|
upFront.eZine |
|
|
a
publication from |
|
|
Issue #477 : : June 6, 2006 |
|
|
C o n t e n t s CAD Enables
Piracy UGS
07Q1 Conference Call 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. |
|
|
|
|
Next week's upFront.eZine will be late, possibly as late as Friday, because I will be away in Europe attending Bentley System's BE-in < www.be.org/en-US/BEConferenceEurope/Overview.htm >. For those who may have missed it, the WorldCAD Access blog had its half-millionth page-view a couple of weeks ago (522,821 as of right now). Thank you for helping make it one of the most read blogs in the industry. CAD vendors are concerned over their software being pirated; are they as concerned when it's their software that does the pirating? 'Fortune' magazine writer Roger Parloff put CAD in the spotlight of the product counterfeiting industry in his article, 'Not Exactly Counterfeit': "The prong of the problem everyone understands is that technological advances in printing, scanning, 3-D modeling, and so on have made copying through reverse-engineering easier and cheaper than ever. And if you ask any brand owner [such as Nike] why counterfeits are so convincing these days, that's the answer you'll get." Companies who outsource have themselves to blame when their products are copied. To cut costs, they ship their IP [intellectual property] to countries that don't share their values. Translation: to increase profits, they educate manufacturers in Asia on how to make their shoes and purses exactly. They hand the keys of their safety deposit boxes to strangers.
Working the Midnight Shift The overseas manufacturing lines run midnight shifts that make thousands of extra products, of which the brand owner isn't informed. upFront.eZine and WorldCAD Access have detailed the attempts to steal programming source code from Alibre, SolidWorks, and PTC, because the attempts failed; we don't know about the successful thefts, because embarrassed brand owners don't want the publicity -- or, because they don't know it occurred. CAD vendors are among the enablers. PTC and UGS, for instance, boast of how they make it easier for automobile and other manufacturers to outsource their design and manufacturing work to India and China. (Indeed both are cutting their own R&D costs by moving more research and development to India and China over the next three years.) The labels change from 'Made in USA' to 'Designed in USA' to 'Sold in USA.'
How CAD Helps Illegal Copiers "When you're outsourcing, you provide specifications, drawings, blueprints," Parloff quotes a risk manager at ChinaWhy in Shanghai. Here's how CAD software and digital manufacturing enables illegal copying:
Will CAD Vendors Fight Product Piracy? The 'Business Standard' reports on the largest sectors for design outsourcing: 1. Automotive 65-70%. In the manufacturing world, brand owners are fighting back by monitoring production more closely, embedding tags and invisible inks in supplies, suing illegal manufacturers in China, and lobbying for better IP protection legislation. What are CAD vendors doing to help protect their clients? Links:
Dan Staples and Kris Kasprzak of UGS made their way to Bellingham WA USA last week to show the new Velocity to three CAD editors. The presentation was detailed. Here's why: Velocity is a collection of software -- Solid Edge for 3D MCAD, TeamCenter Express for PLM, and FEMAP for finite element modeling. The new release, due out soon, gets the 4th member, NXCAM Express. Plus ancillary products, like JT. So instead of spending two hours describing one product, we got to hear about five or six or seven. The good thing was that Dan and Kris talk fast, so they were able to keep up with my bandwidth requirements.
NXCAM Express Financial analysts worry that if Velocity sells too well, its lower price (lower than NX) will drag down UGS earnings. One way to counter that is add more expensive software to the Velocity package. NXCAM does computer-aided machining, of which UGS has 32 years experience. The Express version comes in four flavors and four price tags, depending on your needs -- ranging from 2.5-axis to 5-axis machining. Included at no extra cost are 200 post processors. UGS already has 35,000 users of this CAM software, and sees great potential for the Express version. One reason is financial. This segment of the software industry has not suffered from price erosion, as has CAD. Whereas full-feature CAD has fallen from over $20,000 to under $10,000, CAM software has remained in the $10-20,000 range.
Solid Edge 19 The big thing in the next release of Solid Edge is more sheetmetal design: gussets, crossbreaks, safe hems, contour flanges, stencil fonts, match faces, and sequenced bend tables. Also expanded is motion simulation. Better call it "MovieMaker for Engineers," because of its video editor-like interface for controlling camera paths, assembly animations, object fade ins/outs, and changes in color. Optional output to Virtual Studio for photo-realistic rendering, and then save as AVI movie files. Just sound editing is missing. We editors joked that 'Toy Story 3' could be made in Solid Edge 19. Movies make management happy, but the new 3D dimensioning and annotation makes engineers happy. Call it "PMI" -- product manufacturing information. Dimensions that understand the X, Y, and Z; that snap to the intersection of cutout sections; that flip their text to match the current viewpoint. Does your CAD software do that?
