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Several companies in our field of CAD offer 3D search tools. If you need a certain size of compressor or washer, then 3D-search finds ones that are similar. The idea is to find look-alikes using hints like 3D geometry, 2D sketches, photographs, dimensions, colors, classifications, and text descriptions.
Paul Powers is ceo of Physna, and he has taken a different approach to 3D search. His company's claim is that it can take 3D data from any source -- CAD, AR, VR, scans, OBJ -- and convert the file data into mathematics that describes the geometry. The company offers two products, the commercial Physna and the free Thangs.
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Ralph Grabowski: What is the benefit of your algorithmic approach to 3D-search?
Paul Powers: We map the unique 3D polygonal structures of models, as well as every subpart and any direction of 3D, spatially. For instance, we know that the cap belongs to the water bottle, and where the cap resides. Our machine learning makes predictions on what the model might be called, like "bottle of water," even of the brand of water bottle based on its shape, such as Evian.
The data is stored in a MongoDB NoSQL database, and not in the models themselves.
Grabowski: How did you get the idea to use mathematics for 3D-search?
Powers: I have a background in international patent law, which uses algorithms to find stolen text, pictures, and so on, but there was none for 3D models. There is a need to know every possible relationship, like trying to find just the head of Mickey Mouse rather than the entire body (and vice versa).
Other geometric search tools rely on CAD sources and use entire models, so the cap on the water bottle would get lost. Translating into different formats to enable searching can also result in data loss.
The mathematical background comes from astrophysics, which I took for a year, just long enough to realize that the mathematics astronomers use to determine locations of stars relative to one other (e.g. using signatures and patterns specific to certain locations with the use of various data points ) could be used for 3D objects.
I never thought of using it for CAD at first, but then we were approached with a lot of use cases – over 300 so far -- and many of them involved engineers.
Grabowski: Do you have an API so that end users can use your technology?
Powers: End users can already use the functionality available in Physna’s enterprise version and in Thangs. We are also working on an API that will allow others to create additional use-cases.
Grabowski: How do you make money, and who funded you?
Powers: Through SaaS [software as a service]. We sell licenses of the enterprise version based on the number of users and number of models.
The Thangs site is free to use. It is our consumer-facing Web site that crawls the Web using our algorithm to search for 3D models. It has over a million of them now. https://www.thangs.com/
We have raised $8.9 million so far, and soon will have another announcement.
Grabowski: Where does the name Physna come from?
Powers: It comes from "physical DNA."
The user interface of the Thangs Web site
Trying Out Thangs
Thangs is a free site that lets you test out a simplified, consumer-level version of Physna’s algorithms at https://thangs.com. You can upload 3D models to search for, or to share with other people. It has over 50,000 members.
When I tried it out, I hit a point of confusion: the site offers two Upload buttons that do different things. One is for uploading models to the Thangs database, after which you and others can search for them. No search is involved.
The other Upload "button" is part of the search bar and is meant for visual searches: it's for uploading models like the one(s) you are looking for, and then Thangs is meant to return results. The files you upload through this button are not uploaded to the Thangs database, and so they are not searchable by others.
Thangs accepts file in the following formats up to 250MB each:
.3dxml
.CATPart
.dwg and .dxf
.iges and .igs
.ipt
.jt
.model
.par and .prt
.sab, .sat, and .sldprt
.step and .stp
.stl
.vda
.x_b and .x_t
.xcgm and .xml
Thangs offers unlimited storage, along with version control for collaboration, which I did not test. While the site boasts 1.1 million models, the most popular models on the site are organic mesh models more suitable to games and renderings. That’s because while the majority of models are industrial components from suppliers, they are less popular and so less obvious -- unless you search specifically for them. It searches models from users as well as publicly available ones on other sites that hold 3D models.
I tested Thangs with a 3D model of a motor from SKG Sweden, which makes models of its products available in multiple formats: STEP, Solidworks, SAT, Pro/Engineer, Parasolid, IGES, and 2D DWG.
Thangs scanning the content of a 3D model
I uploaded the model in SAT format, and then tested Thangs by uploading the same model in the other formats. Here are the results, along with the time it took to upload, scan, and search. Because of the efficiency and inefficiency of each format, file sizes ranged between 400KB and 3MB, and the polygon count between 900 and 23,000.
STEP (.step) -- 19 seconds; match found correctly
Solidworks (.sldprt) -- 9 secs; found incorrect results like a series of washers and other simple parts at other sites
SAT (.sat) -- 17 secs; match found correctly
Pro/Engineer (.prt.1) -- not accepted
Parasolid (.x_t) ---- 10 secs; found incorrect results like a series of washers and other simple parts at other sites
IGES (.igs) -- 49 secs; found no correct results but mostly found unrelated organic models at other sites, such as the left arm of a HE Barbarian.
DWG (2D views) -- I canceled the operation after waiting ten minutes for scanning to complete.
Out of the seven formats I tested, two returned correct results. Physna explains why: “The algorithm doesn’t just search for similar parts. It looks for all geometric relationships. It’s likely that these parts are able to be used inside of the part you uploaded. But Thangs is soon going to receive an enhancement that will make the meaning of these results clearer (like in Physna’s enterprise version) and show not only what is related, but exactly why, how and where.”
In the case of the HE Barbarian left arm, Physna says, “The results aren’t technically incorrect because a false positive isn’t mathematically possible, as the algorithm searches for geometric relationships, not just similar models. What you’re seeing is a partial match (some portion of the geometry is the same between the parts). The reason these results don’t make much sense is that Thangs uses a simplified version of Physna’s algorithms. We’re in the process of updating the algorithms, which include weighting to remove these results that aren’t helpful.”
For the failed DWG search, Physna reports that “2D<>3D search is not yet supported in Thangs. DWG isn’t a 3D file format, so while you can save the model in Thangs, the 3D<>3D search algorithm won’t work on it.”
In summary, Physna told me, “Thangs doesn’t yet contain the full algorithm set available in the enterprise version. as it uses a simplified version of Physna’s algorithms. We’re in the process of updating the algorithms. Thangs also doesn’t yet normalize the models to the same extent Physna’s enterprise version does. That is why you’re seeing differences between file types.”
MachineWorks releases Polygonica 3.0 SDK [software development kit], its component library for polygon mesh modeling with automatic determination of best-fit tolerance and zone-based remeshing.
CCE is pre-announcing Review Room, an add-on to its EnSuite Cloud online file viewer that will use peer-to-peer connections to review CAD files, and so avoid storing your proprietary files on remote third-party servers (aka ‘the cloud’). “This has never been done before,” says the company. It’s due to be released in a few weeks, so sign up through cadcam-e.com/EnSuite-Cloud/index.aspx.
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Also in pre-announcing mode is Siemens for the next release of NX coming out in December, with the highlight feature being MBD [model-based definitions]. It automates rules-based PMI [product and manufacturing information] through a software advisor that checks data. A demo video is posted at blogs.sw.siemens.com/nx-design/the-all-new-model-based-definition-is-coming-soon/.
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Here are some of the posts that appeared recently on my WorldCAD Access blog:
For some reason I stopped getting the newsletter around the beginning of October. When I tried to resubscribe I received a strange web page. In any event I would like to keep receiving the newsletter if possible.
- Mike
The editor replies: I switched my mass email provider from MailChimp (much too expensive for a free newsletter!) to SubStack, and so the old subscribe link no longer works. I will add you to the mailing list manually, and you can catch up on back issues at www.upfrontezine.com.
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I only just noticed, but you might want to remind subscribers to check their Junk or Spam folders if they seemingly are no longer getting upFront.eZine in their Inbox. Speaking from experience.
- Jim
Re: Readers Respond to Revit's Shared Parameters
Nice to see the great response to the Revit Shared Parameter exchange you published. Sometimes I think my suggestions just come from a very jaded place. The stress of managing BIM ended my career, which I may be not-so-secretly bitter about.
- Dave Edwards Dave Edwards Consulting
The editor replies: Some aspects of technology work great, but other areas are desperately bad, and so I fully appreciate you bringing them up!
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The issue with multiple sets of different BIM systems is without question a huge problem. My company is mostly involved in the Catia world for aerospace. That said, this same problem happened to aerospace many years ago. A perfect example of it is described in intuitivestories.com/airbus_and_trillion_dollar_engineering_error.html -- a trillion-dollar Airbus problem.
Here is how Boeing and Airbus -- the two largest airplane manufacturers in the world -- addressed the problem.
Boeing -- works under the AS9100 guidelines. As part of the guidelines, there is a specific AS9102 “First Article Inspection Report” form that must be submitted whenever you generate CAD data. Folks like inspectionxpert.com/fai/as9102 are common in this industry.
These processes have, of course, trickled down to most of their suppliers. Both Inspection Expert and Q-Checker are $10,000 products. With software this expensive, this should give you an idea of how serious this problem has become. We at CAD/CAM Services now offer checking with these software products as a service to customers who have no interest in spending so much on checking software just to make a part. And of course, we have to provide not just the reporting, but the fixing of that part or assembly to pass inspection.
Until BIM requires a version of something like this checking/certification program, BIM will continue to be a logistics nightmare. Stay safe.
- Scott Shuppert, president CAD/CAM Services
The editor replies: I think that buildingSmart and IFCs are supposed to (eventually) be the solution, but I don't see that happening in the foreseeable future. MCAD benefits from having giant manufacturing firms who can dictate standards. Building construction is far too dis-integrated for one standard to have a chance of ruling. When it comes to input from BIM vendors, Autodesk doesn't seem interested enough, and Nemetschek, while interested, is at this point not big enough.
Mr Shuppert replies: And therein lies the problem. Which is also why we, as a CAD service bureau, shy away from BIM work. It is pretty hard to make everybody happy.
Thank You, Readers
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Two years ago, Bricsys introduced Blockify, a command that converts identical 2D entities into one block with one click. This is useful for imported drawings and ones that were poorly drawn in two ways: makes drawing file sizes smaller, and makes them easier to edit: changing one block changes all instances of it in the drawing, like replacing all chairs in a drawing at once.
BricsCAD V21 automatically adds 2D and 3D constraints to make blocks parametric, and creates associative arrays when the modeler finds repetitive patterns of 2D entities. These can be edited in the BEdit environment, and seems to solve the painful problem of trying to figure out how to add parametrics to (dynamic) blocks.
Any parameter can now be geometry-driven. For instance, change the size of any part of a chair, and all connected items change appropriately.
Drawing Optimization
The new Optimize command fixes drawings by closing gaps and forcing lines horizontal/vertical/45-degrees within tolerances. This is handy for imported point clouds, which tend to have come up with lines that are rather shaky. As you change settings in the Optimize’s dialog box, the drawing updates in real time to show you which entities will be affected.
Deciding which lines get to be straightened-out
The Simplify command reduces the number of vertices in overly-verticed polylines, such from 350,000 to 450 vertices in the demo we were shown.
The CopyGuided command was added last year, and this year V21 adds MoveGuided, which heals related entities when, say, a door moved in a wall or a window is removed.
The Third Discipline: Civil Engineering
Once Bricsys established independence for its general CAD program, it branched out into verticals, specifically ones involving architectural and sheet metal design, with significant nods to 2D and 3D mechanical drawings. Over the last decade, Bricsys used advances in one area (say BIM) to advance other areas, such as in mechanical CAD. The leapfrogging is possible because Bricsys programs a single CAD package; it's much harder, for instance, for a Dassault to add a Catia function to a Solidworks.
Last year, Bricsys branched to another discipline, civil engineering. Well, it's not the broad range of civil engineering activities I know from my university days, but a narrower focus on terrain modeling and roadway design. Or, as Bricsys calls it, “visually-correct linear infrastructure modeling.”
This year's release allows users to map a 2D satellite photo onto a clipped 3D TIN (terrain) file, and then model in 3D on top of it. For roadway design, V21 adds spirals (needed for horizontal road curves) and parabolas (for vertical road curves). The new accuracy factor forces profiles to match existing groups, followed by optional manual edits with grips or with the Properties panel to manipulate stations, grades, elevations, and so on. There still is no input criteria, which for roads is design speed, which determines horizontal and vertical curvatures.
Cross-sections being applied to bridges and roadways
A “corridor” is a 3D cross-section that defines the elements of road and bridges (see figure above). BricsCAD can apply multiple corridor templates to make the road change along its length, such from road to bridge. There is no design analysis for pavements or bridge strengths.
V21 defines slopes for cuts and fills (embankments). Cuts and fills update automatically as users use grips to move the alignment horizontally and vertically. Missing is cut-and-fill balancing, which minimizes earth haulage and then adjusts the alignment to match.
Third-party developers provide some of the missing elements.
Point Cloud Processing
Two releases ago, Bricsys added the ability to import point cloud data, albeit indirectly. It converts common formats (.ptx, .pts, .las, and .rcp) in the background to its project format .vrm (Virtual Reality Model), which points to folders containing the point cloud files stored in an optimized format, .bpt (Bricsys Point Tree).
In V21, BricsCAD Lite can view point clouds added to drawings by a higher license. A new point cloud processing engine uses background processing and multi-threading to manipulate and navigate point clouds faster. Cropped sections of point clouds can be exported to .pts files.
These days, the tough task is turning the scatteredness of point clouds into the precision of 3D geometry. Those who lived through the raster-to-vector transformations of the late 1980s understand the challenge well. In v21, Bricsys takes the first step in generating 2D floor plans from point clouds through the new DetectFloor command. This is followed by the Optimize command to smooth out converted vector lines.
Point cloud data being converted to rooms
Other new point cloud-related commands do the following tasks:
Fit planar surface geometry to flat areas of point clouds
Fit lines to sections of point clouds
Generate volume sections on a floor-by-floor basis (regions of points with similar z coordinates)
BubbleViewer is a separate app running alongside BricsCAD for walking through point cloud scenes. You specify a variety of colorizations: there's natural colors, naturally, along with directional colors, (red and green are horizontal, blue is vertical -- same as the UCS icon), or showing distances from cloud points to your viewpoint. The idea is that you use the viewer to identify walls, thickness of walls and slabs, and so on.
Finally, there is a new VR Viewer for looking at 3D models directly. It reads the aforementioned VRM files.
Viewing a point cloud through the new VR viewing function in BricsCAD
BIM
Bricsys BIM product owner Tiemen Strobbe showed us what's new in his company's building information modeling add-on. Some 80% of BIM work is repetitive, according to Bricsys, and so the company is working on automating the steps. Semi-automation tools include QuickBuilding, Bimify, and Propagate. Mr Strobbe mentioned also using LISP and Python to automate design tasks and data visualization.
Of the three, the addition new to V21 is QuickBuilding. It converts 3D spaces and solids into BIM models with specified story heights. This is the initial implementation, os users can expect enhancements over time.
Copying and pasting geometry is improved through the Propagate and CopyGuided commands using the context of the drawing to paste the geometry correctly, such as lining up with walls. Related to this is the Bimify and AutoMatch combo of commands for automating the placement of repetitive elements.
Drawing Composition
BIM programs like BricsCAD do nearly all design work in 3D, but in the end it's 2D construction drawings that are still needed on-site. There are two ways to make these drawings: flatten 3D models or slice 2D views through them. No matter how it's done, the production of drawings is tedious (well, it's pretty exciting the first few times you do it), so there is a push by numerous CAD programs towards the semi-automation of drawings. BricsCAD V21 offers its version of automated 2D drawing generation, including tag placement and drawing styles, through its Project Browser.
Two-D views are stored in separate drawings, which are linked to the project model through sheet sets. Views are arranged automatically through Sheetset Setup, with them generated as a background process. When users reduce the number of views on a sheet, BricsCAD adds more sheets automatically to accommodate the overflow. Hundreds of sheets can be generated in minutes, according to Bricsys, although we did not see this in the demo.
More interesting to me was V21’s ability to link drawing representations to entity properties. The example we saw showed fire ratings of walls with appropriate colors. (See figure below) This is done through the new Drawing Composition panel, which also defines tags, such as for fire doors.
Fire ratings color coded into a generated drawing
Automatic design checking was mentioned, but not expanded upon. As construction detailing like dimensioning is still manual, this is to be added in the future.
Revit Editing
The hot topic these days is the importing and editing Revit files outside of Autodesk-supplied software, through an initiative of the Open Design Alliance. Here BricsCAD is no different: it imports RVT (Revit models) and RFA (Revit symbols) files as underlays or converted to editable entities, including importing selected entities from the Revit file.
V21 uses the Bimify command to turn imported (dumb) geometry into BIM elements by detecting what entities probably are, such as walls and slabs.
There was a whole whack of more info given to us on architectural modeling, but at this point I was getting cross-eyed from data overload. This two-part article is, after all, already close to three thousand words long.
I did perk up when version control was mentioned. How to have multiple users work on a single BIM model? With V21, Bricsys implemented GIT-based version control in which users check out a file locally from a server. It downloads only portions of models, and works online and offline. Currently in beta.
Mechanical Assembly Design
Bricsys mechanical product owner Dmitry Ushakov talked to us what is new on the mechanical side of BricsCAD. He showed us how V21 can convert a 3D solid model to sheet metal parts in under four minutes. “No one else can do this,” he said.
What’s new in V21’s sheet metal capabilities
With the online session getting close to four hours long, I found myself taking fewer and fewer notes. Sorry! You can read the entire what’s-new list for BricsCAD V21 at bricsys.com/common/releasenotes.jsp and view the summit online at youtu.be/VnxrUoffY7k.
What Ralph Grabowski Thinks
A Bricsys new-release event is assuredly an exercise in feature overload, but in a good way: you know the folks at the company take their software and customers seriously. Despite the cornucopia, I noticed a few things missing.
There was no mention of generative design, which is okay, because it appears to be losing its luster as users go from “Wow! A million different designs!” to “Oh no, a million different ugly designs.”
CEO Erik de Keyser did not make an appearance.
Two years after being acquired by Sweden's Hexagon, there are no new links to Hexagon software other than one announced a year ago with Leica (for importing scanned point clouds). The Scan-to-BIM consortium announced last year by HOK, Leica, and Bricsys hasn’t gained more members.
Hexagon offers a half-dozen (or more — it’s hard to count) analysis and CAM programs. Perhaps next year we will see links to analyze and output products designed in BricsCAD.
In the end, I consider Bricsys’ reliance on a single file format its strength, but its limited links to external programs something that needs to be addressed.
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Design Master’s 11th annual BIM and MEP survey is now on. The survey starts at surveymonkey.com/r/DCBXXKF. Questions include the use of collision detection and BIM itself in your office. You can read the results of the surveys from other years here: designmaster.biz/blog/2019/12/mep-bim-2019-survey-results/. One of the surprising results is that over the last decade, BIM appears to be used less, rather than more.
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Like all other CAD vendors, CadLine Kft is holding their ArchLine.XP user conference online. It runs for three days, beginning Nov 24. Unlike all other CAD vendors, presentations at ArchLine.XP Expo will be held in eleven languages. Sign up at archlinexp.com/events
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“Maybe ten years ago, innovation was all about electrifying mechanical systems. Today, it seems to rely on material science: what can we create that's lighter, stronger, conductive, responsive, or in some other way unique, as a product differentiator?” asks Monica Schnitger in talking about Siemens’ acquisition of Clugi of The Netherlands, which will add computational chemistry for multi-scale simulations. Price was not announced. Details at schnitgercorp.com/2020/11/02/siemens-adds-computational-chemistry-modeling-to-simcenter/.
Letters to the Editor
Re: Readers Respond to Revit's Shared Parameters
Some interesting discussions about the gap between BIM as a design tool and what is required with regard to modeling for manufacturing / fabrication / construction.
You are right that this gap exists, that it is the cause of significant commercial and process inefficiencies, and that it isn’t much helped by some of the technology platforms that are widely used (in my case, in the AEC environment).
My view, however, is that this is largely driven by disconnection in business relationships, not by technological issues. I can give an example: it is common in my field of construction for a designer to generate drawings and/or BIM models as an end-product, and for these to form an input for construction and fabrication teams. Steelwork fabricators, who have used 3D CAD and CAM platforms for many years, sometimes take the designer’s model and adapt it, but it’s still more common for them to build their own model, fit for their own purposes.
This is partly driven by contractual liabilities (nobody wants to be responsible for data that is not their business), and partly by self-interest. The fabricator is interested in things such as plate-cutting, weld distortion, and precamber, where they need to adapt their model to suit working methods over which they have power. The designer does not.
We have on at least one occasion broken free from this, and it was successful and rewarding. For the design of a pedestrian bridge on the Ordsall Chord project (Manchester UK), we (the structural engineers) created a digital model which specified the structure in full, including every single weld, nut, and bolt. For the first time in the UK, that was enough. We did not produce any of the normal design drawings. This process saved a month off the design delivery program, and also measurably reduced design costs; this is not just the designer’s claim, the contractor confirmed to us that these savings were real.
Architectural render of the completed Ordsall Chord
How was this possible? Firstly, we used the same software that the steel fabricator uses (Tekla Structures) instead of what we were using for most of our other designs on the project (Bentley AECOSim). This ensured they would get the level of detail they needed, in the format most useful to them. Secondly, the fabricator’s own modeling technicians helped us prepare the model. This gave the end users confidence in the quality of the model content, so that they could use it as the direct basis for any further (non-design) elements they needed to add.
The project and processes used on that occasion are described in detail in our paper (icevirtuallibrary.com/doi/full/10.1680/jbren.16.00012) freely available online. The technology to do things better is already here: what is required is the boldness to forge new, more collaborative contractual relationships in industries that lack vertical integration. The improvements in quality and the real financial savings that can result need to be set against the inevitable obstacles such as overly-restrictive digital standards compliance, to allow these obstacles to be set aside.
Brian Duguid, technical director Practice Leader for Bridges and Civil Structures, Mott MacDonald
Thank You, Readers
Thank you to readers donating towards the operation of upFront.eZine:
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Issue #1,073 | 9 November 2020 | The Business of CAD
by Ralph Grabowski
The problem in covering Bricsys' annual conference each year is the overwhelming amount information broadcast to attendees. Whereas some CAD vendors introduce a very few new functions each year, the much smaller Bricsys corporation generates hundreds of changes for its lone software program that handles general, mechanical, civil, and architectural drawings and models.
In other years, the info deluge was spread over two days; this year, over four hours. So, I'll report on a bunch of things that were announced, but not everything. You can view the recording at youtu.be/VnxrUoffY7k. For the official what's-new list, see the 31-page-long bricsys.com/common/releasenotes.jsp, which is updated with each point release.
Some 2,900 people watched the live event, about 6x more than attended in-person events of earlier years. Unlike many other CAD firms, Bricsys always runs their software demos live, with no pre-recorded interactions with the software.
