November
28, 2004
Issue
409
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- - - C
O N T E N T S The
CAD Society Re-Forms
Bentley
Woos AutoCAD Users, Part XII
Q&A:
Under
The Radar Write - - - Donate
$25 - - - Look for additional,
nearly-daily CAD commentary at our Weblog: --- Visit our new digital photography Weblog at The Canon S1iS Fan (ADVERTISMENT) Updated and Expanded for AutoCAD 2005! Tailoring AutoCAD 2005 is the new e-book for AutoCAD 2005. Download as a 260-page e-book in PDF format (US$26.95) or on CD ($31.95). Covers all areas of customization, from changing the user interface to writing toolbar macros and LISP routines. Click here to sample preview pages and place your order.
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For nearly two decades, The CAD Society has been a loose collection of people who show up at twice-yearly functions. Things were accomplished, such as handing out a trio of annual awards. [I appreciated receiving the CAD Community Award in 2002 for the impact this e-newsletter has on the industry.] A year ago, Brad Holz asked Joe Greco to take over the organization of The CAD Society. (It shares its address with Cyon Research.) And now the new'n improved CAD Society emerged. The CAD Society had tried to be the voice of the CAD industry. Has it had any impact since its formation in 1985? The widely-ignored CAD Interoperability Guideline gives a clue to the organization's ineffectiveness, unfortunately. Now with its more formal structure, perhaps it can become effective. The Web site is redesigned <www.cadsociety.org>, and membership is more than just free. And that's important if an organization is to be taken seriously. What do you gain from paying US$25 a year? Right now:
And in the future:
Bentley Woos AutoCAD Users, Part XII Bentley Systems has been wooing AutoCAD users since the early 90s. That was when MicroStation became the very first CAD package to directly read .dwg files. (Later, MicroStation was the first to directly write .dwg files, and was almost the first to run AutoLISP routines -- except that Bentley abandoned the project. MicroStation now has an AutoCAD mode in its user interface, and stores the entire .dwg file in the V8 version of its new DGN format.) Over the years, Bentley has made repeated attempts to lure some percentage of the six million AutoCAD and LT users into the MicroStation community -- as have other CAD vendors envious of Autodesk's dominance: Alibre, Cadkey, IronCAD, SolidWorks, etc, etc. None have pulled it off to a significant degree. Nor will they. What price, do you suppose, would you or another CAD user be prepared to pay for switching to a different CAD system? We've discussed the point before in upFront.eZine; the answer is along the lines of "you'd have to pay me to switch," because the cost of switching is high:
This week, mid-way through Autodesk University, Bentley plans to announce details of its latest enticement program </www.bentley.com/AutoCADusers>. When it does, Bentley needs to bundle software and training into a package that's priced lower than an upgrade to AutoCAD 2006 (US$500) -- and then provide on-going annual subscription fees lower than Autodesk's ($420). (Autodesk likes to make it seem that more-than-three-release-old versions of AutoCAD don't qualify for upgrade pricing after mid-January. Not true: the company offers 30% discounts on upgrades going back to Release 14.) Bentley is not alone; Alibre also currently hopes to persuade some of the 2.4 million 2D AutoCAD LT users to switch to its 3D MCAD software ($495-$795 until 31 Dec). www.alibre.com/promos/acadupgrade.asp If nothing else, it gets the two companies free exposure in the CAD media. Q&A: Five Minutes with David Wayne David Wayne heads up CADalog. http://cadalog-inc.com
upFront.eZine: "What's the story? Cadalog.com is owned by IMSI [at the time of the interview]. Is cadalog-inc.com yours? Are you progressing with software development independent of IMSI? Wondering minds want to know." David Wayne: "I guess it is confusing. Cadalog,Inc. is an independent company. We owned the CADalog.com Web site, but sold it to IMSI last year. The site was a small part of our business. We continued to do business (without CADalog.com) with a focus on localization/ distribution for Asian markets (Rhino, SketchUp, Visual Mill, Alibre, TurboCAD). "We had complaints when we did not upgrade some of our AutoCAD mechanical plug-ins (the EMT MECH products) to Auto2004/ 2005. So instead of going through the pain of upgrading this software, we are licensing SI-Mechanical from Design Pacifica. We've updated the install and documentation, and