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Issue #454 : : December 6, 2005 |
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C o n t e n t s The Future of AutoCAD Below
the Radar, and other
regular columns. |
Write the Editor. Donate to upFront.eZine through Paypal. Access nearly-daily CAD commentary at our blog: WorldCAD Access. |
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It's the aging best seller, yesterday's technology still making millions for Autodesk. The company would rather you license today's technology -- Inventor, Revit, Civil3D -- but it cannot afford to pull the plug on a program that's practically eponymous for CAD, but whose roots go back to the 1970s. For now, AutoCAD has a future, and there is one word to describe it: "aggressive."
New User Interface The public attending Autodesk University saw minor changes to AutoCAD's user interface during the keynote address by COO Carl Bass, as illustrated by this photograph. The red-circled areas show some changes to the UI:
Most attendees, however, did not see the second user interface, one that is closer to that of Inventor: no 'Command:' prompt, an enormous control palette on the side, and a 3D perspective grid. (Sorry, no photo.) You can toggle between the two user interfaces, and an Autodesk representative promised that the old UI would always be available. Staying in the Autodesk Fold Competitors have found it hard to move AutoCAD users to competing CAD packages. Because the switch from AutoCAD to Inventor is severe, customers are more amenable to considering a completely different package for 3D MCAD. Future releases of AutoCAD change that. The new conceptual modeler uses the same ASM modeler used by Inventor. That makes it easier to swap files between AutoCAD and Inventor. Going further, AutoCAD will be able to read Inventor and Revit files; Revit will read Inventor files; and Inventor will read Revit files. During the Bass keynotes, slides projected behind him emphasized togetherness slogans:
By making its product cross-compatible, Autodesk should be able to use its strength in the general CAD market (AutoCAD) to gain marketshare in other markets (MCAD, AEC, GIS, etc). Competing Against Competitors SolidWorks has been the most aggressive in attempting to convert AutoCAD users to its 3D MCAD software. At AU, Autodesk shot back, but in a most peculiar way. The press room contained posters in faux boxing style, with these headlines:
Included was a place and date (during AU), but no event took place. Members of the CAD media puzzled over Autodesk, the self-proclaimed #1, needing to gloat. Maybe after years of being targeted by SolidWorks marketing... Or maybe Autodesk Marketing was using we-the-media as a test market, because the posters appeared nowhere else. In any case, Bass told me the posters were an example of the new, more aggressive marketing we can expect from Autodesk. Other ways to cut out the competition: During a briefing, one Autodesk executive told me that AutoCAD's new conceptual modeler makes it unnecessary for customers to use products from competitors: "Instead of Rhino or SketchUp, create, visualize, and document in AutoCAD." One of Autodesk's GIS products has always had the ability to read DGN files created by MicroStation from Bentley Systems. A future release of AutoCAD will also read DGN files. At the AU show, there was some controversy over the source of the DGN translator. British CAD editor Martyn Day did the research, and found that "Autodesk reverse-engineered DGN itself, at the cost of something like $400,000 in a cleanroom environment. It's V8 DGN. Autodesk wonders if there would be any advantage in putting the source code up as open source, to keep the cost of development down." That's cheaper than outsourcing! Other New Features It was ironic that the keynotes from CEO Carol Bartz and Carl Bass both hinted at relegating AutoCAD to "2D design" status when its major new features are in the areas of 3D modeling and rendering. (LT was never mentioned.) There is a new rendering engine, but no demos were given. 3D editing in AutoCAD has barely been interactive, and so the new conceptual modeler changes all that. Right-click a grip to extrude shapes. Modify shapes with sweeps and lofts -- and sweep any profile. Interactive cutting planes. Create a 3D helix with three clicks. Watching these new abilities, I began to wonder if the adjective "conceptual" was meant downplay the power of the new AutoCAD modeler viz-a-viz Inventor. Dynamic UCS automatically changes the UCS to whichever 3D face you are working with. (I should have thought to ask how DUCS works with spheres.) When rendering, linestyles can be applied to make lines overlap, shaky, and so on. Other New Products In the early 1990s, Autodesk went on an acquisitions spree, as it attempted to become a player in all areas of graphics. For a time, it even had a competitor to PowerPoint! The effort failed, and Autodesk contracted back to CAD only (oh, and the movie effects business). At AU 05, the company showed its CAD division again moving beyond CAD. Vespa (wasp) is the code name for a stand-alone post-processor for AutoCAD drawings, turning perfectly precise lines into artwork. Blocks are replaced with real-looking images, and layers can be mapped to effects. Bass told me he was proud of the linkage: make a change in AutoCAD, and the Vespa image updates automatically. Problem is, I and some other members of the media didn't care much for the artistic effects generated by Vespa; I don't think architects will be impressed until the effects are more refined. The software was developed in-house, and an Autodesk employee told me it might ship in 2006. Northland Render [I think that was the name] is a file viewer with an all-encompassing file format. The demo contained three Inventor models placed in a building model from Revit on top of topology and aerial mapping from another Autodesk product -- all those different formats stored in a single file. The software allows you to zoom and swoop, much like Google Earth in 3D mode. Here, Bass confirmed, Autodesk was using software from its entertainment division for its CAD files. (These features may or may not make it into the next release of AutoCAD, and the new products may or may not ship.)