Product specialist Chi-Yan demo’ing BricsCAD live with 2D and 3D mice
Global Licensing
Bricsys has a new tag line, “Connecting people and companies that transform CAD, BIM, and mechanical design of today.” The company always has emphasized its unified approach in using a single CAD program with a single file format in which to store drawings and models. The only translation customers need to perform is on files coming from non-DWG CAD programs.
This year, the emphasis in the keynote was on the global nature of their software licenses. This is an issue, because some CAD vendors limit use of the software to the country in which the license was purchased.
Chief operating officer Mark van den Bergh reminded us that BricsCAD does not have named-user licenses, nor does it limit license use to single countries, nor does it force customers onto subscriptions. “One license for planet earth,” said Mr van den Bergh. As well, an office license can be used at home.
A testimonial from Mazda spoke of the company’s appreciation for global licenses. “The fact that we can use the same licenses overseas is definitely a factor.” BricsCAD is used by Mazda for drawings of production lines, and the company expects to move BricsCAD from 2D to 3D.
BricsCAD in use at Mazda
Rejiggered BricsCAD Lineup
"Sometimes 2D is more powerful, sometimes 3D is more powerful," Mr van den Bergh said, introducing the rejiggered software lineup.
BricsCAD Lite ($560) replaces BricsCAD Standard, and is at the low end with 2D-only drafting. Lite includes open LISP, which Bricsys says is 5x to 100x faster than other versions of LISP. Lite has advanced tech like machine learning with targets, but lacks BRX and other APIs, and so it is limited as to which third-party add-ons it can run.
BricsCAD Pro ($960) combines the previous BricsCAD Pro and Platinum editions to offer full 2D/3D direct modeling with 2D/3D parametrics. It is the base needed on which to run Mechanical ($1,700) to assemblies, to access the Communicator ($500) file translator, and/or the BIM module ($1,800). Prices are for perpetual licenses and are in US$.
Differences between BricsCAD Pro and BricsCAD Mechanical
BricsCAD Ultimate ($2,000) carries on from before, combining all of Bricsys’ software in a single package.
BricsCAD Shape (free) for 3D modeling is still included with any BricsCAD download, even after the 30-day trial ends.
All interact with 24/7, the company's subscription-based online collaboration platform.
BricsCAD Cloud moves from being free in BricsCAD to being available only to customers who purchase an annual subscription. This is not surprising, given that CAD vendors don’t get to rent space on cloud servers for free.
Bricsys Collective is the new name for third-party add-ons, of which 350 are available through the online store.
What's New in BricsCAD V21
Some new features in the 21st release of BricsCAD are catch-ups with competitors, while other new functions leapfrog ahead of pretty much any other competitor.
Some of the catch-up commands include the SetByLayer command for changing any property of objects on layers. LayTrans maps layers in imported drawings to office standards. Three-D meshes can have their smoothness adjusted from 0 (none) to 5 (maximum), and can edit individual vertices and edges. CombineText groups single-line text into Mtext; properties of imported ArcText can be edited.
Other new functions are clever. History is recorded per-entity in the Properties panel, so you can go back to change your mind about changes to specific entities.
Copy Array places multiple copies at once as an array.
Importing SKP files turns SketchUp meshes into blocks so that they can be manipulated more easily; as well, SketchUp materials are imported and so can be used by BricsCAD.
Meshes from a SketchUp model imported as blocks, with attached materials
Externally-referenced drawings (xrefs) load in the background. When a drawing has many xrefs, you see them displayed one at a time as they load, as you work on other things.
Direct Modeling
Fillets and chamfers in direct modeling can have variable-radii curves and multi-angle chamfers. The manipulator lets us edit the curves and angles interactively.
Hold down Ctrl to push or pull during PushPull command. PushPull now works with constrained objects, such as interactively changing the size of a plate with several holes.
BricsCAD introduced L- and T-connections in an earlier release. If you have a bunch of pipes, valves, and Ts connected and you move one, the others move/stretch to compensate. V21 offers hotkeys to switch between connected and disconnected moves. Added to V21 is the ability to rotate connected elements
Pipes interactively being moved from where they intersect a column
We saw a demo of the roof of a building being rotated. When disconnected, the trusses and walls stayed in place. With a connected rotation, the trusses moved along with the roof, while the walls stretched automatically to meet the roof line. V21 also adds real-time previews of these movements.
Roof being rotated with connections turned off
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Next week we have for you part 2 of the Bricsys Design Summit 2020, covering updates to its civil engineering, mechanical design, and BIM modules.
And in Other News
PTC plans to release Creo 7.0 in the coming months, featuring the first Atlas-based add-on — cloud-based Generative Design Extension (GDX) using technology from the Frustum acquisition; GDX works also with Onshape. Other Atlas add-ons could take five to ten years to appear, such as a cloud-based version of Creo.
PTC CEO James Hepplemann noted that Onshape revenues grew 80% year-over-year, and “landed over 700 competitive displacements, the majority coming from SolidWorks.” Dassault Systemes has 49,800 companies using Solidworks.
PTC’s 2020 revenues were $1.46 billion, up 17% from the year before; next year, it expects to take in $1.55 - $1.6 billion. The company, however, sits on $1.0 billion in debt. www.ptc.com
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3D Systems is unloading all of its subtractive CAM software, selling Cimatron and GibbsCAM to the SigmaTEK Systems division of Battery Ventures for $65 million. Six years ago, 3D Systems paid $97 million to acquire Cimatron-GibbsCAM.
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This reminds me when we used colors in CAD to specify plotter pen numbers: In KeyCreator MfgCAD 2021, face colors on 3D models become MBD [model-based definitions] data to signify manufacturing tolerances and hole types.
Is there anyone providing CAD software that will work in a parallel computing environment?
- Roger Roberts, president-retired Mid-West CAD, Inc.
The editor replies: Some CAD vendors have implemented some basic functions in parallel computing, such as loading files and performing renderings, but none have the full CAD package, nor is it likely this will ever occur.
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Hope you are surviving well during these crazy times! I was intrigued to see a guest editorial in your newsletter. What is the process to submit a guest editorial?
- A. S.
The editor replies: “Guest editorial” refers to any article not written by me. They are usually ones with specialized topics that I think are of interest to my readers.
Thank You, Readers
Thank you to readers who donate towards the operation of upFront.eZine:
1SET Design Pty Ltd
Novedge LLC (small company donation)
To support upFront.eZine through PayPal.me, then I suggest the following amounts:
Issue #1,072 | 2 November 1020 | The Business of CAD
I work in the food service design industry. We design commercial food service facilities for restaurants, schools, hotels, and so on. Back in the 1980s, a group of forward-thinking food service designers developed a layering standard for AutoCAD, which we still use. Having a standard made our lives much easier.
There are over 400 manufacturers in our industry. A food service designer may use equipment from dozens of manufacturers in a kitchen design. We simply don’t have the time to edit Revit families from all these sources to work together in our Revit projects. So we applied the same thinking to Revit, and food service designers have been using a common Revit Shared Parameter file since 2010.
Our Shared Parameter file covers all the utilities that one may find in a kitchen: gas, water supply, voltages, drainage, and so on. By and large, it has been working very well. Now our group has expanded to develop these standards for international food service design. I’ll keep you posted on our progress.
- Truman Donoho Foodservice Equipment Symbols
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I don’t see how you can have BIM-to-CAM when there is insufficient resolution/fidelity in the BIM to start with. It’s easy to degrade resolution, but how do you add it?
- Robin Capper New Zealand
The editor replies: The idea is to have CAM-level details in the BIM model, which I think is referred to as LOD 5 (level of detail 5). This is the level at which screws are modeled.
The problem is how to get to LOD 5, as lighter models already overwhelm BIM hardware and software systems. So this is the gap that exists between doing the design and being able to manufacture it.
Martyn Day of AEC Magazine wrote about the BIM-can't-CAM problem, but I can't find that article; sorry! Traditional BIM vendors are making enough money from selling regular BIM that they haven't bothered fixing the CAM part. Autodesk, which went overboard on buying construction management software, doesn't have a way to get from Revit to the construction site. Bricsys proposes adding intimate details through "AI," where the software predicts the details needed, and then adds them automatically.
Mr Capper responds: I think the real issue is that BIM is often more ‘design intent’ than actually constructible. I thought Autodesk’s Quantum concept, demo’ed at AU a few years ago, was an interesting approach to that.
The detail modeler, say curtain wall fabricator, just pulled critical control points from the architect's model (live, and refreshed at agreed-to intervals) and served back as a lightweight placeholder. Seems to have ‘gone dark’; I wonder if it was abandoned or retreated into secret development?
The editor replies: It was abandoned after several years of development. It was known as Project Quantum and was specific to AEC. Autodesk is replacing it with the all-encompassing Project Plasma, and apparently will announce more at Autodesk University later this year.
The discussion of Revit and BIM are very interesting, even though it's totally different world than the mechanical one that I inhabit.
Occasionally, I read things that make me realize that the building construction world is intensely striving to achieve the level of documentation that is considered completely normal and routine in the manufacturing world. The problem is that they have to do it for a "product" that is more complex in terms of the number of different parts involved (generally) and, instead of being built in a single factory, with all components purchased by a single purchasing department, there are many, many companies involved, each with their own systems of part numbering, naming, modeling, purchasing, warehousing, issuing, inventorying, and accounting.
So they can look to the manufacturing world for some guidance, but no manufacturing system is going to stretch to fit the construction of a large building by fifty subcontractors.
The article noted that "The Shared Parameter GUID ensures each Shared Parameter in existence has its own unique 32-bit identifier number, which is the only thing Revit really cares about with any parameter you create."
This is called a "part number" in my world. And I have occasionally had to explain and convince small manufacturers that it's important to assign a unique number to every component they make. I can only imagine how hard it would be to convince everyone involved in a large building project, from the architect to the electrician, that having consistent names for things is essential.
Thanks for your continued insights into this world.
- Jess Davis, president Davis Precision Design, Inc.
The editor replies: You hit the nail on the head, to borrow a phrase from construction. As someone once put it, think of assembling an Boeing 747, but in a muddy field miles from the factory, and each one plane being made with a different set of plans.
The BIM software world has, in the last year, just started to notice that they have a great problem in failing to connect with construction, except experimentally. It is all well and good for industry critics to complain that construction has only progressed 1% in efficiency over the last couple of decades, but there can be no automation when there is no data to input into the automation.
Mr Davis responds: It's kind of fun to explain manufacturing to a carpenter.
"Yeah, that 2x4 you just cut and nailed in place? See, we would have a drawing for that."
"Why would I need a drawing to cut that?"
"Oh, you wouldn't cut it. A supplier would cut it, and you'd just have to find it in those two semi-loads of pallets that got unloaded during the last rainstorm. It'll be marked with a cardboard tag."
The editor replies: ROTFL
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Dave has an elegant solution to the parameter mess, although it would require some admin. Bizarrely, it is implemented for some items in that old, non-BIM product called AutoCAD Architecture, that in some ways is more sophisticated at managing BIM standards.
Revit has a similar concept in its CAD export maps (object keys to layer names), but AutoCAD Architecture's Layer Key system addresses the same problem. The list of AEC Objects is consistent, but there is no standardization across the industry for layers.
So an object 'DOOR' can be mapped to 'A-Door' in one key, or '32-Door' or 'Bld_Door' or whatever you assign in the different keys. Open a generic file; hit Remap; all the layers and properties update; start work. This means you have one template, one parameter in the library, potentially serving hundreds of client standards.
Using a key to build names has massive advantages, with the only real disadvantage of having to administer the keys:
It enforces company standards by allowing users to only select pre-set values when naming content. For Revit, imagine when creating parameters (to use Matt's example) you could only choose ‘Width’ as part of the parameter name, because the BIM standard has set it . This eliminates creative naming or typos ("witdth").
It would allow mapping of multiple values to your standard, so my ‘FurnLength = Desk Width | Width of desk | witdth’ in ‘foreign’ content or linked files. As an aside I only have Length (X), Depth (Y) and Height (Z) but no ‘Width’ in my shared parameters as I found this avoids confusion. If you want to have a ‘Width,’ it has to update the relevant X, Y, or Z shared parameter used for tracking object volumes. I can do that with our content, but not any foreign stuff.
It would allow you to have per-project or client Key Tables. If they are consistent with naming (and often they are consistently different), just link the content, apply the map, done.
I would not like a parameter creation standard or mapping key to control everything, but it should be able to manage consistent information crucial to information sharing and basic data entry (Width, not widTH, Witdh etc). In some ways the shared parameters do that, but still depend on users complying with a standard while making them!
The other thing is, and sorely lacking in Revit, Layer Keys -- like every other AEC Object, Display, Material and Property Set (Parameters) -- have both Style and Instance GUIDs and can be updated (from a standards file) automatically or with a prompt on first access, or manually any time. If the BIM Manager updates a key to reflect a client’s requirements or a change in standards, then every project will acquire that update when it’s next edited. So I wish Revit had that!
I even have found using Schedule Keys (combinations of parameters tied to a single selectable key value) for things like rooms, area, and space properties works very well in a Revit Project, but is challenging to standardize across multiple projects, even with third party tools.
For instance, I have a master Schedule Key in my Standards project, update it (add a value, or change some of the existing key sub-parameters), but then update the same key schedule in existing projects. It’s a basic requirement in using BIM for lifecycle management, not just build and run.
- Robin Caper
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Another excellent eZine from my man Ralph! A reader wrote, “What I proposed (many, many years ago) was a Linked Parameter Mapping Table.”
That’s a ‘no-brainer’! Any idiot could see that as the only solution for a changing world. I’ve said as much to Autodesk in the past, but my wishlist suggestions always fell on deaf bureaucratic-guarded investor pocketbooks.
It’s too late to fix the screw-up of data in the CAD world. The only way it will get fixed is if we impose upon ourselves a global CAD dictatorship! Cheers,
- Chris Cadman
The editor replies: Data exchange is a problem that stays problematic, even as brilliant programmers find solutions.
And in Other News
Hexagon reported total Q3 revenues of €940 million (US$1.1 billion) — flat both on organic and constant currency bases from a year ago, following five quarters of declines. Despite this, the company has so far this year made ten acquisitions, including a third line of CAM [computer-aided manufacturing] software through last week’s purchase of ESPRIT owner DP Technology.
Contact Software releases its PLM software Elements v15.5 as an LTS [long term support] edition, so that customers will receive support for years to come.
OnScale Solve’s cloud engineering simulation platform offers multi-physics solvers. The current version has mechanical, thermal, and coupled thermal-mechanical analyses; in the future, the site plans to add dynamic mechanical, nonlinear mechanics, thermal-fluid, fluid-structure interactions, and acoustic analysis.
The company is offering free private accounts to anyone of 500 core-hours/year. The software runs on its own at onscale.com, as well as inside Onshape.
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Here are some of the posts that appeared recently on my WorldCAD Access blog:
Parallelism is where the computer runs two or more pieces of computer code at the same time on CPUs and/or GPUs. Nearly all CPUs sport multiple cores (the equivalent of two or more CPUs in a single chip) and handle multiple threads (more than one software operation at a time). GPUs are the graphics boards in our computers, and they commonly boast thousands of tiny CPUs, huge amounts of on-board data storage, and high data speeds.
Parallel operations on CPUs in CAD are limited to loading files and regenerating drawings, for the most part. In GPUs, parallel operations are useful for speeding up predictable actions like renderings and finite element analyses. Most of what we do in CAD cannot, however, be predicted by software. When we, for instance, start drawing a 3D solid cylinder, the software has no idea what step we take next -- specify the radius, drag the height, switch to a mesh model, specify an angle... And so all CAD software for the most part is single-threaded, running on a single-core.
Should someone make headway in CAD, then this is an important advance for our industry, because then our favorite software will run much faster. Roman Lygin heads up CAD Exchanger, and he talked with me about how his team works with parallelism in their software.
- Ralph Grabowski, editor
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Indeed, parallelism in CAD is tough. There are two important issues here.
Firstly, parallelism is challenging for the ordinary software developer. And the truth is that not every developer on the team should be involved in parallelism implementation. The entry barrier is quite high and it is best to have skilled people to do it.
Secondly, bringing parallelism to CAD is especially difficult due to CAD-specific challenges.
Parallelism requires good understanding of lower-level architecture (CPU and memory, processes and threads) as well as parallelism-specific issues, such as data races, work imbalance, and associated overhead.
Truth to be told, I did not see decent GPU-parallelism coming to CAD, except in the limited case of triangulation of huge 3D models, where the overhead of data transfers between RAM and GPU memory is offset by speed-ups due to the massive parallelism made possible by the GPU. The problem is that GPU parallelism is vulnerable to branching (such as through if/else statements), which is very common in CAD. I believe that CPU parallelism has a greater potential for CAD, and so let's set aside the GPU to focus on the CPU.
CPU parallelism can be viewed as a three-level pie, a metaphor I first heard from Arch Robison, former Intel senior principal engineer and the first architect of Intel Thread Building Blocks, the C++ library for parallel computing.
The three levels are as follows:
1. Multi-process parallelism. Usually MPI-enabled [message passing interface], the program runs in independent processes, with instances communicating between one another. Communication can be via shared memory when running on the same computer, or through a network when running on a cluster.
2. Multi-threading. Each process works through multiple threads that share data in the same (i.e. shared) memory. This applies to multi-core CPUs and multi-CPU workstations.
3. SIMD (Single Instruction, Multiple Data). Thanks to long CPU registers, one arithmetic command can be applied simultaneously to several data items, such as two or four doubles [8 bytes each].
Multi-process parallelism (approach #1) can probably be applied reasonably well to processing huge assemblies, when the entire assembly simply cannot fit into a single process memory. We have never experimented with that, but we have seen our clients trying to achieve it with our APIs, and it made sense. You still have to apply to a lot of intelligence to achieve efficient scalability and reduce overhead, as assemblies can be very imbalanced internally.
In CAD, the greatest potential lies in working with a multi-threaded approach (approach #2), in most cases and when working with medium to large models. This is where we apply parallelism the most.
Approach #3 can be applied quite efficiently to NURBS [non-uniform rational B- splines] evaluation. In 2013, I wrote a paper “Applying Vectorization Techniques for B-Spline Surface Evaluation” (see figure 1) that found the local speed-up was 15x or more, thanks to applying FMA [fused multiply-add] instructions in most recent CPUs of that time.
Figure 1: From the paper, the function for determining surface point coordinates
CAD-specific challenges manifest themselves through several cases, especially the following ones:
Data structures with strong interdependence. For instance, a b-rep [boundary representation] graph has one shell referring to multiple faces. Each face refers to an edge shared by two faces (in a closed-manifold solid body). Each vertex can be shared by multiple edges, and so on. To efficiently process such a structure, you have to take care of proper data access synchronization to prevent data races, which can cause invalid executions and make it hard to trace bugs.
But if you do this naively by just applying a typical mutex [mutually exclusive flag], then you can easily kill all scalability because each fine-grain access to a vertex, an edge, and so on will be mutex-protected, incurring significant overhead -- which you don't have in pure serial code. [A mutex is a gatekeeper that allows one thread in but blocks access to the others.]
Data imbalance. In a typical assembly, you likely have parts with distinct complexity, such as a bolt being different from an impeller. Inside each part, you can have very different geometries, such as planar and NURB surfaces. Computation complexities (e.g. a 3D point from UV parameters) can be distinct in several orders of magnitude. So, again you cannot simply divide the work between n threads and expect good parallelism. You end up with pathological imbalances, with one unlucky thread crunching a big chunk of data, while the others sit idle.
We address these challenges efficiently by restructuring the data to reduce/avoid interdependence, and by applying work-stealing vs. work-sharing paradigms. We also heavily exploit nested parallelism, such as across parts in an assembly, across bodies in a part, and across faces in a body. Imagine a thread working on a first part of a thousand NURBS surfaces in one sub-assembly, while three other threads are processing hundreds of parts of twenty other sub-assemblies, with nesting.
This allows us to scale up 8x or more threads easily on typical medium-to-large models. Of course, the larger the model, the farther the algorithms can scale. In CAD Exchanger, these techniques are implemented in the core architecture, and most our converters take advantage of that.
But the effect strongly depends on the capabilities of the file formats themselves. In STL, there is essentially no parallelism, as the format does not allow for anything except a flat list of triangles. In JT, by contrast, parallelism is leveraged very efficiently.
In addition to conversion procedures, we apply parallelism in triangulations and organizing visualization pipelines by asynchronously loading/converting the data and gradually displaying the complex models. This video demonstrates the effect. We also apply a lot of parallelism tricks in I/O [input/output], reaching a great speed-up and efficient scalability.
Q&A
Ralph Grabowski: When customers license your firm's SDK, what kinds of projects do they use it for?
On-demand manufacturing and in particular cost estimations
3D Web apps
Grabowski: You mentioned that CAD Exchanger is more than a converter or viewer. What other functions does it perform?
Lygin: It imports/exports assembly hierarchies, b-rep and mesh geometries, meta-data, and PMI [product manufacturing information]. The SDK and our other developer tools also offer:
Measurements/computations of bounding boxes, surface areas, volumes, and so on
Visualization in multiple display modes, with interactive selection/hover, and so on
Direct Unity integration in run-time
Manufacturing-related algorithms, such as for CNC [computer numerically controlled] machining feature recognition of milled surfaces, drilled holes, countersinks; sheet metal unfolding, and so on
Advanced meshers for FEA [finite element analysis]
Web toolkit for in-browser visualization
Cloud-based conversion API [application programming interface]
Model simplification through b-rep shrink-wrapping, internal body removal, and so on, along with mesh decimation by factor 100x and more; see figure 2
Figure 2: CAD Exchanger reducing meshes by 99%
Grabowski: You support five native file formats -- Solidworks, NX, Creo, Catia V5, and DWG. Why did you choose these ones?
Lygin: Based on the general market and particular customers' demands. We currently support 20+ formats, with three just released and more underway. All the converters are based on common-core architecture and design principles, so the converters can leverage scalable parallelism on multi-core architectures.
Grabowski: Do you write your own translators, or do you license them from other developers?
Lygin: All translators are our own, except for a proprietary Autodesk FBX SDK to parse/format FBX and related formats. Other than that, CAD Exchanger does not depend on any proprietary technologies as we own entire technology stack for CAD conversion. We certainly use several open source libraries, though.
Grabowski: Has the coronavirus benefited or hindered your company's operations?
Lygin: YTD [year to date] our product revenue has grown strongly, on par with previous years. In the early weeks of coronavirus, we did notice some cautiousness in customers' orders, as some orders were temporarily put on hold, but in the following weeks things got back to normal.
I believe we offer excellent value to price and our customers appreciate that. We added many Fortune 500 companies to our customer list.