tested it on 2004/2005, and are making it available to our customers from OhYeahCAD.com. "All the North American Web and distribution restrictions that were placed on us when we sold CADalog.com to IMSI last year have expired, and we are free to start selling products in North America again. So we are doing that via OhYeahCAD.com. Does this make sense?" - - - Since this interview was recorded, IMSI sold cadalog.com to IBsystems. A summary of CAD industry news you may not have read elsewhere, or that we found interesting: UGS launches JT2Go no-cost 3D viewing software for 3D drawings saved in XML-based JT format. www.jtopen.com Intergraph ships SmartPlant Review 5.1 3D visualization and design review software -- the first, they say, to offer laser scanning point cloud data integration. ppm.intergraph.com/visualization Dr. DWG solution Center announces that its Liteview2005 supports DWF files, AutoCAD 2005, and HPGL. www.drdwg.com CoCreate's Model Manager uses XML Web services to manage data. [The press release uses different language: "CoCreate's Model Manager leverages the power of XML Web services to tie into service-oriented architectures that link together CoCreate design environments with enterprise applications."] www.cocreate.com Subdivision surfacing is now available in SDLib V1.0 from SMS. www.smlib.com/sdlib.html Spicer announces Imagenation 7.5 and Image a.X 7.5, adding support for viewing DWG 2005, Inventor 3D, MicroStation v8 2004, JT format, and enhanced PDF. Demo copy available at www.spicer.com after registration. SAMTECH embraces the wind power industry with SAMCEF for Wind Turbines -- non-linear FEM for composite blades and structures, gearbox modeling, servomechanisms and turbine controllers. www.samcef.com Geomate's ToleranceCalc (US$95) wizard extracts 1D and 2D linear tolerance vectors from DXF files at any stage of the design process, and then generates a worst-case stack-up analysis. www.inventbetter.com/tolerancecalc.html nPower Software's Power CatiaToMax performs native Catia V5 translation to 3ds Max with multi-threaded tessellation support. www.nPowerSoftware.com - - - Throughout the week, we post additional news items and think pieces are posted at our Weblog. Headlines from the last two weeks include:
Hardware Hits IDEAL drops the price of the Contex Chroma XL 42" scanner from US$22,900 to $19,900. www.ideal.com Seminars & Conferences 6th International Conference on Computer-Aided Industrial Design and Conceptual Design is 29 May - 1 June at the Technical University Delft. www.io.tudelft.nl/caidcd2005 2005 International Conference 0n ISO 9000 is Feb 28 - Mar 2 at Lake Buena Vista FL USA. www.iso9000conference.com . Register by Jan 17 and receive an early bird registration gift, one of:
People/Companies on the Move Derek Burney joins IDELIX Software on its board of advisors. Mr Burney is the former president of CAE Inc. Autodesk promotes Mark Paraskeva to a new position: vp of northern Europe. Mr Paraskeve is the former senior area sales director for northern Europe. ABAQUS moves to 166 Valley Street, Providence RI USA. "Situated in a riverfront complex of 19th-century Providence mill buildings that once produced the nation's largest supply of worsted wool, the Rising Sun Mills development will be a mix of a high technology environment combined with traditional values of solidity and reliability much like the new ABAQUS office, itself a former mill building." Redo With 'Multi-CAD' magazine no longer in print, there remains a CAD magazine printed in Australia, as Randall Newton reminds us. 'Control Alt Delete', the MicroStation magazine published in Melbourne, still creates a quarterly print edition. members.ozemail.com.au/~penbrush Brand New CAD Books/eBooks In exchange for your mailing address and phone number, CADCIM Technologies emails you the link for downloading the "Autodesk Inventor for Designers Release 5" textbook (by Sham Tickoo) free. Send info to sales@cadcim.com In exchange for US$26.95, upFront.eZine Publishing emails you the "Tailoring AutoCAD 2005" PDF e-book (by Ralph Grabowski). Send payment to www.paypal.com/affil/pal=ralphg%40xyzpress.com WorthWhile Web http://www.preparingforemergencies.co.uk
http://www.bananaguard.com
Letters to the Editor Re: IFCs "My (usual) $0.02: In all fairness, if IAI/IFC can be attributed to anybody, that would be Richard See, and, I suppose, by extension to his employer at the time, Autodesk. The guy invested a good piece of his life into this. "Of course, IAI fast became more than
a single-vendor effort. As of now IAI owes its existence to a lot
more people. (I'd like to think I've contributed a bit, too.)"
