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Issue #509 : : March 13, 2007 |
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In this Issue: UGS 06Q4 Conference Call Highlights
Autodesk 07Q4 Conference Call Highlights
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Tomorrow is the day Right Hemisphere releases version 5 of (most of) its software suite, and today was the day Rix Kramlich, the company's new vp of worldwide marketing, described it for me. What sets Right Hemisphere apart from other technical documentation providers is that they encourage you to stay with the CAD and graphics software you already use. Some 130 file formats are translated into and out of their own .rh format. What this means is that CATIA users continue using CATIA, and that Illustrator users continue using Illustrator. Right Hemisphere does the grunt work in the background, translating between CATIA to Illustrator, and also modifying the images from solid CAD models to isometric 2D line drawings. As required, PMI and ERP data is automatically added to diagrams. The name, by the way, comes from its origins in the creative industry, and the Right Hemisphere is supposed to be the creative side. [I am not sure what that means for people who claim to not have a creative BONE in their body.] The company became better-known last year as the one who provided Adobe the Deep Exploration technology for the Toolkit portion of Acrobat 3D. The other items being announced tomorrow are:
I asked Mr Kramlich who his competitors were. People like Seemage and Bunkspeed do some things but none do it all as does Right Hemisphere. I mentioned PTC, but then the CAD end of their tech doc system is Pro/E. I had to chuckle at Mr Kramlich defining PLM as "Pain, Labor, Misery." You'll get to chuckle too, when Right Hemisphere launches its new ads using that slogan. www.righthemisphere.com [You need to upgrade Flash to v8 to view the home page.]
UGS 06Q4 Conference Call Highlights UGS reports US$353 million revenue in Q4, up 8% over a year earlier. For the year, revenue was $1.22 billion, up 6%. CAD revenue increased just 4%. Americas had -1% lower revenues due to weakness in the auto industry. In contrast, Europe grew 18%. New releases of software coming: in April NX 5 with new UI better than mid-range (SolidWorks, Pro/E, Inventor), and TeamCenter 2007 in June. More than 35,000 downloads of their free Solid Edge 2D Drafting software of English version.
Paraphrased Q&A Q: What commitment does management have to stay with UGS after Siemens completes its purchase? A: We have a very strong management commitment, long term contracts are signed by management. Next week we have our first major integration planning meeting. We think the Siemens deal will be the redefining event in the whole industry.
Q: What could your growth be this year and next? You were in low single digits in CAD. A: With NX5 we can get to 6-7% license growth this year, and even better with Velocity [SolidEdge bundle]. We have 1,100 feet on the street [salesmen] for Velocity.
Q: Will the auto situation persist in the USA? A: This has been going on for two years, and we think the worst is over. This year will be flat, but there might be some growth at the end of the year.
Commentary It is appropriate for the ceo of UGS to be optimistic that the acquisition by Siemens will be good for UGS and bad for its competitors. But it won't be: being swallowed by a humongous corporation renders you nearly invisible. Not that the UGS ceo has much say in the matter. Bain Capital, Silver Lake Partners and Warburg Pincus and other private equity firms are primarily interested in making large profits from flipping companies. I suspect UGS would have preferred to go public, as it was planning to (and run its own ship), than have its owners decide to profit sooner by unloading UGS to Siemens for a tidy sum. I have a feeling that it was cheaper for Bain, et all to sell off UGS than to pay for the IPO. (If you were to argue that SolidWorks has done well being owned by a larger entity, the situation is v-e-r-y different: its owner is also a CAD company, yet has given SW almost complete independence. Siemens is an industrial concern with -- this is the crucial part -- financial expectations that differ from a software company who attributes include high R&D spending, fast moving changes, and the CAD mindset. Making matters worse, Siemens plans to integrate UGS into its businesses, which threatens UGS with even greater invisibility. Ask former Visio vps about invisibility.)
Autodesk Conference Call Highlights About Siemens buying UGS: "I would bet dollars to donuts that the private equity firms will have another shot at UGS within a few years." Autodesk thinks that UGS's current owners found the CAD market too difficult in which to compete. About the Vista-incompatibility of older software giving a boost to sales: "I wouldn’t look for any short-term benefit from Vista." About being able to sustain 40% growth in 3D software: "Yes." About sales in Japan: "It's really still not meeting our expectations." About new AutoCAD license growth: "We are not going to break it." About the backdating investigation: "The Board of Directors has concluded that the financial statements for fiscal years' 2003 through 2006 should be restated... Approximately $23 million to $26 million... no evidence that any officer or director backdated any stock options to himself or herself... unlikely that epeople involved in the decisions and actions that resulted in incorrect measurement aids, understood the accounting impact of their actions or intended to misstate our financial statements."