In operations, the team moved to and continue working remotely most of the time. We are now revisiting our lease to reduce the occupancy given the ongoing remote working mode.
[Roman Lygin spent ten years at Intel working in the software division that develops Intel Parallel Studio and Intel Cluster Studio, both developer suites for parallel programming. For the last five years at Intel, he managed engineering teams developing Intel TBB, OpenMP, and MPI libraries. He is the founder of CAD Exchanger. Parallel computing has become his second professional passion, after CAD data exchange.]
== 3D Conversion of Ultra-Massive 3D Models via DWF-3D & Okino's PolyTrans|CAD ==
One of the most refined aspects of Okino's PolyTrans|CAD software is in transforming ultra-massive MCAD models of oil and gas rigs, LNG processing plants, 3D factories, and other unwieldy datasets into Cinema-4D, 3ds Max, Maya, and Unity (among others).
What often takes days using blindly incorrect methods takes minutes or an hour with Okino's well-defined optimization and compression methods using its DWF-3D conversion system.
Popular CAD data sources include SolidWorks, ProE/Creo, Inventor, AutoCAD, Revit, Navisworks, DGN, IGES, STEP, Parasolid, and JT. DCC data sources are Cinema-4D, 3ds Max, Maya, FBX/Collada, and many more.
Perfected over three decades, we know 3D data translation intimately, providing you with highly personalized solutions, education, and communication.
Bricsys announces the new release of BricsCAD v21 online tomorrow, 27 Oct. I'm expecting to see the company expand its offerings in direct modeling with BIM and MCAD.
Heads up as Graebert breaks up their two-day in-person new-release event to two online events:
neXt is a 30-minute what's-going-to-be-new Webinar on Dec 1 (or Dec 2 or 3, depending on your residential continent)
ARES 2022 launch event is in April
You read correctly: Grabert is skipping a version number, going from ARES 2020 to 2022. Save the date, as the registration link is not yet live.
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The CAD software business tends to be recession-proof, with sales going up in good times (people looking to spend money) and up in bad times (people looking to save money).
But this year the world's tiniest living object felled the world's largest CAD company, as Dassault Systemes’ Q3 license revenues fell 15% and the company lowered expectations for the year, as it expects license revenues to fall 19-20% -- reduced more from July's prediction of a 16-18% fall.
Now, Dassault gets revenues from more than just licenses, and so overall organic revenues [revenues excluding recent acquisitions] fell a more modest 3%, and stalwarts like Solidworks were even up 5% on the quarter.
Dave Edwards: Even with a common file format, things are nearly impossible without a common data format or at least common data naming.
Case in point: I hand my architectural model to a furnishing consultant and to a medical planner. They use their own developed libraries of content; each could have data fields for the same information using different names. Once I receive the model back, how do I then combine the fields to do scheduling and cost analysis.
Matt Stachoni: Using Revit? It's relatively easy. Furniture and medical equipment consultants/vendors often use Revit family libraries from the manufacturers of the products they sell. Any manufacturer who develops a bespoke content library for professional use will likely implement their custom data as a series of Shared Parameters within the families.
Shared Parameters are designed to be shared between multiple projects and families, scheduled, filtered, exported to ODBC, appear in tags, and so on, so standardization is a key planning item. Within a given vendor library, the Shared Parameters should be the same, so you should not have one furniture family with a "Desk Width" parameter and another with a "Width of Desk" or "Desk is This Many Inches Wide" parameter or other such nonsense.
Disclaimer: I'm not guaranteeing anything, obviously. Revit users are just as capable as AutoCAD users of doing horrible, horrible things, but in this case it's actually more work to do it wrong. Custom family parameters which are not Shared cannot be scheduled or used in tags, so it's in their best interest to use standardized Shared Parameters just to get their work done.
You should be able to simply link the furniture model into your architectural model and create a schedule of furniture/equipment, and have those proprietary Shared Parameters exposed in the schedule creation dialog box. Just be sure to check the "Include elements in links" box at the bottom of the Fields tab. You can also combine parameters to appear in a single cell of a schedule as well.
Of course, there is no standardization between manufacturers, so if you have three different furniture manufacturers on a job you could end up with the "Desk Width" / "Width of Desk" / "Desk is This Many Inches Wide" nightmare.
You cannot rename Shared Parameters within a project, but you can rename parameters (fields) to a standard name in the schedules, so you may have to create separate schedules per manufacturer. You could export the schedules to Excel and combine them there to create a master, and/or use Dynamo to perform some home-brewed hocus-pocus to get the results you need.
Dave Edwards: Thanks for the response. I was familiar with most of those workarounds, but they can be a pain. And during my time as a BIM Manager, they weren't all available (such as combining fields in a Schedule).
Using a single set of Shared Parameters by multiple firms often never has the chance to happen because-- shared with whom? If you're a consultant working with many architects, which set of Shared Parameters to do you use to create yours with? As in your example, having no naming standard can be horrible to overcome and I ran into that often.
What I proposed (many, many years ago) was a Linked Parameter Mapping Table. You could assign a table which mapped the names of Parameters to a set of standard names when it was attached any file you had linked into your project. This would require a bit of setup, but could then be used on multiple projects with the same consultant in the future. Schedules using Libraries created with a divergent set of Parameters could be created using standard Revit procedures, etc. Not a great solution, but one which wouldn't require Libraries to have been built (or rebuilt) with the same Shared Parameters or any external data manipulation.
Matt Stachoni: Yeah, combining fields in a schedule is fairly new, and of course there's always Dynamo for stuff Revit doesn't do out of the box if you have the 3,024 hours to learn it.
But there's no compelling reason to expect anyone's Shared Parameters name will match anyone else's name. Unless they came from the same Shared Parameters file definition, two parameters from different projects (even with the same name) are completely different parameters from Revit's standpoint, and you cannot ever create a schedule with such parameters that would appear in the same column. That's not how Revit's parameter subsystem works.
Remember that the Family Editor environment is completely outside of the Revit Project environment, and the two do not talk to each other. The term Shared Parameter doesn't imply anything beyond the ability for that parameter to work in families, including tags, and be exposed in the project environment for scheduling. That's it. It has nothing to do with what company you belong to or your business relationship with anyone else.
As a furniture manufacturer or consultant working with many architects, the only Shared Parameters I'm worried about are the ones I need to create for my families. I may or may not use an internal standard naming system, but that's just to make my life easier.
Family Parameters that you define in the Family Editor cannot be exposed to the project as a whole, except from within the family's Type Parameters palette/dialog or as instance parameters you can view/edit in the Properties Palette. You cannot schedule a Family Parameter or include it in a tag, because neither the schedule nor the tag family knows what you are talking about.
Likewise, you can assign a Project Parameter to a category, which is then present in every element instance within that category, but only inside of the project environment. For example, if you add a Project parameter called "Door Panel Type" to the Doors category, you can then add data to it when you select any door, as well as schedule it (because the project understands that parameter), but the parameter does not appear in the family editor, nor can you add that parameter to a tag family because, as with Family Parameters, Revit doesn't know what you are talking about outside of the project.
Shared Parameters bridge that gap. When you define a Shared Parameter in the Shared Parameters dialog, it is best to think of it as essentially defining a dictionary entry. The Shared Parameters File contains all of the SP "definitions" each of which contain a few pertinent pieces of information:
·The Revit GUID [globally unique identifier]
·The parameter name
· Its data type
·Optional description
·And so on
The Shared Parameter GUID ensures each Shared Parameter in existence has its own unique 32-bit identifier number, which is the only thing Revit really cares about with any parameter you create. That's how you can create a hundred valid Shared Parameters with the same name, data type, description, and so on; Revit is only ever concerned with the GUID and the name doesn't matter.
·When you add a Shared Parameter to a component family, you pull in the GUID information so it understands the parameter fully.
·When you create a tag for that component, you also pull in the same Shared Parameter data (i.e. GUID) so both the tag and the family are able to reference exactly the same information.
·When you bring the family into the project, the Shared Parameter comes along for the ride and is exposed to the project, and every case of this Shared Parameter has the same GUID no matter the context, which is what Revit needs and is how you can schedule and tag it.
There is nothing special about the Shared Parameters file itself, except that it stores the complete list of Shared Parameter definitions you typically use in your projects. Shared Parameters are a one-way street from the Shared Parameters file to the project or family.
Changes to the Shared Parameters file (the "definitions") do not update themselves in the project or families, so you would need to get it right the first time, or spend lots of hours redefining the parameter in every family you previously created (one argument for organizing and standardizing Shared Parameters when creating a manufacturer library _before_ you model anything). You can also delete the Shared Parameters file, then go to Shared Parameters and export every Shared Parameter in your project or family out to a new file which is one way to get foreign Shared Parameters into your content.
Thus, naming standards may be nice to have but aren't really required for the end user. A manufacturer's standard convention may be to prefix all of their Shared Parameters with a 2-3 letter prefix, e.g. "ES-" for Global Industry's "Evolve Systems" line, which identifies those Shared Parameters as their's to the uninitiated.
As long as you can keep the manufacturer's parameters differentiated from one another (so you aren't dealing with multiple copies of the same parameter name), you should be OK. But expecting every manufacturer to use one standard would be ridiculous and unworkable, and in the end it's simply not required anyway. The only use case I could see is where you want to schedule all of the furniture and want the same set of parameter names to be used for size, cost, and so on. But like I said, if you filter your schedules by manufacturer and modify the field header text, you are 99.9% there without any Dynamo gizmodic jiggerwaddling.
Alternatively, you could create a single schedule that has everyone's pricing parameter fields (which are all different), and group everyone's price parameters under a single "COST" heading and change each manufacturer's pricing parameter header name to the manufacturer's name.
- - -
Dave Edwards heads up Dave Edwards Consulting, while Matt Stachoni is BIM Manager at Tutor Perini Building.
And in Other News
Here are some of the posts that appeared on our WorldCAD Access blog recently:
I read your reader's comment about the Generic CADD ebook and your reply, and realized I'm still earning a few dollars from my 2003 book on AutoLISP and the 2011 update. That buys me a cup of coffee every month, and I love coffee.
To whomever is purchasing my Kindle books: thank you! I don't know if Autodesk will ever invest in LISP again, but it was fun while they did.
- David Stein
The editor replies: It is helpful when an AutoCAD function doesn't change. My biggest selling ebook was on dynamic blocks, which haven't changed in a decade. Today, I do bespoke ebooks, where a CAD company pays me a lump sum to write a book specific to them.
Mr Stein responds: I wasn't aware that was even a thing. That makes sense, from a marketing aspect. Nice!
In constructech we see change, possibilities for efficiency, and an explosion of hype. The core issue with "twins" is the core challenge of tech in construction: understanding the difference between physical reality and the data that describes it.
If I create a full-scale animotronic version of myself (a la Disney or 19th century automatons) is that my "twin"?
I am looking for ways of reading or writing a Revit file formats. Could you please provide any information regarding the above and if there is any documentation available?
To date, the read side is well implemented, the write side is a more difficult project and is only partially available. Note that this is for writing your own software. If you don't want to do that, then consider a CAD program that reads RVT files, such as BricsCAD V21 (due out end of October), ARES 2020, and other programs that have implemented RVT-read
Let me add an interesting, contemporary twist to this problem. As has been much described in these comments, my Logitech M705 started misbehaving and became almost impossible to use. Changed the batteries to no avail.
Decided to Google the problem and found this thread as a result. After reading all the original post and subsequent comments, I decided to try the USB extender cord. While preparing to do so, realized I had installed a Cam Link 4K [for connecting cameras live to computers] in the USB port adjacent to the Logitech receiver. Unplugging the Cam Link, instantly the mouse resumed its normal behavior with no problems. Reinstalled the Cam Link and the mouse's erratic behavior immediately returned.
I moved the Cam Link device to another USB port away from the Logitech receiver. Problem solved!
- Ed (via WorldCAD Access)
- - -
My Logitech MX Master 2s started to act sporadic on my Macbook Pro. Instead of continuing to use the unifying receiver and/or extension cables, I merely went to the Mouse preferences and hooked it up as a bluetooth mouse.
Now it is working fine, and I have a spare useless receiver in a drawer.
- Scott Duchin (via WorldCAD Access)
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Recently, generative design entered the interest of the AEC industry mainstream when it was included in Revit 2021 as a new feature. In this article, I explore the various challenges and opportunities offered by this way of working -- many of which aren't often marketed openly.
Any given design process we engage in typically involves a myriad of interconnected variables, whether they be compliance-driven or simply personal preferences. Capturing all of this in a code-based workflow can be challenging, if not impossible (at least to the time-frames we work within). Long story, short: generative design is difficult.
Many industries have been benefiting from generative design for many years now (such as medical research and industrial design), however this is typically from a pure optimization perspective. Usually the generative goals are not focused on aesthetic appeal, a much harder aspect of a building to objectively measure. Generative outcomes are often quite 'ugly’; as evidence, just check out this study by Fusion 360's optimization of the Golden Gate bridge. See figure 1.
Figure 1. A bridge not even a mother could love (image source engineering.com)
To further understand how difficult it has been for the AEC mainstream to embrace generative design, we only need look at the fact that there have been AEC-relevant tools (like Grasshopper) able to work in a generative manner for at least a decade now. Will another tool entering the industry change this, or are we simply witnessing a hype cycle?
Barriers to Implementation
Generative design faces barriers to realized success. The primary one is probably perceived return-on-investment (ROI). If a generative study cannot save time or money in a provable manner, it is difficult to take it beyond a curiosity.
One way to combat this is to develop generative tools that can assist on a wide variety of projects, but in this case we encounter another issue: generative outcomes are often overly simplified and cannot handle later exceptions to their predefined rules.
Some companies have successfully developed generative tools for their own internal use, some prominent examples being the dashboards of NBBJ Digital (see figure 2), or Gensler's forays into modular building generation. In both cases, the setup and management of these systems require a significant investment in terms of time, maintenance, and staffing to generate a significant return on investment.
Figure 2: Example of digital dashboard set up by NBBJ to package generative and feasibility studies (image source nbbj.com/about/digital-practice/)
AEC firms are not usually known for taking such deep dives into the fiscally unknown, and so examples like these have proven this is usually the only way to get started.
Generative Design LT
It is worth noting that nearly all major firms investing in generative design are not using the newly introduced tool in Revit to make their studies, and I expect they never will. Whilst the newly added tool is a welcome addition to the collection of 'nobs and whistles' progressively being grafted onto Revit, I believe its true benefit is simply introducing the concept of generative design to the unaware. From here, I expect most will move to other, more fit-for-purpose platforms once they encounter some limitations.
The primary limitation of Revit's Generative Design tool is that it relies on its geometry engine, as well as Dynamo (Autodesk’s computational design software for BIM), for its execution. No matter how smitten users may be with Revit, few will defend the speed and ease of using it to generate complex geometric forms that a generative study would typically rely upon.
Historically, AEC users have leveraged Rhino 3D and its scripting environment Grasshopper to produce generative tools and studies. Such add-ons as Galapagos evolutionary solver (integrated since v5), Wallacei multi-objective optimization engine, and Octopus parametric problem solver provide a wide variety of methods by which to create complex and meaningful studies, further enhanced by analytical add-ons, such as Ladybug weather tools. The Human UI add-on also provides the ability to flexibly design custom user interfaces for Grasshopper, such as the one previously shown by NBBJ.
In comparison, the Generative Design tool in Revit has a restricted UI, as well as three pre-defined methods of undertaking and filtering study results -- limited potential, with the trade-off of greater ease of use. The types of studies used to market the Generative Design tool must also be scrutinized: a furniture layout and the optimization of three boxes. One could argue that these are telling of the tool’s self-aware nature of its inherent limitations.
Let us imagine we are designing a simple single story residential dwelling. The script we will be using to undertake the generative study in this case looks a bit like figure 3:
Figure 3: Script for a simple study
All generative studies rely on the measurement-of-fitness for numerical goals. These goals come in many forms, but ultimately they will be the key to defining how we develop and review our study – the end justifies the means. Such goals we may wish to measure are the following:
Space planning fitness
Maximizing areas
Minimizing areas
In the case of our study, we will focus on measuring four concurrent goals:
Maximizing living room area
Maximizing back yard area
Minimizing front yard area
Minimizing corridor area
It is important to note that our script uses a predefined spatial layout; for example, the master bedroom is always at the front of the house. Whilst we will allow a range of flexibility to the sizes of rooms in the generated layout, we will not give the script the ability to rearrange these spaces at will. Such a change to our study would, at the very least, double the complexity of how our study is conducted and built.
Establishing Initial Constraints
Before we even begin the design and layout process, we have to contend with the following development constraints that are beyond our control:
Height restrictions
Front, rear, and side setbacks
Maximum and minimum areas
Other LEP/DCP [Australian Local Environmental Plan / Development Control Plan] requirements
These must all be captured in an initial portion of a generative design study in a scripted form. In the case of our hypothetical study this is achieved by the following steps:
Capturing site controls as scripted inputs
Beginning from a start point (origin)
Establishing a site boundary
Establishing a compliant building outline
The script portion that handles this part of our study looks like this:
Figure 4: All this just to create a box and a line
If this already looks too complex for your liking, this is just the tip of the iceberg.
Introducing the House Contents
Once the boundaries of the study are established, the remainder of the script deals with working inwards from these boundaries to script the layout of our house. Note that we cannot simply model our house like we would in Revit; a generative study requires a fully coded workflow.
The requirement of coding a solution is often the main stumbling point for newcomers to generative design. They only see what marketing shows, which is a nice end product and a clean user interface: how complex can it really be? Very complex, it turns out.
By working inwards from our building boundary and corner points, we can code all the rooms into our study as rectangles that report their areas. From this, we can generate what is leftover (the living area). Note that we are also introducing some optional criteria:
The alfresco [outdoor covered living area] at the rear can be combined with the living space
The third room on the right (a media room adjacent to bedrooms 2 and 3) can be omitted. See figure 5.
Figure 5: Well, that got a bit more complex!
As before, if the above is looking too complex, then I have some bad news for you: we are not done yet. We still need to visualize our results and measure our goals.
Finishing the Study
Whilst so far we have been viewing our study in coded format, we must construct a visually discernible outcome for the end of our study. We could simply report back the numerical results; most users, however, require visual aids to interpret the numerical goals/fitness. See figure 6.
Figure 6: Looking a bit more like a house
Note that everything is still contained within Dynamo, the coding environment. Our study does not necessarily generate a house in Revit with walls, floors, rooms, and so on. This would require an additional 'back-end' that would likely need the same amount of coding.
This leads to a common narrative I try to promote to others: we are not typically setting up a workflow to automate the model setup process. The real value is derived from using the tools as planning and decision-making aids. If you simply want an automated house layout, send some money overseas to an outsourcing firm; you will save time and money vs. attempting to automate your design process.
Running and Reviewing the Study
Once we have set up the Dynamo script (and defined the inputs/outputs), we can export the study to the Generative Design tool itself. See figure 7. This process will also capture any graph dependencies, such as custom packages that may be involved in the study. (In our case, we are using none.) Note that if you are using the educational version of Revit 2021, you will only be able to run your study from within Dynamo itself.
Figure 7: The Export (left) and Define Study (right) dialogues
The tool presents us with a few methods to generate our study, each supporting a different means of generating and reviewing its results:
In the case of Randomize, our inputs are generated at random and we will see every result generated.
If we use Optimize, Revit instead creates sub-studies from a population size; for example, in the above study we will see the most successful result of ten studies, with 20 sub-studies undertaken for each.
If we use Cross Product, Revit exhausts every possible combination the study can produce.
(An important type of study that is not offered by the tool is an Evolutionary method. In this case, each iteration of the study takes results from the previous population to generate the next, essentially forming an evolution that optimizes itself progressively until an ideal solution is reached.)
Once the study is undertaken, we can review and filter the results. In the case of the above study, I have sorted results so that I see first the studies which generated the most living room area. See figure 8. As we would logically expect, the alfresco is not present in any of these outcomes. (Which lends to the question: did we even need to include it in the first place?)
Figure 8: Results of the generative study
I also applied a filter on the third-to-last goal (GOAL_AreaLiving) to isolate a smaller sub-set of results for detailed review. By selecting one of these, I can review the inputs that generated the successful outcome, which I then can use to inform my actual design.
(In the bottom right of figure 8 is the option to Create Revit Elements, should the study be designed to allow this to occur.)
Problems to Solutions
As I previously mentioned, this study works with a predefined housing layout and known setback requirements. If I were to conduct this study with a different layout or planning requirements, I would probably need to edit the base script, or begin again. Generative studies are often tailored to very specific problems, and so they might not provide broad use cases beyond their initial setup.
In the case of the above study, the entire process took me three hours to set up and conduct. Given that this is for a very specific use case, it is unlikely I would have generated enough ROI on such a study to justify its setup. Whilst on the surface it may wow a client, the conclusions drawn from the study are not revelations by any means:
If I want to make my living area larger, I should remove the alfresco.
Likewise, I should exclude the media room.
Likewise, my rooms should all be as small as possible.
To maximize my backyard, I should work close to the front setbacks.
I intentionally set up my study to demonstrate that when the goals are too simple, the results will be too predictable and not generate an outcome different from what we could have simply predicted ourselves. Maybe we should have asked more specific questions like these ones:
Which side of the house should my bedrooms be on?
How can I maximize sunlight to living areas?
Which results achieve the most cross ventilation?
What if I rearranged room locations in each case?
All of the above are more loaded questions, with less predictable outcomes. Each of these would also compound the complexity of the script to set up. For all of them, there must be a break-even point identified for the time invested vs. the results obtained.
Conclusion: Question the Answer
All of the above challenges lead me to these burning questions:
What is the problem that generative design ultimately solves for our industry?
Are we ready for it and, if not, when will we be?
Simply put, I believe that generative design does not answer any questions unless we ask the right ones in the first place. As is the case with BIM, generative design is far more than a set of tools – it is a process. The tools necessitate that the answers they provide must be to questions we cannot easily prove to our clients.
I commend all those out there leveraging generative design to improve their design workflows, but I encourage all those considering exploring this field to focus more on the questions, and less on the answers.
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Gavin Crump is a BIM consultant and the founder of BIM Guru, a Revit training and consulting firm in Australia. (h/t: R. vD.)
You and I (and many others) are extremely fortunate that during our life path our early careers intersected with a brand new (and soon to be burgeoning) industry: CAD. For me, it was 1984 and my first job as a drafter helping implement an Intergraph MEDS dual InterAct CAD system hooked up to a VAX VMS mainframe.
I remember CADalyst and the elusive CADReport, and watched an industry morph from 2D CAD, to wireframe, to 3D Parametric solid modeling into the behemoth that it is. Your writing over all these years has provided us a beacon of direction, and a comfort of reliability.
