this pen tablet machine have drooled over
(on?) it. For them, it's instantly differentiated, and at a gut
level. Unlike the hulking light pen contraptions IBM produced
in the '70s that put out enough radiation to heat up your fillings,
this machine really does meld the architect's basic tool with
technology in a unique way.
"If an architect draws on paper, he ends up with paper.
If you draw in Revit on the VAIO 'paper', you get a digital model
of the building as well as the construction documentation. Automatically.
"Of course, this is what Revit does with a mouse, too. But
the VAIO pen interface is the digital analog (whoa) of the 'mother
tongue idiom' for architects: pencil and paper. It's so natural
that it transforms the experience of using Revit from computing
back to drawing.
"Our intent is to make the interactions between the pen
UI and Revit even more compelling in later releases of Revit.
We are considering enhancements that might allow left- and right-handers
to customize the UI differently, for example."
- Alex Neihaus
Revit Technology Corp.
The editor replies: "I still don't get why using Revit on a pen computer is any different from using, say, ArchiCAD on a pen computer."
Re: upFront.eZine 6th Anniversary
"upfront.ezine is well worth the small donation. Not only
do you get all that regular useful news-breaking CAD info, you
also get a gleaming pen. Now this is not a deal to be missed.
"I would encourage all readers to get the gleaming pen.
Discreetly tucked into the top pocket the gleaming pen could become
the CAD equivalent of the secret handshake. I certainly hope to
get the nod of approval and admiration from CAD professionals
when I wave my gleaming pen at AEC Systems in Chicago."
- Steve Hannath
Softcover International
"I just wanted to drop you a line and let you know that
I truly appreciate all your work that goes into producing upFront.eZine.
Over the last five years I have changed jobs several times. The
one thing that I like to have around is a subscription to upFront.eZine.
I value the depth of your insight and experience in the industry
that you bring to the publication each week and I really like
your travel photos. Boston is on my destination list for this
year.
"Keep up the great work and congrats on six years!"
- Tige Procyshyn
CBCL Limited
Re: Autodesk Marketing
"I'm sure others would be interested in knowing if there's
a future in Actrix Technical. Autodesk's folks often answer Actrix
questions in the newsgroups, but they never respond to questions
about the product's future.
"I haven't seen much marketing for Actrix in a long time.
which makes me wonder: just how long with this be around anyway?
I'm wondering if Autodesk's lack of response is an indication."
- Darren Young
Minnesota CADWorks
The editor replies: "It's been over eight months since the last Actrix press release."
A recent press release from Buzzsaw stated that "Autodesk
leads the worldwide market for architectural software and has
shipped over 26 million copies of AutoCAD."
When I asked Buzzsaw's pr firm where the number "26 million"
came from, they replied: "I don't actually work with Autodesk,
only Buzzsaw, so I can't confirm their numbers." And they
suggested I contact Autodesk marketing.
Which replied, "The figure should be 2.6 million not 26
million -- it apparently was a typographical error in the press
release."
Re: XML
"Bentley was instrumental in initiating the aecXML effort.
They did this by contributing money, energy, and leadership to
the cause -- it was an industry effort, not a Bentley in-house
development. The primary focus of aecXML was not design information;
certainly it was not the design information that is typically
represented in CAD. Rather it was the other information involved
in a construction project, such as schedules, procurement, etc.
In any event, it seems to be largely stalled."
- Leo Schlosberg
Heavyware.com
"This week's eZine mentioned that the DesignXML is undocumented,
which is not correct as any produced XML file does contains the
link to the public documented schema http://www.DesignXML.org/schema/DesignXML_V_100.xdr
."
- Shaan Hurley
Autodesk
The editor replies: "Curious, though, that www.designxml.com points to www.autodesk.com, and not the DesignXML docs."
"I think Evan Yares had a good summary. DesignXML is not
a replacement for DWG; however, we do see XML in general as a
better way for applications to communicate with each other. I
believe a parallel can be drawn between XML and TCP/IP, the communications
protocol fundamental to the operation of the Internet. TCP/IP
defines the rules that govern how packets of data are sent between
computers, and allows computers to communicate regardless of hardware,
operating system, physical location, network medium, or method
of connecting to the network. XML takes that abstraction one level
higher, enabling diverse applications to talk to each other.
"DesignXML provides a structure for creating multiple, redundant
representations of your model at various levels of fidelity, so
that applications that need to get at this data can take what
they need, and discard what they don't. We call these representations
'channels', and a DesignXML file does not have to be fully populated
with all the channels to be valid -- it can contain just a single
channel, if that's what the publisher wants.
"One of the biggest benefits of XML is that it is 'styleable',
so a single data source can be styled (filtered) to produce different
results. Take a simple example: counting the number of instances
of a block in a drawing; if that drawing is in DWG you'll need
an application that has access to a DWG library (such as ObjectDBX,
or OpenDWG). When that data is in XML, is becomes a much simpler
task to write a style sheet that parses through the XML file and
counts the number of blocks, or lists their insertion points or
any other property.
"Another example: Internally we are looking at DesignXML
to improve the interoperability of custom objects.
"The highest level of fidelity of DesignXML is the AcDbXML
model channel, and (as you correctly pointed out) this is what
is available today. The other channels (listed in decreasing levels
of fidelity) are:
Geometry3D
Facetted3D
Vector2D
Raster2D
"The Raster2D, Vector2D and Facetted3D channels will be released
as an extension after AutoCAD 2002, and will be based on emerging
standards."
- Wayne Fisher
Autodesk
The editor replies: "Thank you for the thorough reply. I'll be printing the rest of Mr Fisher's letter next week."
Conferences
AEC Systems 2001 conference, June 18-21 at McCormick Place in
Chicago IL USA. Greg Bentley, ceo Bentley Systems, and Philip
Bernstein, vp Autodesk, will be keynoting on Wednesday 20th (8:30
to 10:00am). http://www.aecsystems.com
Computer
News Summaries
Mozilla 1.0 has been delayed until 15 Oct 2001.
Opera 5.0 for Linux is now shipping at http://www.opera.com/linux/. [Opera is upFront.eZine's prefered Web browser.] The current version for Windows is 5.11.
The PilotGear Web site <http://www.palmgear.com> last week reached 10,000 software titles for download for PalmOS computers.
"Following Intel's release of its new family of [64-bit] Itamium processors, a number of Linux distributions made available [on May 30] their various flavors of Linux for the new 64-bit processor. Among them: Red Hat, SuSE and Turbolinux..." - BetaNews
J.S. Wurzler Underwriting Managers is charging customers 5-15% more if they use Microsoft's Windows NT software in their Internet operations. The announcement indicates growing frustration with the ongoing discoveries of vulnerabilities in Microsoft products. "We saw that our NT-based clients were having more downtime" due to hacking, said ceo John Wurzler. - Interactive Week
Notable
Quotable
"Calls from people selling hardware and software have
probably gone up fivefold in recent months. There's an air of
desperation to it."
- Bob Reeder, vp information and communications services,
Alaska Airlines quoted in eWeek
Contact!