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Issue #278: 15 January, 2002

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Inside this Issue

• Q&A: Five Minutes with Tailor Made Software
• Doing the Math
• CAD Sucks.com
• Under the Radar

Scott Taylor: I first got started with CAD, and translation in 1980. At the time, I was a computer science major, and as my senior project I wrote a complete 2D CAD system for the architecture department. It was advanced for its time (and for six years thereafter); it included translation to and from the then current standard Siggraph CORE. That was, unfortunately about the only implementation of the CORE standard that anyone, anywhere wrote.
In 1987 I spent a year in Paris on loan from Boeing to Dassault Systemes, where I designed and helped to write the CATIA IGES translator. I have worked with translation full-time since then.

upFront.eZine: Who are some of your clients? Are there some CAD vendors in particular that you work with?

Scott Taylor: I work with a variety of manufacturers -- Boeing, AT&T, Siemens, ABB, and so on -- and with firms related to A/E/C related, such as BWI Airport and Battelle NW Lab. Many of these conversion clients are interested in output to PDF for US government contracts.
A lot of my viewer clients are in the building industry or facilities management applications, because that is where DWF has taken hold. My CADViewer product supports SVF, but I see little interest from MicroStation users.
I worked well with CAD vendors at times, and at other times am treated as a pariah. I used to do a lot of work for Bentley and IBM. These days I am working with Autodesk. I will work with anyone.
I have a liberal developer program where I provide a free copy of any software for development purposes. This has been a very popular program, especially with Web developers.

upFront.eZine: Your company joined up with ZoomOn for a while. What were you doing there (besides frequent trips to Scandinavia) and what's happening now?

Scott Taylor: I was co-chief technical officer, responsible for technical direction in the USA, which meant CAD conversion and viewing systems primarily. I also assisted in planning and implementing the basic system software developed in Stockholm. I joked that my office was "seat 3A" because I did make a lot of trips from Seattle to San Jose and Stockholm.
I had an amicable parting with ZoomON in November. They are concentrating on cell phone animation, and I bought the CAD viewing and translation business from them. (I still own part of ZoomON).

upFront.eZine: What's your view of CAD interoperability?

Scott Taylor: It used to be that all CAD systems could _read_ files from other systems or standards, but _writing_ them was more a marketing "tick box" than a useful function. In the mid-90s things seemed to improve. There were good implementations of DWG converters by other CAD systems and users really demanded a certain level of interoperability.
Now it is looking fragmented again. Autodesk moved beyond R12 DWG and other systems could (would) not follow very well.
Solids are where a lot of interest is now. Things were getting better, but now we have Autodesk's new kernel, which will be incompatible with ACIS and ParaSolids.
I have a philosophy different from many: solids may be "sexy" but getting CAD graphics into manuals and reports, and on the Web is still 85-90% of the total market -- so that's where I concentrate. PDF is by far our most popular output format, with DWF second. Three-D conversion is fairly simple; getting something to look great in a manual is far harder.
I support 70 distinct formats, but PDF and DWF account for 80% of my business. Even for these simple formats, you need to do things like map fonts between dissimilar styles and maintain a high level of graphic content as possible. For example, I make sure circles are circles, and not a collection of lines or, worse, pixels.

upFront.eZine: What about some of the up and coming formats, like XML and SVG? Will they help the future of translation?

Scott Taylor: Things sound better with the advent of XML, but parts like SVG have a long way to go to be useful for "the masses."
SVG manages to make DXF look terse. It is good for simple animation, but it is obviously not designed for CAD. I have supported SVG for about a year, but we have yet to get a question about it. Either our converter is *really good* or [there is no demand].
The IGES Committee had a rule that to include and entity in the standard, it had to be used in at least three main CAD systems, because anything unique would be difficult to exchange with anyone else. The rule was intended to keep the standard to a manageable size, but it meant that the "good parts" of each CAD system were basically islands with no good way between them.
I think that still is and always will be the case. If your CAD system is just like your competitors system then why bother? CAD vendors will always strive to set themselves apart and that will mean translation difficulties will always exist.
Part of it is a matter of expectations. When I lecture on the subject, I ask "Can you sit down at the two systems and create the drawing the same? If not, how in the world do you expect to convert between the two with 100% accuracy?" Text fonts will change; entities may look the same, but will be constructed in a different manner or to a different tolerance. As long as the standard is "Is the drawing useful" and not "Is the drawing identical", then interoperability is possible. Thankfully as CAD usage has matured, I think a certain level of reality has set in and users are more realistic about things now.
Part of it is learning how to avoid problems and how not to set yourself up to fail. Don't have a long text string with a number in and expect the circle you put around the number to still have the number in it when converted. The odds are very strong that it will not. Things like that.
All in all, though, I am not worried about being without a job anytime soon.

