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Issue #603 : : May 5, 2009 |
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In this issue: Revealed: The Future of the ODA
[Editor's note: Due to the length of this report and due to my jetlag, this issue is shorter than usual.]
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Revealed: The Future of the ODA It was during the first two days of its first conference that the Open Design Alliance revealed its future plans. Arnold van der Wiede is current president, and he sees this recessionary period as beneficial -- despite numerous other conferences shutting down. "This is the perfect time to plan for the future," he declares. He wants to change the ODA's orientation to -- something different. After collating data from several speakers, I determined this may well be the four-step program for ODA’s near-term future.
First step is to begin speaking of "the platform" instead of DWG and DGN "libraries." How so? The vast majority of the organization's two thousand members need DWG libraries for primarily reading and writing DWG files. (Autodesk's $2,500 fee is too high for those who employ DWG libraries non-commercially.) The key is that six members are now writing their own complete CAD programs -- aka "platforms." (I expect the number to increase in coming years.) ODA says it will never develop a CAD system of its own -- not even IntelliCAD. Instead, ODA makes available all components required for writing one in-house or through APIs. I suggest that ODA won't be tempted to break this pledge, because the better strategy is to sell gold pans over panning for gold.
A second step is to make more add-on technology available to members, such as solids modeling, geometric and dimensional constraints, PDFs, and high-speed display and rendering. All it takes is for 20 members providing funding for ODA to hiring the programmer to write the API (linking code). After that, it is just a two-step process for members: (1) to license the technology from the provider, and (2) to drop it into their code. (In complimentary fashion, component providers are realizing that ODA's thousands of members consist of a ready market. And so we see corporations like Siemens PLM Systems, the Spatial division of Dassault Systemes, and Tech Soft 3D giving presentations at this conference -- hoping members will license their technology.
A third step is providing complete coverage in operating systems (Linux, Mac, Windows, Android, and so on) and on components (ACIS, ParaSolid, PDF, and more). Mr van der Wiede joked that Autodesk should become a member, because ODA’s DWG libraries are already working on the Mac.
A fourth step is to create links with organizations, such as buildingSmart (originally IAI). ODA is not adopting IFCs, but is fascinated by the buildingSmart's organizational methods, such as regional chapters of its 1,100 members. More on buildingSmart later.
Another step? I hear a change in name is planned. Mr van de Wiede's ultimate goal is for ODA to develop platforms for any technical graphic application. Note that the word "CAD" was not used, but the much broader term "technical graphics." I am pessimistic, for I have watched companies like Visio and Autodesk stumble attempting the same thing. (In the late 1990s, Visio had a similar Grande Plan, but gave up when IntelliCAD didn't work out; in the early 1990s, Autodesk had a similar Grande Plan, but eventually gave up on trying to mimic the PowerPoints, et al.) Nevertheless Mr van der Wiede confirmed my query that yes, Visio-like technical diagramming software is feasible. For the long term, Mr van der Weide hopes for continued 10% annual growth, and that Autodesk will see ODA as a partner, instead of feeling threatened by it. In the nearer-term, cto Neil Peterson showed us that the DWG platform can now read DWG 2010 (v1024) files. Developers were warned that the next major release of DWGdirect will break their apps, due to the new parallelization, constraints, and entity overrule. It'll ship later this year in two phases. Both D-Cubed and LEDAS might be supported; ParaSolid support will be added should there be sufficient support; XML to be added by a third-party; but there is almost no interest in Intergraph file formats. Got technology? The ODA is interested in partnering with you.
buildingSmart Alliance buildingSmart Alliance is the new, snappier name for IAI (international alliance for interoperability), whose aim is opening up AEC data. Here is irony: Autodesk created IFCs and then later handed them over to IAI -- kind of like when Visio created ODA and then handed the MarComp libraries over to them. Both bSa and ODA are in the business of opening up data. Autodesk continues to be a member of bSa. "Without the ODA, we would be out of business, because buildingSmart cannot afford to hack DWG on their own," said Bjorn Stangeland of buildingSmart, also ceo of DataDesign of Norway. He summarized that BIM = 3D model + properties + relationships. And that the most important part of BIM [building information modeling] is the "I". He quickly demo'ed how IFC files can be dragged into Acrobat Pro, which displays the 3D model and its data.
Greabert ARES Robert Graebert is one of the six who built a new CAD engine on ODA's platform. The name is ARES (pronounced 'aries"). It has 400 commands, runs .net, VSTA, LISP, C/C++, and Delphi routines, and has a customizable user interface that adapts nicely to any OS it runs on. Mr Graebert showed benchmarks, including a 30MB drawing that timed AutoCAD at 24.5 secs but ARES at a mere 9 secs. The software is due to be released in June. Ceo Wilfred Graebert later told me that the ARES effort began five years ago when he decided a modern CAD program was needed to replace their aging PowerCAD (aka FelixCAD), which could not easily take on new tasks. ARES is modular. They found a great niche: CAD that runs on limited-memory PDAs, as in 10MB of RAM. Six years ago they added support for BlueTooth, allowing their CAD software to interact with laser measuring devices. Graebert consider itself as having built the first AutoCAD-compatible CAD engine, although I wonder if SoftSource may have beat them with VDraft. Perhaps you can sense ODA's interest in Graebert: it's a company with expertise in squeezing CAD systems into cellphone-size RAM, CPUs, and operating systems -- like Android. I look forward to learning more during next month's visit to their Berlin head office.