Sales Figures In order in increasing sales: 6. Civil 3D
5. Inventor
4. Revit
3. AutoCAD
2. AutoCAD LT
1. Subscriptions
Autodesk's Q4 revenue was US$497 million, up 19% over last year. For the year, $1.84 billion. For fiscal 2008, net revenues are expected to be $2.075-$2.125 billion.
Commentary When Autodesk says that 15% of its customers use 3D software, they leave out LT sales from the denominator. Including the overwhelming sales of LT would cut that percentage in half. Ouch! Autodesk keeps emphasizing 3D revenues, even though it's 2D that carries the company. Here is the spin that happened in this conference call: "Total 3D revenue increased 40%... Consistent with our increased focus on moving customers to vertical and 3D products, both AutoCAD and LT grew more slowly this quarter. Revenue from LT increased 7%..." The increase in 3D sales is not so dramatic when you realized that LT alone continues to sell 2x more copies than all 3D products combined. Hence the need for Autodesk to ask you to look over here, not over there. Another item I have to chuckle at is that many CAD vendors (not just Autodesk) claim to be gaining market share. From whom? They back their claim on increased sales -- as if the CAD market were a zero-sum game. They must not have heard of the Expanding Pie Theory.
T-FLEX CAD (as well as all its add-on apps) can now take advantage of 64-bit AMD and Intel CPUs running Windows XP and Vista x64 Editions. This lets T-FLEX handle as much as 128GB RAM and 16TB of virtual memory. In addition, more data is delivered per clock cycle, making T-FLEX run faster. www.tflex.com Geometros releases sgCore v1.8, a C++ class library for solid state modeling (also used for the company's SolidGraph CAD system). Registered users get access to the SolidGraph source code. And now a separate sgCore Full Source Code License is available for purchase (US$400 - $1,200). Download eval versions from www.geometros.com/download/index.htm Corel update its technical illustration software, DESIGNER Technical Suite 12, with compatibility for Vista. Download the service pack from www.corel.com . [I have a copy of this software, it looks good, but it feels like too much hard work to switch from Visio 2000 for my technical documentation needs.] ALLCapture captures screen grabs in real-time for creating videos, software simulations, tutorials, and CAD 3D animations. It can record moving images and audio at the same time. Trial version at www.allcapture.com/progs/allcapture-trial.exe UGS announces Femap v9.3 CAE software has new methods
of applying loads through data surfaces, bolt preload modeling,
and more. Expected to ship this quarter. www.ugs.com/femap
PTC has a try-it-free-for-30-days offer for Pro/ENGINEER Wildfire 3.0 Tryout Edition at www.ptc.com/offers/tryout.htm . Web page includes seven tutorials. You need to register with a password. [When so many sites now require registration, I just don't bother anymore -- I suffer from Too-Many-Passwords-For-Silly-Reasons Overload.] Gibbs and Associates plans to soon release a 5-axis GibbsCAM option for simultaneous milling. www.GibbsCAM.com Alibre and FreeDesign are bundling Alibre Design Expert and FreeDimension for US$1,595 -- a parametric solid modeler with 3D surface creation. Create any organic shape with FreeDimension's controls, and then pass them to Alibre's solid modeler to combine surfaces with solid mechanical parts. http://www.alibre.com and www.freedesign-inc.com - - - These news items were posted during the last week at the WorldCAD Access blog <worldcadaccess.typepad.com>:
And at the Gizmos Grabowski <worldcadaccess.ty-by, Power Supply
Hardware News Metris upgrades its K-Series Optical CMM system. By tracking the 3D position of a set of infra-red LEDs attached to the test object, its relative motion and deformation are analyzed; a camera handles measurement volumes of 17 m3. Up to eight cameras can be used, to expand them measurement volume. www.metris.com Matrox Graphics now has the TripleHead2Go Digital Edition that lets you stretch the Windows acreen across three digital monitors for 3840x1024 resolution. www.matrox.com/graphics
Seminars & Conferences The Society of Manufacturing Engineers (SME) Interoperability and 3D Collaboration event takes place May 2-3 in Detroit USA. www.sme.org/interop/ AutoVue Customer Cimm'posium 2007 is June 27-28 in Montreal Canada, just before the Montreal Jazz Festival. www.cimmetry.com/cimmposium
People/Companies on the Move Delcam acquirs Crispin Systems, which sells software for designing and manufacturing lasts, uppers, and soles in the shoe industry.
