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Issue #610   :  :  July 7, 2009

In this issue:

Autodesk Releases First Part of Fusion

The upFront.eZine Tour of Northern Europe

  • Part III: On the Job Site with Graebert

Out of the Inbox, and our other regular columns.

 
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 Autodesk Releases First Part of Fusion

A few years ago, Autodesk's Mechanical Solution division launched a new group named "Emerging Products and Technology." Its purpose is to find trends in problems that customers are having with software, and then asked the questions, "Why did we do it this way? and "Is there a new way that solves the problem?"

EP&T investigates and then develops software with previews for customers; some stick, some do not. Nearly three years ago, EP&T took a look at the problems created by the feature tree in Inventor, and then came up with a more flexible solution. Called "Inventor Fusion," it is available now as a "technology preview" from http://labs.autodesk.com/technologies/fusion/   .

(The download is a stand-alone program that does not interfere with Inventor; the released version will be integrated into Inventor.)

I asked product manager Kevin Schneider about Fusion's description: feature-based explicit modeler. "Explicit modeler" is Autodesk's term for what is also known as direct modeling or editing. "Feature-based" means that Fusion works with features, shapes common to mechanical drawings, such as countersunk bore holes.

The software automatically creates feature tree from imported drawings, something I confirmed when Fusion successfully imported shaver.dwg, an AutoCAD Release 12 solid model. I effortlessly added a hole to the model.

I also asked Mr Schneider about Autodesk's claim that Fusion is "different from all other explicit modelers." How does it differ, for example, from synchronous technology? Fusion automatically identifies features -- like fillets -- from any imported file, no matter the source; in contrast, he told me, synchtech only recognizes features in newly created drawings, or one imported from Siemens' own software, like Solid Edge.

Fusion is more than a direct editor; it also blends features from AutoCAD and Inventor, such as AutoCAD's direct editing of dimensions with Inventor's command-less drawing of arcs. It contains new user interface concepts, such as marking menus, gestures, triads, and selection strips -- which I suppose we might see in a future release of Inventor and other Autodesk software:

  • Marking Menu -- an eight-segment icon menu that appears when you hold down the right-click menu.
  • Gesture -- a way of accessing a Marking Menu item directly: right-click and drag the mouse in the direction that you've memorized the menu segment to be positioned.
  • Triad -- combine AutoCAD's 3D move, scale, and rotate gizmos into a single gizmo.
  • Selection Strip -- lets you select overlapping entities through a filmroll-like strip.

 

The ship date is vague; a second technology preview (TP2) is schedule for September; it will include direct translators for a number of competitor CAD programs. I would suppose Fusion will be included with Inventor 2011 next March.

For a detailed review of Fusion's operations, read Al Dean's multipart coverage at DEVELOP3D, beginning with Part I at http://www.develop3d.com/2009/06/inventor-fusion-part-i-inventor-fusion.html  .

The standalone software is available from http://www.inventorfusion.com

The upFront.eZine Tour of Northern Europe:
Part III: On the Job Site with Graebert
(Or, Measuring Spandau)

The "Spandau" name is perhaps best known from the British music group "Spandau Ballet," but also for the infamous prison holding a single prisoner from WWII. In reality, it is the westernmost borough of Berlin -- Berlin being a city-state that consists of a multitude of municipalities, each with its own Rathaus (German for "city hall," Rat is the German word for "council").

At 3:05pm on a Friday afternoon, the S-Bahn deposited me near Spandau Rathaus for my meeting with Ursula, one of Graebert's in-house surveyors. I was meeting her so that she could be showing me a live project. A maintenance company has the contract for cleaning all of Spandau's public buildings, including the massive city hall that felt to me more like a museum than a center for bureaucracy. The cleaners need to know the number of square meters of floors and windows.

As we meet under the trees in front of city hall, she already has the HTC Ameo portable computer velcro'ed to her wrist. We go inside, and she begins with the basics in a quiet room off the main entrance. She chooses a starting point, and then obtains the lengths of its four sides. The laser measuring device sends distances to her computer via Bluetooth instantly. With the four walls in place, she uses offsets to determine the location of the massive two columns in the center of the room.

Figure: Measuring room sizes with a laser measuring device; you can see the red laser dot on the doorframe. Strapped to her arm is an HTC Ameo portable computer running Graebert's SiteMaster software. The computer is also a camera, camcorder, sound recorder, cell phone, and Web browser.

 

Next, it's time for the windows and doors; these are added in two stages. First, each one is located and sized; then, details are added, such as number of mullions. If a window is broken, she can use the computer's camera to attach a photo to the CAD drawing. Doors become the starting points for attached rooms.

A check function finds errors in measurements; the laser is accurate to 2mm.

Ursula employs a number of tricks gained from experience. Very short distances are measured simply with a tape measure that she has tucked into a back pocked; the measurement is entered manually. To measure the widths of columns, she quickly attaches a business card with sticky tack-- so that the laser's beam has something to bounce off. To measure very high items, she attaches a telescoping unipod to the laser, and then controls it remotely with the SiteMaster software running on the computer. When walls are not rectilinear, the software lets her make three-point measurements to determine the angle.

