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Issue #498 : : December 4, 2006 |
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C o n t e n t s
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Write the editor. Through Paypal you can donate $25 to support upFront.eZine. Access nearly-daily CAD commentary at our Weblog: WorldCAD Access. |
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One of the oldest CAD companies in the world has gone private. Intergraph says it did this to get away from the three-month targets imposed by Wall Street on publicly-owned companies, and concentrate on long-term growth. Last Wednesday, Hellman Friedman and Texas Pacific Group completed their US$1.3-billion purchase of the company formerly known by its ticker symbol as INGR. The new owners are unlikely to keep Intergraph private forever, though, because the purpose of the purchase is not primarily for long-term growth. Instead, the investors want to build up the company, and then make their profit by taking Intergraph public again. For us in the media, this means less information flowing out of the company, as it no longer needs to report publicly to its shareholders. On the other hand, Intergraph is no longer a CAD company, calling itself a SIM vendor -- spatial information management. For Intergraph, CAD now means "computer-aided dispatch." Other CAD companies that switched from public to private ownership include UGS (formerly part of EDS) and IMSI/design, formerly part of Broadcast.com. I expect UGS to return to public ownership in the next year or so.
Back in May, AfterCAD applied Google Earth-like technology to display 2D CAD drawings in Web browsers -- without plug-ins. CAD drawings are converted into raster squares, which are delivered as JPEGs to the browser. When users click a square, this tells the server where to zoom in. (See www.upfrontezine.com/2006/upf-476.htm#a .) Now the company has extended its reach to the third dimension. Last week they give me access to their http://realworld.aftercad.com Web page. It let me zoom, pan, and move through 3D models -- again, with no plug-in. AfterCAD has two versions. The AJAX version uses Java controls to view models in a step-like fashion. It's slower than the second version, which uses Flash. The Flash version previews a wireframe of the object, which you can rotate in realtime; then the rendered version is quickly displayed. I tried to learn what goes on behind the scenes, but wasn't too successful. All AfterCAD would tell me is "there are a 100 other things we do," among them poly-reduction to prepare for fast rendering. They convert 3D drawings saved in DWG, 3DS, Maya, DWF, and DXF, and then send the rendered images to Web browsers as JPEGs. In a couple of weeks, they hope to show additional features, such as an interactive parts tree, and the annotation of drawings. The parts tree would let you change colors and materials. Called Realworld, AfterCAD plans to ship it in January. What's the market for Realworld? AfterCAD hopes it becomes an easy way for consumers to view 3D interactively.
A summary of CAD industry news you may not have read elsewhere, or that I found interesting: - - - Cadalytic Media releases SpecifiCAD beta for Revit Building -- and updates the beta for AutoCAD and ADT. The add-in provides McGraw-Hill construction data inside the CAD programs. cadalytic.com/index.php?dir=products UGS releases Parasolid v18.1 geometric modeling component. UGS figures Parasolid now resides in 2 million CAD packages, a number that becomes interesting to mull over when you realize that some CAD packages also include arch-competitor ACIS. www.ugs.com CoCreate Software has a new release of OneSpace Integration for mySAP PLM. www.cocreate.com/mysap_plm.cfm A series of free multiphysics tutorial CDs from COMSOL show off modeling, simulation, and virtual prototyping for students and others. Titles include "Introduction to Acoustics Simulation" and "Introduction to RF Simulations." www.comsol.com/intro/ Chaos Systems AB releases Topocad v9 for surveying, mapping, design, and GIS. www.chaos.se SolidWorks claims first place in the Shipping A Vista-compatible CAD System competition. Parent Dassault Systemes says it fully supports Vista and Office 2007, as Sanjay Parthasarathy, corporate vp of developer and platform evangelism group at Microsoft, explains: "With an enhanced user experience in a common 3D environment, 3D real-time collaboration in context, easy integration with the 2007 Office system and built on a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA), Dassault Systemes will help make PLM more accessible for our mutual customers." [Uh huh.] www.3ds.com UGS says it too has integrated its PLM software with Office 2007 and Vist. They got Simon Witts, corporate vp of enterprise and partner group Microsoft, to explain it: "UGS products running with Microsoft 2007 Office system and Windows Vista, enable manufacturing companies to extend the power of PLM far beyond the engineering and manufacturing departments so that people in purchasing, operations, sales and marketing can collaborate on product information and build connections with outside suppliers and customers." [This means you're not able to do this today on Windows XP. Or Linux.] www.ugs.com Autodesk says