64-bit and Multicore A tiny percentage of UGS customers use 64-bit versions of the software, but they tend to be among the largest customers, so UGS obliges them. When you run the 32-bit version of Solid Edge on 64-bit Windows, the software can access 4GB RAM. (XP is limited to 3GB and Windows 2000 to 2GB.) The only reason to go 64-bit is for assemblies with more than 100,000 parts. UGS sees no advantage to multi-core CPUs (which Intel and AMD are pushing), because most software, including CAD, does not multi-thread easily. ("Multi-thread" means parts of the software can be handed off to the second CPU and executed independently.) We tend to work consecutively with CAD software, not concurrently.
FEMAP 9.2 UGS has already shipped the updated version of the FEMAP member of Velocity. They say they have over 20 thousand customers, of which half come from the recently disengaged MSC. There was more to learn, but after two hours of high-speed data input, I had to head back to Canada and pick up my daughters from school. Links:
A summary of CAD industry news you may not have read elsewhere, or that I found interesting: think3 announces thinkiD DesignXpressions with shape and model modifications for GSM3 [Global Shape Modeling]. www.think3.com Strata releases Strata Live 3D and Strata Foto 3D software, and updates its Strata 3D CX software to version 5.0. www.strata.com COADE introduces its CADWorx 2007 process plant design suite with enhanced project data management and drawing visualization. www.coade.com Cimmetry Systems updates its AutoVue v19.1 viewing software by adding NC Drill formats, Cadence Allegro and Concept 15.5, and OrCad Capture and Layout 10.5. Download demo from www.cimmetry.com Kineo C.A.M. releases Kineo Path Planner 2.03 automatic path planning software with path editor and clash analyser. www.kineocam.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 International Symposium for Engineering IT (ISEIT) is Oct 23-24 in Clear Lake TX USA. www.iseit.com Congress on the Future of Engineering Software is Apr 12-15, 2007 in Scottsdale AZ USA. www.cofes.com
Redo "I'd like to make a clarification to avoid misleading your readers who might assume CADVault for AutoCAD is free. It's true that it can be downloaded at no cost. ("...May be freely downloaded" was the phrase used in our press release). What you download and use for free is the actual product. "Despite this, CADVault for AutoCAD is not freeware, it is a commercial product and we make money from it. Huh? Let me explain: "While people who have downloaded the product for free can use it to create DWG files containing vaults, only authorized users who have bought a CADVault license can use it to create secure vaults. "Using a free downloaded copy of CADVault for AutoCAD is
like using a storage cabinet to which you do not have the key. You
can close the cabinet but you can't lock it, so anyone else can
open it up and get at the contents. CADLock, Inc. can provide you
with the key to that cabinet, but the key will cost you money. www.cadlock.com/support/cv_faq.stm " Market News COADE reports record FY06 sales revenues, up 30% over the previous year. "The company makes a habit of marking monthly sales records with celebrations at some of Houston's leading restaurants and entertainment venues or in luxury suites at Houston major league sporting events... Some of the more notable recent record sales months were celebrated by taking the employees on 4-day excursions to Jamaica, the Caribbean and Mexico." Avatech Solutions completes its acquisition of Sterling Systems and Consulting. Brand New CAD Books/eBooks "Architectural Design Presentations Using Chief Architect
Version 10"
"Autodesk Revit Building 9 for Architects & Designers"
"Pro/ENGINEER Wildfire 3.0 for Designers"
"Unigraphics NX4. Basic and Intermediate NX4 Modeling, Drafting
and Assemblies"
"Tailoring AutoCAD 2007" WorthWhile Web http://www.microsoftmonitor.com/
http://www.klm.com Letters to the Editor Re: Bentley Ships XM "Citroen XM could be delivered with a V6. That was more
than 10 years ago!" The editor responds: "<g>."
Re: Autodesk 07Q1 Conference Call "And resellers not were mentioned as respecting Carol or anything about Autodesk. "The practices of Autodesk continue to erode the dealer
base. Or as Autodesk says, 'Strengthening it.' They have driven
out the technical base; only marketers are left who know next to
nothing about the product." - - - "Thanks for the great observations on the CAD business --
I appreciate your 'guerilla' journalism."
Spin Doctor of the Moment "The Malaysian software piracy rate has gone down by one
percentage point to 60%, according to a study by the Business Software
Alliance, released last week." Notable Quotable "...whenever I talk to someone about a Web 2.0 application
and hear that they already have '10,000 users', I've been telling
that them the first 25,000 users are irrelevant."
Copyright 2006 by upFront.eZine Publishing, Ltd. All rights reserved worldwide Article reprint fee US$250.00.
All trademarks belong to their respective holders. "upFront.eZine,"
"Talking About CAD," and "On your desktop every Tuesday morning"
are trademarks of upFront.eZinePublishing, Ltd. |
|
|
|
|