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Issue #441 : : July 26, 2005 |
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C o n t e n t s What Guy Kawasaki Says Extreme Lack-of-CAD Makeover Below
the Radar, and a few of the 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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It's time for summer vacation! At least for those of us living on the upper half of the Earth. This is the last issue of upFront.eZine before taking the annual break during August. I am glad to see other CAD publications also resisting the relentless pace of shoveling information your way on an incessant basis. For instance, Tenlinks.com cuts back its headlines-oriented newsletter to four days a week. Rest is good. When this e-newsletter returns on Sept 12, I plan to run a visual quiz to celebrate an anniversary event that takes place in mid-September. The Real Meaning of 3D Guest Editorial by Murray Pearson In an earlier issue of upFront.eZine, the question was raised by Craig Ryan about the value of 3D CAD and the fact that it is becoming the new and required standard. The definition of 3D, in this context, was overlooked. This was not helped by the CAD vendor giving a poor explanation to Craig about what 3D meant, and the explanation was not clarified by the editor's response [Ouch! - Ed.]. In my opinion, 3D is all about coordination and consistency for sets of building construction documents. With true 3D systems, you build 3D models, and then extract drawings for construction which are totally consistent and coordinated. This requires the 2D drafter, like Chris, to totally change his way of thinking and working on projects. Right now, he uses the computer and thinks exactly the same way as he did when using the drawing board. His efficiency is only affected by drawing lines faster. No additional benefit can possibly be gained. For experienced drafters, this can work well, because they have every aspect of the building's coordination in their head, just as they did when working on the drawing board. They are happy for they know no other way. My first exposure to CAD was a fully parametric 3D drawing production system, RUCAPS in 1979. I produced 100 sheets of fully coordinated drawings on a large building project in London, and then altered and reproduced 70 of them in two days. I was amazed some years later to watch an AutoCAD user draw and duplicate lines; I could not see the point. By working in true 3D and building up a single database for all drawing production, the drafter starts to think about the design process; drawings are a by-product. Renderings in 3D may also come from this process, but they are not the primary reason for working in 3D. Keep it simple: investigate how you can use a 3D system, not for 3D visualization, but to change the way you work for more efficient drawing production and coordination of all drawings. 3D visuals also happen, but they are not the primary output. As for the capital cost of the software, it is peanuts compared to the cost of your time and your business. The $7,000 quoted probably represents about 4% per year or about 2 hours a week. It takes only a minor productivity increase to justify this capital cost. Good luck, Craig, and try to find someone who can give you a true explanation of what working in 3D can mean for the building designer. If the first benefit they show you is a 3D rendering, then find someone else. I can't imagine a life as a drafter looking forward to the rest of my working career drawing and copying lines and using an offset tool.
(Murray Pearson is the founder of Cadimage Solutions, and distributes ArchiCAD in New Zealand. www.cadimage.co.nz) PTC Reports on Quarter 3 Oops! They did it again. PTC, once the sick child of CAD, continues its recovery. Look at the growth rate that itself is growing: 2004 Q3
+2% Growth is coming from different geographies and different sectors. On top of it all, they have US$404 million cash in the bank. Not everything is rosy, however. While CAD revenue was up 4%, PLM was down 4% on the quarter. Over the year earlier, the percentages are reversed: CAD down 7% and PLM up 16%. Lots of questions from analysts over the Arbortext acquisition, with PTC executives explaining it as an opportunity to go beyond engineering. "We're confused why the French company [Dassault Systemes] is doubling down into engineering. We are excited by our strategy to go beyond engineering and get more value from engineering data." One of the voices at the PTC end of the phone line explained how well Arbortext fits in with Pro/Engineer: consider changing a full-parametric CAD design. The changes then ripple through the system, automatically updating the documentation. PTC executives felt neither Dassault nor UGS have an all-encompassing CAD-PLM solution that matches PTC's. Indeed, PTC warned that as Dassault withdraws its IBM distribution agreement country-by-country, Dassault's revenues will appear to grow, because it no longer needs to share revenue with IBM. Some 4,150 copies of Pro/E were sold in the last quarter. For the fiscal year ending September 30, PTC expects revenue to be between $715 million and $720 million.
