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Issue #497 : : November 28, 2006 |
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C o n t e n t s
Autodesk
vs. Open Design Alliance
Readers
Respnd: |
Write the editor. Through Paypal donate $25 to upFront.eZine. Access nearly-daily CAD commentary at our Weblog: WorldCAD Access. |
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Greetings from the snowbound southwest coast of Canada. I'm glad to be stuck indoors today, but not glad about the content in 'Fortune' magazine's recent feature, "The Future of Design." The 17-page article makes this many references to CAD and other types of design software: 0. 'Fortune' may be clueless, but e-books from upFront.eZine Publishing aren't. "Tailoring AutoCAD Rendering" is my latest PDF book: 140 pages on AutoCAD 2007's rendering, lighting, materials, cameras, and more. Just US$21.00 at www.PayPal.com (submit to grabowski @ telus.net ). More information about this ebook at www.upfrontezine.com/tar
Autodesk vs. Open Design Alliance Just in time for American Thanksgiving, Autodesk set an external law firm upon the Open Design Alliance (ODA) over trademark infringement. In a statement, Autodesk says its legal action could have been prevented if the ODA hadn't ignored an earlier letter, which requested that TrustedDWG be pulled from the ODA's DirectDWG APIs [application programing interface]. A judge agreed with Autodesk, giving it a temporary restraining order preventing ODA and associated organizations from:
In return, Autodesk had to file a bond of US$10,000. The parties have a show-case hearing on Jan 18 in Seattle, where the ODA has to show why the temporary restraining order shouldn't be upgraded to a preliminary injunction. The ODA's Web site < /www.opendwg.org > reports that "Due to this order, the DWGdirect version 2.1.0 libraries are no longer available for download. We expect to make replacement libraries available in the next few days. If you have previously downloaded these libraries, you may be directly affected by the court order..." Autodesk's Web site and 19 blogs are silent on the matter.
CAD Vendors React Of 19 CAD vendors I contacted, most wanted to say nothing. All are members of the ODA, and all are indirect parties to the action. Here is a sampling of the responses I received: "I have been reading this with great interest. But as you
can appreciate, this is fairly sensitive with a potentially wide
legal implication."
"I wish you had asked me to comment on any other topic under
the sun! Such as globalization and its impact on civilization
in general, and on CAD vendors and users in particular. :) "
"I can't adequately make any comments since it seems to
be two opponents lobbing cannonballs back and forth at each other.
I, like all ODA licensees, will simply have to await the outcome
of this law suit."
"Since I am involved in this issue, I am not able to comment."
"Stick with a 'no comment' for now, Ralph."
"Whatever happens doesn't affect us, because we are not
using the code in question."
"IntelliCAD does not yet use the libraries in question, although their release is imminent. I certainly won't let Autodesk's lawsuit stop me from releasing. "If their watermark were simply for the purpose of identifying the source of the drawing, I would have no problem with it. However, Autodesk appears to be using it to cast doubts on the reliability of drawings produced by other products. Otherwise, I wouldn't care if drawings produced by my software appeared as 'TrustedDWG' to AutoCAD. "IntelliCAD could just as easily check the TrustedDWG flag
in drawings saved in AutoCAD, then do an AUDIT to look for errors;
if there were, I could blame them on AutoCAD. Then we could engage
in an all-out p**sing contest, which is what Autodesk apparently
is looking for."
Industry Coverage The headquarters for covering this trial is Randall Newton's www.AECnews.com. He has a reporter in the courtroom, and the raft of articles include these headlines:
Other blogs covering the law suit include:
eReaders
Respond: Readers and vendors reacted to articles by Martyn Day and myself in upFront.eZine #495: - - - "Thanx for the heads-up about data mining. Now you're telling
me about the fascist machinery keeping track of my every move. Maybe
we should be humming Dylan tunes while we work!"
"I have looked in vain at Martyn's site for an email address re the handing out of free goodies to the Chinese by our vision-less CAD/CAM outfits. My question is: Do you know specifically which companies are doing this? "Kind of funny how they don't want a CAD user to pirate their stuff but they advertise how easy it is to reverse engineer the intellectual property of industry using their software. "With all the advantages our government and our greedy CPA-MBA-CEOs
are giving the Chinese I think the skids are greased and we are
on our way out as #1. I can only hope some of the idiots responsible
for this get what they richly deserve." The editor replies: "Just about every MCAD company has free versions of their multi-thousand-dollar software packages. The difference between them is how long they run, which can range from 15 days to forever."
"This is my acronym for privacy-pirating software: CADD
= Consumers against Data Diving. 'Collect global, sell local.' Or
maybe it's the other way around: 'collect local, see global.'"
"When Cadkey first hit the streets we had a visitor from, as I recall, Hunan University. This visitor got the official tour of our 10-room office, and then said that he would be happy to translate Cadkey into Chinese in trade for a free copy. Since we were paying our distributors significantly more (in kind) to do the job in other languages, it sounded like a good deal. "Some months later, we got a package in the mail wrapped in brown paper and tied with rough string. Inside were the two Cadkey manuals translated into Chinese. The enclosed note thanked us for the gift, and stated that Cadkey was now the most popular CAD package used at Hunan University! "The professor made the leap from a gift of one copy to a gift of a site license and, for all we knew, a country-wide license. This was around the same time that the Thai parliament passed a law allowing citizens to steal software that was priced out of reach of consumers. "In my role as International Sales Manager, I devised a
pricing scheme that allowed our distributors in developing economies
to price Cadkey at the market level, and then return 50% of the
sale price to us as payment. This worked exceedingly well in Hong
Kong and a few other markets by generating revenue that we probably
would not have otherwise ever seen."
