|
upFront.eZine |
|
|
a
publication from |
|
|
Issue #478 : : June 15, 2006 |
|
|
C o n t e n t s The Bentley BE 2006 Conference Below the Radar but no other regular columns.
|
Write the Editor. Donate to upFront.eZine through Paypal. Access nearly-daily CAD commentary at our blog: WorldCAD Access. |
|
|
|
|
The Bentley BE 2006 Conference Bentley’s dual-site user conference this year was a bit of an odd situation for the CAD media. For those who attended the European edition, there was little new to report, because Bentley made most of its announcements two weeks earlier at the American edition. Indeed, Euro-attendees would have learned just about all there was to learn from the wide coverage given the American edition by CAD bloggers, e-editors, and legacy print media. Still, it was a chance for us to be in Prague.
BE-ing In Prague "BE" is short for Bentley empowered, and the Prague conference took place June 10-15. Attendance was "over 1,000", with combined attendance of both events at "under 3,000." The European event hosted attendees from 50 countries. The largest percent of attendees are involved in mapping, which Bentley calls "geospatial." Some 32 journalists were registered, although only a dozen showed up at the MicroStation Q&A. - - - If you are limited to seeing just one European city, Prague would be it. There, you don’t need a destination; just go anywhere in the city core for an amazing experience of BIM-free building architecture, streets that shoot off at non-orthogonal angles, tantalizing alleyways unmarked on digital maps, and remarkable CAM-free souvenirs of glass, birch bark, and egg shell. After enjoying iced cappacino and chocolate cake at sidewalk cafe, my wife admitted, "That experience was worth being married to you for 22 years." Unfortunately, the fabulous experience of Prague, the city, must be tempered with the "service" sector. First rule: don’t take taxis, which overcharge, such as $25 for a five-minute ride. Second rule: get important things in writing. The Hilton Prague tried to charge several attendees (including me) for an extra night by claiming we should have arrived a day earlier. Fortunately, I had had the hotel fax me written confirmation weeks earlier. And then there was the nasty incident at the end of my stay, where the Hilton front desk staff confirmed my 5am airport shuttle bus reservation ("It will be here in five minutes") but when it failed to show, admitted they never made the reservation for me the day before. Despite these and other negative experiences, here are some of the not to be missed areas: the Old Quarter and its Old Town Square (where World Cup games were shown on a giant video screen); the Jewish Quarter ($15 for an entrance ticket to several synagogues-cum-museums and the 700-year-old cemetery); and the presidential palace on the other side of the river (admission is free, except for the sweat equity in hiking the stairs up the hill).
The Keynotes The main BE event began, as do most user conferences, with an inspirational video: "be the difference." Children spouted cute statements: "Trains can go as fast as airplanes. Can you make roads that are safe? Life will be better." All presumably designed by software from Bentley Systems. - - - Chief marketing officer Tony Flynn forgets he’s no longer in the United States, and so his attempt to get the pan-European crowd enthused falls flat. "Are you excited about the BE Conference this week!" he shouted. Weak response. "Are you excited about the World Cup conference?" Slightly stronger response. "Let’s try it again. Are you excited about the BE Conference this week?" Response weakens again, regretfully. That night’s World Cup soccer game was to be between USA and the Czech Republic. [For those not keeping track, the US team forgot the World Cup was on.] Holding up a jersey from each team, he asks, "Which should I wear tonight?" The Euro-fans made louder noises for the non-USA jersey. And then each of the following speakers reminds us of the USA vs. Czech game. Notes from the keynote: Infrastructure is important for east European countries recovering from the savages of communism. East Germany had the benefit of West Germany putting in $100 billion into infrastructure, but others, like the Czech Republic, don’t have a sugar daddy. Bentley Systems wants its software to remodel these countries. BE Careers Network is to provide and teach Bentley software to students in colleges. Bentley Learn provides unlimited learning to commercial users at a cost of a 20% surcharge on the cost of Bentley’s annual subscription fees (called Select). Select itself has increased in price, from 12% to 15% of the software’s price. Some 67% of Bentley’s revenues come from subscriptions, and as ceo Greg Bentley notes in his portion of the keynote event, those revenues grow only slowly. So, increasing the price is one way to grow revenues, although Bentley staff repeatedly emphasizes that the value was greater than with other CAD vendors. [Some CAD publication might want to take on the task of comparing costs and benefits of the panorama of CAD subscription fees, now that they seem to be here to stay.] - - - A video shows the 14th annual Future Cities Competition, partly sponsored by Bentley. The team from Minnesota won. - - - Ceo Greg Bentley gives an annual-report style speech; the report itself can be downloaded from http://www.bentley.com/annualreport . No CAD vendor has more civil and other engineers on staff than Bentley Systems. The company has 2,000 employees (labeled "colleagues"), with 1,000 outside of North America. It spends 20% on R&D [research and development]. Revenues were US$336 million, with most debt now retired. The