Redo "DST is changing on March 11th, 2007 in the US." "??? Sunday March 3rd ????" The editor replies: "Stupid typo. Stupid DST."
"Ok which is it? SpacClaim or Spaceclaim?" The editor replies: "SpaceClaim -- my typo, which I blame on my new keyboard."
WorthWhile Web http://www.stress-free.co.nz/why_autodesk_should_open_dwf
http://www.fourmilab.ch/documents/msapogee.html
http://searchengineland.com/070309-094930.php
Letters to the Editor Re: Decimate "Though people are often sloppy in English usage, in the case of decimate it seems the 'word slobs' are not always wrong. I most often hear decimate used in the sense of substantial destruction, whereas annihilate ('to reduce to nothing, to destroy the existence of') is used when total destruction is meant. This modern usage is supported by a look at old dictionaries. "For example, my 1840 Webster's Dictionary has three definitions,
the third of which closely matches modern American usage: "But enough of these animadversions (better look that one
up too, it's not what you think). Words are fun, but Time is Money." - - - Re: Landscaping Software "I'm not entirely certain what Arthur is looking for, but
Medusa4 does include a terrain modeling package which is reasonably
good. It is available both in the educational version and in the
Personal Edition. The Personal edition can be downloaded here: www.cad-schroer.com/index.php?land=com&ziel=Products-M4Personal&scr=1.7
"
"We have several landscape design people using ENVISIONEER.
Even though it's aimed at designing buildings, it has extensive
landscaping facilities and a huge, worldwide plant encyclopedia.
Plants can be placed and aged in growth etc, all in 3D. And its
price makes it affordable for that purpose." - - - Re: CAD for Cheap "The educational versions are low-cost AND legal, only if
used by students for educational purposes. They are not legal for
commercial use. And of course, the education plot stamp will show
up on anything plotted out. You don't want to get them started down
that road." The editor replies: "In many cases that's true, but Autodesk's MCAD people told me that anyone with an .edu email address can download the educational version of Inventor for free." - - - Re: Redo The editor explains: "She is British." - - - Re: Richard Williams' Story "This is what happens when a company tells you how to run your business rather than helping you run your business. Made more disturbing by the fact the company 'thinks' it knows your business -- better than you do. Not to sure this should be chalked up to arrogance or stupidity. Either way, we as consumers lose. "I’ve got a co-worker who can run SolidWorks on a Vista machine but none of the add-ins from SW or other third parties. And this is from a CAD vendor who is one of the first CAD companies out of the gate with a Vista compatible version. The graphics card uses OpenGL which results in a slower application then the 'obsolete' operating system we are using now (XP). "Makes me wonder: does anyone at Microsoft understand that
the rest of us have to function in the real world?"
"With all due respect to Mr. Richard Williams, I've been running XP, Linux, and Vista in a test lab on VASTLY inferior hardware to what he describes, and have had VERY few problems. "Try using the Compatibility features for running legacy apps like SolidWorks. Inventor, SolidWorks and several 3D games that we've tested, which didn't run well on native Vista, ran just fine by setting the Compatibility mode to "XP/SP2". "There is no such thing as 'BIOS is setup only for Vista'. If he has a legal CD with XP on it, just insert it, boot from the CD, and choose the option to delete the partition and recreate it. If all else fails, download DBAN (search Google for it), burn to a CD or copy to a bootable USB thumb drive, boot the computer and nuke the hard drive, then install XP from scratch. "After months of agonizing over complaints and praise over
Vista, I decided to join the MS beta program and be part of the
solution. Vista is very stable, very powerful, and very secure --
especially when compared to XP. It's long overdue for Windows to
finally come close to the UI features of OS X and the security of
Linux." The editor replies: "I get the feeling that he didn't even try SW on Vista." - - - "Love the e-zine." "Thanks for yet another, in a long line of informative and
thought provoking upFront ezine issues."
Notable Quotable "The screen says to my wife, 'You've performed an illegal
operation'. Are the police coming? There is a whole range of terminology
that is inappropriate for the public."
Copyright 2007 by upFront.eZine Publishing, Ltd. All rights reserved worldwide Article reprint fee US$250.0 and up.
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