|
upFront.eZine |
|
|
a
publication from |
|
|
Issue #604 : : May 12, 2009 |
|
|
In this issue: -Paraphrased Q&A
|
Write the editor. Make him smile! Through Paypal, consider donating $25 in support of upFront.eZine. Or else... We're trendy. We have a Weblog. WorldCAD Access. |
|
|
|
|
Matt Sederberg is ceo of T-Splines, and his 9-person company began in university; now it's four years old. It has ownership on a patent for a unique type of surface: T-splines. In some ways, it operates like other 3D mesh surfaces, such as those found in AutoCAD 2010; the difference, however, is that T-splines are mathematically smooth (like NURBS), and that T-spline lines of vertices don’t need to traverse the whole surface -- they can terminate partway through the surface in T-intersections -- hence the product name. The T-Splines software is for (1) creating smooth, organic shapes; (2) editing them; and then (3) exporting them to CAD software. It is being used for jewelry design, some consumer products and toys, and organic architecture. I asked him about other differences between T-splines and NURBS (non-uniform rational B-splines):
(You can learn more about T-spline technology from www.tsplines.com/about/technology.html )
You do as much design as possible with T-splines, and then convert them to NURBS. You begin with a 3D mesh primitive, like a box or sphere, and then begin to squeeze and expand parts of the box for form a shape -- much like working with Plasticine. (If you've used the Mesh command in AutoCAD 2010, then you'll already be familiar with the technique.) T-Splines is more advanced than Acad 2010, of course, providing such things as symmetry mode, where what you edit on one side of the mesh box occurs on the other side. If you need to perform Boolean operations, you convert the T-spline mesh to NURBS surfaces. Once done, you use Rhino's many export formats to send the NURBS model to a CAD package, such as SolidWorks. In the CAD software, you convert the surface model to a solid model by giving it thickness. Once a solid model, it can be exported for manufacturing. An advantage of T-splines is that they can subdivide local areas of the surface without the warping that subdivision surfaces suffer from. Their software is an add-in for Rhino and Maya; there is no stand-alone version. Adopt Rhino for industrial design and output to CAD, Maya for games development. While other, similar modelers are used primarily for conceptual design, Mr Sederberg emphasized that his is meant for output to CAD. T-Splines is $600, plus you need Rhino at $1000. You can integrate T-spline technology into your graphical software with the T-Tools SDK. Version 2 has been in public beta for quite an while, and ships on May 13. A no-cost demo is available from www.tsplines.com after registration.
PTC Q2 Conference Call PTC reported that software sales (licenses) fell by a stunning 44% in Q2 compared to a year ago. The company was saved by it maintenance (subscription) income, which fell just 10%, and makes up 80% of the company's revenues. In brief:
PTC has dropped out of the Billion-Dollar CAD club.
Paraphrased Q&A Q: What happened to cause the noticeable sequential decline in maintenance paying seats. A: We have certain seats that expire each quarter; the majority are renewed. The number of new seats was down significantly year-over-year and that decrease really drove the decrease in active seats on maintenance. Our attach rates [new maintenance attached to to new sales of licensees] were actually up.
Q: What are you doing about the channel [reseller] business declining for the first time on a year-over-year basis, or maybe the first time? A: This is a fairly significant decline in the channel business, which also impacted active seats on maintenance, as well as the direct business. In terms of specific steps we’ve taken:
It’s actually tough out there. Our competitors have exactly the same issues that we have. I think it's that the SMB [small and medium business] space is in a difficult credit environment. You just have to look at the results from Autodesk, which are significantly worse than ours.
Q: What is the renewal rate number for maintenance? A: We are still in that range of 85% to 90% renewals, percent of accounts renewed. We are on the lower end of that range this quarter.
Q: Your European direct business was up. A: EADS is a $60 billion to $70 billion company that chose us in September. We had a small footprint in one division of Airbus in EADS. We had no footprint in Eurocopter, Military Transport, or an of the other divisions -- all of which we are now converting to Windchill, from Siemens and Dassault. Dassault is a fine company, but they pre-announced twice in the last two quarters. A lot of what they called "deferred accounts and deferred purchases" are actually going to PTC. I know that when we won the EADS deal, [Dassult ceo] Bernard Charles said it was a maintenance update; that’s the biggest joke in the world.
Q: Have you guys reached bottom yet? A: We track our forecast by geography, from beginning of quarter to end of quarter on a monthly basis. North America, for the first time in probably six or eight quarters, came in at a higher number at the end of the quarter than we were forecasting. It's still a low number, but we beat the initial forecast in North America and we had not been seeing that. I think the drop in Europe followed the drop in North America. We had a difficult quarter in Asia-Pac [Pacific] this quarter. We saw our business in China down for the first time in a number of quarters.
