Figure 1: 2D drafting and 3D modeling in Vectorworks 2011.
u p F r o n t . e Z i n e
t h e b u s i n e s s o f c a d
Issue #661 | September 28, 2010 | English Edition
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In This Issue
1. HP IPG Holds an Innovation Summit
- The Web is All
- Android on the Tablet
- Paraphrased Q&A
- Cinema 4D
HP IPG Holds an Innovation Summit
It had a grandiose name for what I thought would only be a roll-out of marginally upgraded printers. Nevertheless it was important enough for HP's IPG [imaging and printing group] to fly me to New York City to attend the half-day event. The Eventi ballroom was packed with analysts in suits and journalists in business-casual. Squeezing himself next to me, an the Associated Press reporter asked me if I thought the products announced at the day's event would beimportant or evolutionary. "Evolutionary," I guessed.
After all, the inkjet and laser printers arrayed on the stage before us seemed to me much like every other one since the invention of the two technologies by Canon in the mid-1990s. (HP began its printer business in earnest by licensing Canon's laser engines and inkjet technologies; its original thermal printers weren't business-ready.)
Well, I was wrong. Though it wasn't a "summit," it certainly was a day of showing "innovation." But by the end of the four hours, I had to wonder whether it was innovation that would find a market -- as did other journalists I spoke with, ones who work for actual print and repro magazines.
The Web is All
HP proposes that every one of its printers have an email address of its own. The proposal becomes concrete this November with the shipment of new consumer and commercial models, the cheapest a mere $99. At first, a few will have this capability, and then eventually all.
And it does work. Using my Galaxy S cell phone, I attached a photograph to an email, and then sent it to the email address of one of the printers in the test drive area set up adjacent to the hotel ballroom. An HP rep explained that the message was being sent to one of HP's servers, which rasterized the JPG file, and then sent it on to the printer. Two pages emerged from the printer in front of me, first the text of my message on 8.5x11" paper (the cover sheet or job separator page), and then a minute later my photograph emerged on 4x6" photo paper.
The purpose of all this infrastructure is to sell more printers, more media, and (especially!) more ink. HP wouldn't say that directly, of course; instead, they proposed the scenario of the $99 printer sitting in grandma's living room, while proud dad snaps and emails photographs of the kids' soccer game to the email address of granny's printer.
The scenario is plausible, because it eliminates the frustration granny feels trying to figure out how to print those photos of her grandkids arriving in her email account. (Trust me, this is an unsolved problem, one for which I regularly have to provide gratis consulting to relatives and neighbors.) But it presumes granny wanting a printer occupying a spot in her living room -- albeit an objection HP labored to overcome by designing a printer made of glass and aluminum that doesn't have the look of those that you normally get for $99 at Wal-mart. (When I told writer Bill Fane about emailing to printers, he remarked that he wouldn't be keen on all the spam that would be printed out every day.)
Then HP extended the scenario to the business world, calling on an architect flown in from Vienna to describe how he used a new DesignJet. It's a bit more complicated than the granny scenario, so follow me here:
1. The drawing is created in AutoCAD.
2. "Plotting drawings in AutoCAD is complex, as you know." [Um, I guess so.] Instead, he used a beta of HP's new ePrint and Share plug-on to have AutoCAD generate a PDF.
3. The plug-in provides "an accurate preview of exactly how the drawing will be printed..."
4. ... and then the PDF is emailed to a printer in Shanghai, which prints out the D-size drawing...
5. ... for the project owner to approve, sign, and then scan with the printer to...
6. ... send back to Vienna as an e-fax.
(The ePrint plug-in will be available next year for recent releases of AutoCAD. It'll be free, though it only works with these new printers from HP. Whilte ePrint works only with AutoCAD, HP hinted to me that negotiations with other CAD vendors were in the works.)
By this point, my seat mates and I were left wondering, "Why?" Nevermind; HP had their answer ready, which was to introduce the new DesignJet T 2300 eMFP [multi-function printer] as the first Web-ready E-size printer, and priced at $8,500 [about half the typical price], along with ePrint + Share [Web printing plug-in to create, print, share, and manage large-format content online]. HP is calling this "the world's most collaborative printing solution." Currently, computers are still needed as intermediaries, but next year ePrint will work directly with the printers.
