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Issue #242: 27 March, 2001

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Inside this Issue

• CAD for Principals 'CAD Software Evaluation Report'
  - Was the Evaluation Fair?
  - Should CAD Vendors Sponsor Studies?
  - "We Won, Fair and Square."
  - That's Not All
• Headlight.com Files for Bankruptcy
• Below the Radar, and other regular departments

CAD for Principals 'CAD Software Evaluation Report'

The controversy over the "CAD Software Evaluation Report" continues as participants and observers engage in debate by writing letters to 'Engineering News Record' and 'upFront.eZine'. There are two lines of debate: (1) Was the evaluation process fair? and (2) Should CAD vendors sponsor the project?

Was the Evaluation Fair?

There have been a couple of complaints about the evaluation. One comes from Phillip Bernstein of Autodesk (in a letter to ENR): "Although Autodesk provided extensive information to the CAD for Principals Council on Autodesk Architectural Desktop [ADT], our model-based design application, which is comparable to the other advanced modeling tools compared in the study, the Council chose to base its ranking instead on our horizontal AutoCAD application."
In reply, Scott DeGaro (one of the evaluators) wrote: "As a long time user of ADT, I was able to include information and features that was pertinent to the Council, but was not included in Autodesk's response to the Council's requirements. In addition, several requests for clarification were made to my contact at Autodesk, Bob Batcheler, AEC Marketing Director, to which no responses have been made to this date."
The confusion over which software was used in the evaluation is explained by Mr DeGaro: "Any responses made in the review were based on ADT, but often referred to as AutoCAD 2000. This is a semantic oversight..."

The CAD for Principals Web site has a discussion forum, where a complaint was made of the study's result because it gave top marks to Revit, a product that has been around for less than a year (at the time of the study), and had not yet been used, start to finish, on a major building project.
We need only look back a few years in history to find CAD vendors who react to unfavorable results. One of the most controversial was the Architectural Cup. Then, several CAD vendors interpreted results to declare themselves winners. One CAD vendor went so far to threaten the organizer with a lawsuit if the official result was not favorable to them.

Should CAD Vendors Sponsor Studies?

The second controversy involves Revit Technology Corp. The company's software, Revit, was part of the study. The company sponsored the study. And the company declared itself the winner.
Revit defends their involvement using this analogy: "If we were a pharmaceutical company with a life-saving new formulation, we would be _required_ to sponsor and fund above-reproach clinical research to get government approval before we could sell the drug in the market." Well, maybe in the USA, but vendor-sponsored pharmaceutical research is getting a black eye here in Canada.
Still, several study participants wrote me that Revit did not affect them. "I have not received nor have I received any special gifts from Revit. The only communication I have had from Revit has been sales calls in regards to their third release."
Confirms Revit: "We didn't pay any volunteers, nor did C4P. The proceeds from the sale of the Report, if any, are to be used partially compensate the evaluators for their time."

There may be no conflict of interest, but there is the appearance of conflict of interest. When I put this to Revit, Alex Neihaus, vp marketing, replied: "As to whether or not there was an appearance of conflict, the question is: in whose eyes? But check out the names of the people who contributed at www.kfa-inc.com. Do you think in their eyes it was a conflict? Clearly not. Given the obvious self-interest of those for whom there's a 'perception problem,' I still think it's a shame these folks' efforts got trashed."

"We Won, Fair and Square."

The six competitors in the study were AEC DesignWare (new owners of an Intergraph product), Autodesk, Bentley Systems, Bricsnet, Graphisoft, and Revit. The result shows that Revit came in first place in three categories, third in two, and fifth in one category.
By comparison, Graphisoft came in first place in one category, second place in four categories, and rated inconclusive in one category. Adding up the unweighted Vendor Scores (page 34 of the study), gives the following result:

1. Revit 14.5
2. Graphisoft 13.7
3. Bentley 13.3
4. Bricsnet 12.5
5. Autodesk 8.6
6. AEC DesignWare 7.4

That's Not All

It doesn't help that in the middle of this, I receive complaints of spamming of news groups by one of the CAD vendors involved in the study. "I did an IP Route Trace back (geeky things I do over morning coffee) and it seems as those IPs originate from the same mail server that lies within [the CAD vendor]."
Asked the reader, "Is it a comment on the moral fiber of society as a whole? In the past, it was always stupid little things, like people tearing up and throwing away your lead printouts (before disks) at trade shows, and just the general disparaging remarks."

