www.upfrontezine.com
"When I see any Web site claim to be only
readable using particular hardware or software,
I cringe -- they are pining for the bad old days when each piece
of information needed
a different program to access it."
- Tim Berners-Lee
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200-7739670.html?tag=tp_pr
Inside this Issue
SCS|Envoy
PlanetCAD wants to address the problem of delays in manufacturing
by making product data available at every stage of the manufacturing
process. The data they speak of includes models and drawings;
design specs; bills of material; and photographs, video, and multimedia.
PlanetCAD talked about their plans for SCS|Envoy during a Web
conference call last week. A survey taken by PlanetCAD seems to
indicate that 65% of manufacturers distribute data on CD using
ExpressMail.
The purpose of their new software, SCS|Envoy, is to automate manual
processes and the transmission of data. SCS is short for "supply
chain collaboration." The software is currently in beta test,
and is due to ship in January. When I asked about the price, I
was told "It is wholly undervalued at US$100,000 starting
price for a site-wide license. Functionality upgrades (new modules
such as Supply Chain transactions) will add cost." Version
2 of SCS|Envoy, with tons more features, is due out in April.
http://www.planetcad.com/PROD/envoymain.html
Intergraph Earnings Call
At just over 30 minutes, including questions, Intergraph's
3Q earnings call was one of the shortest I've listened in on.
Intergraph hopes to profit (no disrespect intended) from the anti-terrorism
war currently underway. "We are currently helping the war
effort." Several of the company's specializations -- mapping,
security systems, 911/communications software -- are in high demand,
although, as the company's officers admitted, the anticipated
revenues were not yet being realized.
In answer to a question, Intergraph would not disclose the cost
of litigation with Intel, other than to say, "it will continue
at a high rate." One court case is scheduled for early 2002;
the other for early 2003.
Intergraph has now completely exited the hardware business. It
is also exiting the Middle East, leaving that area to a local
distributor.
On the financial side, Intergraph reported a net income of US$1.2
million on revenues of US$127.1 million, Although revenue was
down by US$31 million from the same quarter a year earlier, net
income improved by $15 million, from a loss to a profit.
http://www.intergraph.com
Q&A: Five Minutes with IntegrityWare
This Q&A is with Gary Crocker, head of IntegrityWare,
a surface modeling kernel developer.
upFront.eZine: Give me a bit of the history behind IntegrityWare.
Gary Crocker: IntegrityWare started Sept '96 with the goal
of being a geometry and graphics technology provider. Myself and
the other founder (Dahjiun Wang) had worked for one of the major
CAD companies.
upFront.eZine: Which company was that?
Gary Crocker: Prime Computer, which became Computervision.
We started working out of our houses (and still do) in San Diego
CA. We believed there was a market for a quality geometry toolkit
that was not full blown "modeling kernel". We felt that
for every ONE application that was doing "geometric model
creation," there were FIVE or more applications doing some
sort of "post creation" analysis. These FIVE do not
really need solids editing functions, such as Booleans and filleting.
We decided to focus on providing tools to query and analyze existing
geometric models.
upFront.eZine: As I understand it, you have a different
business model than that of the Big Boys, Spatial and ParaSolid.
Gary Crocker: We choose a royalty-free source code-based business
model similar to that of GeomWare. In addition, we work closely
with GeomWare to develop products complementary to their NURBS
library, called NLib. Whereas NLib creates and edits NURBS curves
and surfaces, we focus primarily on developing numerical tools
that use existing NURBS representations.
upFront.eZine: So, how do you manage to compete with kernels
funded by the two largest CAD companies in the world?
Gary Crocker: By being part of a cooperative organization
of small "virtual companies." We cooperate with:
* GeomWare - NURBS libraries
* HarmonyWare - IGES, Step, SAT, and other translators.
* Solid Modeling Solutions - solid modeling kernel.