I have often wondered, as hard as it is to just focus on ONE aspect of CAD, how is it that you have been able to cover the many aspects and industries it entails? Truly amazing, and a dedication to such an industry.
It’s been such a pleasure sharing this professional road with you. Congratulations on 35 years of guidance! - Randy Mees, Sr. Manager, Designer Transcather Heart Valves, Edwards Lifesciences
The editor replies: In my early years at CADalyst, I was only-AutoCAD, always-AutoCAD. After I left, book publishers asked me to write about other CAD, so I got exposed to Microstation (the most un-AutoCAD-like CAD package ever!), Generic CADD, Visio, and then all the IntelliCAD clones. They were relatively simple to pick up.
Grasping 3D history-based sketch-based parametric MCAD, like Inventor and Solidworks, took me years, mainly because I was spoiled by AutoCAD's simple 3D, and so I could not figure out why you would want to be dependent on history, need to start from sketches, or bother with parametrics.
A great help to me over the years was all the interviews I have done at shows and online. Experts at firms explain to my audience (and me) how things work.
Color me cynical, but after a while, there really isn't much new. Cloud CAD is just a rehash of what Alibre tried two decades ago, which was a copy of the terminal-mainframe system I used two decades before that. BIM is a newer version of smart architectural software from the 1990s, which did exactly what we expected architectural CAD should do -- insert a window symbol and slide it along the wall. Generative design is just a better version of iterations of a FORTRAN-like DO loop. Mobile CAD is just desktop CAD with fewer commands.
In my opinion, AutoCAD is EOL [end of life]. Nice to have for a quick and dirty drawing, but no longer for every day use. That's a job for the verticals.
I think Autodesk is of the same opinion, seeing the 'improvements' over the last years releases; mostly bells and whistles, although importing PDF is a nice addition, for the time being. - Simon Weel
Re: Open Design Alliance DevCon 2020
You wrote, "The problem lies in the file format. Once a model is in Revit, it is not effortless to move it to another system."
Even with a common file format, things are nearly impossible without a common data format or at least common data naming.
Case in point: I hand my architectural model to a furnishing consultant and to a medical planner. They use their own developed libraries of content; each could have data fields for the same information using different names. Once I receive the model back, how do I then combine the fields to do scheduling and cost analysis?
I know there are default fields, but not all of them are required for a project. There are attempts at this, such as OpenRFA, but without industry support, they don't get widely accepted. - Dave Edwards Dave Edwards Consulting
The editor replies: Then there is the whole issue of intellectual property. Architects, who spend time (ie money) on developing a BIM model aren't keen to hand it off to others. This can be overcome if it is agreed that the owner owns the BIM model, pays appropriately for its development, and so allows it to be shared.
Mr Edwards responds: No kidding. We are required to turn over our entire model, including all the Families [Revit's parametric block libraries] we have developed or purchased; they ended up with copies of all of our hard work. We feel some system of copy protection is needed so that they can use the model to print and do scheduling, but not extract the Families for use on other projects.
- - -
Thirty and more years ago the “standard” for translating between systems was IGES [Initial Graphics Exchange Specification]. Most systems were pretty good at writing IGES files, but all systems were horrible at reading the files -- except those that originated in their system, so round-trip conversions usually worked.
To successfully translate between systems, you almost always had to use IGES Flavoring software, which would take the IGES file from system A and modify it to be able to be properly interpreted by system B, usually by massaging it to use the round-trip capabilities. By writing customized Flavoring software you usually could, but not always, get something useful into the second system.
So, it seems that the more things change, the more they remain the same. - Scott Taylor, founder Tailor Made Software
The editor replies: It appears BuildingSmart wants to do some kind of flavoring approach with IFC v5.
Now you're talking my language, Ralph! Always good stuff from LEDAS, but I disagree with Ivan's conclusion that it is better to not make the base visitor class abstract.
I think the top-level base class should *always* be abstract, a pure interface. An intermediate second-level base class can be introduced with empty implementations of all virtual functions. In this way you can have your cake, and eat it, too. Then, each implementation scenario can decide which base class is most appropriate for it: the top-level abstract base that ensures compile-time errors in case the abstract interface changes; or the non-abstract second-level base if the implementation doesn't care about changes in the top-level interface. - Owen Wengerd
Your piece struck a reminiscent cord with me, particularly those early computer days. My first exposure was to a Digital, I do believe, PDP-80 (maybe? I think). Shortly thereafter, it was replaced by an HP. This was at the Nova Scotia Institute of Technology circa 1972/1973.
I recall programming with cards, where you could mark or shade boxes with a soft pencil. If memory serves correctly, once programmed with cards you could get a punched paper tape copy and/or backup for subsequent use.
The photo shows a punched tape copy of a program for solving quadratic equations (no claim that it actually worked is implied). As always, thanks for your work. - Jim Longley Canada
The editor replies: I never did work with punch tape, but the blank punch cards were used for everything else in university life, like notepads, signs, study sheets...
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Siemens last summer held an online launch event [replay: youtube.com/watch?v=2nZXi9YJ3o4] for Solid Edge 2021, at which it emphasized the do-it-all nature of this mid-range software. Presenter vp of R&D Dan Staples boasted that Solid Edge has "the best mechanical design in the marketplace." (Siemens had not yet held a launch event for NX.)
In addition to MCAD, Mr Staples noted that Solid Edge 2021 is involved in a number of related fields (see figure 1), ones that aren't, however, quite as complete as marketing might suggest. It is Siemens as a whole that has the breadth in software offerings, with Capital electrical design for vehicles and aircraft as the most recent significant acquisition.
Figure 1: Breadth of activities performed by Solid Edge 2021
Electrical Design in Solid Edge consists primarily of designing cabinets and auto-routing wire harnesses; it doesn't actually do electrical design. Instead, it depends on importing electrical and PCB designs through TeamCenter, IDX, and DSI files.
Simulation is conducted through a cutdown version of Siemens's own Simcenter.
Manufacturing involves choosing tools for simulating models cut by multi-axis CAM [computer-aided manufacturing] machines, as well as AM [additive manufacturing] material selection and output checking.
Technical Publications means generating interactive documents through the HTML5-enabled Share3D at https://www.share3d.com/, and PDF files; see Figure 2.
Figure 2 Exploding a 3D model for training
Data Management employs parts of TeamCenter inside Solid Edge to control drawings.
Cloud-based Collaboration refers to a separate program, TeamCenter X (in beta), for sharing and viewing models on mobile devices, and using AR [augmented reality] to place them in the physical realm; see figure 3 or visit https://trials.sw.siemens.com/teamcenterx-cloud-plm/.
Figure 3: Teamcenter X placing a 3D model the real world
Sub-division Modeling is the number-one feature touted by Siemens for Solid Edge 2021. It really is meant for industrial designers who make organic-looking things like the swoopy shell of a mouse or camera body. The emphasis in sub-d is not accuracy but looks.
Me, I have difficulty with freeform sketching programs like Gravit, and so I find sub-d just as difficult to wrangle. Never mind. Here is how it works. You begin with a primitive, like a box or sphere, and then interactively push and pull mesh areas to get closer and closer to the shape you want.
When you need greater detail, you sub-divide some meshes into smaller ones. Sharp corners are added by manipulating edges. Solid Edge includes a handy mirror function, so that anything you do on one half is replicated in the other half to create a perfectly symmetrical result. See figure 4.
Figure 4: Mirrored subdivision modeling in Solid Edge 2021
Arriving at a curvy mouse or camera body is faster with sub-d modeling than with solid modeling, but eventually the mesh needs to work with solids. Here, Siemens offers Convergent Modeling, its take on allowing disparate data to exist in a single model, including generative and reverse-engineered (3D scans) ones. Sub-d modeling is included with both the Classic and Premium versions of Solid Edge 2021, so you don't pay extra for it.
Let me run down highlights for some of the other new features:
Modeling. To make large assemblies faster, all parts are kept in a single assembly file. Internal relationships (like constraints) are now remembered when copying and pasting parts from one assembly to another.
Frames can have gaps to allow for welds, and semi-automatically add inward or outward end-caps with optional offsets and chamfers. Nesting now optimizes parts placement on unusual shapes, like cow hides.
Sheetmetal. Multiple edges receive flanges just by selecting them and then pulling, and partial flanges can be constructed. Decals lets you place images and logos, even across multiple faces.
Simulation. The 2021 release adds electronics air cooling analysis from Simcenter's FLOEFD fluid simulation module. Package Creator defines the packaging and solder points of chips.
Modern chips generate a lot of heat, and so simulation in Solid Edge now handles the impacts from air flow and cooling of fans, shown as temperature curves and iso-surfaces that represent air flow direction, velocity, and temperature. See figure 5. Structural designs also can take temperature into account.
Figure 5: Iso-surface visualization of fan's cooling capacity
User Interface. Adaptive UI tracks the commands with which you are working, and then guesses the next command you might need. CAD managers can take output from experienced users and give it to novice users as they learn to do specific tasks, with Solid Edge telling them the next command to employ.
Parts Catalog. Siemens licensed the Cadenas parts library to provide Solid Edge 2021 with 1,500 manufacturers' catalogs. There is a visual search function that returns results sorted by percentage likelihood of matching your request.
Q&A
Q: Siemens had a sketching app on Android a few years ago, which I notice hasn't been updated in over a year. Is NX Sketch based on this technology?
A: Good catch on that. We learned from CatchBook how people sketch, but NX Sketch is brand-new and is built into NX. It avoids over-constraints on sketches.
Q: Is NX Share available standalone or only in NX? A: Right now, it is part of NX. It will be available standalone later this year.
Q: Regarding the $100 million AAR [average recurring revenue] of Mendix: why did revenues skyrocket? A: The covid crisis is making companies wanting to build apps quickly, to work remotely. Even before, Mendix provided local capabilities, such as to Teamcenter. It grew 155% over last year.
Q: What is the pricing for Teamcenter X? A: We have very competitive and attractive pricing with what's out there on the market.
Q: Is Teamcenter Share a re-badge of Solid Edge Portal? A: Absolutely not. It is built on the Mendix platform. It adds CAD knowledge to a Dropbox-like platform.
Q: Will Teamcenter be replaced by Teamcenter X over time? Is this part of a roadmap to replace all desktop programs with cloud apps? A: We are not one of those vendors who go to their customers who say, "As of May 25, we will be completely SaaS [software as a service, a.k.a. cloud-only]." This is not our approach. We are modernizing products by bringing them to the cloud. Customers can make the transition, if they want to, when they are ready. We will never have to have that hard discussion with customers about them having to make a difficult transition of technologies.
Q: What market does Teamcenter X target? A: Immediately, in the mid-market. But there is interest from large customers as well.
Q: How is Mendix affecting development at Siemens, and will it be an independent company? A: We learn a lot from each other. We don't forget that Mendix began with business applications, such as HR [human resources] and finance. So we can solve the complete solution across the board for customers.
Q: How is your partnership with Bentley on CALM [capital asset lifecycle management] going? A: It is growing business for data management of plant design, offshore platforms, and so on. We will be doing more together, as you will hear in the coming 12-18 months. We are bringing Teamcenter product configuration to these large projects.
Q: When will authoring [design] software like NX be on the cloud? A: The cloud is a major trend, and we are looking at how to bring more of it to our customers. We are working on the authoring side, but the real strength of the cloud is on the collaboration side. So, for instance, we are bringing more collaboration to the authoring software.
Q: Revenues of your division for the year? A: Siemens does not report divisional revenues [such as for Siemens Digital Industries Software], but maybe that will change in the future, like in two years. We are outgrowing our competition every quarter.
Q: How is simulation, CD-Adapco doing? A: Overall it is doing well. Simulation is core to the digital twin of vehicles and plants. Our simulation revenues are equal to the revenues of the market leader [ANSYS]. That gets lost in our large portfolio of software.
What Ralph Grabowski Thinks
This is an era where, it seems to me, some CAD vendors concentrate harder on collecting subscriptions from customers than improving their software. So it is good to see Siemens going all out by loading up this year's release of Solid Edge with lots of new functions.
During the launch event, the host introduced Solid Edge 2021 to us by saying, "We bring the technologies of tomorrow to our customers today." But some new features -- like sub-d modeling and electrical design -- were long needed to catch up with competitors AutoCAD and Solidworks, respectively. The improvements to fluid simulation were, I suspect, in reaction to Discovery Live fluid simulation added by PTC to Creo last year. Other new features, like the "AI"-enabled interface, are trickle-downs from earlier releases of NX.
[This article first appeared in Design Engineering magazine and is reprinted with permission.]
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Re: Open Design Alliance DevCon 2020
I tried using IFC when using the educational version of Tekla. I wanted to go between Inventor and Tekla, one way or the other. Could not be done. I tried it with other CAD software and found it could not be done.
The reason is because of the extensive amount of time and energy that goes into telling the IFC converter all the data for each and every structural part, if at all available in the software itself, and if it is the same in the other software. I quickly discovered that there is no IFC standard per IFC standard!
And if you let the software do the metadata exchange for you, it'll screw you every time. If you can manage to work your way through the process, you’ll be so exhausted by the time you’re done, that it makes the process untenable.
My limited experience says that “details in BIM are too low for CAM” is a low estimate. I’ve found that “details in BIM are too low for most of the fabrication and construction involved”.
The reason is because the fab shops can’t get sufficient dimensions off BIM drawings to “cut and fit.” That is, if the drawings done right, which is nearly never, due to the cost-cutting which hires novices to make the drawings.
That lack of sufficient BIM dimensional info is why they farm out the structural to structural detailers, the reinforced concrete to concrete detailers, the miscellaneous steel to steel detailers, the plumbing and piping to specialists, the machining...
Thanx for your ‘invigorating’ reporting! – Chris Cadman
The editor replies: The problem is that IFC was never meant to handle architectural data exchange. It was invented in 1994 by Autodesk with Release 13 to deal with data stored in custom (user-defined) objects, made possible by the then-new objectARX API. BuildingSmart is working at making it work.
Martyn Day, editor of the British AEC Magazine, has been pounding on the lack of the BIM-construction link. Autodesk spent a billion dollars to join the already-crowded construction monitoring software market, instead of on the BIM-CAM link that would have given them a leg up over competitors. Mr Cadman responds: At least ODA hasn’t sat on their thumbs with AutoCAD. Maybe if Autodesk worked up a translation app that exchanges data between their various 3D software, we’d have our solution already. One has to wonder where all the subscription $ goes, considering the little they do to substantially improve their software year after year.
The editor replies: Autodesk has a 3D translator meant primarily for MCAD but does not work with AEC.
Siemens has a perspective unique among MCAD software firms: it's the only one operating as a manufacturer. Other big MCAD vendors, like Autodesk and PTC, have presentation centers in which they show manufacturing at tiny scales, but Siemens is a manufacturing behemoth that last year made CAD$115 billion -- 20x more than its largest CAD software competitor, Dassault Systemes.
The CAD division at Siemens is unique also in that we never know for sure what its name is. Today, it's Siemens Digital Industries Software. Before, it was Siemens PLM Software, earlier Siemens PLM Systems, and before that Unigraphics and EDS. The high-end NX CAD software got its new name following the merging of Unigraphics and I-DEAS. Only its mid-range Solid Edge CAD program kept its name constant throughout the decades.
NX and Solid Edge were birthed by the oldest CAD companies in history. Unigraphics began in 1969 as "Uniapt" CAM software from United Computing. The same year, Intergraph launched as a CAD-oriented mapping company. Solid Edge is the result of a 1995 experiment in building next-gen software, but it didn't fit Intergraph's product line, so no one was surprised when Intergraph sold Solid Edge to Unigraphics after just three years. NX and Solid Edge arrived at Siemens through the German company's 2007 acquisition of Unigraphics.
The Future Is the Cloud -- Perhaps
Siemens is the largest CAD vendor to resist today's notion that design software must run on the cloud, a position that is in direct contrast to competitors who find customers still clinging to desktops irritating. For Siemens Digital Industries Software CEO Tony Hemmelgarn, design belongs on the desktop -- end of story. "We will never have to have that hard discussion with customers about them having to make a difficult transition of technologies [from desktop to cloud]," he said.
What does belong in the cloud is collaboration, and so Siemens is working at making its popular Teamcenter collaborative software run on the cloud, under the name of Teamcenter X. You can see how this makes sense: engineers have powerful desktop systems running NX, collaborating with each other and fieldworkers through the cloud.
When it comes to the cloud, Siemens offers unusual flexibility. You can have software hosted by Siemens (on Amazon), on private or local cloud providers, on your premise, at the edge, and hybrids thereof. No one else offers this.
You Pay Your Way
Siemens insists customers should have a choice in how to pay for software, whether through permanent licenses or by subscription. Mr Hemmelgarn says he is surprised at how many of his competitors have forced customers onto subscriptions.
Despite his declaration, the company is nevertheless pushing forward with software that can only be paid for by subscription. It turns out that CAD vendors who go to the cloud have no choice in the matter, because software that runs non-stop on the cloud has to be paid for non-stop to cloud providers like Amazon, and so customers also have to pay non-stop.
Siemens emphasized the cloud over desktop-bound software during July's presentation to the CAD press. While NX was mentioned often by customer testimonials, Solid Edge and simulation division CD-Adapco got no attention at all. Never mind that Siemens' simulation division makes as much as market leader ANSYS ($1.5 billion last year) and more than all of PTC.
Siemens' Future is Mendix
If we understand nothing else about the future for Siemens, it's that it is based on Mendix. This platform with the unusual name has an unusual history: it began as a cloud-based visual programming service for business applications, like human resources and scheduling. Two years ago, Siemens bought it for CAD$950 million, and then applied it to CAD.
We can think of Mendix as a combination of Autodesk's Forge API and PTC's Onshape/Atlas platform. It has a three-fold role at Siemens:
A set of software for running businesses
An API [application programming interface] for customers to customize
The underlying technology that powers all cloud apps for Siemens
"We are launching a lot of applications based on Mendix," said senior vp of Business Strategy and Marketing Brenda Discher, formerly of Autodesk marketing.
What Ralph Grabowski Thinks
Siemens places the emphases on the right areas. Design belongs on the desktop; subscriptions ought to be optional; automatic upgrades are pausable; collaboration should be hostable anywhere. These are policies that reassure customers that their future with Siemens is a stable one. https://solidedge.siemens.com
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Next Week: You get a look at what is new in Solid Edge 2021, plus an extended Q&A with executives from Siemens.
[This article first appeared in Design Engineering magazine and is reprinted with permission.]
And in Other News
The following posts appeared on the WorldCAD Access blog during the summer:
Vectorworks ships its namesake software, Vectorworks 2021, with a new Project Sharing server and multi-threaded Vectorworks Graphics Module cache that offers up to 5x faster file loading. https://www.vectorworks.net
I just fired up my old copy of Generic CADD to do some drafting and realized my memory is not as good as I thought it was in using it. This [Inside Generic CADD ebook] will come in handy to refresh my brain cells. – J. G. The editor replies: I am glad to hear it helps. I notice that I produced the book first in the print version in 1993.
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I've been reading your blog on and off for the last few months--I have a lot to learn from your technical knowledge. Thanks for being so passionate about CAD software, – Clifton Harness
Re: Architecture firms to Autodesk: We're no longer happy with Revit
For Autodesk, Revit became the Perfect Storm. With the grip on the DWG file format waning, another strategy had to be put into place. They did it with Revit:
Government contracts mandating its use
A file format not backwards-compatible
And a subscription model.
I know BIM is a "process," but I saw many contracts which essentially stated the application was not mandated, but the deliverables had to be in RVT format. BIM by its very nature requires an open file exchange format, tools for data exchange, and collaboration. When that didn't happen, the only thing left was the single-source option.
This needed to be an industry-wide effort, as MIDI was in the music industry. Even in the earliest days, we could see there was so much which needed to be standardized to make the dream of BIM a reality, but it never happened (even using a single source). It could still be done but a lot of money and time has already been spent and I'm afraid "the horse has left the barn."
No one listened then, maybe they're listening now. – Dave Edwards Dave Edwards Consulting
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There are more professional CAD and BIM software products to consider these days than waaayyyy overpriced Autodesk products. I've never understood why larger practices and some individuals don't explore the market to recognize this fact and thus end up being VANILLA-CAD users and out of pocket. Instead of this tenuous lobbying, just change your CAD HB-pencil!
List of alternative CAD/BIM products than Autodesk:
4MSA IDEA - Architectural Design (IntelliCAD)
AutoDesSys - Form-Z
Bentley - Architecture
Bricsys – BricsCAD / BricsCAD BIM
Cadline Network Ltd – ArchLine-Xp & LT (light) version
CadLogic - Draft it Architectural
CADSoft - Envisioneer
Chief Architect
DataCAD LLC – Software for AEC Professionals
Elecosoft – Arcon Evo Visual Building Premium
FreeCAD Arch Xeometric – EliteCad Architecture
Gehry Technologies - Digital Project Designer
Graphisoft - ArchiCAD
IMSI/Design – TurboCAD Professional
NanoSoft - NanoCad Construction
Nemetschek - Allplan Architecture
Nemetschek - Vectorworks Architect
ProgeSoft – ProgeCAD Architecture
Robert McNeel & Associates - Rhino 3D + VisualARQ
Softtech – Spirit Pro
Trimble – SketchUp Pro
ZWSOFT - ZWCAD Pro
– Clayton Taylor Trotman & Taylor Architectural Consultants, England
The editor replies: The problem lies in the file format. Once a model is in Revit, it is not effortless to move it to another system. IFC helps, but is not perfect; full RVT support from ODA is a year away.
Thank You, Readers
Thank you to readers who donate towards the operation of upFront.eZine:
Robert G Findlay, Australia
Gijs Willem Sloof of Talenting Investments, The Netherlands (two donations)
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Issue #1,065 | Celebrating 35 Years in CAD | September 14, 2020
From the Editor
It was this month in 1985 that I began writing about computer-aided design, as CADalyst magazine hired me to be their new technical editor.
Now it's 35 years later, and thanks to you amazing readers, I'm still reporting on our favorite software.
- Ralph Grabowski
Open Design Alliance
DevCon 2020
Compiled by Ralph Grabowski
We were supposed to be in Munich for this event, but then coronavirus ruined the trip. The Open Design Alliance’s DevCon 2020 was, as a result, online, just like other CAD software conferences this year.
In ODA president Neil Peterson overview of the industry, he noted that this is a down year for BIM [building information modeling], but then expects it to grow by an annual average of 14.5% through to 2025. Some of the issues (pro and con) that define the market are the many design programs available, multiple data formats, a growing number of stakeholders, and the biggest problem of all: the gap between design tools and offsite prefabrication, as details in BIM are too low for CAM [computer-aided manufacturing].