"AutoCAD 2006 and 2007 do not ping Autodesk's servers each time the computer is started. The Internet activity is not to Autodesk, but to VeriSign. This is due to AutoCAD being digitally signed with Authenticode and verified by VeriSign. This assures users of:
"When AutoCAD launches, Windows detects that our dlls are signed (as required by Windows Logo Certification requirements) and attempts to verify that our signature has not been revoked. To do this, Windows pings VeriSign’s servers. Windows performs this verification for both AcStart launch and AutoCAD launch. None of this communication is with or to Autodesk. "AutoCAD sends information to Autodesk in the following situations:
For more on activation and registration: usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/index?siteID=123112&id=3970195 For more on error reporting: usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/index?siteID=123112&id=7047344&linkID=2475323 For more on the Communication Center: usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/ps/item?siteID=123112&id=3750373&linkID=2475323 "Autodesk takes our customers’ privacy seriously, and strives
for openness and transparency in what information our customers
choose to share with Autodesk."
A summary of CAD industry news you may not have read elsewhere, or that I found interesting: - - - VERTEX Building Design combines 3D design with traditional 2D procedures. The Finnish company has software for mechanical, electrical, plant, building, and interior designs. http://www.vertex.fi/english/index.htm PPTminimizer of Germany reduces PowerPoint presentations by up to 96% by optimizing graphics and imbedded objects. Download a test version from http://www.pptminimizer.com/eng/download.htm progeCAD 2007 Professional of Italy edits and saves AutoCAD 2007 drawings. Other new features include Express toolbar; convert PDF to DWG; direct editing of blocks drawings; advanced attribute editor; and a more AutoCAD-like interface. http://www.progesoft.com Ashlar-Vellum of USA introduces enterprise licensing for its Graphite drafting software, such as 50 people on Mac and Windows for US$11,500 per year, or up to 25,000 users for $115,000 per year. [That's $4.60 per user per year!] http://www.ashlar.com/sections/products/graphite-enterprise/graphite-enterprise.html Cimmetry Systems of Canada releases AutoVue 19.1 for Documentum. http://www.cimmetry.com/integrations-vuelink-integrations-documentum.html Sescoi of England previews WorkNC G3 automated CAM/CAD system at http://www.sescoi.co.uk Cadro of Australia releases HatchKit 2.6 hatch pattern editor for Alibre, AllyCAD, AutoCAD, DataCAD, DesignCAD, General CADD Pro, IntelliCAD, MegaCAD, MicroStation, Revit, SolidWorks, Spirit, TurboCAD, VersaCAD and VisualCAD. http://www.cadro.com.au/hatchkit/ SYCODE of India has eight file import and export add-ins for Solid Edge. http://www.sycode.com The next release of QuadriSpace adds support for 3D DWF models. http://www.quadrispace.com Noran Engineering announces their new simulation software, NEiFusion for product design, development, optimization, testing, and quality. http://www.nenastran.com PTC makes available the Arbortext Content Manager for its Dynamic Publishing System. - - - These news items were posted during the last week at the WorldCAD Access blog < worldcadaccess.typepad.com>:
Seminars & Conferences 23rd annual Coordinate Metrology Systems Conference is in Reno NV USA on July 16-20. [Metrology is portable measurement of manufactured components.] http://www.cmsc.org .
Magazine/eZine/Weblog Updates The French-language http://www.CADxp.com site expands to include SolidWorks, Catia, and Pro/Engineer. Also available in English at http://www.CADxp.info Deelip Menezes's new Weblog is at http://www.deelip.com UGS launches industry-oriented Web site at http://www.ugs.com/industries /
People/Companies on the Move LMS appoints Eddy Vandersmissen as vp of marketing. He was a marketing director at Fujitsu Siemens.
Brand New CAD Books/eBooks "Solid Edge V19 for Designers"
"Teamcenter Engineering and Product Lifecycle Management
Basics: A Learning Manual for Teamcenter Engineering with Notes
Regarding Implementation"
"Tailoring AutoCAD Rendering"
WorthWhile Web http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2006/11/21.html
http://www.drizzle.com/~lettvin/2006/11/windows-shutdown-crapfest.html
Letters to the Editor Re: Atlantic Canada "As a long-time (aren't we all) beneficiary of your newsletter, I just had to respond. Having been born and raised in Vancouver BC, where I first began receiving your eZine, I moved to New Brunswick last Spring -- a work-related move with the same company. "I can definitely attest to the fact that Atlantic Canada, for all intents and purposes, IS a different country due to the unique culture and lifestyle. We're learning to eat fiddleheads and be aware of 40-foot tides. To think we always thought Western Canada was the center of the universe. "Thanks, once again, for your efforts in maintaining open
dialog within the diversity of CAD-related industries." The editor replies: "Declare Atlantic Canada a nation. Every other part of Canada is doing that these days." - - - Re: "Seems like I should get royalties on your e-zine
-- you're using all my material." The editor replies: "And that of Dick Harrison, etc." Mr Bass responds: "Yeah, BUT my material is much better than Dick's or Bernard's."
Notable Quotable "MP3 is the only real 'Plays For Sure' audio format."
Copyright 2006 by upFront.eZine Publishing, Ltd. All rights reserved worldwide Article reprint fee US$250.00.
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