SMLIb from Solid Modeling Solutions is a direct competitor to
ACIS and Parasolid, and includes all of our libraries (GSLib/TSLib/POPLib),
GeomWare's NLib, and a non-manifold topology solids engine.
Nemetschek, for example, uses SMLib as the kernel for Vectorworks
9, an AEC CAD product. They really needed to do 1000+ box/box
type Booleans per second to build and edit their walls, doors,
floors, etc. parametrically. That sort of performance is impossible
with traditional solids modeling. It really requires a polygonal
modeling kernel that is highly optimized for performance. That
is why we developed the polygonal Booleans and other polygonal
tools now available in POPLib 2.0.
upFront.eZine: Where did the company name IntegrityWare
come from?
Gary Crocker: We decided that we wanted to form a "software
company of integrity". The "integrity" part really
stands for how we decided to run the business. We hope it applies
to the software also, but that is not the intention. Both Dahjiun
and I saw lots of problems in the software industry: a lot of
selling of vaporware, slipping dates, making false promises, working
inordinate number of hours, overhyping. We decided that we wanted
to form a company based on Biblical principles. We don't announce
anything until it is done. If we bid for a consulting job and
it comes in under, we charge only for the time we actually put
in.
upFront.eZine: Give me a quick overview of your product
line.
Gary Crocker: Our first product, Geometric Solver Library
(GSLib), was released in early 1997. It works on NURBS curves
and untrimmed NURBS surfaces, such as dropping curves onto surfaces
and surface-surface intersection.
Our second product, Trimmed Surface Library (TSLib), creates
and queries trimmed surfaces, open shells, solids, and cellular
topology.
Our third product, Polygon Optimization Library (POPLib), creates
polygons from trimmed surfaces and solids. Release 2 contains
polygon modeling tools, such as decimation (reduction), Booleans,
sectioning, and ray-firing.
upFront.eZine: Where is your market located?
Gary Crocker: About half of our business is in Europe, 3/8ths
in the US, and 1/8 in Japan or Korea. We occasionally compete
with Parasolid or ACIS. The fact that our software is efficient
and reliable, as well as being royalty-free has contributed to
a great many of our sales.
Below the Radar
A summary of CAD industry news you may not have read
elsewhere:
Announcing that "There will NEVER be another CadKey upgrade offer like this!", CadKey Corp is offering its pre-v19 customers an upgrade to CadKey v19, plus a one-year service contract for US$1,195 (regular price US$1,845), which includes a free upgrade to CadKey v20. http://www.cadkey.com/products/upgarde
With a curious lack of fanfare, Autodesk began last month shipping
QuickCAD 8. More curious, there is no upgrade from QuickCAD Millennium
Edition Release 7. [QuickCAD has been one of my favorite CAD
programs, being a merging of Autodesk's AutoSketch and Foresight
Resources' Drafix. QuickCAD, for example, imports DXF files that
AutoCAD rejects.]
http://www3.autodesk.com/adsk/section/0,,137592-123112,00.html
Congero 2.0 uses AutoCAD drawings as the basis of a monitoring system by linking data to the drawings, such as data from a materials handling system, factory automation system, or a construction project. Data can comes from SQL ODBC databases, TCP/IP data, or serial line data. Download a 30-day full-functional demo from http://www.congero.com [Nice looking Web site, by the way.]
Marinsoft's Duct Calculator is an HVAC duct design and sizing program that works Autodesk Building Mechanical. http://www.marinsoft.com
Revit Technology secured an additional US$7 million in funding to enhance its sales and distribution channels. Senior management at Revit contributed, as did Atlas Venture and North Bridge Venture Partners. Privately-held Revit continues to be coy about its success, but recently revealed that it gained 400 new customers in the past six months.