Microsoft got the DWFx varient of it DWF format working in Vista's XPS viewer. aecnews.com/news/2006/11/29/2134.aspx LMS International integrates IPG Automotive's virtual driver model into Virtual.Lab Motion software for vehicle ride and handling simulation. www.lmsintl.com SPEOS software from OPTIS optimizes lighting designs for automobiles, electronics, aerospace, marine, and architecture in CATIA V5. www.optis-world.com Docupoint announces Discovery 2007 for AutoCAD. It combines a fulltext search engine, Web server, and automatic DWF generator into a single server app. www.docupoint.com Right Hemisphere's Deep Creator 2.3 (US$1,995) features 3D scene set-up wizards. Trial version available from www.righthemisphere.com/support/downloads/download.php progeCAD DWG Viewer supports AutoCAD v2.5 through v2007 with redlines, markups, and plots. www.progesoft.com IDEAL ships WiseImage X: native raster editing and raster-to-vector conversion inside AutoCAD 2007. www.ideal.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:
Hardware News HP has sold 1.5 million Linux servers worldwide. Matrox DualHead2Go and TripleHead2Go now work with Macs. These little boxes let your graphics board output to two or three monitors. www.matrox.com/graphics/mac
Seminars & Conferences 21st annual GeoTec Event is May 14-17, 2007 is in Calgary Alberta, Canada. www.GeoPlace.com
People/Companies on the Move The Open Design Alliance removes Evan Yares from his position as president, and from the board of directors and as executive director. His temporary replacement is Mauritz Botha of IMSI/Design. NAFEMS appoints Matthew Ladzinski as its dedicated North American representative. Daniel Blumenthal resigns as a director of ANSYS, as part of an agreement where he would serve as long as Willis Stein & Partners held at least 5% of the company's stock.
Redo SYCODE is the correct name of Deelip Menezes' company, not Syscode. A letter from Randy Sanders should have read "...collect local, SELL global..." and not "see global."
Letters to the Editor Re: Autodesk vs. Open Design Alliance "My, oh my. Autodesk has pretty deep pockets (compared to the ODA) when it comes to legal defense. I can't help but wonder what this situation would be like if the ODA included Microsoft or IBM. I know that's a stretch, but the stakes would be entirely different. "This case appears to be a situation in which the bigger brother is finally tired of the little brother following so closely behind, and decides to turn suddenly and take a swing to gain some distance. "Yes, legally, there's enough here to merit a case, or at
least a hearing. Is there any real substance to the claim? Who knows.
Maybe Autodesk just needed some friction to be reminded that there
is still 'competition' out there waiting for them to stumble. I
don't think anyone expects this will push ODA or others back far
enough to really eliminate competition. They'll fall back and regroup
and continue on."
"Earlier versions of AutoCAD, by default, had the DWGCheck function turned off. Has Autodesk deceived we users all along by letting us think DWGCheck actually did something useful, and now wants us to believe that it is in our interest to have a totally unproductive 'overtly negative' statement rubbed into our psyche every time we use a trusted contractor's or a trusted customer's drawing? "Even if Autodesk wins against ODA, we users lose
money each time we have to react to the TrustedDWG message. Is that
what Autodesk really wants? Do you value we users and our time so
little you are prepared to throw our time and money away so Autodesk
can say they achieved what?" - - - Re: 'Fortune' Ignores Software "I don't share your disappointment with 'Fortune' magazine's article, 'The Future of Design.' In its role of speaking to a general business readership, 'Fortune' did a service to anybody who makes a living designing things. Whether we design buildings or MP3 players, we benefit from any discussion that encourages decision makers to think about design, and how better design can improve their business and world. Whether one is a designer, or a business that sells to designers, I think the 'Fortune' article was good for our professions. "They admittedly did not talk about the software tools that
designers use, but then again they don't discuss software when covering
auditing, regulatory compliance, or other business activities
that rely on software tools in today's world. Which is fine, for
those who need detail on the tools, journals like your's handle
that discussion better anyway." The editor replies: "Fortune did cover the role of design software some months ago in a report on how it's used by some Chinese manufacturers to copy product designs." - - - Re: Metrology "Metrology is the science of measurement. The definition
you provide in Issue #497, 'the portable measurement of manufactured
components' is much too narrow." - - - "I just took out a home equity loan, and bought ADT 2007
and MAX 9 and a quad-core [computer] and a digital DSLR camera.
Now I got to pay this back. $17k out the door in about 2 hours."
Spin Doctor of the Moment "Game Over: How Nintendo Conquered the World."
Notable Quotable "I used to be a gadget geek. Now I just want stuff that
works."
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