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Issue #449 : : November 1, 2005 |
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C o n t e n t s High-end Players
Eye SMBs, Part I Downloads.com: The Top 10 Most Popular CAD DownloadsI 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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High-end Players Eye SMBs, Part I by Martyn Day October 2005 will be looked back on as significant in the history of MCAD: the apparent merger of the mid- and high-ends of the market. October brought announcements from UGS and then Dassault which imply that their main target for growth is the Small to medium sized-businesses (commonly called SMBs). SMBs have been traditionally targeted with mid-range products like Inventor and SolidWorks. The net result will be a blurring between the functionality level in mid and high ends, together with increased competition for smaller deals. What UGS Did UGS was first to bring new products and an approach to the market. Describing its intentions to deliver enterprise-level PLM technology to the mid-market with an easy-to-deploy portfolio, called the Velocity Series, that doesn’t have the high-overheads of traditional systems. The company leads the charge with its mid-range (and greatly overlooked) SolidEdge modeling tool, together with a entry-level version of UGS’s Teamcenter, called Teamcenter Express. The portfolio will be distributed and supported through a new Global Channel Program designed to enhance distribution through existing channel partners. UGS intends to grow its existing global channel partners and ultimately expand channel capacity by 50% by the end of 2006. UGS believes that similarly to large organizations, mid-size manufacturers face sourcing, product customization, accurate and timely quotations, program management, integrated design and manufacturing and increased regulatory requirements. While these smaller companies have previously focused on design, manufacturing and data management solutions, UGS thinks they need one integrated solution too. The SMB PLM Market According to AMR Research, mid-market is the fasting growing segment in what they term as PLM. It's growing 12% annually, compared to 9% for the industry as a whole. (Mid-market is defined as companies generating $30 million to $999 million in annual revenues.) The research company estimates spending on non-CAD PLM, such as PDM, will drive a substantial portion of that increased investment. Based on this research, UGS estimates its mid-market opportunity (companies with revenues below $750M) will grow from $3.8 billion in 2004 to $6.4 billion in 2009. UGS has backed up this belief with a major development effort to provide a quick-to-deploy version of Teamcenter to work with SolidEdge. UGS's efforts with Teamcenter are perhaps the most interesting part of the portfolio, as it simply didn’t exist before. UGS intends to expand the number of resellers capable of selling the product, especially into competitive accounts; UGS is attracting interest from Autodesk and SolidWorks resellers. While there are many PDM systems out there, SolidWorks doesn't have its own (relying on SmarTeam another Dassault company) and Autodesk's efforts are embryonic, to say the least. If UGS has cracked the deployment and cost of ownership issues traditionally linked with PDM, Teamcenter Express could be a seeding product for the company, should it be able to penetrate competitive resellers that are desperate for a more reliable PDM system for their customers. Next week: Part II (Martyn Day is group editor for 'MCAD', 'AEC', 'Prototype', and 'Workstation' magazines at EDA. www.cadserver.co.uk ) Top 10 Most Popular CAD Downloads Downloads.com is run by CNET, and hosts a lot of free and free-to-try software. Here are the ten most popular CAD-related products:
1. Free DWG Viewer from Informative Graphics
2. CadStd Lite from Apperson & Daughters
3. Super Home Suite from Punch Software
4. Home Plan Pro from Home Plan Software.
5. CAD.OCX from SkySof Software.
6. SketchUp from @Last Software
7. Solid Converter DWG-PDF from VoyagerSoft
8. VariCAD from VariCAD
9. JustCad from Jon Hoke
10. DesignCAD Express from Upperspace
A summary of CAD industry news you may not have read elsewhere, or that I found interesting:
Speculation alert! Bob Meyer, executive vp of design products (ie, CAD), steps down from IMSI's board of directors "to focus his attention on a potential transaction with the company." Buying TurboCAD from IMSI, and running it as a separate company is the immediate thought, now that IMSI is deciding to head into broadcast ventures. Mystery buy-in? Bricscad is a Commercial Member of ITC (IntelliCAD Technical Consortium), which means they get access to the IntelliCAD source code. ITC is a Founding Member of ODA (Open Design Alliance), which means they get access to the OpenDWG API source code. So why did Bricscad also become a Founding Member of ODA? VRcontext expands its Walkinside software for realtime visualization of 3D models. Version 4.0 connects objects to external documents; convert large projects in batch mode; creates and run basic scenarios with moving characters, explosions, and so on. www.walkinside.com Scan2CAD v7.4 is updated by SoftCover with improved recognition of curves, raster images attachable to DXFs, and improved zoom and pan. www.softcover.com LT Tip: SoftCover, which is celebrating its tenth anniversary, notes that AutoCAD LT users can use Scan2CAD to load raster images into LT via that new the attach-raster-to-DXF feature. This is not normally possible because the Image Insert command is disabled by Autodesk in LT. Working on two versions at the same time, General CADD Pro v3.1.27 is now available, with v4.0.20 available in beta. Version history and demo downloads from www.generalcadd.com/downloads.htm CoCreate is noting success in its subscription program: 1,000 subscriptions in 10 months, generating a cool one million euros for the company in annual revenue. Customers get the following bundle: OneSpace Designer [2D] Drafting 2005; Drawing Manager; and OneSpace Designer [3D] Modeling. www.cocreate.com - - - These news items were posted during the last week at the WorldCAD Access blog <worldcadaccess.typepad.com>:
And at the Gizmos Grabowski <worldcadaccess.typepad.com/gizmos/> Weblog:
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 IFC Building Model Server Workshop is Dec 1-4 at GeorgiaTech, Atlanta, USA. www.epmtech.jotne.com/events/BIM-Workshop-EDM.pdf
Magazine/eZine/Weblog Updates Karen Fugle has a Weblog with a cheeky name, EatyourCAD, for CAD managers and an emphasis on MicroStation. www.eatyourcad.com Applied Production has a set of SolidWorks sheetmetal tutorials at www.appliedproduction.com/SolidWorks.htm www.cadtalent.com lists job openings for CAD operators. It returns a maximum of 200 job openings per CAD brand:
People/Companies on the Move Next step to going public? UGS elects three outsiders to its board of directors: Dale Crandall (president of Kaiser Foundation Health Plan); Paul David Miller (retired admiral, United States Navy); and David Peterschmidt (ceo of Openwave Systems). The other member of the board are UGS ceo Tony Affuso and six representatives from private equity firms that own UGS: Warburg Pincus, Bain Capital, and Silver Lake Partners. Meanwhile, the 'India Times' reports that UGS plans to double its workforce in Pune, India -- "its largest development centre" -- from 500 engineers to 1,000 over the next two years. "Global manufacturing companies using China as its manufacturing base are also trying to leverage the Indian engineering skills in cutting design time," notes the paper. economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/msid-1274899,curpg-1.cms
Market News Dassault Systemes raises its 2005 profit goal for the third time. Sales in the Americas are up 23% this quarter, and so Dassault is predicting that overall per-share earnings will increase by 15-16% for the year.
Brand New CAD Books/eBooks "Rendering With MicroStation" by Jerry Flynn,
"Tailoring AutoCAD 2006" by Ralph Grabowski WorthWhile Web www.microsoft.com/winme/0509/25597/Eric_Rudder_Keynote_PDC2005_100k_300kMBR.asx
http://poignantguide.net/ruby/chapter-1.html
Letters to the Editor Re: PLM is... "My role in the product development world is to consult with end user companies and vendors (CAD and otherwise) on issues related to PLM, CAD data visualization, and related topics. So I have to comment on the lead article in upFront.eZine #443. "First, PLM is PRODUCT (not project) Lifecycle Management by most people's reckoning. It is an evolution of PDM (Product Data Management), which term still applies to the management of product information and the processes by which that information evolves throughout a product's lifecycle. "Second, yes, CAD formats and 3D visual formats embody a confusing mess of issues that are often further obfuscated by the various CAD and visualization software vendors. CAD data is often stored in seemingly impenetrable formats and a true mess of viewable formats, both 2D and 3D abound. Some commercial viewing software is able to display over 250 different formats, albeit through a common viewing tool, providing real benefits using the product lifecycle. "Third, and most important, the following statement is made in the article: 'If some customers are already chafing against the increasingly-difficult-to-access CAD data, how much worse will it be when CAD vendors lock up PLM data in file formats that are bound to be even more obscure?' "Not a single PLM solution of which I am aware, including those provided by the CAD vendors, encrypts or otherwise saves PLM information in and encrypted or proprietary format -- including both the PLM-specific data these systems have to store and the user's data (CAD, documents, software code, electronic CAD, analysis and test data, etc.) -- unless the user invokes an encryption scheme of their own. "Be clear here though that CAD data may well be stored in
its native (that is proprietary) format. The role of PLM is to make
data accessible in a controlled way to everyone throughout an extended
enterprise--not to bury it in some locked, hidden vault (such as
the bottom drawer of someone's desk)!"
