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Issue #459 : : January 31, 2006 |
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C o n t e n t s - Meeting
Third-Party Vendors 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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Users and executives held their annual group-hug at SolidWorks World last week in the dreadfully-confusing Caesar's Palace hotel in Las Vegas USA. Attendance was around 3,700 plus 90 international journalists -- both numbers claimed by SolidWorks to be the largest ever for an mechanical CAD event. A jealous competitor tried crashing the affair with a parallel function. All indications are that the occurrence was a non-triumph, other than in the minds of its marketing folks. Think about it logically: are the 3,700-most-fanatical SolidWorks fans in the world going to switch to a different MCAD package? Hardly. - - - www.upfrontezine.com/figs/sww6-2.jpg : Slide displayed by Seymour and Powell showing the difference between men and women. "Designers can't be politically-correct," they noted. For me, the highlight of the event was the Tuesday keynote given by Seymour & Powell, product designers from England. They have penetrating insights into how people use consumer devices. For instance: Companies (unfortunately) make things easier for themselves, instead of for their customers. I recall reading in 'Fortune' magazine some months ago about Samsung removing a button from their camcorder. It wasn't about making the camcorder easier to use for customers; it was about Samsung saving pennies by eliminating another button. Kind of like the www.seymourpowell.co.uk Web site: "Our site requires the latest flash player" [koff, koff]. - - - As a journalist, it was a pleasure meeting some of the many CAD editors and technical writers from overseas, including from Czech Republic, Italy, England, and Slovenia -- as well as USA and Canada. Tony Lockwood on being editor of Desktop Engineering' magazine (one of the few remaining print publications for the CAD industry): "I have no evidence to support a belief beyond my gut feeling, but I do have a gut to feel it."
Meeting Third Party Vendors PR people made sure my time was fully booked with a half-dozen interviews over 1.5 days. From Kubotek's Cheryl Salatino [sorry, I keep saying "Kubota"], I got a demo of their new Realyze software, which is a repurposing of their KeyCreator MCAD software. Realyze becomes a front-end translator to SolidWorks: it translates and heals like other translators, but also allows modification of the translated models -- pre-editing, as it were. Currently running outside of SolidWorks, a plug-in version is planned for in a coupla' months. www.kubotekusa.com/products/realyze/ Did you know about the ceo banned from Las Vegas? Numerous years ago, he won too much money gambling, but then used his winnings to launch a new CAD company. I got to see the email from Caesar's Hotel allowing him onto their property but not allowing gambling. On the email, his assistant noted, "Here is your Get Out of Jail pass..." Objet's Eden 3D printers use two polymers, one for the model and the other to support gaps in the model. The second polymer is washed away, allowing working models with interlocking parts, such as screws and hinges. Imagine a fully working crescent wrench made by a 3D printer; I now have one on my desk. www.2objet.com - - - If Tech Soft America changes its name, credit me. Speaking with co-founder Ron Fritz about his company's HOOPS graphics, I told him, "The name's gotta go." He explained the history (Germany's Tech Soft Gmbh bought HOOPS from Autodesk, then formed TSA[merica]), and he admitted there's been some discussion on the name change. "Kill the baby," I advised, and rename it Hoops3D, like the Web site. Of great interest was Mr Fritz's explanation of graphics in Vista, the next release of Windows cheered by developers and dreaded by corporations. In Vista, all graphics will be accelerated using Direct3D -- including menus, windows, etc. Reports are that OpenGL-based applications will run through an emulation layer in order to use Direct3D which will significantly impact performance. It will apparently still be possible for an application to get around this to keep OpenGL hardware acceleration, but some of Vista's look-and-feel will be missing. www.hoops3d.com - - - www.upfrontezine.com/figs/sww6-1.jpg : SolidWorks ceo John McEleney (left) silhouetted before the Wednesday morning keynote. Speaking of items that gotta go, what about SolidWorks' relationship with Dassault Systemes -- or lack thereof? I asked the question of several SolidWorks execs, who nearly managed to look embarrassed. Basically, John (ceo of SW) meets with Bernard (ceo of DS) couple of times a year, and some technology gets swapped. I forgot to ask the follow-up question: "So what's the advantage of SolidWorks continuing as a subsidiary of Dassault?" Maybe big brother provides financial stability. My guess is that SolidWorks makes a US$200 million a year. - - - Todd Cummings is director of research and development at Synergis, specifically for their Adept software that manages engineers' documents. To understand why I appreciated meeting him, you have to understand the weather here in Canada. It has been raining steady since mid-December. All kinds of rain and temperature records are being broken (going back to 1903, the last time global warming enriched the pockets of researchers, I presume) and things are turning green that oughtn't be. It was a relief when Mr Cummings suggested we meet outside, by the pool, in the sun. Ahhh, vitamin D enrichment. He was puzzled why we were meeting at all: "It says here you have no interest in PLM, and that's what we're about." Instead, we swapped war stories of the CAD industry from the mid-1980s. www.synergis-adept.com www.upfrontezine.com/figs/sww6-3.jpg : Tuesday night's entertainment was the Las Vegas Motor Speedway.