A summary of CAD industry news you may not have read elsewhere, or that I found interesting: CADlogic launches Draft IT, their new no-cost 2D PC CAD system. The enhanced Draft IT PLUS is £49 (approx US$80). Download the 6MB file from www.cadlogic.com/products/draftit/index.htm General CADD v4.0.10 is released for open beta testing. New features are added biweekly. www.generalcadd.com/downloads-BETA4.htm CoCreate Software announces OneSpace Live that packages the Web meeting components from OneSpace.net at half the price: US$60/user/month hosted, or $495/user perpetual. www.cocreate.com/onespacelive Theorem Solutions' latest Data eXchange Navigator (DXN) isolates and translates components and sub-assemblies from large assembly data files. Handles Catia V5 and A V4, UG NX, I-DEAS, Pro/E, ParaSolid, CADDS 5, and STEP. www.theorem.co.uk CCE releases CAT5Edge, their Solid Edge-integrated direct translator that imports Catia V5 files. Similar translators also available for Catia, Pro/E, UGS, SolidWorks, Mastercam, Parasolid, IGES, and STEP. www.cadcam-e.com ARCHIBUS supports Google Earth and Maps for geographic information systems. www.archibus.com Alibre and Amada are working to deliver 3D parametric modeling for the large sheet metal fabrication industry. New products are planned for release later this year. www.alibre.com softelec releases v8.02 for all VPHybridCAD products: full support for AutoCAD LT 2006, plus a new direct scanning interface for Colortrac's SmartLF large format scanners. Download demos from www.softelec.com Actify now offers true one-button creation of PDF files with embedded 3D U3F files from the SpinFire for Microsoft software. www.actify.com Intergraph ships the newest version of SmartPlant 3D. www.intergraph.com @Last Software releases SketchUp 5.0 (US$495). www.sketchup.com MatrixOne announces Designer Central, a workgroup design application for product designers collaborating with a central application. Supports Pro/E, UGS NX, Catia V4 and V5, SolidEdge, SolidWorks, Inventor, AutoCAD, MicroStation, Zuken, Mentor, Cadence, Xilinx, and Altera. www.matrixone.com Autodesk has a beta of its Batch Drawing Converter for R14-2006. The update does not require AutoCAD be installed. To test the beta, sign up at myfeedback.autodesk.com . In other news, Autodesk says its DWF Viewer has been downloaded 7 million times. And Camtek announces new version of PEPS SolidCut CADCAM software. www.peps.com
Seminars & Conferences 2005 ArtCAM User Group Meeting is Sept 28-30 in Orlando FL USA. Sponsored by Delcam. www.artcam.com 7th Eastpo International Machine Tool Fair is July 26-29 in Shanghai, China. www.ndbexpo.com/sime7/sime7_indexe.htm
Magazine/eZine/Weblog Updates The x-cad.net Web site logs 104,055 registrations before its self-imposed due date of 1 August. Alibre last week admitted they were the ones behind X-CAD, although Internet-related clues had pointed to the company early in its marketing campaign. Recipients may not be pleased to learn that they must be connected to the Internet to use the software, and will be watching ads from Google. Eliminating the Internet connection costs a fee.
People/Companies on the Move 2D scanner Contex Scanning Technology of Denmark and 3D scanner Z Corporation of USA are merging. The new company will be called Contex, with Z being a subsidiary. Cimatron appoints Danny Haran as ceo, following Zvika Naggan resignation for personal reasons. Mr Haran was the company's vp marketing and chief operating officer. Mark Sears is named chief operating officer at SolidVision. Mr Sears is the former head of subscription service, technical support, and certification groups at SolidWorks. Located at #90, ANSYS is the only CAE company to rank in Fortune magazine's list of the 100 Fastest-Growing Small Companies. The web2CAD and TraceParts Web sites register their 300,000th user. The sites provide free libraries of 50 million parts for machine designers. www.traceparts.com
Letters to the Editor Re: What Guy Kawasaki Says "Nice to see there are dreamers in the business world. However, I think Guy Kawasaki of Macintosh needs a reality check: '10. Make Meaning (rather than set out to make money)'. "Since when is something other than profit the motivating
and controlling factor in ALL business decisions? This guy sounds
like a mama reading fairy tales to her little child at bedtime." The editor replies: "I think his point was that if you create meaningful products, then the people will want it, and profits will follow. upFront.eZine uses that model. When I first explained ten years ago the concept of this newsletter to my dad, he wondered, 'How can you possibly make money from a free newsletter?' He now understands."