company is recognized by Daratech as the leader in plant design, but that’s the only category in which Bentley is tracked by the research firm. The company continues to make lots of acquisitions, which doubles its growth rate. Recent acquisitions include Speedikon, Cook-Hurlbert, STAAD (Research Engineers), RAM International, Logos, CADscript and MAPscript, and GEF-Ris. The newest version of MicroStation is called "V8 XM," and the ceo announces that there have been 6,700 installations over the prior two weeks. Oh, and ProjectWise is as important as MicroStation, because it provides seamless work sharing. (Its ship date is timed to coincide with the Prague BE-in.) Important enough that the new ProjectWise StartPoint provides basic services free (check-in/out) if you have SharePoint (not free from Microsoft). The freebee is available late in June. An intense cooperation between Microsoft and Bentley was mentioned. Microsoft has intense cooperations going with several CAD vendors, and it wouldn’t surprise me if a crafty lawyer sees that intensity as an opportunity for a lawsuit against the software monopolist. "Generative components" are an add-on to MicroStation for creating wild architectural models -- and more reasonable ones, too. (Kind of like, if Catia can do it, we can too. Plus, AutoCAD can’t.) The components will be available at some undetermined point in the future after customers receive training from some to-be-determined training program. Bentley continues its stance of declaring itself the "largest third party developer for AutoCAD" while condemning its competitor. Or as the ceo put it, Autodesk is attempting to impose its proprietary DWF format on its customers, whereas Bentley is leveraging PDF and Google everywhere. He described Autodesk’s "characteristic indifference for its customers" by its incomplete DGN support (read only, not write). Bentley intends to support DWG 2007, but the ceo did not state when. The ceo ended his speech with a tie-in to the video, emphasizing the need in having children become architects and engineers. [Laudable. I was a professional engineer, but became frustrated with the "stuck in the mud" attitude that prevents effective change. So I became a journalist.]
Astrologers and Futurologists Ray Hammond was the feature speaker. "I am a futurologist," he announced in his measured British accent. No response from the polite Euro-crowd. "Well, you are very polite." I guess he couldn’t predict the reaction [koff, koff]. Here are notes on some of what he said, along with my comments in square brackets: We have no language for future [, he began]. More specifically, we have no language for the technological future. Radio was first called "wireless." Locomotives were first called "iron horses." Aeroplanes "flying machines." Refrigerators "ice boxes". Automobiles "horseless carriages." [He didn’t come up with alternative language for "wireless networking."] Future technologies have no language, so we cannot know how they will affect us -- we cannot think and plan the future. [In my mind, it has nothing to do with language shortcomings, but our inability to foresee all benefits and shortcomings of new technology. For example, we could not foresee that bank machines would eliminate traveler’s cheques -- terminology had no involvement.] When I type into Google [, he continued,] I find the first glimmerings of real intelligence [ha!]. Search engines archive, thus the beginnings of memory. [No, it’s just large-scale archiving. Because my PalmPilot remembers appointments better than me doesn’t mean it has memory.] Change has just begun, the nature of change is changing. Change is becoming exponential, curving upward. [I’d argue it is leveling off. He extrapolates exponentially from 1986, but fails to note that CPU speeds have plateaued. Similarly, he is very excited about cell phones being connected to always-on, very cheap Web, ironic given that the Hilton Prague charges $20 a day for its cheapest Internet connection, and that Bentley doesn’t provide wireless networking for attendees. In any case, cell phone screens are too small; even hi-res PalmPilot screens are barely adequate.] It is the interaction of technology with society that determines what gets adopted and when. [I can agree with that, but the interaction is not limited to just technology.] Continuing education is the only antidote to dealing with change. [I agree with that point; the social problems occur when people cannot or will not update their learning.] How do these changes impact business? Business is changing from the market economy (defined as making and selling things) to a subscription economy, where even the most physical things are delivered by subscription. For example, air conditioning units. The manufacturer becomes a supplier of ‘cold air.’ End customers don’t want to buy an a unit; they want cold air. [Not in Prague!] In the future, manufacturers will be connected to all units for diagnostics, some types of repair, and control -- selling cold air by subscription. The manufacturer might even buy the power for the units, providing the volts as part of the subscription. [The problem with this example is that air conditioners are now so cheap that members of the consumer society don’t care about repairs; they want to throw it out so they can buy another. As well, we aren’t keen on having others control us; the previous week I was in Berlin, where the heat to my relatives’ apartment had been turned off in April; now it was June, cold, and no heat.] [I suppose he is saying that the Internet could become as pervasive as electricity. As I sit here in Amsterdam airport, I see all sorts of things run by electricity: rotating, illuminated signs; clocks and cappacino makers; escalators and announcement systems. In all of these, the system is simple: provide sufficient amperes and grounding, and it all keeps working. IP (internet protocol) is meant to be simple, but isn’t as trivial as electricity, and I get the feeling he doesn’t understand that.] Ford wants to sell the driving experience on a subscription basis -- covering repairs, replacement cars, etc. The same will happen in all industries, including health care. [We in Canada call it health insurance.] [Naturally, he makes the tie-in to Bentley’s subscription program.] Imagine in the future where all employees have always-on Internet cell phones whose data is connected to the company’s central file server, which is capturing all information that the employees capture. Consider databases that can be searched by voice print, facial recognition, meeting notes between union/management, designers/owners -- petabytes of unstructured data. [There already is a system that does much of this: it’s called conducting business by email.] Is there a value to this database information to another company wanting to build a similar product? Yes, because it would contain valuable information, such as who to speak to, which paperwork needs to be filled out, etc. [But this data changes over time, and so loses its value -- no different from trying to keep a Web site updated. Hmm, maybe the second law of thermodynamics applies to data: order tends to disorder.] The problem is that the company cannot show the value of this database on its accounting balance sheet. This is not intellectual property or patents, but wisdom from running a project or a company. [Yes but. Competitors are not interested in sharing this data; even branch offices attempt to keep information each other as part of the petty power plays that we engage in.] In the next few years, companies will be able to bring this "capital" to their balance sheets. No organization has integrated its databases with cell phones. But once they do, that will be the final link of the last 30 years of technological development. [Technological nirvana now!] We will have the ability to work in the taxi or the airport lounge. [Umm. We already do.] Delays allow productivity to occur due to wireless connectivity -- turning dead time into productive time. [I agree that free Internet connections at airports are very valuable, but people are getting tired of being always connected. In the future, I predict, being inaccessible will become a status symbol.] I predict that we will continue to see growth and low inflation for decades ahead. [This was predicted back in 2000, but hubris got in the way, where corporate executives saw what they wanted to see in the reports generated by modern computer software.] [Even as he was speaking, stock markets around the world were crashing due to inflation fears.] Because cells phones will allow us to be productive when we’d otherwise be inefficient. [The good thing about being a futurologist is that you don’t need to back up your predictions with a written guarantee.]
MicroStation Q&A Bentley Systems held a Q&A for the media, where for an hour we could ask anything we wanted about MicroStation. I asked about the patent Bentley is claiming for assigning commands to keystrokes. (Generic CADD did that two decades ago.) Apparently, it's the more specific case of assigning keys that access commands in toolbars. There was some discussion of DGN files capturing intelligences of vertical apps, unlike Autodesk's ARX. For example, intelligent geometry cannot be exploded in MicroStation, whereas it can in AutoCAD. Q: Will MicroStation V8 XM support Windows Vista? Most new
computers will have it pre-installed in a half-year. Q: Weren't generative components supposed to be included with
XM? Q: What is missing from PowerDraft "XM"? Q: Explain Project Explorer some more. Q: When will XM support DWG 2007? Q: What do you think of Autodesk reverse-engineering DGN?
[Autodesk plans to add DGN display to AutoCAD 2007 this summer.]
A summary of CAD industry news you may not have read elsewhere, or that I found interesting:
As I predicted months ago, IMSI this week spun off its TurboCAD business as IMSI/Design in a management buy-out. The old IMSI becomes Broadcaster.com and will try to sell video over the ‘Net. Informative Graphics partners with Seemage of France, a company that specializes in automotive and aerospace data visualization. http://www.seemage.com The BRL-CAD Open Source project announces BRL-CAD 7.8.0, the first distribution of the Linux CAD package for Windows. http://brlcad.org iCADsales.com announces software for civil engineers and surveyors: progeEARTH bundles COGO, Survey, Digital Terrain Modeling, and Road Design with progeCAD 2006 Professional. http://www.icadsales.com CoCreate Software reports a 233% increase in channel shipments in the first half of 2006 over the same period last year. Autodesk introduces Civil 3D 2007 Extension for Google Earth Technology Preview -- can we call it C37EGET? -- for publishing Civil 3D objects to Google Earth. You can download it from http://www.autodesk.com/google -- if you have Civil 3D. GibbsCAM rolls out its 2006 CAM [computer-aided manufacturing] software. http://www.GibbsCAM.com AccuRender 4 now supports Piranesi, the 3D painting software from Informatix Software International, by rendering to EPix files. http://www.informatix.co.uk/piranesi VariCAD 2005 3.00 improves the STEP interface, hi-res 3D bitmaps, improved file opening, dimensioning, user interface, and more. Available for Linux and Windows from http://www.varicad.com .
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. |
|
|
|
|