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#327
11 February 2003
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a l k i n g a b o u t c a d
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issue
#327
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Contents Skirmish
by Press Release: Conference
Calls: Paper
vs. Digital Data: Below
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Skirmish by Press Release: Dassault and EDS Dassault Systems last week inadvertently [or perhaps not] began a press release skirmish with Ford and EDS by proclaiming, "IBM and Dassault Systèmes Awarded Contract For Worldwide Vehicle Development by Ford Motor Company." Tellingly, the press release lacked a quote from Ford. The subsequent headlines told the story. As you read them, keep in mind that Ford has 50,000 seats of EDS CAD software, while the Dassault announcement is for 4,000-5,5000 seats of CATIA and ENOVIA. While Ford designs most vehicles with EDS software, the recently-acquired Volvo and Land Rover are designed with Dassault software. - - - Wednesday 5 Feb 7:18pm: "IBM Inroads at Automaker Ford Deals Blow to EDS" (Reuters). Comment: News agencies (such as Reuters and Associated Press) sometimes rewrite press releases as news items. 9:09pm: "EDS Awarded Expanded Product Lifecycle Management Software Contract For Collaboration and Product Creation By Ford Motor Company" (PR Newswire). Comment: PR Newswire and Business Wire are press release distributors. To comply with American requirements that all investors learn of corporate information at the same time, companies often issue a press release on PR Newswire before sending it out to their own e-mailing list. 10:09pm: "DS, IBM Awarded Global PLM Contract by Ford" (Dassault Systemes of America). Comment: I receive my copy of Dassault's press release. 10:41pm: "IBM, French Partner Strike Deal With Ford" (Associated Press). Comment: IBM markets the CATIA and ENOVIA software developed by Dassault. - - - Thursday 6 Feb 12:35am: "Ford Picks Software from Dassault, IBM, Supplanting EDS" (Dow Jones Business News). Excerpt: "Ford Motor picked software from Dassault Systèmes and IBM for a big new contract, supplanting Electronic Data Systems, its longtime supplier, Thursday's Wall Street Journal reported. Ford declined to disclose the value of the contract, and it said it will continue to use EDS software extensively." Later, the contract was priced at US$50 million. 5:31am: "IBM, Dassault Confirm Ford Software Pact" (Dow Jones Business News). Excerpt: "Financial terms of the deal weren't provided, but Ed Petrozelli, an IBM vice president, told The Wall Street Journal that over time the new business could amount to 'hundreds of millions' including related services and consulting." 2:02pm: "IBM Wins Ford Motor Services Contract" (NewsFactor). Comment: The money isn't in the CAD software; service contracts are five times more lucrative, a market in which IBM (#1) and EDS (#2) are arch competitors. 2:20pm: "Ford Statement: Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) Software and Services Contract" (PR Newswire). Comment: Ford challenges the "death knoll" press coverage. I wonder if the phone line between EDS and Ford was burning up? Excerpt: "For years Ford Motor Company has pursued a multi-CAD strategy -- that strategy has not changed. Recent marketplace reports concerning Ford's strategic direction in Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) software technologies and services are grossly distorted. Both EDS and IBM/Dassault are key partners to Ford Motor Company." 