The ODA wants to make BIM (and other aspects of CAD) transparent: to view, publish, collaborate, exchange data, and manipulate data openly. (See figure 1.) The idea of an open standard created by industry stands in contrast to those proprietary formats preferred by software vendors. ODA backs up its slogan "transparent BIM" with SDKs [software development kits] named BIMrv (for Revit) and BIMnv (for Navisworks).
Figure 1: The technology stack from Open Design Alliance (all images sourced from DevCon prsentations)
ODA + bSI + OGS
Last year, ODA partnered with buildingSmart International (bSI) to provide the SDKs for the IFC [industry foundation classes] format used by the BIM industry to exchange data. This year, ODA inked an agreement with Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC); the two are exploring how they might work together. I assume ODA will make SDKs for OGC.
There has always been an obvious link between CAD and GIS [geographic information systems]; indeed, that is how Intergraph got its start in 1969. As long ago as 2007 GIS-CAD became “3D information management,” because more than just CAD data works with GIS, such as BIM. (See figure 2.) And so OGC agreed this year to work with ODA.
Figure 2: The sorts of things handled by OGC
This Year’s IFC v4.3
IFC v4.3 includes more of the built environment, while two dozen object types have been deprecated or replaced by new schema. Built environment means physical structures, such as roads, canals, and shopping centers. (See figure 3.) IFC schema have to be proved by actual implementation before they can be approved as ISO standards, and so for 4.3 this is happening through a number of railroad and road organizations in North America and Europe.
Figure 3: The built environments supported by IFC 4.3
The nomenclature has changed: bSI replaced the x in version numbers with ., so the old (and confusing) 4x3 is now 4.3.
The Future IFC 5
IFC version 5 will be more efficient and less confusing.
More efficient, because IFC data will become available in a larger number of file formats, such as adding XML, OWL, JSON, HDF5, and so on to the current STEP; UML [unified modeling language] will be the primary format. HDF5 [hierarchical data format] in particular offers smaller file sizes and faster load times due to compression and structure; see ogc.org/standards/HDF5. (See figure 4.) We talked about HDFs in upFront.eZine #1,058.
Figure 4: The advantages to using HDF5 with IFC
Less confusing, because right now model view definitions (MVD) allow software vendors to cherry-pick parts of IFC to implement in their software; the idea was that they wouldn't need to implement the entire standard, which is huge. But if an IFC file is exported according to one MVD, and the recipient software package is written to another MVD, then confusion reigns when there is insufficient overlap between the two MVDs.
MVDs will change in the future. The replacement will be IDS [information delivery system] in which the vendor says what information is needed from an IFC file.
The new information delivery standard of IFC 5 means there will be a single IFC base for all programs for long-term . The root of IFC will have fewer updates for stability (every three to five years) with entity definitions having more frequent ones to keep current (every one to three years).
IFC will be publicly available on GitHub. The ODA demo’ed using IFC files in HDF5 format. Their IFC viewer for Windows and MacOS supports the newest IFC versions. It does all the tasks we expect of viewers today, such as sections, but now also displays shadows and handles collision detection. It exports the IFC model to PDF. Anyone can download it fro free from openifcviewer.com
SDKs for Revit and Navisworks
The ODA supports Revit file formats up to today's RVT 2021 (see figure 5).
Figure 5: The capabilities of ODA's BIimRv API
During the online conference, we saw some of the new functions being made available from the ODA:
Several kinds of sectioning (see figure 6)
Color-filled 2D plans based on function
User worksets, which isolate grouped elements by name
Conditional load/unloads that save can 1GB RAM, on average
Figure 5: Sectioning of Revit models by BimRv
While the ODA’s BimRv SDK reads and displays Revit files, the big deal (and tougher job) is creating RVT files, which also means being able to edit them. This is still under development. The ODA has a road map to show which functions will be released over the next sixteen months. (See figure 7.) Creation functions include curves, custom parameters, connectors, materials, view-based elements (sheets), forms, families, Boolean operations, and openings.
Figure 7: Roadmap from ODA for BimRv
We also saw the progress being made with Navisworks compatibility, which for Autodesk is a kind of universal file format on the AEC side. See figure 8 for the roadmap.
Figure 8: Roadmap from ODA for BIMnv
Bricsys told us how it uses the ODA’s SDKs for DWG, civil, BIM, and mechanical components. As of v21 BricsCAD will import RVT files, not just IFCs as in earlier releases. RVT elements are translated into native geometry, which for BricsCAD means DWG format. The translated elements can then be directly modeled, sectioned, and edited – and saved as DWG files for use in other software. (See figure 9.)
Figure 9: BricsCAD v21 with RVT-format model
BricsCAD v21 will place RVT files as underlays, which means they can be seen as references, but are not editable. Specific entities, such as walls, can be imported from the underlay, I think they said. BricsCAD 21 is due to ship by the end of October, 2020.
Q&A
Ralph Grabowski: I did not catch the line by Mr Ouellette about IFC. Does he think IFC can handle all forms of data (like DFM, digital twins) -- or not? If not, then what is the alternative to accessing that data?
Jeffrey Ouellette: The simple answer would be the use of linked data methodologies. bSI is exploring the use of IfcOWL, as well as implementations of JSON / IfcJSON to make it easier to link to other data sources and exchange them on a transactional basis.
Grabowski: I am not sure we heard exactly what is ODA doing with OGC?
Neil Peterson: We are looking at cooperation in a similar manner to the cooperation between ODA and bSI, where ODA would provide implementations for certain OGC standards. For example, CityGML has been discussed as a possible first project.
Fabio: Regarding Civil SDK, how much of API has been migrated to .Net? Is this SDK the same as AutoCAD Civil SDK?
Ivan: Currently, we wrapped all Civil into a public API. The API is the same as the C++ ODA Civil SDK.
John: The main point is I notice that the library seems more granular now.
Ralph Grabowski: Is the Android ODA viewer for anyone, or just members of ODA?
Alexander Federov: This application is for the ODA members, as a sample of using our Visualize SDK under the Android platform.
John: What are the main differences between Drawing vs. Visualize SDKs?
Alexander Federov: Visualize SDK is for the rendering of the different kinds of the data. It is not connected with some specific format. But strictly speaking, since Drawings SDK uses Visualize SDK for rendering contents of the DWG files, it is possible to transfer data to DWG first, and then render it with Visualize SDK as a contents of the DWG database. But such a transformation is sometimes not possible or efficient.
Fabio: Is it possible to use .Net C# to integrate all stacks (DWG SDK, Visualize, Publish) in order to develop cross-platform -- Windows, Mac, and mobile (IOS and Android)?
Alexander Borobikov: We provide wrappers for C++ code. Wrappers are generated for a large set pf SDKs: Drawings SDK, Visualize SDK, Publish SDK. But for now our wrappers are Windows-only.
Guido: Does Visualize support huge point cloud data that might not fit into memory?
Alexander Federov: Yes. We have the RCS [Re Cap source]-based point cloud object, which allows the use of LOD [levels of detail] for the huge point cloud data. Yesterday [at the conference], there was a demonstration of such a technique. It will be possible to see the recordings of yesterday's presentation and find some details about it.
Guido: Do you have any plans to support AR [augmented reality] or VR [virtual reality] in Visualize?
Alexander Federov: We created a VR sample two years ago. But it was frozen since then. We have a plan to reanimate activity with it next year. With AR, no plans yet.
Ben: Will recordings of these presentations be available later?
Alexander Borobikov: We will upload the materials to our Youtube channel, so they will be available.
What Ralph Grabowski Thinks
The importance of the Open Design Alliance is that it sets the pace for other CAD systems. In this way it is like the firms that produce kernels: numerous CAD systems depend on the capabilities delivered by updates to kernels, and likewise on the ODA.
Fortunately for members, the ODA sees DWG as more than just a file format, and so over the last decade has created a framework for application development around DWG. With its APIs and SDKs, members can create software like 2D/3D CAD programs that handle solids, custom file viewers of multiple file formats, PDF import/export, revisioning, and so on – for software running on desktop computers, Web browsers, and mobile devices. (See figure 10.)
Figure 10: Mobile version of DWG viewer and its capabilities
Perhaps the key to the ODA’s success is that it is a member-owned non-profit, ensuring long-term support. Being member-owned means that members determine the direction of development; being non-profit means that it does not need to satisfy a Wall Streetian demand for higher profits that comes at the expense of customer needs. www.opendesign.com
And in Other News
The following posts appeared on the WorldCAD Access blog during the summer:
I miss your Quotable Notables. I thought the irony was great. - Paul Bertram
The editor replies: It became, frankly, hard work for me to hunt down a steady supply for each week. I am glad that you liked them. If you want similar irony, follow @managerspeak on Twitter. Here is one of his aphorisms: "90% of success is showing up. We’re going to have to do that on Zoom for a while."
Here is a bonus one, to be filed under 'Spin Doctor of the Moment': "This account was incorrectly actioned. This has been reversed and the account has been reinstated." - Twitter
Re: Spaceclaim Success
It's hard to say how successful Spaceclaim's marketing was. And my experience is that nobody knows about Spaceclaim outside the CAD-nerd echo chamber -- and actually most CAD users have no clue what direct modeling is.
So if nobody knows about Spaceclaim, and it was not successful in terms of selling many seats, then can we say that their marketing was successful? - Istvan Csanady, CEO Shapr3D
The editor replies: They certainly gained mindshare, fostered the push in mainstream MCAD to emphasize direct modeling, and then disappeared from the CAD-nerd echo chamber with their acquisition by Ansys.
This is in response to this guy’s complaint, “Their unwillingness to offer any sort of help to repair or replace my far superior Performance MX mouse with a failing left-click button.” Tell him he may be able to open the mouse, and then buy a replacement switch from DigiKey. I’ve done that to my mouse before, so maybe it’s possible for him? Doing so requires minimal mechanical and soldering skills. - Chris Cadman
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Commenting on 3Dconnexion/Logitech, I ran across this last month. They are indeed separate from Logitech. I was surprised. See the last post in this forum topic: 3dconnexion.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=25&t=35706 -Brian Cranston, CAD Administrator LSI Industries
The editor replies: Yah, there is a lot of confusion on this. 3dconnexion could help by making it clearer on their Web site.
Re: Dassault Systemes vs Solidworks, Part II
This is really a great eye-opening article. I use Solidworks every day at work. Though cloud-based has its benefits, I live in an area that sometimes has a poor internet connection. I rely on this software to get my job done and to get accurate and high-quality production drawings for our production facility.
If Solidworks starts getting phased out to introduce a new system, it will cost us years of learning and hard work to get our drawings where they are. Thank you for the eye opening article. I will be keeping closer tabs on this and will think towards what our future may look like in the Solidworks and 3D design world. Thank you so much for this article. - Josh Hixon Duluth Tree Service Pros
Ah, those where the days! Nth Engine's birds-eye view was the thing I missed most when switching to Matrox graphics cards.
I also remember the fiddling with jumpers / rocker switches on network cards, graphic cards and other ISA cards to get them to use different IRQ, DMA en I/O addresses. And particularly to optimize the I/O space so QEMM [Quarterdeck Expanded Memory Manager] could make the most of upper memory. Oh, well. - Simon Weel (via WorldCAD Access) The Netherlands
The editor replies: AutoCAD for a time also had a bird's-eye view (DsViewer command, expired in 2012), but I never found it particularly useful as it tended to be small, so as not take up much screen real estate (see figure below, credit cadforum.cz). If, back then, I could have afforded two monitors (they tended to be around $1,500 each in the 1990s), then a bird's eye view in one monitor might have been pretty nifty.
Bird's-eye view window at left
Thank You, Readers
Thank you to readers who donate towards the operation of upFront.eZine:
Bricsys (small corporate donation)
Dave Edwards Consulting
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Ever since 17 architectural firms wrote a letter of protest to AutoCAD ceo Andrew Anagnost regarding the status of Revit, reaction has been on-going. More architectural firms signed the letter. Our readers wrote lots of letters to the editor. More industry watchers gave their unique points of view on the problem faced by Autodesk, such as these ones:
Your article "Architecture firms to Autodesk: We're no longer happy with Revit" was very interesting, and emphasized some of the pain points we all suffer from being so tightly tied to the Revit platform.
It reminded me of a comment I wrote (a long, long time ago, in 2007) for the article "What Needs to be Fixed in AutoCAD" where I outlined about three dozen things that were just dumb about the program that I used just about every day since 1987.
In a comment to your recent article "Autodesk at 2020," I wrote (after a lengthy diatribe of explaining what's great about Revit) that "I could spend at least another hour talking about what’s wrong with Revit and how to fix it." - Matt Stachoni, BIM Manager Tutor Perini / Parsons, JV
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Your review of the status (and future) of Revit was fantastic, and at the same time sad. Autodesk seems to be suffering from shareholder paralysis, but I'm not an expert. It seems like frustration with product roadmaps and customer needs never ends.
I also liked your mention of customers maintaining their own development teams for customization. I loved working in that capacity years ago, but the opportunities in the defense world seemed bleak to me, and the compensation just doesn't compare with mainstream IT work.
Keep up the outstanding work that you do! I haven't worked in the CAD industry in quite a few years, but I still enjoy reading your articles and reviews. - David Stein
The editor replies: I explain to non-CAD users that Revit is like my previous car: 20 years old, liable to breakdowns, and costly to maintain.
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It is interesting -- in a sort of watching-a-train-wreck way -- to see Autodesk failing to deliver on keeping up its core business. But more curious to me is how this seems to suddenly be happening in a number of industries.
USA automakers are flailing around with electric vehicles, while Tesla seems to have mastered them. A similar thing is true of hybrids: Toyota succeeded where no USA manufacturer even seemed to make an effort. Boeing is facing major internal problems in a similar manner. We have Intel's spectacular failure in not keeping up with TSMC on a technical manufacturing level, and its numerous security issues.
I remember that when Andy Grove was head of Intel, he was almost paranoid about staying ahead of the game technically. His mantra was that you had to be your own competition, always bettering your products before the competition did.
What we are seeing perhaps, is that these large corporations became management-heavy and thought they could coast on near-monopolies forever, forgetting that being heavy on management almost always means being deficient in innovation. - Steve Schuller
The editor replies: You seem to have it correct. When Jim Collins examined how mighty corporations fell, it mostly was due to hubris: 'Now that we are successful in one area, we can be successful in any area!'
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I’ll be paying my annual AutoCAD maintenance fee (CDN$985) this week, which will be the last time I financially support Autodesk. I’ve had my own copy since 1993, and prior to then, when I ran the CAD department at Wang Australia, since 1985 at which time there was a specific version for the Wang PC. Out of curiosity I asked the dealer what the annual subscription costs -- CDN$2,200!
Apart from blind greed, I don’t understand what the thinking is behind Autodesk’s subscription fee. Surely they must realize that there will be many like me who will happily use their perpetual license and/or switch to BricsCAD or another program. - Dairobi Paul
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It seems like an association of companies with obvious profit interest is trying to cut expenses. How is this different to what we doing everyday going to the supermarket? Do we have control over the price of potatoes? or trendy avocados?
Let me highlight something from personal experience. I had a boss that wanted to automate everything and make modular construction, because he realized on the benefit he could have from cutting construction costs by pre-fabricating. A classic BIM approach. Now, what he did not realize at the beginning is that he'd have to increase significantly the design inversion in hours and tools enabling the task. When he did it was too late for two reasons: he didn't bring right specialists able to predesign, and he didn't use the right tools. Those tools are expensive. All good tools are expensive, especially if are digital in this increasingly digitalised word. So he admitted that Autodesk flows would have work when bankrupting. He made is choice. I do not get why the obsession with Autodesk here.
Second point. What happened to my ex-boss is happening at an industry level. Everything is digitalizing and there is a huge investment from software companies supporting that change. But don't get confused here, software companies are addressing industry needs -- not the opposite way)
So, when this ECIF is proposing that paper are actually not understanding the same that my ex-boss missed, that the inversion is balancing towards design stages and pre-construction stages. That's the whole point of BIM, and some construction firms are missing the point because they have significantly less benefits rather than more expenses that, of course, are justified by the investment made by not only Autodesk but others too. I'm a fan of Bentley for example.
So what are we talking about here? You do not want the avocado? Take the donut. Let's see for how long you'll benefit from it. - Fernando Gonzalez (via WorldCAD Access)
- - -
You wrote, "Architectural firms in England and Australia, some of whom work globally, had standardized on Revit, partly due to government mandating it for its own projects." This is not true. They did not mandate Revit; they mandated BIM. They are very different things. Revit does not equal BIM. Revit is software. BIM is a process. - BIMFluff (via WorldCAD Access)
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I have been saying this for two decades, as you know: the only way to get Autodesk to listen is to become an Autodesk shareholder; to Autodesk's upper management, paying users are just cows to be milked.
Any customer who buys more than ten seats of an Autodesk software product should also get in the habit of buying stock in that company. If each of the signatories to that open letter had 10,000 shares of Autodesk in their corporate stock portfolio, they could join forces to threaten to vote out upper management with much more authority and effectiveness.
The bonus is that when customers own stock in the products that they themselves use, they are getting a discount on the products in the form of stock dividends and increased share value.
Change can even be pushed by regular users, if they work together. Buying a few shares each month, 100,000 aggravated users would control a major chunk of the company after just two or three years. Then they could demand real improvements.
Thanks as always for your diligent reporting. - Peter Lawton, LEED AP AEI | Affiliated Engineers, Inc.
The editor replies: Autodesk has 221 million outstanding shares. I believe that when someone has 7% of the shares (at a cost currently of $3.7 billion), he can have one seat on their board of directors.
Mr Lawton responds: Yes, I understand that share prices are now 10x what they were when I was talking about this in the early 2000s, but it is also true that in those days, crowdsourcing was much less developed.
Today the effort would require sophisticated crowdsourcing infrastructure, and the involvement of many people: 100,000 to 250,000 frustrated Autodesk customers would need to pool resources to purchase many shares each month, for at least a couple of years, before a strong position would be realized.
Then, if we can get some of the large A/E/C firms to buy up blocks of stock, for their corporate portfolios, things speed up. Their investing philosophy would have to be different than with other investments. For example, one improvement that corporate users might like would be reducing the release cycle to every 4 years, so Autodesk profits would fall, (along with the stock value), but the A/E/C company's profits might rise, because IT changes and software training would be reduced.
Also, if Autodesk gets wind of such an effort seriously undertaken, they might be more inclined to listen up.
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Excellent read! It’s what I’ve been saying about Autodesk since-- well, forever. If you want to know what Autodesk's been up to for the past decade, just follow the money. But that’ll take some digging, and probably creative accounting as well! - Chris Cadman
The editor replies: The effort to displace Autodesk is a rare event that's occurred only twice before, that I know of. There was a (failed) effort in the 1990s to replace DXF (then the de facto exchange format among desktop CAD), and then the successful Project Phoenix, which resulted in IntelliCAD and the explosion in alternatives to AutoCAD.
Mr Cadman responds: I can only hope for this rare event to trigger an explosion in Autodesk's customer base, away from them to alternative BIM software.
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I could have told them this ten years ago. Revit came from the stable of PTC's Pro/ENGINEER, perhaps the least flexible parametric modeler at the time. Users familiar with Autodesk products over time know they have never had a 'vision'. Revit's founders played the market well tho. - Keith Jackson (via WorldCAD Access)
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One of the good things today is that, with the Internet, you can effortlessly band together with like-thinkers when you don’t like how things are going. Some of the world’s largest architectural firms earlier this year banded together, because they don’t like how things are going with Revit.
They had waited patiently for Autodesk to update the 20-year-old Revit, just as Autodesk had done with 20-year-old Inventor in creating Fusion for mechanical design. In 2016, Autodesk did announced that a new Revit would be forthcoming, code-naming it Project Quantum. It would operate as BIM-in-the-cloud and pass data to modules as they needed it. Later, it was re-code-named Project Plasma; then, so far, nothing more.
During the Revit launch event at Harvard University, April 5, 2000
Competitors didn’t stand still. During this time, Vectorworks smoothly replaced the entire kernel of its 35-year-old architectural software with Parasolid, giving it new capabilities. Bricsys wrote a BIM module from scratch for BricsCAD.
Graphisoft, whose ArchiCAD BIM modeler is 38 years old, this year completed, in three years, Project Everest. In it, applications (including non-Graphisoft ones) get from the BIM model only the data they need to do their analysis, and then return it to ArchiCAD quickly. Together with Graphisoft’s BIMcloud server, the Everest concept is similar to what Autodesk had hoped to deliver with Quantum.
Something at Autodesk, it seemed, was amiss.
The Survey & the Letter
Architectural firms in England and Australia, some of whom work globally, had standardized on Revit, partly due to government mandating it for its own projects. Waiting four years for the promised neo-Revit became, for them, long enough.
And so they conducted a survey amongst themselves to find that their level of satisfaction with Autodesk and Revit ranged between 1 and 3 -- out of 10, the highest. This tells me that there is a great deal of anger, when survey respondents aren’t giving a "could do better" 5/10.
So they wrote a letter to CEO Anagnost, listing their concerns. It is signed by the IT design directors at 17 firms, including Zaha Hadid Architects, and not signed by eight more*. In it, they described their experiences with Revit since 2015:
BIM models that must broken up, because Revit cannot handle today’s large projects well
Lack of a data pipeline to handle the many sources of data in use today
Limited Revit development in modern concepts like GPU processing, multi-cores, and virtual PCs
Lack of a road map assuring users of a definite development path
Enduring up to five different license models, with a sixth on its way
Up to a seventy-per-cent increase in Revit license cost between 2015 and 2019
Lack of trust in storing their intellectual property on Autodesk's cloud services
(*) Fear of retaliation from some parts of the Autodesk organization
The survey and letter are being made public today.
What Ralph Grabowski Thinks
We have had hints as to why it seems Autodesk isn’t matching the architectural development strides of the likes of ArchiCAD. It may be its perception of near-monopoly (in some parts of the world) giving a sense of success; it may be its new emphasis on the much larger, potentially more lucrative construction market; it may be a difficulty in converting Revit to a modern code base – these are some of the hints.
The letter released today seems to indicate that 25 design firms don’t want to leave Revit (perhaps they can’t) as much as they want Autodesk to keep its promise of delivering better software, quickly, for architects who work nationally and globally. If nothing else comes of it, the survey and letter publicly expose an undercurrent of discontent with Autodesk. Perhaps others will add their names to the list of signatories.
Conceivably, the more serious problem facing the firms is this: what if Autodesk is unable to deliver a neo-Revit? It is not inconceivable. The firm failed to put all its software on the cloud by 2015, as held by former CEO Carl Bass. Among its competitors, Dassault Systemes, following years of determined announcements, never shipped a long-awaited program dedicated to architectural design.