My son's having a hard time with Grade 10 algebra, so I've been tutoring him evenings and weekends. Part of the problem is the lack of real-world application. Who cares about the value of X, when there are more important challenges, like conquering the next level in Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2. I gave my son, Stefan, the following real-world problems:

An Autodesk press release says that 3Q02 was the best quarter ever, selling 5,300 licenses of their Inventor software, and that this represents a 64% increase over 2Q02. I asked Stefan:
q1: How many copies did they sell in 2Q02?
a1: 3,230 (5,300 / 1.64).
q2: If Inventor has been selling for nine quarters, how many copies have sold in all?
a2: Since the maximum was 5,300 per quarter, they've sold under 47,700 (5,300 x 9).
A more accurate estimate: Assume Inventor sold no more than 3,230 per quarter in the 7 quarters prior to 3Q01, and sold another 5,000 in 4Q02. The result is 33,000 (roughly).
Another estimate: Ramping up sales from 1,000/q to 3,000/q and more recently 5,000/q, results in a rough figure of 22,000.

In its Jan issue, 'CADalyst' magazine reported that its readers were horrified at the thin Dec issue -- a mere 48 pages (excluding the cover). The Jan issue was a more respectable 64 pages, but at what cost? Print publishers like to have a 50:50 ad:editorial ratio. I asked Stefan:
q3: If the Jan issue has 20 pages of ads, how many pages in total should it have to cover costs?
a3: Double, or 40 pages.
q4: If magazines are printed 16 pages to a sheet, what should the size be?
a4: The nearest page-count would be 48 pages.

I hope his tutor does a better job than I.

Parts of the English-speaking world use the verb "sucks" to indicate something that is not working well. With the ability to create anti-corporate Web sites easily, corporations are buying up domain names that might be used against them. I did a whois search to find the owners of a variety of "sucks.com" domains:

autodesksucks.com - Autodesk (also owns .biz, .org, .info, .net variants)
autocadsucks.com - Autodesk
bentleysucks.com - Baxter Healthcare
cadencesucks.com - Jason Leonard
microsoftsucks.com - Secaucus Group
mscsucks.com - MSC INDUSTRIAL DIRECT
ptcsucks.com - namezero.com, Inc
revitsucks.com - Revit Technology Corporation
solidedgesucks.com - taken but not identified

Other domain names, such as cadkeysucks.com and proesucks.om, were not registered, nor was cadsucks.com.

Tuesday the 15th is the last day Autodesk lets R14 users upgrade for cheaper. It's also the final day for 0% financing from Ford Motor Company. Coincidence? Probably.
January 31 is the last day Autodesk provides support to R14 users. It's also the day I plan to buy a new mini-van from Honda.

What! Another CAD system? Delcam's ArtCAM 2D is an entry-level version of ArtCAM Pro for 2D and 2.5D CNC engraving and routing. Press release failes to mention the price, but points out that ArtCAM can help engrave your kitchen cabinet doors.

Keith Rule has a site with a translator called Crossroads that handles a variety of 3D formats, some incomplete, at http://home.europa.com/~keithr/Crossroads/index.html . He warns he's currently on sabbatical, with with the new-born child and all.
This Crossroads is not to be confused with the Crossroads award given by Open Systems Advisors to "technologies that ... are ready for consideration by mainstream users."

Structural Research & Analysis released COSMOS/Works 7.0, which it calls "the best selling analysis tool for SolidWorks users." No surprise there: both are wholly-owned subsidiaries of Dassault Systèmes. Price is a secret, apparently, but you can try it free for 15 days while you wait for SRAC to work out a quote.

PTC has an alliance with Siebel Systems "to integrate Siebel eBusiness Applications and PTC Collaborative Product Development solutions, allowing Siebel eBusiness Applications users to view rich digital product data with PTC solutions." That means it gets a Pro/E file viewer. I think.

CoCreate Software donated US$600,000 worth of OneSpace Solution Suites to Pennsylvania State University's Department of Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering. News like makes other MCAD vendors grind their teeth.

CAD for the iMac is not dead. The Architosh Web site lists the following CAD and 3D vendors exhibiting at the recent MacWorld: Strata, VRToolBox, Alias/Wavefront, Maxon Computers, Corel, Hash, AEC Software, auto-des-sys, Nemetschek NA, Eovia, discreet (autodesk), NewTek, and
Adobe. Details at http://www.architosh.com/news/2002-01/2002a-mwsf-vendors.phtml

COFES2002 (Congress on the Future of Engineering Software) May 2-5 in Scottsdale AZ USA. Bring your sun umbrella. http://www.cofes.com

In related news, TriTools Partners acquired ownership of Visual CADD effective Dec 31'01. Before that, they had been operating under an agreement with IMSI to develop and market Visual CADD.

ELSA named Eric Shiroke president and ceo. Mr. Shiroke was formerly in charge of business development and strategic alliances at VARStreet.