A summary of CAD industry news you may not have read elsewhere, or that I found interesting:
If Autodesk can say it, why not Nemetschek? The company's most recent press release calls its Vectorworks Spotlight software "the industry standard" in entertainment and lighting design software. www.nemetschek.net UGS is now shipping the English version of Solid Edge Version 18 software to customers. www.ugs.com/solidedge Engineered Design Solutions introduces Chronos, a time logging program for AutoCAD. Download the 30-day version from www.engds.com/Chronos/Chronos.htm CoCreate is pre-announcing OneSpace 2006, which consists of OneSpace Designer [2D] Drafting, OneSpace Designer [3D] Modeling, Model Manager, OneSpace.net, and OneSpace Live. The package is due to ship early 2006. www.cocreate.com CADPO is making available i.get.it 4.0, its Web-based engineering knowledge development software that works with PLM systems from UGS, Dassault Systems, SolidWorks, Autodesk, and others. www.cadpo.com UGS [or maybe INCAT, it's hard to tell from the wording of the press release] is shipping iCONNECT software that makes UGS' Teamcenter work with Autodesk's Inventor MCAD software. www.ugs.com Noran Engineering's NEiNastran V9.0 automatically recognizes contact areas and then generates surface contact and weld elements. The software is due to ship in early 2006. www.NENastran.com Visio 2003 Service Pack 2 adds bug fixes and performance enhancements to the diagramming software. Download the 35MB file from go.microsoft.com/?linkid=4271969 SYCODE launches five plug-ins for IntelliCAD: STL Import, OBJ Import, HPGL Import, NC Import, and Points Import. $50 each. www.sycode.com/products/index.htm TransMagic plans to provide an DWF exporter for 3D-translated CAD drawings. [Eh? I thought DWF Writer already did that.] www.transmagic.com And Informative Graphics ships ModelPress Desktop (US$95-$195) viewer of 3D file formats: 3D DWF/DWG/DXF, Inventor, SolidWorks, Solid Edge, IGES, STL, VRML, OpenHSF, XGL, SAT, 3DS, and more. Pay the extra $100 and you also get the Granite-based Pro/E, Wildfire, and STEP formats. Visualizations include cross-sections, cutaways, exploded views, dimensions, measurements, parts location, and volumes, masses, centers, and other part attributes. http://www.modelpress.com. - - - These news items were posted during the last week at the WorldCAD Access blog <worldcadaccess.typepad.com>:
Hardware News Oce's new TDS450 large-format all-in-one printer, copier, and scanner system has 10 scan-to-file destination options. www.oceusa.com
Seminars & Conferences SolidWorks World 2006 is Jan 22-25 in Las Vegas NV USA. (I'll be there Jan 23-25.) www.solidworks.com/pages/swworld/index.html In 2006, LMS Conferences are:
www.lmsintl.com/lmsconferences People/Companies on the Move M2 Technologies hires Dan Duperrault as partner and principal. Mr Duperrault is the former eastern area region director for Autodesk's Manufacturing Solutions Division. Autodesk launches the Manufacturing Supplier Content Center with 100 catalogs of parts for Inventor software; the portal is operated by PARTsolutions. www.autodesk.com/suppliercontent Market News Adobe Systems completes its acquisition of Macromedia via a 1.38:1 stock swap. AVEVA revenues increased 21% over the same six-month period last year, from US$42.4 to US$51.0 million.
Brand New CAD Books/eBooks "Doctor Walt's KEYCREATOR 5 Sizzling Solids" "IntelliCAD: The Un-AutoCAD" WorthWhile Web www.fixmyxp.com/content/view/20/42/
blogspot.boekhoff.org/051203circuitcity.php
headrush.typepad.com/creating_passionate_users/2005/12/have_you_update.html
Spin Doctor of the Moment "Business is a series of battles. We make the chariots."
Notable Quotable "If you have the facts on your side, argue the facts; if
you have the law on your side, argue the law; if you have neither
the facts nor the law, then shout a lot and pound the table."
Copyright 2005 by upFront.eZine Publishing, Ltd. All rights reserved worldwide Article reprint fee US$250.00.
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