Architects understand their needs better than do software-only houses, and so perhaps a neo-IntelliCAD effort is necessary. This is conceivable, as large architecture firms already retain programming teams engaged in customization and who work regularly with ancillary software, such as the collection of crucial-to-design programs from Robert McNeel & Assoc. To it, add a BimRv backend and change-control API from the Open Design Alliance, throw in ARES-based 2D RVT/IFC drawing generation from Graebert, host IFC 4.x data on Bricsys' massive-data-handling BricsCAD -- and a new open-BIM star may be born in less time than it takes for Autodesk to come up with its next code name for neo-Revit.
Autodesk may be keen on capturing a portion of the world’s largest industry, but construction needs feeding from capable design software. The future, according to large architectural firms, is all about the conceptual stage of design, with AI to handle the detail work, and then pipelining data to automated construction machinery, much of it off-site. The future, in this scenario, may hold no place for Revit.
Over a Zoom meeting facilitated by Vectorworks Senior Media Relations Manager Lauren Burke Meyer, CEO Dr. Biplab Sarkar and VP of Product Development Steve Johnson discussed with me their plans for Vectorworks, near and far.
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Ralph Grabowski: What are you planning for the next release of Vectorworks?
Steve Johnson: We are making improvements in a number of areas:
Improvements to the user interface, including
Tear off palettes
A quick search for tools that are then executed at the cursor
Smart Options Display that brings recent tools and controls from the perimeter of the screen to the cursor (it works across multiple monitors)
Providing users with suggestions for the workflow
We continue to expand upon our conceptual modeling solutions from the last several releases that made Vectorworks an alternative to SketchUp and Rhino, and so the next release has the last piece: draw a line to split the face of a solid to manipulate the geometry using push/pull.
It will have history modeling that provides direct modeling interaction with history-based modeling features.
For interoperability, we are adding Excel import and export, and publishing worksheets to PDFs.
Smart Markers are annotations that work across all our software, with reference links to view details in viewports. They create hyperlinks automatically when exported/published as a PDF. When you click on a marker, it links to the page in the PDF document that it is referencing. These live hyperlinks can also be viewed in the Vectorworks Nomad app, as well as any desktop PDF viewer.
For structural grids, the layout is more automated and can be customized so that users can determine how the grids show up in viewports.
Vectorworks needs to handle larger and larger models with more data, so we have more support for multiple cores to take advantage of the hardware that our users are running. Navigation between scenes in large models is improved. We are integrating and taking advantage of new technologies, and on the road to employing Apple's new Metal graphics system.
For our Vectorworks Architect product, we added a materials resource with graphical and physical attributes that can be attached to any object for better quantity take-offs, like volumes of materials in walls. As an architectural tool, we are best suited for data that falls under the architect’s purview. This includes STC [sound transmission class] ratings, fire ratings, U-values, daylighting information, run-off coefficients, and so on.
Data Visualization shows all data in the model, in multiple ways and now supports Materials, too.
We re-engineered the lighting device to better support focusing, and to handle multiple lights at one time. We were part of a group that defined a new specification for exchanging lighting fixture data between different software programs -- GDTF [General Device Type Format] -- and so the lighting device provides better support of GDTF. (See figure 1.)
Figure 1: Data flow using DGTF
For Landscape, we added support for components in the Landscape Area tool. Components define information such as a layer of topsoil on top of a base material. This lets us get proper sections.
Biplab Sarkar: Landscape is catching up with BIM!
Grabowski: When do you plan to release Vectorworks 2021?
Lauren Burke Meyer: We plan to release it mid-September.
Grabowski: How deeply do you plan to use the APIs developed by the Open Design Alliance for Revit, Navisworks, and IFC files?
Sarkar: We added the first level of Revit compatibility three releases ago. This release has a second version of Revit export: first, we exported models as mesh geometry, now as solids.
We use Solibri for mixed format project files, so we don't need Navisworks. As for IFC, we use our own IFC export/import routines, and we were the first to receive IFC4 Reference View 1.2 Export Certification. (See figure 2.)
Figure 2: IFC data in a Vectorworks model (image source Vectorworks)
We will implement the Civil3D API from ODA in our landscape software, Vectorworks Landmark .
Grabowski: What are some of the long-term goals you have in mind for Vectorworks?
Sarkar: Our vision for Vectorworks is for it to become the all-in-one software for designers around the world.
Currently, Architect supports the needs of our interiors market. However, we’ll be building upon this and soon adding an interior design module, driven by a new rendering engine. (See figure 3.) Real-time rendering is important, and we already have live scenes. Future releases will add TwinMotion architectural rendering [from Unreal Engine] and Maxon's new real-time GPU-powered rendering system, Redshift.
Last year, we began modernizing the UI and UX [user experience], and we will continue on that. We are working on a high-performance engine so that Vectorworks can use as many cores as are available.
Interoperability is important, as our customers bring data into Vectorworks from all kinds of other products. We plan more partnerships, such as last year's link to Esri[for mapping], links to more real-time rendering engines, and to other companies under the Nemetschek umbrella. (See figure 4.)
Figure 4: Placing GIS data from Esri into Vectorworks (image source Vectorworks)
Grabowski: I recall some talk about moving data more easily between Nemetschek products; how is this progressing?
Sarkar: We have always been a proponent of Open BIM [for compatibility with other BIM software]. We have been working on tighter integration with Nemetschek products, and are targeting direct interoperability by March 2021.
Grabowski: You use the Parasolid kernel from Siemens. At its user event last month, Siemens spoke about the advances it has made in convergent modeling [mixed solid and mesh modeling]. Does it have a role in Vectorworks?
Sarkar: Certainly! Convergent modeling is useful for any architectural modeler, being able to mix a solid design with a meshed chair from an online library. We are prototyping it [working on implementing it].
Grabowski: Apple is switching the CPUs in its computers from Intel to ARM. As Vectorworks runs on Windows and MacOS, how will the switch affect you?
Johnson: We have already been looking at what is involved. We will not be using Apple's Rosetta [Intel emulator], as we don't want to sacrifice any speed, no matter how little it might be.
It will likely take us only a week or two to compile the Vectorworks core code for the new Apple silicon using Apple's development toolkit. We will be working hard to prepare Vectorworks for the new Apple hardware, which is reported to be hitting the streets at the turn of the year. www.vectorworks.net
And in Other News
The following posts appeared in recent weeks on my WorldCAD Access blog:
So many of you wrote thoughtful letters about recent upFront.eZine articles that this issue is monster-sized and is dedicated to you, the writers. - Ralph Grabowski
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Re: The Future of IFC
Tech is still grappling with crossing the divide between design and build. I would make two arguments: one, possibly the majority of benefits of BIM [building information modeling] derive more from IPD [integrated project delivery] than from the technology. At a very high confidence level I would say that without IPD, BIM is of very limited utility.
Two, in the early years of IFC, it focused on MEP [mechanical, electrical, plumbing], so that is where BIM has had the greatest success.
The historically normal approach of design-bid-build is a process that in real life involves a lot of redesign, a.k.a. "delegated design" in which the shop drawing process is essentially an iterative detailed re-design in most cases.
IPD instead means that you bring a general contractor and the key subcontractors (historically the MEP guys, mainly) on board early during the design phase. They come onboard on a negotiated basis, rather than as bidders. Often this involves sharing in both the upside and downside of the final project cost, versus the traditional approach in which subs participate only on the downside.
You put all the players in a big room and work out many of the details in that room, so the BIM model ends up being much more reflective of reality, than a purely designer-designed BIM. (I think you already understand that architects have limited knowledge and responsibility for what they design, and their fees are commensurate and limited.)
The low hanging fruit among all the MEP contractors is clash detection, who otherwise fight for room [to fit their ducts, wires, and pipes] in ceilings and other spaces. The fighting used to occur during shop drawings and sometimes even in the field when trades gave each other little surprises.
With IPD, all the clashes as detected in the big meeting room, resolved, and put into the model.
That technology wants to take credit is an old story. It tries to take credit for the gains from discipline and cooperation that are outside the technology, but often accompany it.
For instance, computerized inventory control systems require that each item get a unique identifier, and that every movement of items in and out be recorded, whether at a store or a warehouse. Without discipline, computerized systems are basically worthless, or worse, are where you pay the costs but cannot reap the benefits.
Conversely, with the technology but without the discipline, you get some benefits.
When both cooperate together, you get maximum benefits, but the technology evangelists/salespersons will always attribute far more benefits to the technology, ignoring the role of the changed process. - Leo Schlosberg
Re: 2 Guys Talk CAD
If SpaceClaim is the evidence for the success of direct modeling, no wonder the CAD industry is not investing there. Your reader believes that direct modeling is the next thing. The truth is that it is an old technology that has been around way before the history/feature-based CAD and lost to the history-based systems. - Gal Raz (via WorldCAD Access)
The editor replies: Direct editing was the next thing a decade ago. Today it appears that the next thing is direct simulation.
SpaceClaim was not successful, except in marketing itself. SpaceClaim's marketing did, however, force the largest firms in the MCAD industry to move their software away from being based solely on PTC's pioneering history-based parametric design, and embrace direct modeling -- as witnessed by the direct modeling software launched nearly simultaneously by Autodesk, Dassault, PTC, and Siemens.
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You wrote, "Synchronous Technology, however, suffers from being very hard to understand and implement, because you have to figure out stuff before you start drawing -- the very opposite to what direct modeling is supposed to offer -- and so few Solid Edge and NX users use it."
ST does NOT suffer from being VERY hard to use. Ralph, it's your bitterness towards Solid Edge once again that taints your opinion. Granted in the first few releases there were many issues with using Synchronous, and I was one of it's biggest critics at the time. However the developers at Solid Edge made huge improvements to the GUI to help ease the understanding of just how it works.
The ONLY people who find it difficult to use are those like yourself who are too stuck in their "OLD" ways to see its brilliance. Synchronous has matured into one of the best improvements in 3D CAD in the past decade and has saved my company countless time and money, so I'm not sure why you still hang on to such "old" perceptions and biases.
How much time have you ever spent using Synchronous Technology, and how honest of an attempt did you make to actually understand it? I've been using MCAD since the mid 80s going all the way back to Personal Designer from Computervision.
Or maybe you just can't say what you truly feel as to not upset the folks at AutoCAD or Dassualt, eh. - Bob Mileiti (via WorldCAD Access)
The editor responds: I base my opinion on the few hands I observed going up when the question was asked at the four annual Solid Edge user conferences I attended. From this, I estimate about 10% use ST. So, I am very pleased to hear that you find ST useful.
Of the nearly 300 CAD reporters and analysts at Siemens' online press event earlier this month, I was the only one to ask Siemens staff why during the two-day event they hadn't told us anything about Solid Edge.
Mr Mileiti responds: I don't think Spaceclaim's problems have anything to do with direct modeling a whole. Their failure to attract enough customers had more to do with their single-minded approach.
Solid Edge has always been able to deal with both Parametric and Direct Modeling. As [engineering.com wrote about Siemens vp of mainstream engineering R&D Dan Staples] back in 2018:
"One might also wonder why, if Synchronous Technology is as beneficial as its proponents claim, it’s not a more widespread paradigm. Staples believes the reason is that Siemens is just that far ahead of the technological curve in large part because of its ownership of the Parasolid kernel and D-Cubed constraint solving SDK [software development kit].
The editor replies: I feel Mr Staples makes my case.
The 'single-minded approach' referred to by Mr Mileiti is that Spaceclaim had positioned itself as a model fixer-upper adjacent to CAD seats, rather than as an MCAD system in its own right. It thought it could land a share of what it saw as a 10x-100x bigger market (of adjacent seats) than trying to compete directly with ensconced MCAD systems. (In 2014, it was purchased by ANSYS as a model fixer-upper.)
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Synchronous Technology seems cool in a lot of ways, but I don't see it as superior to history-based design, just a different way to model and edit with its own pros and cons. It appears to fall down on complex geometry, which is where a long rebuild in the history model is at its worse.
I have some parts that I don't know how ST in Solid Edge could edit them, because there is curve to them and/or extremely complex intersections of geometry. I imagine once you learn it, it's not bad and flows well, but I must admit the user interface looks daunting -- a lot of button selections. - Jason Capriotti (via WorldCAD Access)
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You wrote, “Head office in Paris was pressing forward with their V6 generation (known today as "3dExperience"), which uses Delmia as the central repository for Catia data.”
Enovia, ya plum. Much love, - Al Dean
- - -
An interesting summary of kernels and consequences re the big boys. I have been a VX/ZWCAD user [and dealer] for 15 years doing a lot of advanced surfacing as part of everyday modeling. ZW3D has a history-based direct editing approach, which provides the benefits of geometry adjustment and the power to edit the direct edit. I find users of other software are a bit shocked when they see how intuitive and effective it is.
Maybe ZW3D is not flavor of the month being Chinese, but the deep development still takes place in Florida, driven in a unique US/Sino collaboration that has been going on for years now. - Paul Smith Graceland Technology, New Zealand
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Istvan Csanady responded with a marked up Word document. I summarize his and my comments with the original sentences. Mr Csanady is founder and CEO of Shapr3D.
My article in upFront.eZine said: Catia and NX do things Solidworks and Solid Edge cannot -- and deliberately so -- do functions such as advanced surfacing.
Istvan Csanady: I would say that systems engineering is also a key differentiator.
upFront: Direct editing and modeling became vogue with the successful marketing of SpaceClaim.
Csanady: I wouldn’t say Spaceclaim was very successful to be honest, and unfortunately still most CAD users don’t understand what is direct modeling.
Ralph Grabowski: The company was not successful, but their marketing was brilliant.
upFront: Siemens' Parasolid kernel brings direct modeling to Solid Edge and NX.
Csanady: Synchronous Technology is much more than direct modeling. You can think of ST as “feature based direct modeling”. ST automates and batches direct modeling operations by recognizing features in the geometry, like shells. Direct modeling is actually part of Parasolid, and it is licensed to third parties. My Shapr3D is a direct modeling tool, for example, and it runs on Parasolid.
Grabowski: My description of ST being a direct modeler was a simplified one. I understand that it is much more complex, and that users find it too complex.
upFront: Autodesk wrote a new CAD program to handle direct modeling, Fusion.
Csanady: Fusion actually supports both traditional history based modeling and direct modeling. You can switch between the two modes.
Grabowski: Fusion is Autodesk's answer to direct modeling, rather than bolting it onto Inventor.
upFront: My understanding is that Solidworks it has only a kludge that imitates the effect of direct modeling.
Csanady: Solidworks supports all the direct modeling operations, but you can’t turn off design history. So every direct modeling operation is another step in the design history, but basically you get many of the benefits of direct modeling. Obviously, there is a lot of room for improvement in their direct modeling implementation, but it has the basics.
Grabowski: That is the reason behind me using the word 'kludge'. I knew that there was a problem with Solidworks direct modeling. Thanks for spelling it out for me!
upFront: Dassault should have swapped out Parasolids for CGM, while leaving everything else in place.
Csanady: This is easier to say than do. They tried, but it’s basically impossible. If you want to replace a b-rep kernel under a history-based modeler, you need bug-to-bug level compatibility between the two kernels, otherwise you will have significant data loss.
Grabowski: Oh, I understand that it would be very difficult! Hence my use of the word 'should'. Mimicking all bugs is an angle I had not thought of before.
upFront: If they swapped out Parasolid for CGM (they certainly do not enjoy paying license fees to Siemens) they would have incompatible geometry yet again.
Csanady: I think this requires a little bit more of a pragmatic approach: how much they are paying for Siemens versus how much would it cost to replace Parasolids with CGM, and how much would customers benefit from that?
Considering these factors, it’s actually not that obvious that [the kernel swap] would be worth it, unless they believe that Solidworks will start competing at the higher end of the market, becomes a direct NX competitor, and replaces CATIA in their portfolio, which I find highly unlikely.
Grabowski: Agreed. Nevertheless, Paris keeps hitting its head against a wall -- a Solidworks wall.
upFront: At one point, Dassault told me that CGM was better at it because it was second derivative continuous.
Csanady: This does not make too much sense. You can create G2 or Gn continuous surfaces with Parasolid as well, and you can implement any surfacing algorithm on the top of Parasolid. Actually I would say that Parasolid is in every possible way superior to CGM. In robustness, performance, speed etc., CGM is not even close.
Grabowski: This statement was made by an ex-Dassault employee, who was not on the CAD side of things.
upFront: The final death knell for cloud-based mid-sized MCAD came when Onshape admitted they had only 5,000 paying customers.
Csanady: Not because it’s cloud-based, but because there isn’t a single customer problem that their implementation solves. It’s technology done for the sake of doing technology.
Obviously cloud-based solutions will be and should be implemented, especially for collaboration and data exchange, but running the modeling with a browser front-end and cloud back-end makes literally zero sense, is insanely hard to implement, gives no value to the user, and has lots of drawbacks.
Grabowski: I always found the approach used by Belmont Technology interesting, them using the 'we wrote the new gen of MCAD (Solidworks) that became a huge success' argument to land $169 million. A does not infer B.
I think that PTC sees value primarily in the database aspect of Onshape, and a way to sell PTC-branded CAD to smaller customers. In a press event earlier this month, the head of Siemens CAD again emphasized that there will be no cloud version of NX and Solid Edge.
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Let Daren know that Logitech owns 3Dconnexion. His money still went to Logitech. Source: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/3Dconnexion - Christopher Fugitt
The editor replies: I was under the impression 3Dconnexion went independent of Logitech.
Daren is right about everything, except 3Dconnexion being a different company than Logitech. I missed my Performance MX enough I bought a replacement spring for the left click switch. - Henry Sommer
The editor replies: The confusion comes about as both Google and Bing, as their top search result, incorrectly say 3Dconnexion is owned by Logitech, while the Wikipedia entry has not been updated in a decade.
I did not know it was possible to get replacement parts!
The editor replies: Logitech says it sold the company at a loss as "it is more likely than not that the Company would not generate adequate capital gains in the next five years before the capital loss expires under the U.S. tax law."
I turned our research into a blog entry, which you can read here: worldcadaccess.com/blog/2020/06/nobody-owns-3dconnexion.html. It concerns me that Bing, Google, and Wikipedia all have the same wrong answer, and have been wrong for nine years!
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Popular CAD data sources include SolidWorks, ProE/Creo, Inventor, AutoCAD, Revit, Navisworks, DGN, IGES, STEP, Parasolid, and JT. DCC data sources are Cinema-4D, 3ds Max, Maya, FBX/Collada, and many more.
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A domain registrar has 3D.com for sale and hopes to land $25 million. I don't see anyone in the CAD industry ponying up that much, but someone in gaming or an nVidia might.
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Nanosoft last week launched nanoCAD Plus 20 with drawing comparison, 3D clipping, new built-in script editor, and a monitor for changes to system variables and externally-referenced drawings.
Dynamic input adds command options, and undoes/redoes can now be visualized before committing to them. The program imports IFC and point cloud files. Download the 32- or 64-bit 30-day trials from nanocad.com/products/plus/download/.
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Decent IFC viewers can be tough to find, as either they have not been updated lately or are too expensive.
The Open Design Alliance has released a free one that handles IFC v2x3 - v4x2 formats. In addition to all the usual viewing functions, it has cutting planes and clash detection, and will support v4x3 in September. https://openifcviewer.com/
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Graebert is adding to its coronavirus-related CAD offer. Anyone who took up their previous offer to use Kudo browser-based CAD free to the end of June, can now join a focus group and get six more months free -- open at least one drawing in http://kudo.graebert.com (following registration) by the end of day June 30.
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MachineWorks will be releasing Polygonica v2.4 soon that offers:
Curvature aware remeshing
Offsetting curves across mesh surfaces
Reconnect islands based on surrounding mesh curvature
AMETEK-owned Creaform to begin shipping later this summer a wicked-looking 3D scanner, the MetraScan Black with 15 blue lasers, 4x greater resolution than earlier models, and no warm-up time. Targets optional.
It takes 1.8 million measurements each second at a resolution of 0.0009" (0.025mm) and performs meshing in real-time. But you'll need an optimal hardware setup to handle that amount of data. https://www.creaform3d.com/en/optical-3d-scanner-metrascan
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Ideate Software offers several Revit helper programs:
StyleManager fixes style problems when importing content into Revit.
BIMLink imports data into Excel and then sends it as BIM data to Revit.
Explorer fixes Revit problems through a model browser.
Sticky connects non-BIM data from Excel into Revit.
IdeateApps does spell checking, sheet managing, quick selecting, and more.
LiveWorx is PTC's annual user conference. As it was online this year, anyone could attend -- even me. CEO James Heppelmann in his pre-recorded keynote speech reported that Creo 7.0 had been completed by programmers working from home, and was the largest release since Creo was first announced a decade ago as Pro/Engineer's replacement.
What's New in Creo 7
Creo 7 is the 35th release of the company's flagship MCAD software that began at the company's founding with Pro/Engineer. The two emphases in this release of Creo are on generative design and integrated analysis.
Generative Design. Last year, PTC purchased Frustum for its generative design software. PTC needed to catch up with competitors already offering it, such as Autodesk (through Fusion), Siemens (in NX), and even Hexagon (from AMendate). In Creo 7, it's available in two extensions:
Generative Topology Optimization (GTO) runs inside Creo but does only a single analysis at a time (see figure 1)
Generative Design Extension (GDX) runs on the cloud so that users can run multiple design analyses at the same time
Figure 1: Generative Topology Optimization (GTO) is based on Frustum (all images sourced PTC)
Right now, the two extensions handle structural analysis, with modal (vibration) and thermal analysis to come later this year. PTC takes pains to point out the difference between topology optimization and generative design.
Topology optimization minimizes material use through stress analysis, such as using an I-beam in place of a solid bar of steel
Generative design requires designers to specify constraints, like bounding boxes and connection points, after which the software calculates all possibilities to satisfy the constraints automatically
So now PTC can offer both. PTC takes a shot at competitors by declaring that only its generative designs are parametric.
In marketing Creo 7, PTC talks up AI [artificial intelligence]. The best that I could determine is that some AI runs in GDX. Generative design has been criticized for its organic-looking output being manufacturable only by 3D printers, but Creo offers to limit generative changes to those that can be handled by traditional subtractive machining (lathes, etc), even specifying parting lines for moulds.
Simulation. Last year, PTC made a deal with ANSYS to start integrating all of its simulation software into Creo. So far, we see two results from the agreement:
Creo Simulation Live is ANSYS Discovery Live, which updates fluid flow and heat analysis in real time as designers change shapes of parts. (See figure 2.)
Other types of analyses aren't available in Live, so the "new" ANSYS Simulation add-on provides structural, modal, and thermal analysis functions inside Creo 7.