Android on the Tablet
The second piece of innovation was already known, that the interface to some printers is now a 7" tablet that can be physically disconnected. The surprise was that it ran Android 2.1, and not WebOS from the recently acquired Palm. HP told me that Android was running the interfaces for all the new consumer printers, including the $99 one. (This cheapest printer, however, has only a 3.5" swivel touch screen, not the disconnectable tablet.) The tablet communicates wirelessly with its printer, yet acts like an independent tablet, complete with Web and email access. This made one pundit joke that you could now buy a tablet from HP for $399, and they would throw in a free multi-function printer.
It is, however, lacking one crucial piece: no access to Google's Android Market for downloading some or any of its 80,000 applications. Instead, HP got Yahoo to provide the front end to the Web, which is fine if you have a Yahoo mail account, want your news from Yahoo, and so on. Otherwise, it is a severe restriction; it was imposed, I think, to prevent it from cannibalizing sales from HP's true tablets, due out in a few months. http://h30495.www3.hp.com/about/eprint
[Disclosure: HP covered the cost of my air fare, ground transportation, hotel, and some meals.]
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Vectorworks 2011
It's September and so it's time for Sean Flaherty to roll out this year's update of Vectorworks. As ceo of the recently renamed Nemetschek Vectorworks, he's pretty proud that his software holds 75% of the Mac CAD market share, by revenue. No surprise, given that it was originally developed in 1985 on a Mac, under the product name of MiniCAD and company name of Diehl Graphsoft. Parent company Nemetschek (based in Germany) is #1 in for architecture in EMEA (Europe, Middle East, and Africa), and #2 in the rest of the world.
Two years ago, Nemetschek Vectorworks added Parasolids 3D solid modeling kernel to Vectorworks, and this year it says that it is "more 3D-capable than any other BIM product." CTO Biplab Sarkar came on to emphasize the complete integration between 2D and 3D workflows. You can now draf on arbitrary planes, draft any shape in in any view. See figure 1.
Figure 1: 2D drafting and 3D modeling in Vectorworks 2011.
In the area of BIM, Vectorworks now allows varying wall heights and wall end caps (component wrapping). BIM-compliant slabs connect to bonding walls, and can even penetrate walls.
Paraphrased Q&A
Q: How much of Vectorworks runs on Parasolid?
A: All objects are now based on Parasolid.
Q: Any changes to the hardware requirements?
A: Vectorworks 2011 has same requirements as 2010.
Q: What happens to Renderworks?
A: There is value in both, Renderworks is used for sheetview rendering, while Cimema is meant for higher quality for presentations and animations.
Q: Are all new walls and slabs supported by IFCs?
A: Yes, this release extends support for IFC 100%. We are also supporting the OpenBIM initiative, both import and export.
Q: Why do you consider this to be the largest release of Vectorworks ever?
A: It contains the largest grouping of large new features for us: new walls, new rendering engine, new text editor, new 3D features.
Q: How is Renderworks 2011 5-7x faster than 2010?
A: It takes advantage of multi-core CPUs, and rendering now uses a separate thread.
In this age where it is now fashionable to move away from the desktop, Mr Sarkar said, "We will support the new operating systems and compilers from Apple and Microsoft for application development. We have just started looking into what we can do on mobile devices, more specifically on iOS."
Cinema 4D
This year's big integration project was switching the rendering engine to Cinema 4D. No surprise there, since the technology comes from Maxon Computer, also owned by Nemetschek. Cinema 4D operates under the skin of RenderMan, the rendering module, or customers can purchase Cinema 4D standalone. The primary advantages are that the rendering quality is higher, and that no translation is needed to export Vectorworks drawings to Cinema 4D.
Customers can buy a bundle of Cinema 4D Visualize 12 + Renderworks at a 25% discount; if they have one, they can get Cinema at 20% off or Renderworks at 50%. Unfortunately, the last part of the conference call turned into a major marketing push about rendering, to the point that one editor tweeted that Cinema was getting more mentions than Vectorworks!