Spatial moved their corporate office from Boulder CO to 10955 Westmoor Drive, 4th Floor, Westminster CO 80021, USA.

Graphisoft merged its two UK subsidiaries, Cymap and Graphisoft U.K., into one company, Graphisoft U.K. Ltd. They've shifted the development of their HVAC product (Cymap) to head office in Budapest, while GSUK will distribute and support ArchiCAD and Cymap in the UK.

The mother CAD vendors have merged, so the user groups do too. PLM World is the new user group that combines the former Unigraphics Users Group (nee UGS) and The ICCON Network (nee SRDC I-DEAS). "PLM" is name of the EDS division that absorbed UGS and SRDC. The PLM World site <http://event.PLMworld.org> is mum on the definition of PLM, possibly because "Product Lifecycle Management" is easy enough to figure out.

"In last week's upFront.eZine I noted that the Italian CAD market is ten years behind USA. Some Italian CAD users wrote and accused me of being anti-patriotic. For this reason I ask for a little space to explain my position.
" In Italy, many people work with high technology. Think3, for example, is based on a kernel developed in Italy. One of the best solid modelers on the market, Solid Thinking, is developed entirely in Italy. Italy is the home of Fiat, Ferrari, Aprilia, Alenia, Telespazio -- each a leader in its market.
"Especially in AEC market, however, there are few firms with more than ten employees. Firms this small cannot invest in technology. This is the heart of problem. Recently, the government helped by permitting a tax credit for money spent on technology.
"I think that now is the time to close the gap with American CAD users. To help close the gap, I started the CADLandia Web site three years ago to provide information about CAD for Italian CAD users. In three years, I can affirm that Italian CAD users are growing more knowledgeable. They've learned about the many competitors with a variety of CAD solutions, different technologies, and with different market targets.
"My email in the last upFront.eZine was intended to provoke Italian CAD users into moving ahead. When I stated that the Italian CAD market is ten years behind the USA, this was not correct. I would say that Italian CAD users are two years behind the USA, but that in two years, there will no longer be a gap."
- Aniello Annunziata
www.cadlandia.com

Notice the similarity between the new iMac and Pixar's first movie, Luxo jr? And Steve Jobs owns both companies.

Congress should make it easier to punish companies that produce insecure software that puts business and consumers at risk, said a panel assembled by the prestigious National Academy of Sciences. - securityFocus.com

http://www.aesnortheast.com/links/software.html
AES Northeast
List of links to CAD Web sites.

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/9.12/aspergers_pr.html
'Wired' magazine: "The Geek Syndrome"
"Autism - and its milder cousin Asperger's syndrome - is surging among the children of Silicon Valley. Are math- and-tech genes to blame?"

http://www.sunless-sea.net/forum
Sunless Sea
Wonder what happened to Autodesk's Xanadu project? The source code is now free, and it's here.

http://www2.yellowhead16.net/~kknoll/menu2.html
Kurt's Photo Studio
Lots of photos of my hometown, Kitimat.

Look for the answer at http://www.upfrontezine.com/trivia.htm

The editor replies: "PDF is a vector-capable format that is more universal than DWF. You may know it better as Acrobat from Adobe. As this week's interview indicates, PDF is popular in government circles. It is also available for PalmOS."

Re: Five Minutes with Applied 3D Science
"Excellent interview. But has Steve Mastrangelo read these? Inside the Tornado and Crossing the Chasm . I hope he has. As an upstart, he has few marketing choices: One is solve a niche problem that no one else can. Another is make a commodity 3D modeling product."
- Jason Osgood

"Gee, Steve Mastrangelo's A3DS sounds just like Cadkey!"
- Francis Traylor
CADKEY UK

The editor replies, "Perhaps not surprising, considering the heritage."

Re: What is COE?
"COE stands for CATIA Operator Exchange."
- David Weisberg
Technology Automation Services

"This abbreviation means CATIA Operator Exchange, as you can see at http://www.catiasolutions.com/ . It is a kind of user group for Catia."
- Alain CORDIER
France

Re: Chief Architect 8 in January
"Why don't us Chief users know about this?? What year?"
- Norm

The editor replies: "2002."

Re: Excuse to Upgrade
"Last week's Spin Doctor of the Moment quote from 'PC World' about processor speeds is something I'm hoping I can use to try and bleed out a decent system here."
- Name withheld

The editor replied: "My 400MHz Pentium II runs AutoCAD, MicroStation, PageMaker, et al just fine. If 'PC World' considers a 667MHz machine a reason to upgrade, then they're just pandering to the advertiser."

"Enjoyed your first mail for the year!"
- Brian Marr

"Let me say that I, as so many others, really do enjoy the reading of upFront.eZine. Every week you manage to send out an email filled with lots of information. Keep up the good job."
- Viliam Seidl
Patella Manufacturing

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