SolidWorks 2007 On Wednesday morning came the anticipated unveiling of SolidWorks 2007, using the theme of "The Dating Game." (I gotta complain that the many sexual innuendos became tedious.) For details on SW'07, read my Weblog entry at worldcadaccess.typepad.com/blog/2006/01/solidworks_worl_3.html . The list of new features is incomplete with more to be added later. I suspect there's a bit of industrial espionage going on: if a significant competitor announces a kewl feature, there may be time to incorporate something similar before the ship date this summer. SolidWorks World 2007 is in New Orleans, February 4-7, 2007. Eyebrows were raised collectively at naming of the location, but SolidWorks figures (1) the city will be ready by then to host four thousand people and (2) this is a concrete way to help the devastated area. www.solidworks.com
Intergraph's archive of its quarterly conference call with financial analysts is different: instead of streaming audio in a Microsoft format, it is downloadable as an MP3 file. The company last week reported annual revenues up 4.8% from last year, taking in US$577.6 million. Intergraph has been spending millions on reducing costs by $23-28 million a year (ie, cut the number of employees by 215), which they term "organizational realignment." A fixed-price contract with the US Air Force ran into problems when the two disputed over deliverables. The result was a renegotiated contract that cost Intergraph $2.1 million.
PTC Q1 During its Q1, PTC earned US$7.5 million on $193 million in revenues. A year ago, the company made $19.2 million on $169 million in sales. The difference is blamed on new accounting rules that require PTC to cost share options. For Q2, PTC expects revenues of $195-$200 million. Revenue was up 30% in the USA but down 20% in China. PTC has an alliance with IBM PLM Solutions to resell PTC software in China particularly, and some other regions. PTC figures that IBM will continue its relationship with Dassault Systemes. A financial analyst listening in on last week's conference call wondered if PTC would experience the same problems as Dassault has, where IBM failed to deliver certain resource commitments. The question caught PTC executives of guard, who paused, make false starts, and then stated that PTC was completely confident in IBM: "This is strategic for IBM, just as it is for Dassault." Another analyst wanted to know if there were certain markets that IBM is preventing PTC from selling into. Apparently not, other than selling to existing Dassault customers. "We'll go after what is 70% of the rest of the world. In that situation, Unigraphics becomes a pretty good target account for PTC and IBM to go after." Yet another analyst wanted to know if there was exclusivity in the IBM-PTC agreement. Answer: "There is no exclusivity in the agreement, either way." Yet, Dassault several years ago announced that they were the PLM provider to Airbus -- "in advance of any real success; that business is all of ours. We didn't work with IBM there," according to PTC. A 2-5 reverse stock split will reduce the number of shares, and increase the price from roughly US$6.50 to $16.00. PTC has acquired two small companies: CADtrain for training (9 employees) and a German company for consulting (46 employees). The company has 600+ employees in India doing R&D [research and development]. 80% of new seat sales are the entry-level $5000 package, with 20% of the more expensive versions of Pro/Engineer. No press release items this week due to the length of the SolidWorks World show report. - - - 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:
Redo Acrobat 3D translates files from AutoCAD through OpenGL and DXF. Letters to the Editor Re: Adobe 3D and OpenGL "ArchiCAD's 3D Window is fully OpenGL-enabled since a few years ago (from release 8.0). It can be optionally switched between 'native' (= software) and 'OpenGL'. ArchiCAD can output 3DS files too, preserving texture mapping, which can also be imported in Acrobat 3D. "I've tried the Acrobat 3D demo with ArchiCAD and it worked
with all settings at default." - - - Re: Outsourcing "Outsourcing doesn't necessarily have to outside the country, in my opinion. I work in the internal engineering department of an industrial manufacturer. At one time, there were as many as six engineers and seven draftsmen on staff doing maintenance and large capital project engineering and drafting. Today, there is one engineer (there are others on staff in management and/or 'out' in the various departments) in the 'engineering department' and two draftsmen (though barely enough CAD work for 1/2 draftsman). "This is outsourcing outside the company, not outside the
country, where engineers were laid off, and the work outsourced
to consultants (who take the drafting work back to the office with
them). Perhaps, in this vein, outsourcing may be a larger problem
for many." - - - "I am no longer in the CAD industry, but kept the subscription
as I enjoy reading it." "Great ezine." Spin Doctor of the Moment "Safety and security is the overriding feature that most
people will want to have Windows Vista for."
Notable Quotable "Please, God, just one more bubble!"
Copyright 2006 by upFront.eZine Publishing, Ltd. All rights reserved worldwide Article reprint fee US$250.00.
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