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Issue #415 : January 25, 2005 |
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C o n t e n t s PTC 1Q05 Earnings Call
2D, 3D, and Other Topics Lattice3D Webcast |
Write the Editor. Donate to upFront.eZine with Paypal. Access nearly-daily CAD commentary at our blog: WorldCAD Access.
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Parametric Technology is usually the first of the major CAD vendors to report its earnings every three months. During the conference call for Q1 FY05, executives were positively buoyant Overall, sales are up 8%, in Japan up 11%, in Europe up 15%. Part of the increase, however, is from currency inflation due to the weakening US dollar. Eliminating the balloon effect from the strengthening Euro, sales in Europe are up 4%. Still, the improved financial picture has PTC predicting it'll reach US$1 billion in revenue within three years, with a 20% profit margin. Windchill 8 [PLM software] ships in May, while the next release of Pro/E Wildfire [MCAD software] is due this summer. Perhaps the only negative is the increased sales of PTC low-end products. Negative, because this means less revenue per product sold. This caused one financial analyst to ask, "Will PTC reposition itself as a mid-range [$5,000] CAD company, leaving Dassault and UGS at the high-end [$20,000 and up]?" Answer: No plans to evacuate the high-end, nor to deviate from the message that PTC has the best-integrated product development system. One executive asserted PTC has the _only_ scalable solution for those small companies that dream of one day becoming large -- without having to replace their CAD system. What kind of acquisitions does PTC plan? Three kinds:
We have been overwhelmed by letters from readers over the last several months, and here is one attempt to clear out the In basket: - - - "I think the original message that kicked-off this very active discussion was about piping and process plant design <www.upfrontezine.com/2004/upf-400.htm#a>. Perhaps someone will correct me, but process plant design is probably more complex than building designs. "At this point, the big boys (PDS Intergraph, PDMS Aveva)
seem to be getting challenged by the upstart AutoCAD/MicroStation
add-on guys (CADWorx, Bentley's two 3D piping offerings, CADPipe,
etc.) and even some lower-end, perhaps less-capable 3D packages
like MECH-Q running on IntelliCAD. Of course, scale is everything,
but with ever-increasing hardware power at progressively lower cost..
"I do believe design skills are transferable. Having worked
as a designer in the diverse fields of fire protection, fiber optics,
and timber processing, I think I am qualified to say this. Yes,
any field has its unique set of considerations that take time to
learn. But a competent designer knows when to leave his drawing
equipment -- whatever it may be -- and do some research into other
areas. That is the basic difference between a designer and a drafter. "I think that in many cases (but not all) a 3D tool is a
better choice than a 2D tool. That same tool can be used in more
than one field, by one or more designers who are competent in the
field or fields they are working in."
"A few years ago, it became apparent to me that the next big opportunity in AEC technology was in Construction. This is based in part on a simple equation: saving a few percent on construction is a much bigger $ amount, compared to saving the a few percent on design. In addition, there are time savings (time-to-market, time-to-occupancy benefits) that result in even bigger bottom line $. (This was the basis for many of the construction dot.coms, which typically failed because of flawed execution, not necessarily bad ideas.) "One of the biggest problems with using 3D models for construction is the way the model is organized: layers, sheets (2D), or systems, units, floors, rooms (3D) vs. construction zones. "While I am excited to see Graphisoft s entry into this market (a company I have always respected as an innovator and leader, and not simply "paving the cow path"), they are not the first:
"It is worth noting that many these solutions have failed to demonstrate their value. Notably, because (1) they are based on a design model -- not a model organized for construction requirements, and (2) the 4D model is developed at an added cost after design -- not produced during design. "One of the major hurdles these companies face is that virtual
construction requires new work processes. To date, all these companies
have addressed this problem by providing associated services."
"3D is here to stay. I think everyone has their way of modeling.
For me, I use AutoCAD to layout a skeleton of the new device I'm
designing, and then I use Pro/Engineer to model it and detail it.
This way I know what the rough dimensions of the device will
be and that it will fit the application." Their pr firm gathered a gaggle of journalists to hear Jeff Drust talk about Lattice3D's vision for "3D Everywhere" -- and introduce a collection of new software. Lattice3D is the North American presence of Lattice Technology of Japan <www.xvl3d.com>. The company's primary claim to fame is its XVL file format that compresses 3D CAD models by up to 250x -- like reducing a 24MB data file down to 0.17MB. (XVL is short for "eXtended VRML with Lattice," while VRML is short for "virtual reality markup language." VRML was briefly popular in the mid-1990s as a possible standard for displaying interactive 3D models in Web pages. But interactive 3D didn't catch on with the masses. Just because it's possible doesn't mean it'll become popular.) XML's compression is done using Gregory patches, which resurface 3D models with the smallest number of curves needed to represent the details -- using variable tesselations. Ironically, said Mr Drust, the more curves in the model, the smaller the file size. You can learn more technical details at www.xvl3d.com/en/technology Lattice was shoved recently in the spotlight when Dassault Systemes selected XVL upon which to create its Microsoft-approved 3DXML open and "universal" 3D file format. I asked Mr Durst how the 3DXML differs from XVL. He didn't know, because 3DXML has not yet been published. He said Dassault has assured him 3DXML will be a superset of XVL, and thus compatible. The WebEx session included demos of the newly-announced software:
A summary of CAD industry news you may not have read elsewhere, or that we found interesting: The Chicago Public Schools Department of Education to Careers is developing a proposal for a new high school devoted to Design. To make the concept successful, they need support from industry professionals and companies in the Chicago area. Ray Prendergast is wondering if you are willing to:
You can contact him at rprendergast@cps.k12.il.us VX Corp adds a new model morphing toolset to bend, twist, stretch, pull and push solid and non-solid geometry. You can morph by dragging the cursor or inputting precise values, and models can be re-edited at any time via the VX History Manager. /www.vx.com McLaren Software and FileNet Corporation announce McLaren Enterprise Engineer for the FileNet P8 Enterprise Content Management platform. www.mclarensoftware.com and www.FileNet.com Ricoh launches the Pro G3 digital camera that embeds captured images with GPS coordinates from its on-board GPS unit and from external GPSs. www.geospatialexperts.com UGS ships Nastran Version 3, the company's software for advanced finite element analysis. And makes JT2Go 3D viewing software available at no cost from www.JT2Go.com PTC is offering 50% off Pro/ENGINEER bundled with Interactive Surface Design Extension -- US$4,995. Or, get ISDX on its own for $2,500. www.ptc.com/go/isdx Intel unveils its previously veiled Centrino CPU for notebook computers. You won't, unfortunately, be able to tell between notebooks with the old and new Centrinos, because Intel omitted an consumer-level identifier. http://www.intel.com/intel/finance/pricelist - - - Additional news items at our WorldCAD Access blog <worldcadaccess.typepad.com/blog/>:
People/Companies on the Move Dennis Nagy is the new vp of Marketing and Business Development at CD-adapco, a vendor of CFD and CAE software and services. LMS International receives financing from the Belgian Federal Government for developing LMS Virtual.Lab for Aerospace, a virtual simulation suite for aircraft and space system development. The new Acrobat 7 supports 3D images, but not to any standard we are consider commonplace: Adobe has licensed U3D-related technology from Right Hemisphere. To get 3D CAD drawings into PDF files, though, takes two steps: (1) purchase Deep Exploration (US$149) from Right Hemisphere or other product to translate the CAD drawings to U3D format; and (2) import the U3D file into the PDF file using the latest release of Acrobat Professional. Deep Exploration supports 120 data types, including 3D CAD files. www.righthemisphere.com/products/dexp . Bentley Systems notes that the latest release of MicroStation outputs3D models in U3D format without the need for an extra-cost translator. Geometric Software's revenue is up 45% to US$10 million, and profits are by 31%. WorthWhile Web http://www.macobserver.com/article/2001/03/09.10.shtml
Letters to the Editor Re: XML Feature Models "I enjoyed the article and felt he was right on in confronting software vendors. Alibre is a notable exception in the industry on this issue in that our vision is to provide an open standard providing the full feature and history of a 3D parametric solid model. "To that end we created our own extension to the STEP standard, and in August 2002 submitted the extended schema to the STEP ISO committee <www.alibre.com/news/pr/pr20020814.asp>. "We are not even concerned that our specific schema be adopted. Our goal was to provide an example from which to start; we would support an alternative, should it be proposed and adopted. "Unfortunately, ISO committees move at glacial speeds, and worse, all other software vendors in the mechanical market are more interested in maintaining their proprietary formats and locking in customers. "We have not abandoned the vision of robust feature and history data exchange, and are committed to actively supporting any standard that ultimately gains acceptance. "The real question is: Why do so many customers cede their
power and control of their data to software vendors who only pay
lip service to interoperability?"
"Some points that may have been missed in the interesting XML discussion: 1. 'XML is extensible' means that the same software tools can be used across the whole spectrum of XML dialects. Some of the comments seemed to indicate that there would need to be unique proprietary XMLs for different disciplines, but the fundamental utility of XML is that there can be innumerable schemas while at the same time no new development of basic tools. Basic XML tools such as SAX, DOM, XPATH, XSLT, etc can be used on any XML dialect for any discipline, which frees developers to make more interesting applications. 2. 'XML is text' is a really big deal in the graphics world. XML is at the juncture of graphics and text, giving it some unique capabilities. For example in the use of graphical XML, common open source software tools can be leveraged to provide full capability, such as CSV, Concurrent Versions System. "Note that SVG/XML and XAML include a great deal more than mere viewing -- with full scripting, animation, event listener capability built into the browser. In other words, CAD may be in for some significant changes in the not too distant future. SVG and other design oriented XML schemas will allow collaborative design using http and open source frameworks to leapfrog traditional workstation based CAD/GIS software. "Microsoft, Adobe, or even open source could easily swallow
the CAD industry once XML is widely adopted."
"All this discussion of non-geometric product data is soon going to smack right into concerns about securing proprietary data. Here I'm not referring to data proprietary to the CAD vendor, but data proprietary to the designer. If the essence of a design is actually encoded into a model, then how does the designer go about protecting that which he considers proprietary? "Providing access to the parametric relationships between the various elements of a deign may not be a good thing as far as they're concerned. Data abstractions or alternative public representations may also be required, introducing a whole new segmentation to product modeling. "When AP203 was initially implemented, the side-effect that
the AP203 representation stripped out all the parametric dimensions
was actually viewed by many as a benefit as it prevented proprietary
intellectual property from being exported. Protecting intellectual
property is a serious issue." - - - Re: Does My Data Look Big in This? "Why do
people fret over the amount of memory other people use? Are they
that bored?" - - - Re: What AutoCAD LT Lacks "Several weeks ago I upgraded my AutoCAD LT 2000i software on my computer to LT 2005. Upon doing so, I was immediately disappointed to learn that sheet sets are not available in LT. "At my job, I frequently have many file tabs lined up across the bottom of my screen, that run on for miles it seems, and was looking forward to utilizing the sheet set function I had watched Lynn Allen demonstrate at a local Go Further tour last summer. "What a letdown! I may not have upgraded if I had known
this in advance. I would have rather seen the sheet set tools than
the tool palette (or many of the other new features)." Notable Quotable "Modern reporters almost all have college degrees. This
means that they tend to have gotten their interpretive lenses from
the very type of professor they end up quoting once they become
journalists."
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