Vectorworks 2011 is shipping now in English. Rest of the languages by the end October, except Japanese, which ships in January. http://www.vectorworks.net
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And In Other News
Plant design giant Intergraph's purchase of CADworx is having an effect on Autodesk, who this week starts offering a six-step conversion program. It's not clear to me wha the incentive is, given that it looks like CADworx users will have to pay full price for Autodesk's most expensive plant design bundle, Autodesk Plant Design Suite 2011, to get the free crossover kit. http://www.autodesk.com/chooseplantsuite
John Fox makes the jump from PTC (director of product and marketing strategy) to Siemens PLM Systems, as the new vp of marketing for the Velocity Series. I trust that his first move will be to eliminate "Velocity" from the marketing phrasebook.
Also on the move is Joe Crozier from Bentley Systems (global marketing director) to Pointools, a firm I've never heard of but thanks to Joe (the new vp of products) I know now that they are "the makers of high performance point cloud model software." http://www.pointools.com
JTB's FlexReport might even cut your software licensing costs, by recording just how many users are actually running software packages: "to find the best balance between used and available licenses." Free trial from http://blog.jtbworld.com/2010/09/jtb-flexreport-61-released-software.html
Autograph Technical Services' Susan Dunn reminds us that their now-classic slide charts for AutoCAD are available in four versions: US, metric, ANSI and US architectural in metric units, and an ANSI an architectural "Junior" version. Details at http://www.cadcard.com
Android is hot, what with 52% of surveyed programmers prefering it over iOS (25%) or Blackberry (25%). No surprise then that when Aras announced mobile versions that it listed Android ahead of iPhone. The apps were developed by partner Porchys, who specializes in cell phone apps: "This first-generation of apps for Android and iPhone smartphones enables users to securely access, manage and edit information in Aras from their mobile device." http://www.porchys.com
Better batteries are a big deal today, and the new Batteries & Fuel Cells Module for COMSOL Multiphysics lets researchers simulate different materials, configurations, and operating conditions. http://www.comsol.com
MecSoft Corporation launches VisualServeT software license management portal, which lets customers download maintenance releases. http://www.mecsoft.com
Just as I am wrapping up this newsletter, word from Graebert that it is shipping ARES for Linux ($995) this morning -- making ARES the first (and so far, only) DWG-based CAD package now available for purchase for the desktop triumvirate of Linux, OS X, and Windows. Next up: the iPad version. Download a 30-day demo from http://www.graebert.com
Graebert has traditionally built sales by concentrating on OEM'ing its software, instead of taking the Bricsys approach of building a strong roster of third-party developers and software (sell the add-on software, sell another copy of Bricscad). This may be changing, with this morning's other ARES announcement that it is integrating Lightworks Artisan SnapShot Studio. As "snapshot" implies, this add-on does "quick and easy generation of photorealistic images." http://www.lightworkdesign.com
- - -
These were some of the news items that were posted during the last month at our WorldCAD Access blog <http://worldcadaccess.typepad.com>:
- What's inside DraftSight for Mac (beta) -- a running commentary
- CAD Schroer reminds us, "Hey, we do cheap 2D CAD on Linux and Windows, too!"
- PAS creates CMM code from SolidWorks in-a-flash
Letters to the Editor
Re: SolidWorks' Move to Waltham
Have you looked at a map of Waltham, MA. SolidWorks and the Revit building are about a mile apart with Novell in between (according to google maps). I wonder if they all have picnic get-togethers when it's nice outside?
- Steve
The editor responds: Or, it will be easier for employees to "crossgrade" to the other firm!
Mr Ostrovsky replies: I know PTC is just down the road as well. Would love to see a map of all the CAD software offices in the area.
Re: Donations
In response to the rant today from "Caddyworker" that took issue with your request for donations, here is my donation.
- Nancy Johnson, Cadalyst
Just thought you'd like to know I sent you $25.00 [via PayPal]. Booya to Caddyworker :)
- James Martin
Spin Doctor of the Moment
"The next extension is to install [video cameras] in places where we can add facial recognition software. So rather than someone checking in to a specific [social networking] application, we would already know you are there."
- Mark Cuban, The End of Location Based Applications?
http://blogmaverick.com/2010/07/18/the-end-of-location-based-applications/
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