|
upFront.eZine |
|
|
a
publication from |
|
|
Issue #434 : : June 7, 2005 |
|
|
C o n t e n t s COSMOS 2006 Inventor's Installed Base 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.
|
|
|
|
|
Suchit Jain spent an hour last week telling me about COSMOS 2006, due in early July. Good thing he called, because I wanted to know why Dassault Systemes owns COSMOS, ABAQUS, and part of MSC -- all three companies that produce finite element analysis software. (What is it with FEA companies having all-uppercase names?) It works like this: COSMOS is meant for use with SolidWorks, and ABAQUS for Catia. COSMOS represents the easy-of-use market and handles 80% of FEA needs, while ABAQUS covers the high-end, with non-linear and crash analysis. As for MSC, Dassault had an investment in AES, and then MSC bought out AES, so Dassault has a residual ownership in MSC, a company currently suffering from financial reporting problems sufficiently severe to be dropped from the stock exchange. - - - There are five models of COSMOS, which Mr Jain says isn't an acronym for anything. In increasing price, these are:
Some of the features in COSMOS 2006 include:
The Web site is www.cosmosm.com (cosmos.com is a travel agent).
Now that Inventor has outsold SolidWorks in total units, Autodesk is making public the quarter-by-quarter sales figures in its Factsheet. Fiscal 2005 Fiscal 2006 SolidWorks is at 402,000, according to its Web site. And describes itself thusly: "SolidWorks leads the market in number of users in production, customer satisfaction, and revenue." The phrase "in production" is interesting. A problem with Autodesk's figures is that "Inventor" is three CAD products: AutoCAD, Mechanical Desktop, and Inventor, and we don't really know how many Inventor licencees are not using it. (The phrase also hints at the other statistical problem: a large percentage of mcad licenses are for education use, not production use.) Still, it is remarkable that Inventor has outsold SolidWorks in under six years, since its release in September, 1999.
A summary of CAD industry news you may not have read elsewhere, or that I found interesting: - - - Synergis Software ships Synergis Adept 6 (US$1,095), its engineering document management software for small and medium-sized businesses. New features include commercial version of MySQL, SQL database support for MySQL Classic 4.1, Oracle 9i and MS SQL; inherited rights; and more. www.synergis-adept.com As revealed in upFront.eZine two weeks ago, SolidWorks today began shipping eDrawings for Macintosh computers, specifically those running OS X v10.4. eDrawings Professional for Mac is US$995; the viewer is free from www.edrawingsviewer.com/MAC_Viewer.html MultiSUITE Software releases new structural applications for AutoCAD 2006: MultiSUITE, MultiSTEEL, and MultiREBAR. www.multisuite.com Also first detailed in upFront.eZine #432, SolidWorks 2006 was announced officially last week. It is available for purchase now, but will not ship until early July. [Hmmm.] www.solidworks.com/pages/products/solidworks_2006/solidworks_2006_new_features.html Etrage's Plot Service for Pro/INTRALINK v2.4.1 now handles ProductView files from Pro/ENGINEER assemblies larger than 2GB. www.etrage.com/download_form.htm Proficiency releases Collaboration Gateway v4.0, its feature-based CAD interoperability software. Unique are the new controls that allows you to determine whether the assembly structure includes feature-based parts, geometry-based, or none at all. www.proficiency.com LightWork Design optimizes its LightWorks rendering software for AMD's and Intel's 64-bit CPUs, which will allow larger models to be rendered. www.lightworkdesign.com CoCreate Software updates OneSpace Designer 2005 v13.20 with XVL converter and a new integrator with the mySAP. www.cocreate.com/products.cfm/ProdFamilyID/3/ProductID/41 Delcam's ArtCAM Pro has enhancements in 2D drawing, 3D modeling, and machining for the engraving, sign making and woodworking industries. www.delcam.com QuadriSpace's new release of Document3D line of software imports 3D CAD files directly into documents, with no need to create intermediate U3D files, yet exports in 3D-enabled PDF documents. www.document3d.com IMSI is selling FloorPlan 3D Design Suite 10 (US$39.95) with new pre-designed room scenes, improved interface, and 100 more 3D symbols. www.imsisoft.com - - - 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/>
Hardware News ART VPS ships a new PURE ray-tracing graphics card with twice the processing power for dedicated 3D final-frame rendering, 66MHz PCI-X compatibility, and 64-bit core rendering software. http://www.artvps.com
Seminars & Conferences Viewpoint Americas 2005 VANTAGE Users Conference is June 27-29 in New Orleans LA USA. www.viewpointamericas.org 2005 European ICEM Users’ Meeting is Sept 26-27 at the Barcelona Plaza Hotel, Spain. www.icem.com Asia/Pacific ICEM Users’ Meeting is Oct 28 at the Shinigawa Conference Centre in Tokyo, Japan.
People/Companies on the Move Former head of the IntelliCAD Technical Consortium, Scott Hucke, now runs ICADSales.com in the United States, reselling the Italian-developed ProgeCAD Professional 2006, based on the IntelliCAD 6.
Redo upFront.eZine got two facts wrong last week: "Inventor Professional includes a version of ANSYS, which
does quite a bit more than COSMOS. Also, the most expensive acquisition
Autodesk did was Discreet Logic for about $400M."
I also got a URL wrong, but it was the PR company's fault for failing to include it and making me look it up and locating the wrong one. The Quantm Web site is at http://www.quantm.net (not .com).
Spin Doctor of the Moment "No Artificial Sweetener!" "Nutrition Information" Notable Quotable "I felt something, a disturbance in the network, as if a
million Mac zealots cried out in horror and were suddenly silenced."
Copyright 2005 by upFront.eZine Publishing, Ltd. All rights reserved worldwide Article reprint fee US$250.00.
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. |
|
|
|
|