Visualistic converts CAD designs interactive 3D, real-time
worlds. Download the 14-day demo from http://www.visualistic.co.uk/uk/demos.htm
Seminars
& Conferences
Solid Modelling 2002 Exhibition & Seminars, 13 - 14
March 2002 at the National Motorcycle Museum, Birmingham England.
http://www.solidmodelling.co.uk
Intergraph Mapping and GIS Solutions extended the deadline for the GeoSpatial World 2002 Call for Presentations to November 20, 2001. http://www.intergraph.com/geospatialworld
People/Companies
on the Move
After 16 years, Jon Peddie has left Jon Peddie Assocaites
to pursue other business interests. JPA had been acquired by Penton
Media in 1999. The new president is Randall Stickrod, and vp is
Christine Arrington.
IntegWare appointed Jim White to vp of sales and marketing. Mr White was previously worldwide channels manager at CoCreate.
Computer
News Summaries
Intel hopes to deliver a 3GHz Pentium 4 CPU by the end
of 2002.
Belgium-based Agfa will exit the digital camera and consumer scanner market in North America by year's end. The company will continue to sell professional scanners, retail photo labs, and camera film. - ZDNet News
"What do you think Microsoft is going to do with all of the statistics generated from the thousands of corporate desktops that are purchased under an XP license, but actually run older packages? These inflated numbers are going to be used to advertise the fact that XP is the most popular and successful product Microsoft has ever produced." - Ray Bailey
3DWin.de reports that Microsoft Deutschland is shipping copies of Windows XP with identical activation keys. When legitimate users try to activate their newly-installed OS, they are told it is already being used by another computers.
Letters
to the Editor
Re: MicroStation V8
"I was quite disappointed by short-sided perspective of this
newsletter. Bentley's V8 product could well be the most important
release of the year for the CAD industry. You gave it a single
paragraph. I trust that more will be forthcoming?"
- Gary Mansager
HDR
The editor replies: "With a big release, software vendors usually make an effort to get lots information in the hands of journalists. All I've received so far from Bentley marketing is a pair of press releases containing as much information as I reported."
Re: Freeware CAD
"I wonder why OpenDWG and IntelliCAD have struggled so hard
and still have yet to dent Autodesk's sales? Oh well, if someone
captilizes on DesignXML enough to make a truly compatible product
for less (or free!) I'll check it out."
- Dave Stein
The editor replies: "XML is a new technology that suffers from the same old problem. Different CAD packages support different entities, some of which are eternally incompatible. Translation will never be 100% and XML ain't gonna fix that."
Re: MCAD Uncensored
"You seemed a bit touchy about Think3, enough so that I had
to have a listen to Joe. I tend to agree with a lot he had to
say.
"I wish the press would address more consistently the robustnes
of reviewed software. Most CAD managers would agree that lack
of functionality is not nearly so debilitating as functionality
that doesn't work as advertised. We consistently lose significant
time to workarounds for things we thought we wouldn't have to
work around anymore!"
- Reader from New Zealand
The editor replies: "My take was that if Mr Costello
complains about the media and analysts having a hidden agenda,
then perhaps neither should he?
"As for stability of software, CAD publications certainly
haven't tackled that one. Some of the general computer magazines,
however, have tried to do long-term reports on hardware. And there
are a number of sites that track bugs found in software."
Re: Trivia Question
"I've got a little unique insight on CAD.lab, the former
name of Think3. When they decided to open an office in the US,
they contacted our company because our company name was CADLAB,
and we had registered the www.cadlab.com
domain. They felt they needed a Web site for their rollout, so
we became the first 'The Company Formerly Known As CADLAB' (TCFKAC,
which they later used as well) before deciding on our current
name, CAD Group."
- William McNeary
Spin
Doctor of the Moment
"In the words of the Microsoft staffer ... the Xbox is the
'ultimate' games console. 'Ultimate' means there won't be another
one after it, right?"
- Mike Magee, The Inquirer
http://www.theinquirer.net/23100104.htm
Notable
Quotable
"Portals don't understand one of the fundamentals of that
what the Web is incredibly good at: narrowcasting."
- Jakob Nielsen
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/22239.html
Contact!