4:49pm: "EDS Response to Ford Motor Company Statement" (PR Newswire). Excerpt: "We appreciate the Ford Motor Company's continued endorsement of our ongoing leadership position in their product development efforts and their response to the grossly distorted reports about Ford's product development direction." - - - Friday 7 Feb 12:33pm: At CadWire.net, Evan Yares reports that Bloomberg misquoted an EDS spokesman saying "Over the long-term, we [EDS and Dassault] have the potential to drop to a 50-50 state." The news service's current headline now reads, "IBM, Dassault Systèmes Win Ford Software Contracts (Update 3)". 6:14pm: "Value of Ford Software Pacts to IBM, EDS Remains Unclear" (Dow Jones Business News). Comment: Reporter Peter Loftus sums up the skirmish, "Since the deals were announced Wednesday evening, IBM and EDS have accused each other of distorting the truth about the contracts. Moreover, Ford's description of its contract with IBM and IBM's partner, France's Dassault Systèmes, is different from IBM's account of the deal." - - - Monday 10 Feb As of 6:00pm, no further press releases on this issue. Here is the curious part: EDS is a spin-off from General Motors. How is it that they are Ford's major CAD vendor? It comes from EDS buying up UGS (Unigraphics and Solid Edge), and later buying SDRC (I-DEAS), which was/is the prime supplier of CAD software to Ford. EDS is slowly merging I-DEAS with Unigraphics, creating NX. For another view of the week's events, Evan Yares' helpful summary at http://www.cadwire.net/commentary/?23856
Conference Calls: EDS and Dassault Both EDS and Dassault expect revenues to remain flat in the first half of 2003, but hope for increased sales in the second half. The details: Electronic Data Systems The ceo of EDS lamented the company's "first and only earnings miss" with a reduction of 4Q02 revenue of 5%, down to US$5.5 billion from US$5.8 billion a year earlier. Net income fell to US$360 million from $405 million a year earlier. EDS saved 2% by not awarding bonuses. The company has $1.9 billion in cash. For 2003, described as "another tough year," EDS plans to sell off non-core assets and to cut costs. For example, 1,500 call center jobs are moving overseas and 3-4% of the worldwide workforce will be cut. The company continues to cooperate with the SEC investigation. Revenue at the CAD division, called "PLM Solutions," fell 13% to $230 million from $265 million a year earlier. The CAD division is unlikely to be affected by cuts, because the ceo stated that "we have just started to scratch the surface" of PLM [product lifecycle management]. - - - Dassault Systèmes Ceo Bernard Charles noted that "the economic environment has changed a good deal over the course of 2002." Despite it, quarter revenues were e224.4 million, and annual revenues increased 4% to e774.1 million over the year before. The company's chief financial officer was proud to announce that Dassault was the only European software company to grow its revenues in 2002. The company has e390 million in cash. Some 23,626 new seats of SolidWorks were licensed (down 10% from the year before), but at an increased average price of US$5,111, up 2%. By year's end, the total installed base was 230,000 seats (commercial and educational). Mention was made of canceling "less productive resellers." The number CATIA units increased 1%, but average price per seat declined 2%. A major release of V5 is expected in 2003. The company feels that it increased its share of the PLM market to 21%, up three points. The ceo added, "Earlier today, we announced that Ford has decided to standardize all vehicle programs worldwide on our CATIA and ENOVIA V5 PLM solutions" [Oops!]. An analyst noted that IBM's sale of 5,000 seats is relatively small compared to the 50,000 seats EDS has. Dassault replied that their PLM solution was an "unstoppable wave." The analyst countered that Ford was making further investments in EDS software. Dassault replied they didn't want to comment on that announcement. Asked about SolidWorks, Dassault said it was pleased there was no price erosion, as happened to its competitors. What could be done better is expanding the sales channel.