Q: With unemployment pushing towards 10%, why shouldn't the maintenance seats decline 10%? A: Because there’s a penalty for customers to turn maintenance off. If we talk about maintenance pricing, I think that our customers are trying to do exactly what we're trying to do, which is we’re trying to either limit annual increases or escalators on maintenance pricing.
Q: Are you confident of large-size opportunities? A: One of the reasons we are able to displace our competitors is that their deployments over the last ten years have been simplistic. They’re simply doing submit, retrieve, content management -- not particularly exciting. We talk with our customers about doing technical publications of technical documents, bill of material analytics, enterprise configuration and change management, content management, and so on. As we deliver on a broader set of applications, and as we integrate with a broader set of applications inside the customer's businesses, then the opportunity to derive more revenue gets bigger and bigger.
Q: How is CoCreate doing? A: That business has held up well, a little bit better than our overall base [Pro/E] business. I attribute it to an incredibly loyal customer base and its two-thirds maintenance.
Out of the Inbox Intergraph releases SmartMarine 3D 2009 for designing offshore devices and ships in a data-centric, rule-driven manner. New features include:
SpaceClaim 2009 Service Pack 1 adds these features:
Esperient releases Esperient Creator 3.7 with these new features:
Download from www.esperient.com/publicdownloads/SetupEspCreator.exe - - - DRCAUTO Software updates its !SlingShot Max software to be compatible with AutoCAD 2010. No-charge demo from estore.smart-architect.com/paypal/freetryout/slingshotmaxtryout.htm NIST starts its CIS/2 [CIMsteel Integration Standards] discussion group on Google at groups.google.com/group/cis2-group . CIS/2 defines the structural steel data exchange file format. Siemens PLM Software updates D-Cubed 2D Dimensional Constraint Manager to v55. One improvement is for thread-safe instances, which in v54.0 had resulted in worsened performance. Details at www.plm.automation.siemens.com/en_us/products/open/d-cubed/product_news/2ddcm_version55.shtml With the tagline of "Fill the Gap in Your AutoCAD," STEFISKO.com of Poland is sure to be in business a long time with its SketchUp translators: SKP4CAD Export exports SKP, and SKP2CAD Import imports SKP files. They have versions going back to DWG 2004; $59.50 each or try the 15-day demos from www.stefisko.com Autodsys releases AcceliCAD 2010 ($399) as a general purpose CAD program and a platform for hundreds of third-party products www.autodsys.com COADE reports its CADWorx 2009 line of software is compatible with AutoCAD 2010: CADWorx Plant Design Suite 2009, CADWorx P&ID Professional, and CADWorx Steel Professional Plus. www.coade.com Piranesi v5.1 is shipping under its new owners in May for Mac OS X and Windows. (Informatix Software International Limited is now owned by Selective Software Holdings.) www.piranesi.co.uk CadTempo time-keeping software from Engineered Design Solutions for AutoCAD LT, Inventor, Revit, Solidworks, MicroStation, Pro/E, SketchUp, 3dsMax, and other CAD software. 30-day trial from www.cadtempo.com Graphisoft launches its new building energy software for ArchiCAD: Graphisoft EcoDesigner determines energy consumption of buildings during the design stage. Due to ship this month. www.graphisoft.com LATISTA Technologies integrates LATISTA Field v5 construction automation software with Revit, allowing it to mark-up 3D BIM models on the job site. Due to ship in June. www.latista.com Amethyst ShadowFX sun-and-shadow modeler generates shadow profiles cast by buildings and other objects for any latitude, longitude and time of year. Works with DXF files. www.shadowfx.co.uk SmartCAMcnc releases SmartCAM v16 adds solids-based machining to the companies midrange applications. www.SmartCAMcnc.com And the Cad CARD AutoCAD reference tool is now available from Autograph Technical Services in four versions: U.S. Version, Metric ISO A/B, Metric ANSI/Architectural, and U.S. ANSI/Architectural JR. www.cadcard.com
- - - These were some of the news items that were posted during the last week at the WorldCAD Access blog < worldcadaccess.typepad.com >:
Hardware News 3D Creation Lab opens its Web door at www.3dcreationlab.co.uk for color and monochrome 3D printing. Oce is showing new printers and software:
People/Companies on the Move Arnold van der Weide is elected president for one more year of Open Design Alliance by its board of directors. Delcam appoints Clive Martell as Managing Director, replacing Hugh Humphreys as of August 1, who is retiring after 20 years. Mr. Humphreys remains as executive director and deputy chairman. Market News 3D Systems reports Q1 revenues fell by 24% to $24 million due to customers slowing purchases of large format 3D printers. The US government signals that it will be less tolerant of companies exhibiting monopolistic behavior.