"Good job during slow CAD times. I liked your Freudian slip
on the 40-point speech: '3-4 words on why your company exits.' "I
think you meant EXISTS. Had to giggle.." The editor replies: "Oh, shoot! And it's not something spell checkers find."
"One of my pet peeves is the misuse of the 'learning curve' analogy. A steep learning curve is desirable; a flat curve is bad. For a given input of time/effort (x axis), you want a large increase in skill/productivity (y axis). "I know I'm just shouting into a hurricane here: this reversed
logic is now firmly embedded into our culture. Love the newsletter,
keep up the great work."
Re: Extreme Lack-of-CAD Makeover "Your groaning about 'Extreme Makeover: Home Edition' reminds me of my reaction to an episode of 'American Chopper', wherein the bike builders ran into an interference problem that would have shown up like a sore thumb on a CAD model. "I was so bothered by this that I called Orange County Choppers, and talked to Mikey, a main character on the show. He was happy to chat with me, but he had never heard of AutoCAD. OCC didn't use any sort of CAD for their one-off bikes. (The conversation was about two years ago.) "Some of his other comments were also revealing: He said
they do a lot of stuff on the show is strictly for the camera. He
remarked that the show would probably drive bike-builders a little
crazy. Some of the fabrication methods that get shown on tv just
aren't done any more, but they make good visuals!" The editor responds: "Yah, like dramatic images of ripping down houses. Footage of nailing 2x4s all day long and painting walls makes for dull tv. Wait, tv already is dull!"
Re: Norway to Demand Open Formats "I still think it'll turn out to be a thinly veiled protectionist
measure that will favor some obscure Norwegian software company"
"There is extremely good creation software (available for a number of years) that supports creating .doc and .pdf files, as well as Powerpoint and Excel files. "Not only are these free on the Windows platform, but they
are also freely distributed (slight difference) in Linux." The editor replies: "That's true: I use the OpenOffice spreadsheet, which saves in XLS and PDF -- one-button publishing for PDF. Its word processor saves in DOC and other formats."
"No, Sean, you don't own a copy; you license a copy. The Autodesk software license says you _can't_ keep a copy of the version on which the file was created over 120 days past the date you installed a newer version -- except to use it to install the new version. "Assuming that you've violated this, not only do you not own a copy, you don't even have a license anymore, because your license was automatically terminated when you violated the terms and conditions of the license agreement. "That means you are infringing your software supplier's copyright, and are a pirate, subject to suit in federal district court. Since you no longer have the right to use the software, how are you planning on opening the file? "You might want to address this question to piracy@autodesk.com. Though that's sort of like coming up to a police officer, saying you stole a car, and asking if it's OK. "PS: A data model is not the same as a data file format.
They are two separate things."
Re: AutoCAD 2006 "Are you aware that the RmlIn command has been removed from AutoCAD 2006? This effectively disables the redlining function in many document management programs, including DV-TDM by Practical Programs -- which we bought recently and went live with last Monday. "Autodesk seem to think that DWF is the only acceptable
format for redlining, which is simply not practical when it comes
to internal maintenance of our drawing database." The editor replies: "Also removed from AutoCAD is the PsIn command, which imports PostScript files; PsOut is still there."
"Have you seen or experienced lots of bugs in AutoCAD 2006? I have had several issues brought up to the AutoCAD team, and it's been over a month with still no resolution. I had to switch back to 2005 so I could get some work done. "In the Find command, click the Zoom and the
whole drawing disappears. And dbConnect labels reformatting
themselves when they are reloaded. I don't like the new mtext
interface, where the text no longer enlarges itself so it can be
read." The editor replies: "I have found that 2006 has many minor bugs, which gives me the feeling the software was rushed out. (A patch has been released for corrupted cui files.) Also, I find the online help has inaccurate portions, and increasingly so with each new release."
Spin Doctor of the Moment "They definitely consider themselves thought leaders, and they want to be included." - Nancy Santanello, epidemiology department head, Merck, explaining why the drug company paid doctors to change their negative opinions of Vioxx pain killer.
Notable Quotable "Microsoft claims Longhorn will be, er, faster. We faint
in disbelief."
Copyright 2005 by upFront.eZine Publishing, Ltd. All rights reserved worldwide Article reprint fee US$250.00.
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