There is hope. Perhaps all involved will learn from what happened, and do things differently next time. Summarized one evaluator: "The CAD for Principals may have some shortcomings in their 'one size fits all' comparison that I agree with, but the purpose was to create a standard set of guidelines that Principals are looking for and then to evaluate the software packages on the same criteria."
A summary of the report is at the C4P Web site at http://www.cadforprincipals.org/, or can be purchased from PSMJ Resources, http://www.psmj.com

A reader wondered what had happened to Picture This! Kitchen. I recall that Autodesk had sold it to Broderbund in 1998. Jerry Bragstad tracked it further:
"Broderbund is now owned by and called The Learning Company, and is still located up the road from me in Novato CA USA.
"After a bit of phone tag with several employees, all who regretted the loss of The Corporate Memory due to numerous lay-offs and reorganizations, I finally talked to someone who had been there in 1998. She remembered the acquisition by Autodesk. She said they bought it because they wanted some of the technology, but had never done anything with it. I guess it's 'on the shelf.' There has to be a lesson there somewhere."

Some readers have been puzzled by Autodesk's move to all-lowercase letters for some of its product names. Here is how Autodesk describes its 'autodesk' logo: "With all lowercase type and the addition of color for the first time, the new blue logo is sleek, simple, and modern." So, there you go, ya' uppercase-loving Luddites!

The Canadian Alliance Against Software Theft launches a one-month campaign on Sunday (1 April, no joke) for businesses to acquire software licenses without facing penalties for past infringement imposed by CAAST. CAAST says they will contact approximately 20,000 businesses through the campaign. http://www.caast.org

"SolidWorks ... has received two top industry awards ... at the National Design Engineering Show (NDES) 2001 in Chicago. CADENCE magazine presented SolidWorks' collaborative tool set with its Show Stopper Award, and CADALYST magazine bestowed its Best of Show Award on the company's eDrawings product."
"Autodesk's ... Streamline service received the CADENCE Magazine Show Stopper Award at the National Design Engineering Show (NDES) 2001 in Chicago this month ... [and] it won the CADALYST Magazine Best of Show Award for its Autodesk Inventor 4 software."

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

IBM and Dassault Systemes announced the launch of Version 5 Release 6 (V5R6) of CATIA. http://www.ds.com

ParallelGraphics released a beta of Pocket Cortona for 3D and data visualization. The Internet Model Optimizer optimizes complex CAD files, while the Internet Scene Assembler adds interactions and animations to models. Cortona runs on pocket PCs powered by Intel ARM, MIPS, and SH-3 processors. http://www.parallelgraphics.com

AutoCAD users can now create and test drive their own parametric drawings on-line at http://www.officecad.com

http://reality.sgi.com/eile/rOctane/
Turning an SGI Octane into a stereo cabinet
- Thanks to Martyn Day for the above two.

http://www.oid.ucla.edu/Webcast/Inet30/Inet30_body.html
September 2, 1999: 30th Anniversary of the Internet

http://www.happywomanmagazine.com/
An anti-Cosmo parody site:
"We think so you don't have to!"

Re: Revit
"Rivet may be doing a good job capturing your attention, however, their direct distribution model (trying to sell and support directly to the end user) will run the course after the early hits with early innovators -- a la the other failed attempts by would-be players in this CAD market (I will not mention names).
"The key to success, as so clearly demonstrated by Autodesk and SolidWorks, is to find a way to leverage the existing channel and help make them successful along with you. A good product does not in any way assure that you will be one that is left standing; a good indirect distribution model will guarantee that."
- Ed Russell,
Devtron Russell Inc.

