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Issue #241: 20 March, 2001

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Inside this Issue

• Alventive Spins off IronCAD
• CAD for Principals Look to the Future
• Reader Response: Distribution vs Protection
• Below the Radar, and other regular departments

Alventive Spins off IronCAD

Alventive last week created a new independent company called IronCAD LLC (limited liability company) located in Atlanta GA USA, whose job will be to focus on the IronCAD mechanical solids modeling software. Dr Tao-Yang Han will be the president of IronCAD.

In 1997, Visionary Design Systems acquired technology from 3D/EYE (known for its innovative TriSpectives software, called a "Pro/E killer" at the time), from which it created IronCAD, released in Jun'98. (Autodesk also purchased some of the technology from 3D/EYE, creating Actrix.) A year ago, VDS changed its name to the more-trendy-sounding Alventive, which continues doing the online collaborative design solution at http://www.alventive.com

• Broader issue of collaboration: new roles and responsibilities.
• Paradigm shift: how to transition from old processes to new.
• Tackling the problem of exchanging intelligent CAD models between CAD systems: perhaps an effort in collaboration with the IAI's North American chapter.
• Life cycle use of CAD with life cycle benefits.
• Cost/ benefit of advanced life cycle CAD approach.
• Facilities data mining.
• Intelligent data after the project.
• Views on managing CAD in offices.
• Approaches to training.

CAD for Principals is planning a second open session at A/E/C Systerms 2001 in Chicago this June. They plan to report on the results of the CAD Software Evaluation, and hope to get CAD pilot evaluators to report.

"As both consumer and producer, I have some experience with copy protection; I've never seen a compelling business case for such schemes. Here's my take-away points, free of charge:

• Piracy is the cheapest form of marketing. What some call piracy, others call 'network effects' or even 'viral marketing.'
• I'd rather have a customer using a pirated copy of my software than a bought copy of a competitor's product. This is called 'lockout.'
• Hardware keys suck. Ten years ago, roughly a third of the keys failed in the field. One year at another company, a couple hundred keys failed, so we got rid of them. While most keys work as expected, who can tolerate such a failure rate?
• Other problems include: drivers; configuration (play and play -- ha!); connectors; security vendors; and creating a new distribution as your last distribution gets cracked. To the best of my knowledge, all of our current distributions have been cracked.
• Judging from our support records, simply using hardware keys doubled our technical support burden. You may be okay for a one-off (single release); but over the 6-8 year life span of your product, due to platform changes or the need to use 'novel' security mechanisms, you will inflict unforgiveable upheavals on your customers at least twice.

"The associated support cost will slaughter you; your honest customers will hate you; and your non-honest customers will laugh at you. Conclusion: Concentrate your limited development resources on frequent and compelling releases that your loyal customers will cheerfully support financially."
- Jason Osgood

Autodesk has a US$250 rebate on new purchases of AutoCAD 2000i, and US$75 rebate on upgrades made between March 12 and April 16. Purchases can be made from a local dealer or Autodesk's Web site; valid for customers in Canada and the USA only. [Sounds like Autodesk needs a 1Q sales boost. That brings the Web price down to US$3,045.] http://www.autodesk.com/estore/usa/index.htm

Cimsoftek plans to be be among the first to offer a product built on the recently-announced Granite One, PTC's Pro/E engine. In CImsoftek's case, it'll be translators. http://www.cadcam-e.com

Camtek launched PEPS Solidcut 3D milling software (based upon the Parasolid kernel) for 2D/3D wire, NURBS-surface, and solid modeled geometry to be created for the CNC programming process. http://www.peps.com

ACS Software is now providing technical support in real-time. The new system lets ACS technicians see what is displayed on their customers' monitor. http://www.autoedms.com/support.htm

Solid Edge Exchange is a new design collaboration portal for the Solid Edge CAD community. The portal provides general project collaboration; visualization of 2D and 3D product data; and interactive conferencing -- all via Web browser. Solid Edge Exchange will be available in 2Q01; pricing to be announced.

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

Insight Development will release Squiggle v4 (US$99) on June 15. The software makes DWG, DXF, and HPGL/2 plot files look like hand-drawn art. http://www.insightdev.com/products/squiggle40_details.cfm
[I launched this product's career by accident. The developer, Premisys, had given me a diskette during party at an AEC Systems show. The diskette was meant to contain an example of their programming ability; I misunderstood, reviewed it in CADalyst, and a puzzled Premisys unexpectedly began getting calls from people wanting to buy Squiggle. That was more than a decade ago. Premisys later sold the product to Insight.]

Alibre Design will be integrated with eMatrix from MatrixOne. http://www.alibre.com and http://www.matrixone.com

Bentley Systems is shipping Descartes v7.1 imaging software for MicroStation /J, with OCR conversion and imaging enhancement tools. http://www.bentley.com/products/descartes

CoCreate Software announced that SolidDesigner 2001 will ship to upgrade customers in May, and will include Rapid Design, Mold Design Advisor, SolidWorks import, I-DEAS direct interface, and SolidDesigner Access modules. http://www.cocreate.com

Owners of Cimlogic Toolbox for AutoCAD can purchase EMT Software's MECH 2D/3D parts library for US$95, down from the regular $195. http://www.emtsoft.com

Moldflow has released iMPA 5.0, the Internet-enabled version of Moldflow Part Adviser. http://www.plasticszone.com

Quickparts.com Inc. released QuickQuote 2.0 instant online quoting engine. http://www.quickparts.com

AEC Systems 2001 conference, June 18-21 at McCormick Place in Chicago IL USA. http://www.aecsystems.com

"Microsoft will operate the HailStorm services as a business [if and when it's available in 2002]. HailStorm services will have real operational costs, and rather than risk compromising the user-centric model by having someone such as advertisers pay for these services, the people receiving the value -- the end users -- will be the primary source of revenue." [No mention of Plan B if users fail to to show an interest in paying, as happened previously with MSN and Slate.]
- Microsoft whitepaper on Hailstone

http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/8/17372.html
The Register
"Stop the antivirus vendor hype"

http://www.palmstation.com/view_article.py?article=3783&flat_mode=1
PalmStation
"The Palmerati: Six Months Later"

The editor replies, "MegaCADD was a 3D CAD program that was so far ahead of its time that it ultimately failed in the marketplace."

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