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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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Will Computers Revolt? Preparing for the Future of Artificial Intelligence

Issue #1,000 This issue sponsored by BricsCAD V19 catapults forward in BIM, mechanical, and traditional CAD. You work across all disciplines with the common DWG environment. Discover the ABCs of BricsCAD at the forthcoming one-day Australasia BricsCAD Conference, 19 March... Read more →

Top News from the London and Berlin Conferences: The Best from Bricsys 2018, Graebert 2018

Issue #999 This issue sponsored by BricsCAD V19 catapults forward in BIM, mechanical, and traditional CAD. You work across all disciplines in the universal DWG environment. Discover the ABCs of BricsCAD at the forthcoming one-day Australasia BricsCAD Conference, 19 March... Read more →

Q&A with CEO Wilfried Graebert at the Berlin 2018 Annual Meeting

Issue #998 This issue sponsored by BricsCAD V19 catapults forward in BIM, mechanical, and traditional CAD. You work across all disciplines with the universal DWG environment. Discover the ABCs of BricsCAD at the upcoming one-day Australasia BricsCAD Conference, 19 March... Read more →

Q&A with CEO Erik de Keyser: On the acquisition of Bricsys by Hexagon

Issue #997 Transcribed by Ralph Grabowski The bombshell announcement at last month’s Bricsys 2018 London conference was that Bricsys had sold itself to Hexagon of Sweden, and is now part of the Hexagon PPM division. (Hexagon Power Plant Marine was... Read more →

Q&A With CEO Jesse Coors-Blankenship: On Frustum's Release of Generate for Windows

Issue #996 by Ralph Grabowski Frustum did something wrong last month. They moved their cloud-based design software, Generate, from the cloud to the desktop. That's not supposed to be happening in our "post-PC" era, as former Apple CEO Steve Jobs... Read more →

Q&A with CEO Dr Biplab Sarkar: On the Release of Vectorworks 2019

Issue #995 by Ralph Grabowski The Nemetschek Group is rather unusual as it owns the largest number of architectural CAD programs in the world: three -- as well as a dozen ancillary programs, such as for doing steel design and... Read more →

ODA Conference 2018, Part 3 A Tale of Three Vendors

Issue #994 by Ralph Grabowski During the Prague conference held by the Open Design Alliance, I met with several CAD vendors. Nanosoft: nanoCAD 10 and 3DScan Nanosoft began in Moscow a decade ago with this proposition: write an AutoCAD workalike... Read more →

ODA Conference 2018, Part 2: Q&A with Neil Peterson

Issue #993 Following the Open Design Alliance’s conference in Prague last month, Randall Newton of Consilia Vektor and Ralph Grabowski sat down with ODA president Neil Peterson for a Q&A. - - - Q: With your new logo and Web... Read more →

ODA Conference 2018, Part 1: Going Where No DWG Has Gone Before

Issue #929 by Ralph Grabowski As an organization that for many years concerned itself primarily with documenting the DWG format kept proprietary by Autodesk, the Open Design Alliance found time on its hands as Autodesk pulled back from making significant... Read more →

"Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup"

Issue #991 Book written by John Carreyrou; reviewed by Ralph Grabowski When I was a pre-teen kid, I was bored enough in the northern Canadian community in which I grew up to invent stuff. On paper I designed things like... Read more →

New From Epson: The SureColor T3170 Large-format Printer

Issue #990 reviewed by Ralph Grabowski When we think of large-format printers for CAD drawings, we tend to think of brand names like HP, Oce, and maybe Canon (which now owns Oce). Epson is also in the market, but is... Read more →

Siggraph is Back

Issue #989 by Ralph Grabowski The Siggraph computer graphics conference returned to Vancouver (Canada) this year, meaning it cost me only a half-tank of gas to attend it. Also returning are attendees, with roughly 18,000 making the trek to the... Read more →

Conspiracy: Peter Thiel, Hulk Hogan, Gawker, and the Anatomy of Intrigue

Issue #988 Book written by Ryan Holiday; reviewed by Ralph Grabowski During high school English, we bored teenagers were taught about three kinds of conflict presented by fiction: man vs nature, man vs man, and man vs himself. All three... Read more →

Graebert Makes Kudo Pervasive

Issue #987 by Ralph Grabowski with Cedric Desbordes CAD vendors have taken two approaches to browserCAD. A small number enthusiastically embraces it, while a larger number is limiting their involvement to online collaboration. It is, after all, a lot easier... Read more →

What's New in TurboCAD 2018

Issue #986 by Ralph Grabowski with Robert Berry It's been more than a year since I checked in with IMSI/Design. The company went through a change of ownership in the last couple of years, and so more programming and support... Read more →

Et Tu, Autodesk?

Issue #985 by Ralph Grabowski with Martyn Day The ceo of Stratasys resigned last month. The press release that reported the event was written in a neutral fashion. It gave no reason for the change at the top, but it... Read more →

All About ArchiCAD 22

Issue #984 by Ralph Grabowski with Eniko Pauko Every year, Graphisoft focuses on a specific area of ArchiCAD. For release 22, the company's programmers concentrated on making unlimited curtain wall designs, extending parametric modeling to elements like beams and columns,... Read more →

Siemens PLM Connection Americas 2018 (in Phoenix, at 108F)

Issue #983 by Ralph Grabowski So there we were in Phoenix, where the three-block walk along the deserted streets between the hotel and the conference center was about two blocks too long in the 42C-heat. We're in the opening keynote... Read more →

How LEDAS Does 3D On the Web

Issue #982 by Ralph Grabowski with Alexey Ershov LEDAS consists of a group of mathematicians and programmers from Russia who for nearly twenty years now have been creating some of the remarkable software used by CAD vendors. Much of their... Read more →

Alibre Lives

Issue #981 by Ralph Grabowski with Max Freeman Alibre Design was one of several new programs showcased by Microsoft to show off the power of the Internet. Does any of the following sound familiar? Alibre Design was a 3D parametric... Read more →