Re: Autodesk DWGTrueView "Just downloaded
and tried out the DWG TrueView from Autodesk. Looks good except
for the rtext not printing. Would be even better if we could export
the profile that we need to create, to set up the paths so that
xrefs (ie title blocks) appear, CBT files on the network are available,
and so on."
Re: Len's Home Page "I do some
programming in AutoLISP/DCL/VLISP, and put my little programs on
my page for everyone to grab at home.pacifier.com/~nemi
. My favorite program is PS Manager."
Re: AutoSolids "Why doesn't Autodesk just buy AutoSolids, like they have just done with Alias, and incorporate it into the standard AutoCAD software. This will give a big boost to 3D AutoCAD without Autodesk having to do any more development or enhancement on their own. Also this would perhaps stem the tide of small to mid-size companies abandoning AutoCAD for other higher priced mid-range CAD software, such as SolidWorks or Solid Edge. "This could affect Inventor, of course, however Inventor
would be offered to these small to mid-size companies if they needed
a stronger parametrically based solid modeler instead of the Boolean-based
AutoSolids." The editor replies: "Because Autodesk doesn't want you using AutoCAD for 3D. It wants you to use ADT, Inventor, Revit, etc. In conference call after call with investment analysts, CEO Carol Bartz talks about the 10x increase in revenue Autodesk can expect by getting AutoCAD users on the 3D upgrade path."
Re: Autodesk Acquiring Alias "One of
the interesting things is that this will be at least the fifth time
Autodesk has acquired an Open Design Alliance member. In two of
the previous cases, the acquired companies negotiated post-termination
use rights for the Alliance libraries. As I expected, Alias today
asked us to terminate their membership in the Alliance."
Re: Getting Off the A-Train "I'm an architectural technologist who started my CAD love-hate relationship with DataCAD back in the mid 80s. The company I was employed with at the time decided, following an executive decision, mandated that we should be using 'industry leading software'. Enter AutoCAD Release 9. "Well through the years and releases I've both praised and cursed the electronic age which spawned this tool. More so since striking out on my own some 16 years ago to provide technical design and CAD services to local consulting firms. These days most of my workday comprises of maintaining BOMA property lease drawings and spreadsheets for several property management firms, preparing office fit-up drawing packages, providing technical design and drafting services to architects and preparing as-built drawings. "For the past five years I've worked happily (at peace with the bugs) in AutoCAD 2000. That is until the local AutoCAD dealer informs me that unless I upgrade to 2006 at a cost of $4,000.00 (before taxes) I will be left out in the cold. Usually I like to be romanced before being bedded!! I'm having a hard time justifying this outlay when I know there are other packages out there that can do the same job and in some cases, probably better for a fraction of the cost. I remember back to that initial switch from DataCAD. It was hands-down a superior program for those of us in the architectural department! "This brings me to my preverbal 'fork in the road'. Do I continue down the same path, following the other little lambs or, do I veer off onto a parallel road that has fewer (and less expensive) toll booths. I've read reviews of both TurboCAD Professional and IntelliCAD and they seem to fit the bill, so to speak. "For me the bottom line is that I must maintain a seamless
drawing transfer with clients who now use or will soon be using
AutCAD 2006. I am tired of paying for AutoCAD's (patch) upgrades!
To me, Autodesk has become a lumbering giant of a corporation that
must charge higher than reasonable fees for feeding its internal
machine."
Spin Doctor of the Moment "Reuters.com -- No Spin. No Agenda. Just the Facts. As they
happen."
Notable Quotable "The first two [speeches] were interesting to read but rather
typical of the man, in that he nearly but not quite abandoned his
customary reconciliatory tone, a tone advisable in the circumstances
in which he usually speaks but which makes reporting him so difficult
because news thrives on conflict and that is the one thing that
he always, admirably, seeks to avoid."
Copyright 2005 by upFront.eZine Publishing, Ltd. All rights reserved worldwide Article reprint fee US$250.00.
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are trademarks of upFront.eZinePublishing, Ltd. |
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