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Issue #432 : : May 20, 2005 |
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C o n t e n t s From the Editor SolidWorks Comes to Visit Autodesk Reports on
Q1 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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This issue is early, because I am away the long weekend. (We celebrate Victoria Day on May 23 by forgetting the name of Canada's first queen.) I'm driving the equipment van and taking photographs/videos for our high school's band trip to Seattle, Saturday thru Tuesday. (My daughter plays saxaphone in jazz band.) Their public concert is at Center House Stage, Tuesday at 12:00 noon. - - - I have several copies of these books available for US$25 donations to this e-newsletter (overseas please add US$15 for extra postage):
PayPal: www.paypal.com/affil/pal=ralphg%40xyzpress.com Cheques: 34486 Donlyn Avenue, Abbotsford BC, V2S 4W7, Canada SolidWorks CEO John McEleney and application engineer Jerry Stadtmueller dropped by the upFront.eZine office to show off SolidWorks 2006 and talk industry talk. (Joe Dunne was scheduled to accompany his boss, and got to Denver before remembering he forgot his passport for entering Canada.) SolidWorks 2006 This release emphasizes improvements in basic areas and in advanced areas, the idea being that subscription customers will be impressed at what they get for their annual fee. At least, that was the talking point. There are far too many features to list them all (that's what www.solidworks.com is for), so here are some of note: Display States instantly toggle display modes, such as show, hidden, transparent, and textured. The improvement is that there is no dialog box; instead, callouts appear that list the status of modes. In addition, modes can be stored and dragged onto other models. Linked Viewports means that zooms and pans in one viewport equally affect other viewports that are linked. Smart Components build on Smart Fasteners by resizing components (symbols, blocks) to match parts in the model, within defined limits. Relationships, like concentricity, are recognized. Rendering is improved with the Lighworks renderer, adding drag'n drop decals, depth of field (you can define which parts of the scene are in or out of focus), and cameras for walk-thrus. Routing now handles concentric items, like insulation, and fixed length segments. Assembly simplification recognizes classes of parts that don't need to be displayed in detail, such as non-mating parts. And Mr Stadtmueller described how SolidWorks is 80% of the way to eliminating the difference between lightweight and heavyweight file loading. The user shouldn't have to care if the drawing is large and needs to be loaded in segments. Plus there's improvements to COSMOS design analysis, sketch entities, product data management, and more. Speaking of COSMOS, Mr McEleney figures this will soon be its shinning moment, due to the price of steel increasing from China consuming 50% of world production, thus making steel optimization cheaper than slapping on an extra 20% for the safety margin.
It's About AutoCAD I was struck by the number of changes to SolidWorks 2006 that mimic additions to AutoCAD: text in a box (mtext), spell check, tables with equations and object properties (fields), jog dimensions, design checker (standards), and so on. In Us vs. Them news, SolidWorks is changing the name of eDrawings, which was an accurate but unexciting name, to DWGviewer. Uh huh. They now have a stable of three DWG-named products to convince AutoCAD users to come on over, the water's fine:
The emphasis on DWG is no accident: Mr McEleney sees 2D AutoCAD users belonging to the prime cohort of new SolidWorks customers. It's a matter of reassurance. SolidWorks 2006 is due out in July, or maybe even June. Three months ago, and Autodesk reported it first billion-dollar year. Now it says it expects a 50% increase for 2006: the company bravely predicts this year's annual revenues will be in the range of US$1.45-1.5 billion. And to think they've stopped paying dividends. Why the 50% increase? CEO Carol Bartz gave six reasons which can be summed up as: intense globalization means customers are buying software that lets them work anywhere. Other stats that caught my ear: 6.8 million downloads of DWF Viewer. ProductStream 4 launches Friday. Fifty new products this year, of which 25 came out in Q1; the other 25 will be mainly in data management and entertainment over the next three months. Sales of Revit are up 150%, but still no sales figures, but later in the call the CEO implied sales are very low, as does the percentage increase of 150%. Subscriptions from Inventor continue to outdo those from AutoCAD. It sounded to me as if one analyst wondered if Autodesk might acquire ANSYS to counter Dassault's acquisition of ABAQUS. Carol Bartz replied, "We have an analysis partner [ANSYS]. Quite frankly, we don't know why they did it." A summary of CAD industry news you may not have read elsewhere, or that I found interesting: - - - Soft Gold's ABViewer (US$99) allows you to view, edit, and print CAD, raster, and vector files: DXF, DWG, HPGL/2, CGM, SVG, BMP, EMF, JPEG, GIF and TIFF. Download a demo from www.cadsofttools.com/Download/ABViewer.zip . The company notes that it is "involved into the development of the next generation CAD software." Sounds intriguing. ICEM announces that Surf 4.5 features a new helix modeling function, improved sheetmetal spring-back compensation, and topological tessellation. www.icem.com GibbsCAM 2005+ features improvements in the areas of machining solid models, production milling and turning, 3D milling, and high speed machining. www.GibbsCAM.com Synergis Software reports that Adept 6 EDM (US$1095) will be available next month with support for SQL databases to track one million document. [Now I need to generate a millions documents to track.] www.synergis-adept.com Here's a switch: Axiom releases RefManager 5.0a for an older version of MicroStation, V7. www.axiomint.com Alias's DirectConnect software allows ImageStudio software to read SolidWorks 3D drawings and transform them into photorealistic images. Product ships mid-June. www.alias.com/imagestudio - - - 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/ >
Market News Dassault Systemes acquires ABAQUS for US$413 million cash. ABAQUS makes software for simulation and analysis. Letters to the Editor Alternatives to Network License Reporting "I can suggest Sassafras's Keyserver, a great application
for monitoring and reporting on licenses. Purchase price is based
on how many computers you need to control/monitor, but is priced
very well, I think, and will monitor every executable on the machines."
"One solution is JTB FlexReport from JTB World: www.jtbworld.com/jtbflexreport/index.htm
"
"Here is a (relatively) simple answer: 1. In the 'Program Files\Autodesk Network License Manager' folder, copy the file lmutils.exe to another folder, and rename the file lmstat.exe. 2. The following command gives you a report of the AutoCAD usage at the time: lmstat.exe -c "c:\Program Files\Autodesk Network License Manager\License\autodesk.lic" -f 46300ACD_2005_0F where the -c argument points to your license file and the -f argument is the 'feature' you want the report on. 3. Pipe the output to a file, then strip out the data you need. "I have this running as part of a larger command file that
reports on AutoCAD 2002, 2004, 2005 and Raster Design for
each, too. It lets me know when we approach our license limits.
With a little creativity, the tools you need to start with are delivered
with FlexLM."
Re: 10th Anniversary "I've been really enjoying your irreverent newsletter for
the past year or so. I hope you have many more years ahead." "Congrats for 10 years of excellence." "Congratulations on the 10th anniversary of your ezine!
Keep up the great work!" "Thanks for excellent weekly reports. I enjoy the news of
the CAD world." Spin Doctor of the Moment "I think shareholders are the great evil of this modern
world." Notable Quotable "If they really want to sink their brand into this, Google
will end up controlling a high-end phonebook and homework library."
Copyright 2005 by upFront.eZine Publishing, Ltd. All rights reserved worldwide All
rights reserved worldwide. Article reprint fee $250. |
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