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upFront.eZine |
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a
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Issue #430 : : May 10, 2005 |
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C o n t e n t s Why CAD Will Never Be Opeen-Source
New Add-ons for Rhino
Under the Radar and other
regular columns. |
Write the Editor. Donate to upFront.eZine with Paypal. Access nearly-daily CAD commentary at our blog: WorldCAD Access.
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Why CAD Will Never Be Open-Source Over at cio-today.com, Paul Murphy calls for Adobe to make PostScript open-source. He writes about open source successes (but leaves out open source failures). And then this remarkable claim: "Basically it comes down to this: Look around you. You're last big holdout except Microsoft against the open-source evolution." Last big holdout? This guy must be living in a narrow alleyway. The CAD industry (a) is big and (b) isn't "evolving" (to use his term) toward open source. Quite the opposite: it is locking itself into becoming increasingly more closed source. (Many other huge sectors of the software industry will also closed.) As CAD vendors add features, some are developed internally; those would be candidates for open source. Many new features, however, are based on code licensed from specialist companies. The ideals of theory collided with harsh reality of practice when Visio attempted to make IntelliCAD (kind of) open-source; it found it couldn't, because too many aspects were licensed from third parties, who were not interested in losing their revenue stream. Here's an example of the increased lockdown. DXF was the open source representation of AutoCAD drawing files. It was written in plain ASCII for anyone to read, and Autodesk thoroughly documented it. In Release 13, however, part of DXF was made unavailable to the end user. Autodesk had switched its solid modeler from PADL to ACIS, and Spatial did not want its proprietary ACIS data opened up. (ACIS does have its DXF equivalent, the ASCII-based SAT format.) I suggest we will see attempts at open sourcing CAD from two quarters [what about the remaining quarters? -Ed.]:
According to gospel of evolution, the strong kill off the weak. PS: When you read "An Open Letter to Adobe Chairman John Warnock" <story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nf/20050505/bs_nf/34278>, pretend you're Mr Warnock. How would you take Mr Murphy's advice? Rhino is a software that operates below the radar. A lot of companies use the NURBS surface modeler for conceptual industrial design. "Frank Gehry for the Rest of Us," says Wired magazine. Owner Bob Mcneal tells me he's not worried that a future release of AutoCAD will be include similar capabilities. And so I was fascinated to read of these add-ons to Rhino coming in the next weeks:
ClayTools for Rhino (US$2,795) lets you use your "sense of touch" to create organic shapes and handcrafted modifications to NURBS models imported from Rhino. The sense-of-touch is provided by the Phantom Omni Haptic Device, included. http://www.sensable.com/ RhinoCAM 4th-axis module (US$999) from Mechsoft adds 4-axis milling to Rhino, and includes advanced 3-D toolpath simulation to verify operations. It is meant for use by jewelry manufacturers. http://www.rhinocam.com And from Next Limit Technologies comes the Maxwell plug-in for Rhino (US$995 + free plugins), a new rendering engine based on the physics of real light -- light emitters, material shaders, cameras, and so on. http://www.maxwellrender.com (Some of these products also work with other software packages.) http://www.rhino3d.com A summary of CAD industry news you may not have read elsewhere, or that I found interesting: - - - TurboDemo is software for CAD e-learning and tutorials, exporting in a variety of formats, including Java, AVI, and Mediaplayer, with files that are 20-30% smaller. www.turbodemo.com/eng/features.htm I've mentioned it once before, and now StuctureWorks is going live: this is concrete design software built on SolidWorks, otherwise known for mechanical design. It works as you might expect: design the concrete structure in 3D, and then output 2D shop drawings and BOMs (bills of material). Price starts at US$11,200 excl. SolidWorks, plus another $3,500/yr subscription. www.structureworks.net/SWpcast.html Here's a press release I've been puzzling over: "Strata ... announced the upcoming release of Strata 3D Live, a product that allows 3D content to come alive in Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF) files." How, I wondered, is this different from U3D? The source of the 3D: not CAD, but 2D. Start in Adobe's Illustrator, imitate 3D with Strata 3D CX, add graphics and textures with linked Adobe Photoshop files, render, and then use Strata 3D Live to output as an Adobe PDF document. Seems awfully complicated to me. The press release was sent as a PDF file containing examples of 3D images. wwwstrata.com myCADsite.com has 45 tutorials on using AutoCAD 2005, including "Model a Building in 3D" and "Modifying and Creating Dimension Styles". In English and Spanish. www.myCADsite.com IDEAL updates ScanOS (scanner operating system) to output sacns in multipage PDF format. www.ideal.com Dave Arnold heads up Retrieve Technologies (formerly Anzwerz) that produces a Web app to publish your firm's drafting standards and procedures. www.StandardsRetrieve.com Revit Building 8 achieves stage-one IFC certification. www.iai-international.org SiteComp releases Survey and Civil/Survey software v5 with naming of point filters, user definable line connection codes and feature codes, and more. www.sitecomp.net UGS will have its first quarterly conference call next week, since becoming its own company again. [Perhaps a trial run for going public later this year?]