Figure 2: Creo Simulation Live performing real-time fluid flow analysis
Elsewhere. To further catch up to competitors, PTC adds multi-body design to Creo 7 so that users can work with disjointed, touching, and overlapping geometry in a single part.
For AM [additive manufacturing], Creo gets stochastic lattices that identify and follow the edges of prismatic shapes. For SM [subtractive manufacturing], the Mill Turn Work Center now outputs designs to Swiss-brand turning machines.
You can download a 30-day trial of Creo 7 from ptc.com/en/products/cad/creo/trial, after registration. Students from Kindergarten on up can run Creo, MathCAD, and Onshape for free.
PTC in a Time of Coronavirus
A number of CAD vendors (but not all) are offering their customers respite for working from home, like an automatic second license, free access to training, and/or no-charge collaboration software.
Here, PTC is offering customers no-cost license options to work from home for a temporary period. PTC offers its augmented reality app Vuforia Chalk free through to the end of June. PTC's eLearning site is free for now so that users can upgrade their skills. Medical device and health-tech customers receive the highest level of support at no additional charge. To learn more about PTC's support options during WFH, check out the details at ptc.com/en/support/enablement/COVID19-Resources. For example, it explains to registered users how to run Creo at home.
COVID-19 is a marketing opportunity for PTC. "The world of engineering software has to move to the cloud," said Mr Heppelmann during his LiveWorx keynote address. He credits PTC with having the foresight to buy Onshape in November, right before desk workers had to relocate to their homes through stay-at-home orders mandated by some governments. He noted that PTC's PLM [product lifecycle management] software, Windchill, always had been a thin-client cloud application.
While Onshape-powered Atlas is the future platform for "many other PTC products that will be coming out in the future," Creo is still the workhorse, because when PTC speaks about Atlas, it uses hedging words. This is appropriate, as the abilities of Atlas are not yet proven. For instance, in speaking of the apps running on Atlas, "they will also exchange data with one another very easily, because they'll all use, potentially, common databases," said executive vp Jon Hirschtick (emphasis mine).
For apps that will be running on the Atlas/Onshape platform, PTC now has in development Vuforia AR modules, generative design, "and we're working in other areas, too." In the meantime, here is the workflow PTC offers customers today:
When a designer makes change in Creo desktop MCAD...
the change is recorded in Windchill PLM...
through a workflow defined by ThingWorx connectivity software...
so that clients receive an email about the change...
who then click on the link to view it in Onshape online CAD.
Trying Out Vuforia Chalk
PTC is really pushing Vuforia Chalk as its primary coronavirus solution at ptc.com/en/products/augmented-reality/vuforia-chalk-free-access. This remote assistance software displays AR models overtop images seen by a smartphone's camera. Employees can mark up (redline) the view to document maintenance and repair issues, which are then sent back to the office. See figure 3.
Figure 3: Vuforia Chalk marking up a real-time image on a smartphone
To better understand PTC's reason for hyping Vuforia Chalk, I downloaded the app to my new AR-capable Android 10 smartphone, but found, unfortunately, that it was a no-go. Unless you own one of a very, very few supported Android models (although most iOS phones are supported) and are able to contact a Chalk administrator, Vuforia Chalk does nothing useful for you.
Mr Heppelmann in late April reported that the use of Chalk had gone up 10-fold. During LiveWorx, he noted that its usage percentage grew faster than Zoom. PTC promotes the free use of Chalk with the aim of seeding future sales. "These companies using Chalk represent a big upsell pipeline to pursue in Q4 and beyond," he told financial analysts.
PTC's Future Vision
While office workers transitioned easily to working from home, Mr Heppelmann stated that there is a need "to bring digital data to 2.7 billion front line workers." It seemed to me that "front line" means manufacturing workers, as the examples shown would not work for hospital, grocery, and sanitation front line workers. The solution from PTC is to use AR to virtualize front line (manufacturing) work.
Spatial Computing is PTC's new term for physical and digital convergence. It combines AR, IoT [Internet of things], PLM, and CAD into digital twins, a computer model that replicates what's happening in the real world. The AR part is Vuforia Spatial Toolbox, and for PTC it represents the first example of an interface between machines and humans -- "walk the factory floor from your home office," said Mr Heppelmann. "AR is IoT for people." See figure 4.
Figure 4: Vuforia being used to define a robot's path
It is still very early days for Spatial Computing. How it can be broadly deployed is a something PTC is leaving up to you, and so Vuforia Spatial Toolbox is available as an open source model at the PTC Web site. PTC hopes you'll help figure it out.
When Mr Heppelmann forecasts, "You click on a link, and within 15 seconds you're in any part of the suites doing anything that we can do," PTC is pivoting to be like Dassault Systemes and its 3dExperience platform by offering a SaaS [software as a service] suite. "We believe that the Covid crisis will accelerate the SaaS tipping point for the engineering and software industry by several years," he said. http://www.ptc.com [Portions of this article first appeared in Design Engineering magazine, and are reprinted by permission.]
You wrote, "Slow parse speed -- I've waited 15 minutes for an IFC file to open" Well, I'm witnessing Uptown.ifc take ***4 freaking hours*** to read from one Revit into the next Revit. See 3d.bk.tudelft.nl/projects/geobim-benchmark/uptown.html.
I miss the "What does Ralph think" part - HnsaCAD (@CadHns on Twitter)
The editor replies: The binary IFC file and partial BIM data exchange represent important progress needed by IFC, but both are so early in the development of the more efficient format that I wonder how long it will take.
Mr HnsaCAD responds: We will be too old to implement.
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Thanx for an informative IFC update. - Chris Cadman
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Reading your piece on IFCs reminded me of when our tiny startup Heavyware.com (then a proposed multi-fabricator catalog and in retrospect, a doomed entity) joined the IAI in 1999. We found that all IFC classes were design-side; there were no fields that a contractor might want.
When we raised it at a meeting, many people were surprised at the idea that a contractor might want his own data. This oversight arose because the initial sponsorship of 12 in the consortium were software companies, architects, an MEP [mechanical, engineering, plumbing] engineer, large corporations that did MEC-related manufacturing, and a large developer -- basically large Autodesk customers plus other interested software entities, as well as AT&T.
Put another way, in the fragmented world of AEC [architecture, engineering, construction], this started as purely an AE initiative, zero C. Given the incredible complexity involved in designing and building very large prototypes (as in commercial construction), it turns out that streamlining the process takes a long time. - Leo Schlosberg www.planetcommercialconstruction.wordpress.com
The editor replies: I recall in the early days of IFC when advocates showed me how data from a CAD program could be exported (via IFC) to an energy analysis program. They seemed relieved when the demo worked. IFC has come along ways from then. Thanks for telling us your early history with IFC!
Mr Schlosberg responds: Energy analysis was a hot topic then and probably very labor intensive to compute. The initial consortium was 25% energy-related companies (Carrier, Honeywell). Big developers greatly value the energy analysis during design.
Tiny comment from the subcontractor perspective. The shift from paper to CAD meant that you could send files electronically. This meant that the former practice of general contractors often sending you a set of prints so you could bid something, morphed into emailing you the file or telling you where you could download it.
When that began, no one had screens that were useful [big enough with high-enough resolution] for looking at this stuff and so you had to buy a plotter and pay the costs of plotting in order to bid. It was a mild shifting of costs downstream. It clearly was one lesson in understanding information flow in construction: all kinds of things beside water and data flow downstream, the biggest being risk.
The industry is still addressing this, since building off a model can be a risky venture. It depends on who owns the model and whose knowledge went into it.
Thank You, Readers
Thank you to readers who donate towards the operation of upFront.eZine:
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A reader and I corresponded over the status of the CAD industry. He asked to be kept anonymous.
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PL: It seems like Solidworks and Inventor have gotten good enough to reduce people needing to move to higher-end packages like Catia or NX. Are there things from those systems that could benefit Solidworks users?
RG: Catia and NX do things Solidworks and Solid Edge cannot, and deliberately so -- such as advanced surfacing. For the most common kinds of MCAD, however, Solidworks and Solid Edge are good enough.
The primary problem with older CAD (Pro/Engineer, Inventor, Solidworks, Solid Edge) is that they lacked direct editing and modeling, which became vogue with the successful marketing of SpaceClaim.
CAD vendors took different approaches to solve the problem:
PTC integrated ME/30 (from HP) into Pro/E and called it Creo. The transition took several years. The company has its own kernel, Granite.
Siemens wrote the Synchronous Technology add-on to their Parasolids kernel, which brings direct modeling to Solid Edge and NX. (When Siemens licenses Parasolids to other CAD vendors, however, it leaves out ST part.) ST, however, suffers from being very hard to understand and implement, because you have to figure out stuff before you start drawing -- the very opposite to what direct modeling is supposed to offer -- and so few SE and NX users use it.
Autodesk wrote a new CAD program to handle direct modeling, Fusion. (The company has its own kernel, the ACIS-derived ShapeManager.) Inventor carries on as a traditional MCAD history-based modeler.
Dassault Systemes tried to port Solidworks to V6 (3dExperience) but failed, so they wrote bridging software -- modeling programs that use Dassault's CGM kernel and are meant for Solidworks users. These also failed, as each one required expensive annual subscriptions, were immature (lacked functions), and were data-incompatible (Solidworks uses Parasolids). I am unsure where Solidworks stands with direct modeling; my understanding is that it has only a kludge that imitates the effect of direct modeling, but I could be wrong.
Among smaller CAD vendors, several are starting to add direct modeling, with Bricsys having made the most progress, I think. Bricsys was fortunate in having only a rudimentary ACIS-based 3D modeler when they had the foresight to buy outright the direct modeling tech (and staff) from Ledas of Russia.
PL: Not being a CAD guy, what are the things that Dassault should be including in Solidworks that they are not? I know they have redesigned the UX [user experience] a few times.
RG: In retrospective, it is easy to see what Dassault should have done. They should have copied Apple, who successfully switched CPUs and OSes under the hood without users noticing much. Dassault should have done the following:
Swapped out Parasolids for CGM, while leaving everything else in place
Written a transparent Parasolid-CGM translator
Added in direct modeling and editing
Called it a day
Admittedly, geometric kernel swaps are easier today than a decade ago.
But head office in Paris was pressing forward with their V6 generation (known today as "3dExperience"), which uses Enovia as the central repository for Catia data and runs much of the ancillary software as Web-based modules. So no surprise that they thought Solidworks should be converted into that as well.
Never mind that its own Catia customers are disinterested in 3dExperience; after a decade, about 25% have transitioned from V4 and V5. Or that Solidworks is so much more successful at not being cloud-ized.
The final death knell for cloud-based mid-sized MCAD came when Onshape admitted they had only 5,000 paying customers. BOOM! Nobody is going to want to go that way now.
PL: But if they swapped out Parasolid for CGM (they certainly do not enjoy paying license fees to Siemens) they would have incompatible geometry yet again. Perhaps if they implemented direct modeling they would have had an improved ability to deal with it. I am not sure why they did not do that.
RG: That certainly is the position of Bricsys when they say that BricsCAD can import 3D models from any source, have some automated routines fix it up as necessary, and then work on it with direct modeling, like it was native.
My guess is that there is something about the structure of the code in Solidworks that prevents direct modeling from being implemented. Or maybe Dassault was thinking along these lines: if we have to implement direct modeling, we might as well write an all-new MCAD program that fits these modern times.
PL: But surfacing would be easier to add, I assume, since NX can support it with the Parasolid kernel. At one point, Dassault told me that CGM was better at it because it was second derivative continuous, a phrase that makes sense to this lapsed mathematician.
RG: In terms of marketing, surfacing is made to be the differentiator. Siemens told me Solid Edge uses the same version of Parasolid as NX, so it is a matter of switching features on or off -- kind of like mainframes of old!
Excellent article! I've just returned an MX Master 3 mouse as defective (after 2 weeks of testing) that suffered the same problems reported here on the 2s. Ultimately for me, these were the top problems I had with it:
Options replaced Setpoint and lost important features, such as acceleration (which makes it nearly impossible to move quickly across two large monitors and still be able to accurately select fine details)
Non-replaceable battery (as opposed to the AA battery in my Performance MX)
The incredibly poor quality of Logitech's customer support (email only, days for each reply, inability to communicate clearly or accurately respond to each individual problem or question)
Their unwillingness to offer any sort of help to repair or replace my far superior Performance MX mouse with a failing left-click button.
You are correct when you say "Devolution has attacked the MX," and it seems to have also permeated Logitech completely.
Ultimately, however, I am grateful for Logitech's failure because it forced me to look deeper into my other options and allowed me to give my money to another company that I would not have otherwise considered -- and one which seems to listen to its customers. I have just spent twice as much money with 3Dconnexion for two of their products (3D SpaceMouse and 2D CadMouse), which seem to have consistently received good customer reviews. - Daren (via WorldCAD Access)
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When Autodesk developed IFC in the mid-1990s, it was constructed for interoperability based on the way files and data were exchanged back then. Architectural and engineering designers use IFC [industry foundation classes] to exchange data and geometry about building models between programs. Today, buildingSmart International is responsible for the maintaining and expanding the IFC format, with the assistance of the Open Design Alliance making it available through SDKs [software development kits].
The current version is IFC v4.2 and is defined by a 7,000-page document covering 1,800 definitions for entities, compositions, and quantities. Figure 1 shows how a door is defined.
Figure 1: IFC definition of a door
Now, 35 years later, computing has progressed to clever programming languages, efficient file formats, and CPUs that crunch data more quickly. So buildingSmart is looking at how to modernize IFC for version 5 and beyond.
Here is an example of why change is needed, as explained by a member of buildingSmart: "If I move one wall of one floor of a 40-story building, why should I have to package up the entire 40-story building with all of its information, when I could just send [the client] the new wall. Or, [I could] just send them the information that I moved this wall over to here."
Programs like Revit have a database-like representation, so they can do a selective export. What’s technically not attractive is a selective import from a complete IFC SPF file. IFC is in ASCII format, and looks like this (how IFC defines the vertices of a 3D polyline):
The file fragment is shown in IFC-SPF format, the most common .ifc format. Each in the file defines one piece of data. SPF is short for "STEP physical file" and means that the format used by IFC mimics that of STEP, the international "Standard for The Exchange of Product model data" -- more commonly used in MCAD.
ASCII is good, because we humans can read it. But, being in ASCII, it suffers from the same problems that all ASCII files have:
File-size bloat -- files are 6x larger than when compressed
Sequential reading -- entire file must be read from start to end
No mid-file extraction -- the entire model must be loaded into software
Slow parse speed -- I've waited 15 minutes for an IFC file to open
Not hierarchical -- definitions are not defined in order, so the definition of a wall (size, location) can be in one place and information about the related opening in the wall in another spot
While file size is not a problem on today's voluminous computers, the other limitations are frustrating. And so the need to look at a modern file format. But which one?
Two-fork Modernization
Not that there haven't already been modernization attempts:
ifcXML is the XML version of IFC. It looks like the HTML that's used to define Web pages. When software doesn't necessarily know about the file format, then XML [extensible markup language] is useful in this situation. IFCXML expands file size by about 13%. Here is the start of the definition of a door in ifcXML:
ifcZIP is the compressed version of IFC using the common-place PkZIP technology. It is in binary format and reduces file size by about 6x.
ifcOWL is based on Terse RDF Triple Language that is useful for visualizing the content of IFC files using semantic Web to link external data, such as from sensors and geographic databases. OWL is short for "Web Ontology Language" and RDF is short for "Resource Description Framework."
Beyond these, IFC is being modernized through two new projects:
ifcJSON -- JavaScript Object Notation, broadly available
ifcJSONis based on JSON (pronounced "jason"), which is a prevalent data architecture used by Web browsers. JSON is easy to read by humans, is tolerant of faults, and is built into all modern Web browsers. JSON is like XML, but is more modern and has more datatypes, such as arrays, unlike XML. Like XML, there are many programming tools available for JSON, such as JavaScript and Python, and it is compatible with C# and Java. Since it based on an existing standard, formats and programs already exist, such as to view raw data.
In terms of IFC, JSON is useful because it will support partial models, and software can operate on the data directly, without translation. So, buildingSmart has two JSON projects underway. ifcJSON v4 is a direct mapping from EXPRESS-based IFC v4 (see figure 2).
Figure 2: Ecosystem planned for ifcJSON v4
"Once you see an IFC data in JSON, it is striking how much of the file is empty or contains default data," says buildingSmart. A typical IFC file is 90% unnecessary, containing identity matrices or of default values. (Matrices are used to transform vector entities through actions like scaling and rotating; when one is an identity matrix, no transformation takes place.)
ifcJSON v5 is the next version. It simplifies things and adds more capability. It supports geometry as OBJ meshes, FBX game assets, b-reps, and other formats, limits null and empty values (which bulk up ASCII files unnecessarily). Using meshes and leaving out solid modeling simplifies the modeling engine. Figure 3 shows an example of a simplified ifcJSON v5 file.
Figure 3: Non-hierarchical IFC content simplified by ifcJSON v5
ifcHDF5 Is the Binary Future
ifcHDF5 is based on HDF [hierarchical data format] v5 that is used for scientific computing, such as MatLab. At this point, buildingSmart is working on a research project experimenting with turning IFC into a binary format. The drawback is that HDF is not universal like JSON, and so the problems to overcome are how to distribute HDF5 to stakeholders and import HDF5-based files into proprietary software.
The benefit to binary is that it uses fixed-length storage and hierarchical structure, so that the software knows where in the file to jump to. Reading some binary data takes the same time for both small files and large. For instance, to learn how many stories a building model holds, this just involves reading metadata and occurs nearly instantly (around .001 seconds). Reading the total area of all windows takes not much longer. In figure 4, the green line is the time to read ASCII file for the total area of all windows for increasingly complex buildings (a through i); the brown line shows the binary read-time. The graphs are logarithmic.
Figure 4: ASCII (green) vs binary (brown) file read times
ifcHDF5 supports huge data sets, such as those contained in point clouds and sensor data. You cannot store point clouds and acquisition data in ASCII files, because they typically are gigabytes in size. buildingSmart sees different ways of implementing these large data sets. Data from buildings scanned for renovations would probably be kept separate from as-built verification scans. On the other hand, hybrid modeling combines precise 3D models with scans of ornamental parts; or, you might want to keep progressive data of buildings as they shift. See figure 5.
Figure 5: Handling point clouds in projects
Different representations of buildings can be mounted, such as just the bounding boxes, just the b-rep, just the meshes, and so on. A binary ifcHDF5 is not that much smaller than a compressed ASCII IFC file, because of its use of fixed record lengths.
A problem solved by HDF5 is long-time archives, as the format encodes checksums (to ensure the data being read is valid). The IFC schema is encoded so that the IFC version number no longer matters. Even if the storage media deteriorates, parts of the file can be extracted. HDF viewer software displays the binary data in ASCII format that is human-readable.
ODA's Role in Binary IFC
by Neil Peterson, President ODA In 2019, we established a new partnership with buildingSmart, and at the same time released the initial version of our new IFC SDK [software development kit]. IFC is an open format, and so we are providing our IFC SDK at no additional cost as part of a standard ODA membership.
There are a surprising number of problems with the various third-party IFC solutions on the market. For example, some commercial solutions are not even thread-safe, so we’ve been able to solve a lot of problems for our members in this area. IFC is generally encoded using the STEP physical file format, which is a text file that must be read line by line from start to finish.
As part of our effort, we are currently implementing support for binary IFC, based on the work of Thomas Krijnen. We are using the standard HDF5 binary and hierarchical data format, as binary IFC files support random access to specific IFC entities.
So, it’s possible to implement more sophisticated loading techniques, such as partial and lazy loading. We have a binary IFC prototype up and running, and expect to have this new feature in our production release by the third quarter of this year.
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The new IFC formats will be language-independent. Older versions of IFC will be supported in the years ahead, including the EXPRESS, STEP, and other versions. In the end, it's "just being able to exchange pieces that people care about." https://technical.buildingsmart.org/standards/ifc/ifc-formats/
My thanks to Thomas Krijnen for pointing me towards buildingSmart's future development for IFC. He is working on the binary version of IFC, ifcHDF5.
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Excellent Ralph! Spot on. Thank you very much. - David Sargert
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I read with interest your recent posting and would like to comment on 'What Ralph Grabowski Thinks.' You hit the nail on the head.
Your comments were so true. Business today is arrogant and disrespectful of their customers. I feel that some businesses feel that they can change the way they conduct business and the customers will go along with it.
A prime example is Autodesk. I personally bought every upgrade to AutoCAD from v 2.5 to 2011. At 2011, I decided to find a cheaper CAD software because AutoCAD was more expensive than I could afford, and the subscription and upgrades did not seem to be worth the cost.
I found Progecad and bought it, instead of AutoCAD, and no longer have the problems, expense, and hassle. The software has been as good as AutoCAD and at a much cheaper price. I upgrade every other year), I am none the worse for wear.
I do not even recommend AutoCAD to anyone. I know what my upgrades will cost and have had no problems with Progecad. - Newt Edwards
The editor replies: The good news is that in 2020 there are many alternatives to AutoCAD that do 2D drafting at a lower cost, and without mandatory subscriptions.
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I almost read the whole issue in one swoop. I am afraid this pandemic will do a lot of damage to businesses, small, large, and in between, owners, employees, customers. - Herb Grabowski
The editor replies: While shops may go out of business at a faster rate than normal, there will always be entrepreneurs to rise up and fill perceived gaps.
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I’ve been in business 34 years. I’m energize by the very fact that I simply enjoy what I do. It’s my hobby that happens to have revenues tied to it. That’s the way I think of you. You continue to provide consistent, high quality and insightful material. That can only come from the passion you have for what you do. I appreciate it and you. - M.R.
The editor replies: It is hard to believe that when in 1985 I answered a tech-editor-needed ad from CADalyst magazine in the local paper (after being laid off as an engineer) that the topic would become the rest of my life
Re: pCloud pRoblems
I noticed that my AutoCAD files didn’t have any revisions saved on pCloud, as happens with Dropbox. I contacted pCloud and the following is their reply.
"Our developers confirm that there's a bug with the revisions when editing AutoCAD files, but please note that an immediate fix is not possible. Unfortunately, we are unable to provide you with an estimated time for a version with a fix."
The version history on Dropbox has helped me alot from time to time, so it’s a disappointment that it doesn’t happen with pCloud and is of such a low priority to fix that they have no idea when it will be dealt with.
I don’t know if you found this happening to you, but with one of pCloud's recent updates I was disconnected from pCloud and got an expired session window, which sat on top of the login screen. Once I closed the expired session window the login screen closed, too. I can’t remember how, but I managed to eventually get the login screen (I think I rebooted each of my PC’s that had this problem and then manually restarted pCloud). - Dairobi Paul
The editor replies: I have noticed that pCloud is slow to fix bugs. For instance, the right-click option to get a download link went missing for several months. The expired session bug was fixed with the most recent pCloud update, I think.
