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Inside this Issue
Belgium-based Bricsnet plans to focus on the real estate and facility management market. Bricsnet retains rights to the CAD technology, and plans to integrate the CAD software with its Building|Center software.
At one time worth e60, the value of BricsNet shares has steadily fallen over the last two years, and today reached a new all-time low of e0.40.
Autodesk has a problem. It would like to deep-six its Mechanical Desktop software (MDT, which runs on top of AutoCAD), but the product suffers from being too popular (271,000 copies licensed as of Q4). Its other 3D MCAD product, Inventor, represents the future, but has a mere 33,000 (estimated) licenses.
MDT's popularity stems from it running on top of AutoCAD. That makes it easy for the MCAD designer to move from the familiar AutoCAD to MDT, without the trauma of learning a new user interface or losing data from translating existing drawings to new file formats.
Autodesk's "100% pure DWG" campaign has been successful scaring customers away from cheaper or other competitive products. It's kept them in the fold, convincing them to purchase AutoCAD-compatible products, like MDT and AutoCAD LT.
Inventor has the same problem, however, as any competitors' MCAD product: its user interface differs from AutoCAD; and its file format is incompatible. Autodesk solved the second problem by improving DWG translation in Inventor, although not good enough, apparently, because: (1) translation is translation; and (2) improved DWG translation is a feature in the new Inventor v5.3.
With its recent announcement of Inventor Series, Autodesk has now come up with a solution to the first problem: give away Inventor to MDT users. Let them choose which to use, MDT or Inventor. In the meantime, Autodesk can count all of them as Inventor users. Might Autodesk announce that Inventor has over 133,000 users (33,000 original users + 100,000 MDT subscriptions)? That would allow it to beat arch-compatitor SolidWorks' number of commercial seats.
The plan is to give all USA- and Canada-based MDT customers on subscription a copy -- FREE -- of Inventor Series, which combines Inventor 5.3, MDT 6, and Mechanical 6 (a 2D-only version). The pricing, in US funds:
Purchase:
Upgrades:
Subscription:
The annual subscription for Inventor Series is 38% more expensive than MDT alone, but $500 cheaper than the current MDT+Inventor subscription expense. This is a good deal for customers who already use both products, but it's not a good deal for MDT customers not interested in Inventor, who will be forced to pay $300/seat more when their annual subscription comes up for renewal.
Despite rumors of its demise, Autodesk says that MDT 7 "remains on our product roadmap and will be released on a future Autodesk Inventor Series CD."
The upfrontezine.com Web site tracks the 50 most-searched-for terms. During January, the top 10 search keywords were:
Of those looking for a 'crack' (method of disabling software copy protection), users were most interested in:
Dave Weisberg, the former publisher of 'Engineering Automation Report' and 'A-E-C Automation Newsletter,' is working on a history of the CAD industry and its early years. One problem is that three of the major companies during this period -- Calma, Applicon, and Computervision -- are no longer in business after being sold and resold several times. If anyone has any information about these companies that they want to share, particularly covering the period from the late 1960s to 1985, please contact Dave at +1 (303) 770-1728 or email at david.weisberg@eareport.com .
The "ArchiCAD for AutoCAD Users" book (US$24) is now available online from ICS at http://store.yahoo.com/intcad/arforautus.html . The 127-page book was co-authored by David Byrnes, Geoff Langdon, and Ralph Grabowski.
ARCHIdigm's "The Architectural Desktop 3 Presentation eGuide" (US$35) covers views, shademodes, 3D orbit, cameras, rendering, materials, lights, backgrounds, fog, landscape objects, scenes, project organization for rendering, file linking with Viz 4, how to create and plot raster images, image and xref management, rendering template files and many more topics. http://www.archidigm.com/classroom
Eagle Point reports they have an installed base of more than 40,000.
You can download a full-function demo of AutoLib detail and symbol management for AutoCAD from http://www.archmedia.net/html/autolib.html
LightWork Design has released v5 of its MachineWorks CNC simulation software. http://www.machineworks.com/
Parasolid 13.2 is now shipping, the first release under its new owner, the PLM division of EDS. Features include new modeling features, improved performance, and support for Intel's 64-bit Itanium CPU. http://www.plmsolutions-eds.com/products/parasolid/
GEOMATE's automatic geometric calculator, SketchCalc (US$195), for Autodesk Inventor finds section properties of an active sketch with one click. http://www.sketchcalc.com
AMC's GPS2CAD (US$245) software allows a GPS receiver to plots waypoints and track points directly in AutoCAD. http://www.aztechsoft.com/gpscad.htm
Corus has an app containing 3D representations of its metal products
for AEC CAD platforms. CD is free from http://www.corusconstruction.com/constructionparts
PLM World 2002 takes place April 29 - May 3 at Disney World's Coronado Springs Resort in Orlando FL USA. http://event.plmworld.org
COFES2002 (Congress on the Future of Engineering Software) May 2-5 in Scottsdale AZ USA. http://www.cofes.com
Intergraph GeoSpatial Users Community is holding its GeoSpatial World 2002 conference in Atlanta GA USA, June 10-12. http://www.intergraph.com/geospatialworld
Nicole Pack of Autodesk pointed out an error in story on the Autodesk-Spatial-DCubed lawsuit. "You included part of the Marin Independent Journal's article that misstated remarks made in court. The statement should have read, 'D-Cubed[not Autodesk] could end up laying off workers.'"
The CerfCube (US$379) is essentially a PocketPC in a desktop configuration -- packaged in a 3"x3"x3" cube (7.6cm cubed). It runs Windows CE or Linux. http://www.intrinsyc.com/products/referencedesigns/cerfcube.asp
ComputerWire reports that Geoworks has put up for sale its GEOS operating system, along with its AirBoss application platform technology and GEOS-SC operating system. GEOS was Windows-like, but written much more efficiently. The company had hoped to convert it for use with wireless hardware, like cell phones and Palm devices.
Intel says its 64-bit CPU due out in mid-2002 will run at 1GHz, and have a 3MB Level 3 cache and a 64GB/sec Level 2 cache.
Benchmarking by TecChannel concludes that "No person at all really needs an Ultra-ATA/133 interface, for even an Ultra-ATA/66 interface almost is sufficient for the currently fastest IDE hard disks." http://www.tecchannel.de/hardware/850/9.html
- BeLegal press release trumpets itself as an "unlikely hero," but fails to quote the source of the study.
- Thomas Greene http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/23777.html