Paper vs. Digital Data Vendors Respond "It is clear to all that paper will never go away. It is impossible to view all design intent in context on 15", 17", or 21" monitors. In the future we will likely see flexible E-size monitors or intelligent paper that will enable a very easy way for all the various professionals within the design, create, and manage phases of all projects to view design data. But let's not confuse the issue at hand; design professionals and companies need to securely and effectively communicate rich design information more efficiently than paper. "DWF and PDF are formats to help accomplish this. PDF is an optimized, industry-standard format for secure and reliable communication of documents and interaction with forms, and DWF is a secure and highly optimized format for communicating intelligent design information. Draw a line in AutoCAD, create a DWF, you can get the location in space as well as the measurement of that line with no additional 'visual' information from a DWF file. The design intelligence and intent is maintained within the DWF file; this is not available in PDF. "The purpose of DWF is to improve communication of intelligent design information. There are high costs currently associated with long cycle times, errors in construction, and paper storage; DWF and viewing applications can decrease cycle times which help reduce errors in construction, and eliminate some of the costs with moving and storing paper. Many companies are looking for ways to improve the process of create to print to distribute; DWF and viewing applications can change the process to, create to distribute to print, where printing is on an as needed basis and on-site. Think about the huge bills that companies incur based on shipping paper documents back and forth around the world. "DWF will never replace native files like DWG, DXF, IPT, or DGN for that matter, as they serve different purposes. DWF is intended as a secure format for communicating rich design data specifically focused on what the publisher (designer, engineer, architect, etc.) wanted the recipient to see." - Tony Peach,
director of DWF and viewer strategy
"I felt I too had to weigh in on the subject of the all-digital paper-free world. Electronic data exchange is great, and we CAD software people need to keep working hard to invent new ways to make digital CAD exchange easier and easier. But still I think the 'paperless design office' is about as far away as the 'paperless bathroom'. "The fact is that all of our digital data just expands the usage of paper. I imagine that email, CAD, and word processing have been the best news ever for the paper industry. When we typed documents, or drew with pencil on the board, we would use exactly one piece of paper. Now users think nothing of printing off draft after draft of their drawing or report. Fix a few things and print it again. When we bought typing paper we bought it 50 sheets at a time. Who ever thought that we would see 500 sheet packs of paper for sale at the local Wal-Mart or 7-11? "We at SolidWorks have pushed hard to make electronic 3D info exchange easier than ever. Our eDrawings product has been an overwhelming success, with around five million eDrawings already created. It's the closest thing ever to digital paper for 3D. No viewer to download, small size, great tools for visualizing the 3D model and the 2D drawing in one file. No need to buy anything to look at an eDrawing. "It's sobering to me that in this age of high-speed Internet, ubiquitous email, and the widest usage of the best CAD tools ever ---every engineer and designer still knows the latest drop-off time at the local FedEx box. So we in the CAD industry still have a lot of work to do to enable our users to send electronic data around easily. And good old paper won't be disappearing anytime soon." - Jon Hirschtick,
founder and group executive
"Have you ever tried to view an E-size drawing, or even B-size, on a PalmOS? It's not easy to view any size drawing on small screens. Displaying drawings in PDF on a PalmOS is not exactly a benefit. In this instance, smaller is not better. "Further PDF is not the most desirable format for medium
to large drawings. It takes too long to scroll across and wait for
the refresh on an E-size PDF. The PNG format can be opened in any
browser and is easy to scroll around. TIFF G4 is even better, smaller
file size for a given resolution than either PDF or PNG and can
now be opened in Windows XE." The editor replies: "It might be easier now that Sony is shipping PalmOS units with 640x320 resolution."
"The problem with PDF files is that they can be huge. That is why other approaches -- SVG and DWF -- are being developed for exchanging drawing information. Yes, everyone has an Acrobat viewer, but I can get coffee while some files load new pages." - David W.
Claflin
Below the Radar A summary of CAD industry news you may not have read elsewhere, or that I found interesting: Cyco Software has released AutoManager Meridian 2003. http://www.cyco.com PTC is [finally] shipping the production release of Pro/ENGINEER Wildfire. http://www.ptc.com VariCAD 9.0 (US$399) has been released with improved 3D IGES export, 3D STEP export, and smooth rendering. http://www.varicad.com
New Newsletters/Webzines Cyon Research re-launched 'A-E-C Automation Newsletter' as a monthly publication for architecture, engineering and construction firms. Former 'MicroStation Manager' editor Randall Newton is the editor-in-chief and publisher. http://www.aecnews.com
People/Companies on the Move Chris Rogers has left pr firm Sterling Hager to join Bentley Systems as media relations manager.
ENGINEERING.com appointed John Hayes as chief operating officer and chief financial officer. Mr Hayes was ceo of United Software.
Redo Ronald Powell passed on this correction from co-worker Adam Johnson about the speed of notebook computer hard drives: "The 2.5-inch IDE drives [used by notebook computers] are manufactured at speeds of 4200rpm and 5400rpm, where 3.5-inch IDE drives [used by desktop computers] run at 5400rpm and 7200rpm. There currently is no such thing as a 7200rpm notebook hard drive. "Also notebooks often run on batteries where power consumption is an issue and higher speed drives can decrease battery life by a significant margin." Thank you for the correction. I've since read that Maxtor is readying 10,000rpm desktop drives, and that another vendor has a 15,000rpm drive.