- - - And these news items were posted during the last week at our WorldCAD Access blog <worldcadaccess.typepad.com>:
And on the Gizmos Grabowski weblog < http://worldcadaccess.typepad.com/gizmos/ >
People/Companies on the Move ABAQUS opens an office in Australia run by Gerd Diegelmann. Address is 236A Lennox Street, Richmond VIC 3121. [An open house for the North American CAD media is apparently not in the cards, I have learned.] McLaren Software appoints Mike Jones as vp of marketing. Mr Jones held the same position at his previous employer, Citadel Security Software. Brand New CAD Books/eBooks CADCIM Technologies releases "CATIA for Designers V5R14," a textbook by Sham Tickoo. More info at www.cadcim.com WorthWhile Web http://www.mrexcel.com/tip071.shtml
- Merle Hall: "It's all about the tools one has. I think there's probably a similarity between using Excel for CAD and the old axiom (is that the right word?) of being able to do anything with a pair of pliers, a screwdriver, and a hammer."
Letters to the Editor Re: Images of CAD "Thanks for the mention of 'Images of CAD' in your e-zine. It has been a pet project of Richard's, and he is very pleased to see that it is being well-received. "As for the project descriptions, they were written by the
designers and I guess they like to talk about their projects in
a more lofty sense rather than the nitty-gritty design details.
Maybe we can get better design details in Images of CAD II."
Re: PTC First to Ship 64-bit CAD "First to ship 64-bit CAD? I don't think so. Maybe
first under WinXP x64 -- but what makes you think that Microsoft
is early in the 64-bit OS game? If I had to make a bet about who
was first with CAD on 64-bit, it would be Dr. Patrick Hanratty,
of Manufacturing and Consulting Services -- the father of CAD." "I don't know about 64, I was using Dr. Hanratty's Anvil
4000 on a 36-bit (9-bit bytes) Honeywell CP6 Mainframe in the mid-80s.
Weird but true." The editor replies: "Mssrs Yares and Levin write about a posting on WorldCAD Access. I've since changed the title to 'PTC First to Ship 64-bit CAD on Windows'."
Re: Archiving CAD Data, and 2D vs. 3D "If I recall correctly, archival storage was one of the original reasons behind STEP. BTW, with many CAD system formats, you don't even have to go 50 years to not be able to read it -- 10 years is usually enough. "A while ago, I mentioned that 2D is going to be around
as long as it is capable of representing product information that
is not readily supported by 3D. Now with the more recent movement
afoot to start delivering on product data modeling, there is a real
interest in creating systems that are capable of producing product
data models. These systems recognize that there is still a need
for an engineering drawing format of the product information (no
getting away from decades if not centuries of professional practice),
but that information is stored in the product model, not relegated
to some drawing sub-system hinterlands. To paraphrase a popular
line, 'it's all about the product data, stupid!'"
Re: PTC Conference Call "I enjoy getting your newsletter and have for a few years,
good job! You failed to mention the person who was interviewed at
PTC. At first you mention financial analysts, but never say who
the PTC contact is." The editor replies: "On the PTC side, there are three men (I think) and a women responding to questions from the analysts -- so I have no idea who is responding!" - - - "Thanks for the magazine -- very useful." "Congratulations on the 10 years! Keep up the good work." "It's fun to read your upFront.eZine week by week. Keep
it up!" "Congratulations! Ten years of publishing excellence with
upFront.eZine. I appreciate your efforts in keeping me up to date
on 'The Business of CAD.'" "Enjoyed your interview with the, uh, head of the company
this week. Had to chuckle at first. Nice to know some of the
history."
Spin Doctor of the Moment "Adding tracking chips to banking brochures and burying
RFID sensors within the walls of the branch itself would allow banks
to identify which customers are interested in mortgages and enable
the bank to target screen advertising accordingly when a customer
walks past, with the movement of the tag past the screen sensor
programmed to trigger a relevant advertisement, for example, the
[Accenture] consultancy believes."
Notable Quotable "I am the operator, By pressing down a special key,
Copyright 2005 by upFront.eZine Publishing, Ltd. All rights reserved worldwide All
rights reserved worldwide. Article reprint fee $250. |
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