Part way through, the computer rings; a colleague in another part of the building has a question. Towards the end of the hour, she shows me she measures complex staircases. She begins in exactly the same manner as the rectangular room: start with a basepoint and then measure the width, but then employ SiteMaster's stair function to specify the height to the first landing, the number of stairs, number of handrails (one), and so on. I ask how she will handle the curved base that juts out by two steps: starting from the same basepoint, she measures the start, second, and end points to draw an arc.

When she is done for the day, she uses SiteMaster's redlining function to mark areas that need to be continued the next day. Finally, she emails the drawing back to head office near the center of Berlin for back up.

http://www.graebert.com

Out of the Inbox

GlobalCAD releases LandARCH 2010 ($549) for landscape designers working with AutoCAD. New features include:

  • Enhanced 3D model libraries.
  • Terrain modeling with mesh and solids options.
  • Works with AutoCAD 2000-2010, including 64-bit versions, and all vertical products including AutoCAD Architecture.

http://www.globalcad.com

 

Autodesk ships Navisworks 2010 for simulating engineering projects. New features include:

  • Clash grouping and detection.
  • Compatibility with most 3D design and laser scan formats.
  • Compatibility with the not-yet-released AutoCAD Plant 3D.

http://www.autodesk.com/navisworks-plant

- - -

Aftercad Software announces a beta signup for 3D Workspace, its online collaboration SaaS for digital prototyping and building information modeling projects. It lets you upload, view, mark-up, manage, and publish large 3D CAD files to the Web, without needing proprietary viewers. http://www.aftercadonline.com

CAD Manufacturing Services announces that CMS Vault is now included with CMS IntelliCAD. CMS Vault is based on the M-Files document management software fast search, user access permissions, check-in/out and version management. http://intellicadms.com/site/Products.html

Next month's release of Autodesk Moldflow 2010 uses GPU technology in nVidia graphics boards to help double processing speed -- as well as multi-core CPUs using multi-threaded programming. http://www.autodesk.com/moldflow

Dassault Systemes launches V6R2010; the company now uses years for its release numbering. http://www.3ds.com

Icona Solutions ships aesthetica v3.1, which applies manufacturing tolerances and deformation information directly to 3D CAD models for real time perceived quality studies. http://www.iconasolutions.com

Di-O-Matic announces its 3dsmax plug-in for synchronizing voice soundtracks with 3D characters' mouth motions. http://www.di-o-matic.com/products/plugins/VoiceOMatic/

LightWork Design releases LightWorks v8.1 with soft shadows in real-time rendering; programmable shading; and anti-aliased EPix output. http://www.lightworkdesign.com/features/lightworks_81

And IMSI.soft updates TurboCAD Pro v16.1 with better symbol loading, right- and left handed thread dragger options, a foreground color conversion for white fills when printing black, and 47 other improvements. No-charge update for customers at http://www.turbocad.com/Support/TurboCAD16Support/tabid/1183/Default.aspx

- - -

These were some of the news items that were posted during the last week at the WorldCAD Access blog < http://worldcadaccess.typepad.com >:

  • OpenCAD
  • More Punishment for Siemens
  • Use Task-Appropriate Tools
  • Happy Birthday, Canada -- older than most
  • Web 2.0 "4 or 5 Years" Away for AutoCAD
  • Adobe Employees Get 3 Xtra Weeks Vacation

Hardware News

3Dconnexion 3D mice now support Dassault Systèmes’ CATIA Version 5 Release 19 SP4. http://www.3dconnexion.com/solutions

HP's newest workstation boasts 12 cores -- six each in a pair of AMD CPUs. The xw9400 Workstation boasts 34% more performance per watt over quad-core processors. http://www.hp.com/go/workstations

 

People/Companies on the Move

NCG CAM Solutions (Cambridge, UK) purchased a license to the DEPOCAM source code from Parametric Technology Corporation. The staff are former NC Graphics programmers, whose company was acquired by PTC. The rebranded software will be called NCG CAM. http://www.ncgcam.com

Globes Online reports that Dassault is cutting half its staff (86 of 150) in Israel, location of its SmarTeam base. Programming is being centerlized in France and Boston. http://www.globes.co.il/serveen/globes/docview.asp?did=1000476279&fid=1725

Oce internally promotes John Reilly as president of its Document Printing Systems division of Oce North America.

 

Market News

Canadian investment companies Novacap and Capital Regional et Cooperatif Desjardins have invested a secret amount into Creaform.

 

WorthWhile Web

http://michaelnielsen.org/blog/?p=629
"Is scientific publishing about to be disrupted?"
by Michael Nielsen

 

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124648494429082661.html
"Two Centuries On, a Cryptologist Cracks a Presidential Code: Unlocking This Cipher Wasn't Self-Evident; Algorithms and Educated Guesses"
by Rachel Emma Silverman

 

http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/07/04/the-reality-of-pr-smile-dial-name-drop-pray/
"The Reality Of PR: Smile, Dial, Name Drop, Pray"
by Michael Arrington

 

Notable Quotable

"Anyone need to hire an autocad expert? How about an inexperienced burger flipper?"
                    - cyclefiend2000 on Twitter

 

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