New Books/eBooks "TopSolid 2009: Practice Integrated Mechanical CAD/CAM" by Joel Poirot and Bernard Perrot Publishedby ENI Editions Paper; e30.00
WorthWhile Web http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124157578117190427.html "Return of Le Car" ny Holman Jenkins Jr
http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=17394 "The two trends that are conspiring against Microsoft" by Jason Hiner
http://technologizer.com/2009/05/05/windows-7-release-candidate-the-technologizer-faq/ "Windows 7 Release Candidate: The Technologizer FAQ" by Harry McCracken Letters to the Editor Re: AutoCAD in Mac "For one company [like Punch Software] to offer CAD at $49 for both PC and Mac isn't that hard when offering multi-platform from the ground up. A lot of decisions to handle both platforms can be made ahead of time. Omit one technology for another, etc (measure twice, cut once). "To take a program that got its start from a mainframe, trudged through DOS then Windows v3.1 then Windows 95/NT 3.51 and then to XP and Vista and now preparing for Windows 7 (don't forget the 8/16/32/64-bit transitions as well), then now want to try to look at all that 'spaghetti,' a port to Mac would be a nightmare in my book. "Now granted, AutoCAD 12 was on the Mac, but the 680x0 processors were no match when speaking of CAD processing power and price for PC, and a lot has happened since 12. But from what I remember, AutoCAD 12 didn't sell too well, which explains the lackluster attempt for Autodesk to attempt Act II. "In my professional opinion as a previous coder and current engineer is that until some company steps up and offers to purchase 1,000 seats at $4k a seat to run on a Mac, it simply won't happen."
Re: Animations with AutoCAD ebook "Quite a while back I purchased your e-book 'Animations with AutoCAD.' It was extremely helpful in getting me started with animation for architecture. I produced a combination video/animation and am in the process of re-doing, re-editing, and shortening it -- based on the critique I received from the editor of '3D World' magazine, who was nice enough to give me his professional feedback. "Below is my YouTube link, should you be interested in viewing the first-draft video. - Robin Mercier Kuc
Re: Catia for Design "I was interested to read your review of Catia for Design in issue 600 of the upFront.eZine. The organic workflow described in the Catia demo, while not natively a part of packages such as Alias and Rhino, is in fact ideally suited to T-Splines for Rhino. Regarding pricing, the tightly integrated T-Splines + Rhino is only $1,600, still a bargain compared to Catia's entry point of $8,000."
Re: Revealed: The Future of the ODA "I was surprised by how you reported the definition of 'variational' modelers. When I joined this industry in the mid-90s, some vendors promoted variational constraint managers in their history-based systems. In this case, variational meant that sketches didn't need to be fully constrained to be edited. "Since the late 1990s, most 3D modelers with a constraint manager act variationally, so I suppose the term is available to be reappropriated. However, if we are looking for a term for direct modelers that use a constraint manager to edit their models, I would call those 'constraint-based direct modelers.' I know it's wishful thinking, but wouldn't it be great if we marketing folks agreed to terms and stuck with them?" The editor replies: "What? Have something that sounds exactly like that of a competitor? No way! <g> Still, you make a good point on the problem of defining operations that are similar yet different."
"It will be interesting to see the level of Linux nativeness in Bricscad at Q4. So far they have been goofing around with wine and even though being a reasonable platform, it does not seem to live up to normal standards what comes to performance and reliability required in CAD systems."
Re: AutoCAD Ribbon "In our 2009 Flow Diagram menu, I put the ESC key icon on the Quick Access menu to annoy my old keyin fanatics who make fun of my users who use the ribbon. It literally makes them crazy and it’s my little way of getting to them. (I got to amuse myself sometimes.) "I hold a CAD Lunch-n-Learn every week. I enjoy your newsletter -- keep up the good work." Spin Doctor of the Moment "My belief at the time is we needed to protect the facts we were gathering."
Notable Quotable "Every building in America has running water, electricity and ventilation; what's the holdup on universal wireless Internet?"
Copyright 2009 by upFront.eZine Publishing, Ltd. All rights reserved worldwide Article reprint fee US$250.0 and up.
All
trademarks belong to their respective holders.
"upFront.eZine," "Talking About CAD," and
"the business of CADg" are trademarks of
upFront.eZinePublishing, Ltd. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|