Spatial Thomas Tillman of Spatial talked about the new ASAT file format (saves and restores ACIS data of assembly models) and the new Thread-Safe ACIS engine that allows independent instances of ACIS to handle very large datasets, as controlled by the ACIS Thread Manager. Docs are open to everyone at docs.spatial.com and you can get a 90-day eval license
LEDAS I thought first of skipping this talk, because I misread the title as "LEEDS" (environmental stuff). Fortunately, I noticed the correct name in time, and recognized LEDAS as the Russian software company with whom I'd exchanged some emails. The presentation was pretty interesting, because this company is opening up what both Autodesk and Siemens PLM Systems are doing. Emphasizing his words with the f-bomb (oh those Russians), Dmitry Ushakov stated that ODA members were going to have to deal with the constraints added to DWG 2010, and that LEDAS had the solution for them. The company specializes in geometric solvers, and they've produced a DRX version (named LGS [ledas geometric solver] that they got working in Bricscad --geometric and dimensional constraints. ODA members need constraints if they wish to add parametric modification, assembly design, kinematic simulation, and history-free geometry that preserves design intent. LEDAS guarantees that LDS will simulate the behaviors of other products, according to customer needs, such as DCM used by AutoCAD. He spent some time describing the difficulty in creating a constraint solver: it needs to solve a reasonable number of constraints simultaneously, like 10,000 in under a second. It has to be simultaneous, because loops cannot be solved sequentially. The problem was first solved by the founder of D-Cubed in 1991 (now owned by Siemens PLM Systems): decompose large problems to find natural solutions to sub-problems -- LDS has 100 predefine patterns, something that took several dozen man-years. "Of course, you are welcome to design your own," he quipped. They support Mac, Linux, and several flavors of Unix and Windows. You can try out their no-charge browser-based 2D solver at www.ledas.com/products/lgs2d/flash_lgs (Parametric design with constraints is called "variational design" to distinguish it from history-based parametric design.) www.ledas.com/group/white_papers
Bricsys Ceo Eric de Keyser announced that his company now has 100,000 customers, and 300 third-party developers. Sales are unaffected by the recession hitting major CAD companies; sales have increased over the last months, probably as customers look for cheaper solutions. He presented this data:
Commercial applications are coded with a mix of APIs; because of history, not all are in ARX. He maintains that DRX is proof that the ODA does not follow Autodesk slavishly, for DRX is better than ARX due to its use of smart pointers and exception handling; in addition, DRX runs on multiple OSes. While ARX has 22,000 functions, a typical add-on uses just 50. His company's version is named BRX; it has 4,000 functions, and receives more every two weeks as requested by customers. There are some requests for .net, and so he is glad the ODA is starting to work on .net support (due to ship initially in June). Of ODA members, he reported that:
To have a market broader market than only AutoCAD, then you have to program with DRX, he maintained, to avoid the cost associated with maintaining two code streams. He provided this schedule for his own Bricscad's support of operating systems: "We see [Linux] as a very important market; we see a lot of interest in a native Linux solution. And we can do that because our code does not contain MCF classes, but wxWidgets instead." Bricscad 10 will have AutoCAD 2010's addition to ARX, "including the broken ones," he joshed. They are working on adding Bmodeler, a hidden-line API, B-rep, input point filters, and input context reactor. I look forward to meeting with them at their Gent, Belgium head office in June.
Redway3D Fabien Chauvire of France's Redway3D wowed us with the speed of their graphics on ordinary laptops, both 2D and 3D graphics, wireframe and rendered, Their software is able to visualize files with 100,000 parts and 14 million triangles "with no cheating." (They further wowed us by handing out their presentation on 4GB USB thumbdrives.) Because only 30% of computers have 3D graphics cards worldwide, Redway3D has created a GPU emulator, which allows Web apps to display 3D graphics quickly. Based on their in-house benchmarks, regular DirectX takes 4 seconds per step to zoom into a very large drawing; Redway3D does it in 0.05 seconds. In addition, it supports selection and highlighting of entities. The company promises ODA members a 30x speedup after dropping their library into their system.
Additional Conference Coverage Deelip Menezes provided daily coverage of the conference, beginning with "ODA World Conference - The Platform" at www.deelip.com/2009/04/oda-world-conference-platform.html WorldCAD Access described the conference, starting with "Open Design Alliance Conference - Day 1" at worldcadaccess.typepad.com/blog/2009/04/open-design-alliance-conference-day-1.html
Next Year The second annual ODA World Conference is due to be held in Florida, but not DisneyWorld 'cause its too expensive. Those of us living on the West Coast of North America boo'ed the announcement.
[Disclosure: Open Design Alliance provided me with airfare, accommodation, and some meals.]
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