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Issue #448 : : October 25, 2005 |
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C o n t e n t s IntelliCAD World
Conference 2005 Below
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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IntelliCAD World Conference 2005 Conference Report The IntelliCAD Technical Consortium held its second conference last week, making it an annual event. About 50 developers representing 26 companies attended the three days of sessions and socials. Arnold van der Weide is the president of the consortium and he's been working to get the ITC into shape. For example, he boosted the annual membership fee from US$5,000 to $25,000 -- and gained more members, now totaling 40. He improved the backoffice structure, hired more full-time programmers, and ensured that a roadmap was put in place to guide development over the next several years. The biggest news items from the event:
Other items: Spatial showed its new real-time material removal feature, which uses HOOPS booleans to animate the changes to the 3D ACIS model; when the animation is complete, the ACIS model is updated. (Spatial provides an usually low licensing fee for ITC members.) The ITC is dropping support for Hitachi's raster engine, and will adopt a faster alternative from Adeko Group (of Turkey), who have also figured out how to speed-up IntelliCAD's real-time panning. Darcy Detior of MicroSurvey described developing his surveying software, first for AutoCAD, then FelixCAD (now GiveMePower), and for the last 12 months, IntelliCAD. He dropped AutoCAD after becoming nervous over Autodesk wanting the add-on market for itself, and then dropped FelixCAD after they implemented an Internet-only authorization system. Evan Yares of Open Design Alliance described how governments' increasing preference for open standards will give IntelliCAD's "open" DWG format an advantage over Autodesk's proprietary DWG. The next release of IntelliCAD will no longer translate DWG files to IntelliCAD's internal format, but will employ the ODA's DWG read/write routines for direct (and faster) access to drawing files. I led an interactive session that scoped the competition to IntelliCAD, and then examined the pros and cons of other platforms, such as Linux, Mac, and WebOS. IntelliCAD 7.0 is due out in the fall of 2006, with three programmers are already working on it. Until then, intermediate releases, such as 6.2 and 6.3, will ship every few months. www.intellicad.org Travel Photos From the ITC president's name, you can determine why the event was held this year in The Netherlands. The city of Leiden is a fabulous place to visit; for dinner, I recommend Jill's Brasserie on Morsstraat in the old inner city. Here are a few of the 1,800 photos I took during my 12-day trip through Germany and Holland: leiden_1.jpg
A summary of CAD industry news you may not have read elsewhere, or that I found interesting:
Kubotek USA announces KeyCreator 5 (US$3,495); the list of new features is at www.kubotekusa.com/images/pdf/KeyCreator_V5_Enhancements.pdf Also, Nemetschek NA releases VectorWorks 12, UGS launches I-deas 12 NX Series, LEDAS releases Geometric Solver LGS 2D v1.4, CADopia releases v6 of its dialect of IntelliCAD, and AVEVA announces VNET 3.3. SYCODE launches 3DM Import for AutoCAD, which imports 3D Rhino model using the OpenNURBS 3DM file format. www.sycode.com/products/3dm_import_ac/index.htm Autodesk gets with the program by (re-)releasing a DWG viewer. No lightweight, the no-charge download is 100MB from www.autodesk.com/dwgtrueview Empresa Solutions releases v2.0 of its Kinnosa Workflow process management software for SolidWorks’ PDMWorks. www.empresasolutions.com Both ALGOR and Geomagic have released 64-bit versions of their software. - - - These news items were posted during the last week at the WorldCAD Access blog <worldcadaccess.typepad.com>:
Hardware News Hewlett-Packard recalls 135,000 lithium-ion rechargeable battery packs after 16 batteries overheated, sometimes damaging the notebook computer's case. The battery is used with the HP Pavilion, Compaq Presario, HP Compaq, and Compaq Evo brand names. www.hp.com/support/batteryreplacement 3Dconnexion cuts in half the price of SpaceTraveler 3D motion controller: US$199. The company, a division of Logitech, says its has 350,000 using its products. www.3dconnexion.com In related news, Spatial Freedom of Australia says its spatial controller -- the lower-cased "astroid 6000" -- is cheaper than competitors: US$149. www.spatialfreedom.com
Seminars & Conferences Autodesk University 2005 is Nov 28-Dec 1 in Orlando FL USA. (I'm attending for a couple of days.) www.autodesk.com/au BE Conference Europe 2006 is June 11-15 in Prague, Czech Republic. www.be.org/BEconferenceEurope
People/Companies on the Move Ashlar-Vellum wins a court case in The Netherlands against Disaro Benelux -- formerly Vellum Benelux -- over trademark rights and copyrights on Ashlar software. Proficiency appoints Marque Teegardin as the new vp of sales. Mr Teegardin is the former vp of North American sales at CollabNet. Synergis Technologies celebrates its 20th anniversary. Deligo Technologies replaces current ceo Thomas W. Kelly with co-founder Arthur Carlucci. Market News netGuru receives a warning from Nasdaq, because the company is not in compliance with the $1 minimum closing bid price requirement for continued listing on the Nasdaq Capital Market. Autodesk acquires privately-held Engineering Intent for its engineer-to-order software -- "...another acquisition that will extend the company's product footprint for the manufacturing industry." You might recognize the company's earlier name, Heide.
Brand New CAD Books/eBooks "AutoCAD 2006 and AutoCAD LT 2006: No Experience Required" "Tailoring AutoCAD 2006" by Ralph Grabowski WorthWhile Web http://community.borland.com/museum
Spin Doctor of the Moment "Every month we receive over 120,000 queries worldwide for
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