Re: Solid Modeling Kernels
"In recent past I have seen many comments about the kernel providers in this magazine. The only thing that comes to my mind is the maturity of a kernel. When I switched from ACIS to Parsolid, I found ParaSolid to be faster and more robust. I am sure the recent versions of ACIS have closed the gaps in reliability and performance.
"After all, it's a chicken-and-egg situation. If you have successful customers, the kernels mature with their requirements in terms of functionality, reliability, and performance. On the other hand, you get customers if you have these three qualities to begin with. PTC may be an exception, since it may have a bunch of internal customers.
"I think that a day will dawn very soon when you won't be able to differentiate one kernel from the other and, as you say, the interoperability will be taken for granted. Won't that be nice for the CAD users?"
- Biplab Sarkar,
Manager, Geometry, Nemetscheck NA

Re: Archiving Drawings
"I work in the electricity industry where drawings are needed for years. I have seen drawings in the archive from 1918, and older drawings exist. The worst quality drawings are the post-war ones, drawn on everything including brown paper drawing with pencil, pen, crayon, etc., with a different drawing on each side.
"Until upgrading to our current document management system, we were creating a [raster] TIFF file whenever a CAD drawing was approved, then created at least three copies of the drawing on Aperture Card Negative. The original document management system managed 400,000 TIFF files from the early 1990s.
"Users told us that if we included the TIFF-from-CAD-format in the new system they would never use it. Now that it is in service, we have 20MB AutoCAD files coming from contractors with only a few lines and an embedded model; the users are wanting the TIFF feature back in again.
"All our TIFF files are archived onto multiple CD-ROMs stored with long filenames. To ensure that the filenames are readable, we store them with a translation table to short filenames, as well as Rock Ridge and Joiliet long file names."
- Darryl Smith
Pacific Power, Australia

Re: "We Invented Design"
"I did my engineering drafting training at Saskatchewan Technical Institute from 1985 to 1987. On the brand new HP computers were copies of Personal Designer, a full blown 3D (wireframe) CAD program. We learned the transition from hand drafting to CAD in 1-1/2 years.
"AutoCAD? Let's see: last day of the second year, last CAD class, the instructor gave us the opportunity of installing, playing with, and uninstalling (I think) ver2.x. ONE CLASS, that's all. Compared to what we had learned on, AutoCAD was simplistic and restrictive, and certainly not 3D.
"Unfortunately, Personal Designer died. It was a nice package: noun/verb and commands strung into a 'sentence', with the 3D to boot. Nice."
- Richard Weiner,
Canada

Re: Distribution vs Protection
"The purpose of business is to make money while doing something worthwhile, not 'to make sure that no one cheats.' I think Autodesk has probably made more money each year because of their lack of copy protection than if they had copy protection (the 'lockout' principle that Jason Osgood mentions).
"The problem Jason does not address is the legal issue that arises from not prosecuting everybody. Are there any reports of Autodesk or the Software Alliance hassling home users of AutoCAD?"
- John Brunt

"Piracy makes a lot of home students educated in the software. Probably a lot of them will, in time, be among the ones to decide which software could have interest for the firm they are in to buy. I am not, however, condoning piracy."
- Leif Pedersen,
Denmark

"Great newsletter. I always enjoy reading it especially the notable quotables and spin doctor."
- David Zanello,
David Zanello Design

"Thanks for continuing this publication. I enjoy it very much."
- Leigh Trevitt
Australia

"I've been reading your newsletter for a few years now, and have always been impressed with your industry knowledge."
- Mike Tajmajer
Soft Reality

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All contents copyright 2001 by XYZ Publishing, Ltd. Inc., and all rights are reserved. No material may be reproduced electronically or in print without written permission from XYZ Publishing, 34486 Donlyn Avenue Abbotsford BC, V2S 4W7, Canada, unless otherwise noted.