Computer News Summaries Good news for consumers: competition from open source software is worrying Microsoft that it may have to start reducing its software prices, ending the upward spiral. - CNET Cathy Baker is suing Microsoft, Symantec, and software retailers because the companies don't allow people to read shrinkwrap licenses before they buy a product. Baker tried to return the Microsoft and Symantec software to CompUSA after refusing to consent to the licensing terms. CompUSA refused, however, to take back the software, because the packages had been opened. In related news, a judge in New York ruled last month that Network Associates could not enforce shrinkwrap license wording that prohibited reviews of its product without prior consent. [That's good news for those of us who write reviews.] - CNET Linux server revenue increased 90% in Q4 over a year earlier. In contrast, total US server revenue climbed 5%. [In the long run, Linux will win because it is open-er, not because it is cheaper.] - Gartner Dataquest
Market News Framework Technologies reported 17% growth for 1Q03. Ansys reported 4Q02 revenue of US$25.3 million, an increase of 1% over a year ago. The company is buying CFX (computational fluid dynamics software) from AEA Technology for $21 million cash. The upFront.eZine stock index is at www.cadwire.net/to?upfrontezine/stocks
The WorthWhile Web http://www.calculators.de/
http://www.pcworld.com/news/article http://www.gulfnews.com/Articles/news.asp?ArticleID=76223
http://www.linuxjournal.com/article.php?sid=6616
Letters to the Editor Re: What Good Are 64-bit CPUs? "It's going there regardless, somewhat kicking and screaming. "I used to work for a large established mechanical CAD/CAM/CAE software developer and services company, and we were 'heavily encouraged' to develop a release for 64-bit CPUs, specifically Intel Itanium, by very large customers. It wasn't for speed necessarily, although pushing around twice as many bits could speed up things some. "It was needed to handle very intricate part models and very large assemblies of part models, such as automotive and aircraft engines, entire aircraft, and so on. These large models need the expanded memory address space required to handle such enormous amounts of data. "For example, 32-bit CPUs address 4GB of memory address space; Windows 2000/XP, however, only address 1GB out of the box, I believe, and 2-3GB using startup switches. I think 32-bit Unix CPUs and OSs can address all memory space. "Creating a 64-bit version of software would be accomplished by an entire new build of the software specifically for the new hardware and OS (ie, another platform)." - Randy Skaggs
"One of the things that a 64-bit CPU makes possible is to memory map several large files; this is because of the huge address space available. Normally a file is read into RAM, and then written back out to disk. "For large files or complicated relationships among files (such as a CAD assembly with thousands of components), optimizing this process can be tricky. Memory mapping a file allows the file to be used as if it were already in RAM, but without explicitly reading it into RAM: the operating system uses the same virtual memory mechanisms to read/write portions of the file to/from memory as they are needed. The result is simpler (and thus likely less buggy) code; performance could be better too since the code in the OS is going to be heavily optimized (perhaps even hand-coded assembly)." - Dan Smith
"Your e-zine ranks very high on my read list one of the few I read all issues. Keep up the good work." - Rene Dalmeijer,
FAIR bv
"Thanks for your interesting ezine." - Matthias
Franke, BLP GmbH
Spin Doctor of the Moment "They say that the money that we had promised three years ago to be new money this year is not more new money. We have not paid it yet and it is old new money versus new new money. For me, new money is new money if paying in $5 or $10, it's the same money." - Jean Chrétien,
Canadian prime minister, explaining the difference between old and
new money for government programs.
Notable Quotable "When reaching for a graphic phrase, it's wise to avoid importing words from foreign dictatorships [fascist, communist, Stasi]. Irresponsible rhetoric cripples an argument by suggesting that it's based on hysteria, not reason." - Robert Fulford,
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