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Welcome to the archive pages of upFront.eZine, the e-newsletter that for 20+ years has been reporting on the business of the computer-aided design software industry. We launched 1 May, 1995 and today bring thousands of subscribers our edgy opinion, weekly news reports, and beloved travelogues.

 

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Read the Back Issues

We keep all issues since 2012 posted -- in full! -- for your browsing comfort right here on this Web site. Use the links to jump to the first issue of each year:

• January 9, 2017
• January 5, 2016
• January 12, 2015
• January 6, 2014
• January 8, 2013
• January 9, 2012

Download All the Back Issues

Ever since 1995, upFront.eZine has been working hard at keeping alive the history of our beloved CAD industry. These our back issues are for your convenience bundled by year into a single ZIP file.

1995            2005

1996            2006

1997            2007

1998            2008

1999            2009

2000            2010

2001            2011

2002            2012

2003            2013

2004            2014          

After you download these files from Dropbox and unzip them to your computer, use any Web browser to read the newsletters.

 

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When Generative Design Backfires

Issue #1,038 | January 20, 2020 Guest editorial by Roopinder Tara On proud display at last year’s Autodesk University, the biggest CAD conference in the world, was a VW Microbus retrofitted with wheels like none we have ever seen. The... Read more →

Upon Onshape Turning 100 Updates Old

Issue #1,037 | January 13, 2020 by Ralph Grabowski When it came out in 1995, Solidworks was a gamble. It was the first serious CAD program to run only on Windows, an operating system considered by other CAD vendors back... Read more →

ITC vs Gstarsoft, Round 2

Issue #1,035 | January 6, 2020 by Ralph Grabowski Some years ago, Autodesk launched a law suit against CAD software vendor ZwSoft. The American company alleged that the Chinese one had copied its source code. The suspicion arose after a... Read more →

Why Graebert Entered BIM

by Ralph Grabowski There are nearly three dozen CAD programs on the market that work like AutoCAD, but there is only one that comes close to AutoCAD’s market size. Autodesk executives speak of 10–12 million versions of AutoCAD in use,... Read more →

The Berlin Conference: Q&A with Graebert Executives

transcribed by Ralph Grabowski Executives from Graebert GmbH took questions for nearly two hours from the CAD media during the company's Annual Meeting. The focus of the questions was on the company's surprise announcement that it was getting into the... Read more →

The Stockholm Conference: Q&A with Bricsys Executives

Issue #1,032 transcribed by Ralph Grabowski Stockholm skyline, as seen from the Brewery At last month's Stockholm conference of BricsCAD users, the CAD media had the opportunity to quiz Bricsys executives on the topics of the CAD replacement market and... Read more →

Readers Respond: Why Does CAD Hate CAM?

Issue #1,031 Moderated by Ralph Grabowski I really enjoyed your newsletter addressing the still-troubling aspects of CAM [computer-aided manufacturing]. Frankly, I was starting to think that no one cared about the subject any more. As someone who spent many years... Read more →

PTC Bought Onshape, for $470 Million

Issue #1,030 Assessment by Ralph Grabowski That Onshape would one day be sold was certainty. The only questions were When and By Whom. The 'When' was last week, and the 'Whom' was PTC. [This article is based on speculation. Do... Read more →

Why Does CAD Hate CAM?

Issue #1,029 by Ralph Grabowski CCAD ought to love CAM, but it doesn't. The whole point to us designing things is so that things can be made. And so it's kind of weird how much of CAD is hostile to... Read more →

The Black Swan Story Behind BricsCAD - Part II

Issue #1,028 As told by Ralph Grabowski [In part I last week, we learned about the first strand of history that involved Cyco Automation. Their breakthrough in directly reading DWG files lead to a series of black swan moments in... Read more →

The Black Swan Story Behind BricsCAD, pt. 1

Issue #1,027 As told by Ralph Grabowski BricsCAD did not develop in isolation. It is the result of the rich history of CAD, some of which was the result of a black-swan event. Black swans are events that are completely... Read more →

Open Design Alliance Q&A with ODA CEO Peterson

Issue #1,026 by Ralph Grabowski Following the Open Design Alliance's 2019 DevCon conference, the media peppered ODA CEO Neil Peterson with questions for 1.25 hours. Duomo cathedral in the center of Milan (all photography by Ralph Grabowski) - - -... Read more →

The Milan Conference: Open Design Alliance DevCon 2019

Issue #1,025 by Ralph Grabowski There are a few conferences that deal with the future of CAD, and there is just one that describes the immediate future. The Open Design Alliance’s annual event tells us -- and its thousand member... Read more →

Apex Unifies the Future of MSC Software

Issue #1,024 by Ralph Grabowski The most critical part of the MCAD workflow is the simulation phase. This is where the design makes or breaks it, before going on to be manufactured. Simulating breakage with software is tricky, because it... Read more →

SuperD Modeling from Boulder Graphics

Issue #1,023 by Ralph Grabowski with Alyn Rockwood Alyn Rockwood is the founder of Boulder Graphics and is its chief scientist. He told me about the unique modeling system that he calls SuperD -- a take-off from sub-d (short for... Read more →

About NBS - National Building Service

Issue #1,022 by Ralph Grabowski National Building Service was established by RIBA (Ryal Institute of British Architects), and last year it was partially sold to Lloyds Bank. It has 220 employees in England, Canada, and Australia, with 260,000 users. Its... Read more →

2019 Survey: The AutoCAD Workalike Market

Issue #1,021 by Ralph Grabowski AutoCAD is targeted by many workalike software vendors precisely because it is the most successful general 2D/3D CAD program of all time. With four, six, eight, twelve million users (no one really knows) of the... Read more →

Graphisoft Q&A on Project Everest

Issue #1,020 Graphisoft CEO Huw Roberts and vice president of marketing Ákos Pfemeter spent 1.5 hours answering questions from five CAD journalists that had been invited to the company's annual Key Customer Conference, this year in Las Vegas. Here is... Read more →

HxGNn Live 2019: The Las Vegas Conference

Issue #1,019 by Ralph Grabowski Data can save the world" was this year’s theme for Hexagon's 9th annual user conference. Introduced by pounding music offering doomsday lyrics amongst thick, artificial fog and seemingly hundreds of multi-colored spotlights, Hexagon ceo Ola... Read more →

Graphisoft's Key Customer Conference 2019 in Las Vegas

Issue #1,018 by Ralph Grabowski The Graphisoft Story is a remarkable one, begun by a man who in 1984 had an Apple ][ computer smuggled through the Iron Curtain into Hungary. Gábor Bojár had conceived of the idea of using... Read more →