"IFC updates from EPM and Graphisoft:
Re: Acrocat and U3D "Acrobat 7 now can contain interactive
3D images, which must be in U3D format. Do you think the .3D format
would be a better approach? Actify <http://www.actify.com>
is the creator and inventor of the .3D format." The editor replies, "I have no idea why Adobe picked U3D. The format you mention might be better -- or not. The problem is there are too many 3D 'vendor neutral' formats."
"On the CAD Publishing side (our Net-It
brand) the DWF and PDF technology advances are called opportunity!
We've been uniquely positioning for this, specifically with our
Net-It CADs."
"You say of Tony Peach: 'He's made many of us give little thought to the many alternatives...'. Would you care to elaborate on how that works? How does anybody make you 'not think' about alternatives? "By the way, the W3C's standard for web
graphics is called Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG), not SVF." The editor replies, "Good questions. As editors, we get inundated by press releases, pr people calling up, presents in the mail, and so on. Some companies are better are getting through the noise than others; some don't try. "Companies like Adobe and Autodesk spend a lot of time 'educating the marketplace,' a phrase that means working as hard as possible to make editors and other opinion leaders hype-aware of their products. The other file formats I mentioned are less successful, or not as interested, in doing the pr thing. "So, when I wrote that sentence, I acknowledged the danger faced by editors." Mr Kidson responds, "Yes, and upFront eZine is clearly valued more than a PR-weight-ranked filter. "Today there are business drivers for one of the 'non pr thing' technologies that aren't making it onto the pages of upFront.eZine. These are big compared to CAD, and they are part of what may revitalize CAD, but you won't hear much about them from the regular CAD suspects today -- even if readers would find the issues relevant and engaging. "In the case of SVG, anyone can start to get a hint of some of the themes from the W3C site responsible for this open standard: www.w3.org/Graphics/SVG/ "But the point you allude to is spot on: to get the interesting stories told coherently today requires some journalistic initiative."
Re: Spam Filters Plague Honest e-Newsletters "What is it about spam filtering software? I can obtain all the cheap v****a, bargain basement R***x watches, or cash from African dictators I like, but if someone tries to send me a Word doc, then lord help them. "It seems to me that the key a quiet
life in this hyper-connected world is just to install a shonky anti-spam/anti-virus
system and let it merrily delete all the emails you actually need
to work. Perhaps we should return to the halcyon days of the '40s
and '50s, where we could all saunter around like David Niven, drinking
ourselves stupid on gin-and-tonic, and the most effective form of
communication is the carrier pigeon." - - - "Love your ezine. Thought of you and
your 'notable quotables' when I read this at The Register:
"Please include me in your mail list.
Your site looks very interesting and full of interesting news. This
is somewhat of a shortcoming living in Africa."
"Great eZine. Great to keep in touch
with latest CAD developments." Spin Doctor of the Moment "Yes."
Notable Quotable "The most common causes of failure are
filtered information (leaders aren't getting the information directly
from the source, or the information is distorted by people pursuing
their own agendas), selective hearing, wishful thinking, fear, emotional
over-investment, and unrealistic expectations of the capital markets." |
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Return to www.upfrontezine.com. Entire contents copyright ©2004 by upFront.eZine Publishing, Ltd. All rights reserved worldwide. Article reprint fee $500. All trademarks belong to their respective holders. "upFront.eZine," "Talking About CAD," and "On your desktop every Tuesday morning" are trademarks of upFront.eZinePublishing, Ltd. Letters to the editor may be reproduced in an edited form for clarity and brevity. Opinions expressed in letters are not necessarily shared by upFront.eZine Publishing, Ltd. |
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