I use pCloud for most of my online storage needs, but its drawbacks mean that I continue to use the free version Dropbox, although it is limited to three machines now. If necessary, I also use free Google Cloud with apps that do not work with pCloud. I appreciate pCloud's 0.5TB online storage for a one-time fee, but then I wonder how long before pCloud might go out of business!
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Book written by Jim Collins Reviewed by Ralph Grabowski
This article is the second in a series in upFront.eZine examining complexity and what we can understand about it. Here we learn about failure and overcoming it.
- - -
We like being associated with success, but in the real world we experience failure. By understanding what can cause failure, we can learn how to avoid it, and if we cannot avoid it, then we can learn how to navigate it.
A failure warning I took to heart early on is Intel CEO Andy Grove's declaration, “Only the paranoid survive.” Well, it's not that the paranoid necessarily survive, but your business is more likely to survive when it looks in all directions for possible dangers.
Danger is complex because it comes from many directions. Changes in market. Loss of customers. Reduced ability to deliver. Extended power or Internet outages. Even something as obscure as sudden changes in currency exchange becoming severe enough to pummel revenues.
Some dangers can be mitigated by looking back to what has happened in the past, and others by thinking about what might occur in the future. We can only guess, and then make preparations that might never be needed.
As I write this, Hertz is protecting itself with a bankruptcy filing. It has the ongoing cost of leasing three-quarters of a million vehicles for which it has insufficient customers. We understand why it is happening (politicians made the coronavirus-inspired decision to reduce movement), but could such a danger have been predicted?
As a part of learning about the complexity of failure, I have found corporate biographies fascinating reading, learning of how Corel, American Express, Shell, Enron, Palm Computing Time-Warner, ComputerLand rose or failed. Luck often paid a role in rising; failure mostly came about from decisions by executives.
How the Great Fall
When Jim Collins wrote Good to Great, he ended up with a four-million copy bestseller. He didn't realize he would need a followup to document how the great become broken. He was horrified to observe some of the greats in his book fall from lofty perches after attaining perfect business practices, HP and Circuit City most of all.
He and his staff set about rummaging through tens of thousands of business documents to learn the vectors of failure. One source of information he did not consult was the horse's mouth, the staff and executives who worked at the failing companies. From experience, he knew their anecdotal stories would be biased -- too positive or too negative. Instead, he consulted mountains of paperwork that public companies generate, such as annual reports, press releases, and minutes of meetings.
Mr Collins came up with five steps that start a successful company on the path to failure:
Step 1. Hubris [foolish pride] born of success Step 2. Undisciplined pursuit of more Step 3. Denial of risk and peril Step 4. Grasping for salvation Step 5. Capitulation to irrelevance, or death
The companies he examined are these ones:
A&P (Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company) knew their customers so well that when a hearse went by, execs could say, "There goes another customer."
Addressograph launched 23 new copier products in three years to counter upstart Xerox, and engaged in other flip-flopping to loose itself.
Ames Department Stores overtook A&P by establishing itself in smaller towns, but then was overtaken by Wal-Mart in exactly the same way.
Bank of America fell from its position as the largest bank in the world when the then-new CEO drove a wedge between top performers and non-performers.
Circuit City expanded too fast to used car megastores (CarMax) and encrypted DVD rentals (DivX), while not keeping an eye on upstart BestBuy's warehouse concept.
Hewlett-Packard broke Packard's Law, which states that companies are more likely to die of indigestion from too much opportunity than from starvation.
Merck gave itself high growth goals in an industry where only one out of an average of 1,150 molecules becomes a possible medication.
Motorola got to the point where it felt it had to keep spending too much on satellite phones and satellites launches, even as terrestrial cell phone towers blossomed.
Rubbermaid grew so fast that it couldn't keep up with itself (see below).
Scott Paper failed to appreciate consumer demand for a competitor's more absorbent paper towels and softer toilet paper
Zenith didn't take the new competitors from Japan seriously (just as American car makers initially didn't) and did not keep up with lower prices and higher quality
(The book more briefly covers other firms that stumbled and recovered, such as IBM, NASA, and TI.) Not all collapsed, as hinted at by the subtitle: "Why Some Companies Never Give In." Bank of America, HP, and Merck are still independent firms today. Other names familiar to us (Rubbermaid, Scott) now exist as subsidiaries of larger corporations.
Ask Yourself
The book spends time emphasizing the nature of leadership, those CEOs who understand the market, those who do not. Mr Collins asks you to ask two questions about your business:
A. If you believe your business is successful due to luck, what happens when it runs out of luck? B. If you think you success is due to your amazing abilities, what happens when you are wrong?
(Luck includes being in the right place at the right time, finding a niche, having a product that's unexpectedly and wildly popular with customers, landing a sugar daddy.)
Answers by Mr Collins: A. Position your firm for when luck runs out B. Know that the best corporate leaders remain students
Good leaders are not Knowing people ("We know how to be successful!"); they are Learning people, relentless picking the brains of others ("Why? Why? Why?").
The case history that I found most remarkable was Rubbermaid's decision in 1994 to release one new product every day for three years, 365 days a year. It didn't help that Fortune magazine gushed over it as the #1 Most Admired Company. It declined in just four years, eliminating six thousand products, closing nine plants, laying off 1,170 jobs, and finally in 1998 selling itself to Newell.
Its luck ran out: commodity prices went up
Its amazing ability collapsed: it found itself unable to fill orders
This book was written just before the housing-driven economic collapse of 2008 and subsequent Internet-driven destruction of businesses. Had he waited, he could have written about Target's expansion into Canada.
America's second largest retailer (after Wal-mart) was beloved by Canadian cross-border shoppers for its trendy-looking products at reasonable prices. Canadians even nicknamed it with a French-sounding "Tarjay." So it made sense for Target to enter Canada. The company bought out many leases of low-end retailer Zellers (my favorite place for clothes), and then remodeled locations as quickly as possible, opening an astounding 133 Target Canada stores in under two years.
Then it was hit by perception problems:
Due to insufficient warehouse space, Target Canada was unable to restock store shelves quickly enough, and so shoppers came to stores that looked partially empty. The stuff Canadians loved to buy wasn't there.
Due to the exchange rate, prices were 30% higher. The prices Canadians expected to pay were more than the ones they were familiar with from shopping in the States.
Three years after it arrived, the company racked up two billion dollars in losses, and then pulled out of Canada.
What Ralph Grabowski Thinks
Here are some of the tactics I deployed in my 29 years as a free-lance writer:
The Business
Have many fingers in many pies: when one type of work becomes less popular, several others keep you going.
Find a niche: mine is to tell my readers what they don't know.
Look for new opportunities: don't stay comfortable with what you know.
Become desirable: work fast, deliver on-time, stay on-budget, and deliver an excellent product.
Don't be arrogant: learn from customer complaints by implementing them as suggestions.
Maintain friendships: connect with and learn from others in your industry.
Fire customers who frustrate you: living a frustrated life is not worth the money it brings in.
Read voraciously: understand history, and learn which trends might be useful to your business.
The Money
Don't depend on a single large customer: losing it represents a sudden, catastrophic loss of income.
Have no debt: owe no one, pay all bills immediately, and avoid subscriptions.
Hound those who owe you money: it is, after all, your money, not their's.
Maintain cash reserves: you can coast on them when pickings are slimmer for a time.
Invest profits: take advantage of economic ups and downs by investing in a range, such as mutual funds (stock market), bonds, investment certificate (fixed interest), physical gold, even cashback credit cards.
If you work internationally, then maintain bank accounts in major currencies: move funds when exchange rates are advantageous.
Minimize the possibility of legal attack.
The Office
Work from home: avoid the time and costs of commuting.
Don't upgrade software unless you have to; upgrade hardware only when it makes you faster at what you do.
Maintain backups: uninterruptible power supplies, alternative Internet access, large capacity portable solid state drives, off-site backups, spare computers and parts (monitor, keyboard, mouse, hard drives, toner), and insurance coverage.
Consider faults in your office's physical location: earthquakes, landslides, fire, alternative exit routes, and so on.
In short: Assume problems will occur. Try to figure out what they might be. Implement protective actions.
- - -
I appreciated the lessons from this book, but I felt it has too few chapters and too much in the way of appendices. Mr Collins initially considered 60 companies, and I wish he'd have covered more of them and their failures.
How The Mighty Fall: And Why Some Companies Never Give In by Jim Collins 240 pages Published by Jim Collins, 2009 ISBN-10: 0977326411 ISBN-13: 978-0977326419
Bless whoever posted this about the USB extender. Wish I'd known this years ago! This just fixed a major headache, and a 6-foot extender was all it needed.
I so wish Logitech "support" had told me this as a possible solution, rather than many useless install/reinstall software suggestions. Thank you to all who posted this! - Anon (via WorldCAD Access)
Re: Dassault Systemes vs Solidworks
Where can one find a sufficiently reliable statistics on, say, copies of Solidworks annually sold or have been installed and so? For example, those you recently mentioned regarding Inventor vs Solidworks. - L. D.
The editor replies: Nowhere. CAD vendors no longer report seats, unless it suits their marketing to show that they are superior to their competitors. There are a few financial and market analysts who attempt to track numbers, such as by asking retailers for sales.
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Thanx for another good expose, but this time about Solidworks. The [Dassault] idea of 'roles' is BS. It’s just another way to split a program up into bits and pieces, each of which can be charged separately, thus raising revenues for the investors.
I’ve been on a quest for two decades to find a CAD program that does everything well. But to my dismay, not only are all the bits and pieces at Autodesk, Dassault, Hexagon, etc. not doing what I want, they don’t have any intentions any time soon to do so. Why? Because there will be no money in it.
Once a business finds they can do everything with the tools they currently possess, they won’t spend more money at the cad store. A perfect example is automatic drawings and dimensioning of detail parts in 3D documentation. That would save at least 30% of the time and work in a project’s life cycle. Neither Inventor nor Solidworks has that, but you can find it done by independent developers for small companies using their APIs. - Chris Cadman
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When it comes to high-end MCAD, Dassault Systemes is the go-to company. Its software designs most of the automobiles we drive and aircraft in which we (used to) fly. It is on track to exceed $5 billion in revenues.
Growth is good, but wouldn't more growth be better? And so over the last decade Dassault went on an acquisitions spree, buying up software adjacent to its main Catia design package, such as geology. To get out of the CAD rut, the company even targeted fashion and consumer goods, going so far as marketing software that determines where to best place products on store shelves. Consumer goods is a field, however, in which it faces many established competitors.
With the awe-inspiring success of Frank Gehry using Catia for iconic buildings, surely Catia would be ideal for the architectural side of the design market. (I'll let you in on the secret: I understand that Gehry himself never used CAD; only his assistants did.) As a result, the folks at Dassault spoke passionately -- for many years -- about their plans for AEC, but perhaps ended up speaking too long. While Dassault was busy being passionate, BIM was busy overwhelming regular 3D. Dassault had no BIM with which to enter the market, and so today it emphasizes using its 3dExperience software for the mechanical side of architecture, such as fabrication, simulation, and generative design.
The Medical Market
What would be a much bigger market than CAD and is in desperate need of digitalization? If you guess "construction," you'd be right. But, in the case of Dassault, you'd be wrong.
The focus of the company's high-energy CEO Bernard Charles is on medicine. Last fall the company completed its largest acquisition ever, spending US$5.8 billion to acquire Medidata Solutions. Dassault is convinced that it "will become Dassault Systèmes’ second largest core business, after transportation and mobility." The company already had a footprint in this area with its Biovia software for modeling materials and chemicals.
It's easy to see why Dassault likes Medidata. It earned nearly a billion euros last year and is the primary reason Dassault will soon exceed five billion in revenues. The software runs on Medidata's own Rave Clinical Cloud system to store and distribute medical data, which nicely matches Dassault's own cloud-centric stance.
Dassault's first CEO Francis Bernard is, however, not so sure about the acquisition. "With the medical domain, it is not a differentiation, it is a new business. Our competition will come from players other than those in the PLM business," he said in an interview.
Dassault is already describing its medical platform as the "virtual twin experience of humans," mimicking the digital twin strategy popular in CAD today. (See figure 1.) People are, however, not things.
Figure 1: The product life cycles of Dassault Systemes
Solidworks Stays Solid
This is the tenth anniversary of Dassault's failure to turn Solidworks into a cloud-based product, one that began under the name of "Solidworks 6." The collective yawn from users towards the incompatible xDesign-series and other missteps by Dassault became repeated failures.
The difference in cultures between Paris and middle-America don't help. Paris-based Dassault doesn't understand why desktop users wouldn't want to leap at the chance to move to the cloud, touting the benefits of sharing (with other employees), sharing (with clients and manufacturers), and sharing (with other 3dExperience modules). Literally, we had Dassault executives last year asking the stolid Solidworks crowd to please cheer for one or another new 3dExperience-related feature.
Meanwhile, middle America doesn't understand the need to replace a great-working independent desktop system by a system that costs more, works differently, and depends on a solid Internet connection. This is how great-working Solidworks is: it is the world's most popular MCAD software, that boasts a million commercial users (and five or six million education users), that last year sold 81,000 licenses -- double that of Autodesk Inventor -- and that last quarter provided Dassault with 20% of its revenues.
For 2020, Dassault Systemes twisted the knife a bit deeper by renaming the beloved Solidworks World as "3dExperience World." (3dExperience is the name of Dassault's company-wide platform.) I don't know what kind of discussions went on in the background, and maybe none did, but the Americans managed to wrap their own "Solidworks Live" nomenclature around 3dExperience World to make the new name look subsidiary to the old one.
More unhappy news for users as CEO Charles warned that "we are going to progressively introduce the idea that subscription will be mandatory" for Solidworks.
Every couple of years, Dassault changes the 3dExperience-based software it offers Solidworks users and changes the names in the hope that this -- finally! -- will entice them to 3dExperience. These are the programs on offer this year:
3D Creator for creating and reviewing regular 3D models from solids (includes xDesign)
3D Sculptor for making organic shapes from 3D meshes (includes xShape).
See figure 2.
[Figure 2: User interface of software offered by Dassault to Solidworks users
Solidworks 2021
During Solidworks Live earlier this year, we got to see a few of the new features coming in Solidworks 2021. The list seemed to me to be sparse compared to other years. This could be due to the programmers not having progressed very far yet, or it could be an AutoCAD-ization of Solidworks, in which the new feature set is greatly reduced. On to what's new:
When you use silhouette defeaturing in Solidworks 2021 to simplify a model by removing unneeded details, you can now save the silhouette as a configuration within the current model, so that it doesn't need to be stored in a separate file.
Sheetmetal lets you place edge flanges on curved tangent edges. (See figure 3.)
Figure 3: Solidworks 2021 placing a flange along a curved edge
The Color Picker lets you pick up a color from another document in other programs, and then apply the color to the model in Solidworks. This seemingly minor function is surprisingly useful, as I have found from using color pickers in other software.
You'll be able to edit legacy dimensions in drawings, as well as create, edit, and dimension drafting views like details and breaks. (See figure 4.) We've seen this level of detailing functions in other CAD programs, so it's good to see them beefed up in Solidworks. Along with new ways to annotate drawings, you will be able to place hole callouts on holes made by the Hole Wizard and by extruded cuts.
Figure 4: Enlarged detail view in upper right of drawing
Some tweaks are being made to simulation, such as getting more accurate results from bonded non-planer contacts that have variations in the meshing. Blended curvature-based meshes are faster and just as accurate.
Dassault expects to ship the new release of Solidworks in the fall.
What Ralph Grabowski Thinks
Solidworks is the AutoCAD of the mechanical design world. Both programs are old, but keep on doing what their users need them to do. In the main, the market for both CAD systems consist of one- and two-man shops, and in the case of Solidworks, primarily it's for making steel parts for customers.
That Dassault Systemes feels compelled to mess with a successful formula remains a puzzle to me, given that ten years of messing hasn't worked. For some, no egg can be golden enough in their effort to kill the goose. How golden? The company looks forward to Solidworks becoming a billion-dollar business.
And so it appears to me that Dassault seems to have switched its strategy, from trying to kill Solidworks to trying to milk it as a cash cow, and even is copying Autodesk's apparently successful strategy in (a) reducing the new feature count while (b) forcing mandatory subscriptions on customers. Even pirates will be converted, the company's executives think; Autodesk used to think the same.
If nothing else, Solidworks users can take comfort in Dassault CEO Charles declaring that the 25-year-old program will be around for another 20 years. https://www.solidworks.com
[This article first appeared in Design Engineering and is reprinted with permission.]
For several days in mid-February the cowboys in downtown Nashville Tennessee had to make room for 6,000 Solidworks users, developers, and resellers as the city became the temporary capital of CAD during the 3Dexperience World 2020 conference -- the former Solidworks World.
The new name was not chosen randomly by Dassault Systèmes. It reflects plans announced last year to develop applications that integrate into the 3Dexperience Works platform, with Solidworks as the flagship. A key event at the conference this year was the presentation of the new platform that combines online technology, a suite of applications, and a new licensing system.
Everyday users of Solidworks, who have little interest in corporate branding tactics or in predicting trends from the future, couldn’t easily figure out why they didn’t see the name of their favorite CAD program at the conference. "Solidworks" had been replaced completely by "3Dexperience Works" on the first page of the conference program, on participants’ badges, the T-shirts, and souvenirs. (See figure 1.) Unaware users, who upon first seeing the bold 3Dexperience logo, might even have thought that they had gotten lost at the wrong event in Music City Center, the huge conference forum in which the conference was held.
Figure 1: 3Dexperience World branding replacing Solidworks World
In his comments to the press, Solidworks CEO Gian Paolo Bassi (see figure 2) noted that the conference’s rebranding a posed considerable risk, and one that the company’s management took because they were confident that Solidworks users would benefit from the opportunities offered by the new 3Dexperience Works system.
Figure 2: Solidworks CEO Gian Paolo Bassi
Just as we shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, we should not judge this conference by the title on the front of the program’s booklet. 3Dexperience World is, first of all, hundreds of presentations of Solidworks and related technology. These were delivered through 15-20 parallel sessions over four days. Each participant -- from novice user to well-seasoned professional -- could find a few dozen lectures and workshops to match their level and their interests.
The Business of Solidworks
Solidworks has become one of the most recognizable brands in the CAD industry, and even beyond. Although it does not hold a monopoly position (as the 3D CAD market of tools is sufficiently diversified), it has a market share of 20-45%, depending on the method of calculation. It has six million users worldwide, of which more than one million are professional engineers who purchase commercial licenses; the remainder consist of primarily educational licenses.
As a business, Solidworks is doing better than most. Over the last year, its sales grew by 11% to nearly US$900 million, earning more than 20% of Dassault Systèmes’ four-billion in revenues for 2019. As a point of comparison, Dassault’s flagship MCAD system Catia generated US$1.2 billion.
With this unparalleled success in mind, one can ask a logical question: why does Dassault want to rebrand a product that is so much in demand and sells so well?
Ten years ago, Jeff Ray, a former Solidworks CEO, openly discussed how the company had begun a secret 'kill Solidworks' project. (For details, see the “The Death of Solidworks” article on Develop 3D.) A new generation of modeling tools would replace Solidworks. The plan was to develop the new product on top of the same technology platform that Catia V6 uses, using the CGM core from Catia's geometry kernel, replacing Parasolid that today is still used in Solidworks. Many of the ideas in the areas of Web access, collaboration, and integration with CATIA remain relevant today.
(I’d like to note that those development efforts involved us at LEDAS. We collaborated with Dassault Systèmes on the development of a geometric solver that is built into Catia as a CGM component, and because of this we also were involved in those works for Solidworks.)
Fortunately for users, the Solidworks revolution did not occur at that time. Soon after, Dassault Systèmes announced a new concept with the release of its 3Dexperience platform. It replaced PLM. (See article on the Moscow Dassault forum in 2012, albeit in Russian.)
Alternatives based on 3Dexperience, like xDesign, failed to gain traction with Solidworks users. And so the paths of the parent and its subsidiary diverged as plans to merge Solidworks and Catia were postponed to another time. The time has arrived after ten years, except that this time it looks like evolution instead of revolution.
Roles, Web, Subscriptions
Technologically, the 3Dexperience Works package is a set of applications/roles that are downloaded and installed on the computers of users (like Solidworks), or else are accessed online via a Web browser.
Special attention in 3Dexperience Works is given to “roles.” Each user has a specific role, for example, as a 3D sculptor or a 3D creator. For each role, the 3Dexperience platform has specific applications: xShape for 3D sculpting, xDesign for 3D creating.
An example of a role-playing scenario was presented to us, which created a conceptual design of the sensational Tesla Cybertruck using 3Dexperience Works applications. (Jokers in the CAD industry hypothesized that Cybertruck is so crudely polygonal because Tesla designers did not want to exert themselves with A-class surfaces and their subsequent tessellations and renderings.) All team members were involved in an online collaboration, using the same data, and all their activities were part of a continuous development cycle.
It will be possible to store 3Dexperience Works data in the cloud, which will help avoid problems typical with file exchange. File transfers and data conversion between applications are performed in the cloud using native tools. Messaging takes place through 3Dexperience Forum. At some point in the foreseeable future, you will be able to use applications from the CATIA ecosystem, which is one of the significant advantages of the platform -- at least, this is what Dassault management expects.
As not everyone accepts this way of working and not everyone trusts cloud storage, existing file processing methods will also be supported.
All application updates will be installed automatically, so users no longer need to remember version numbers. The “platform” version of Solidworks will also be updated automatically. In some industries (the field of medicine, for example), certified updates are required for each new software version, and so automatic updates do not need to be an option for them. Dassault Systemes hopes for rapid changes in legislation, as today most Web application updates go unnoticed by users, and this practice is becoming the industry standard.
Three types of licenses -- Standard, Professional, and Premium -- provide a set of applications that include Solidworks Standard, Solidworks Professional, and Solidworks Premium. (See figure 3.) It was emphasized to us that the old licensing scheme and the usual Solidworks installation methods remain. However, the company will encourage users to switch to the new commercial offer because it is more beneficial and more convenient for them.
Figure 3: New licensing stacks for Solidworks
AI, Machine Learning, APIs
In recent years, one of the hot topics in IT [information technology] is the breakthrough in the field of artificial intelligence with machine learning, and the resultant avalanche-like growth as these technologies penetrate various fields. Traditional CAD systems lag behind in AI [artificial intelligence], because not many design tasks are particularly suitable for machine learning.
Solidworks developers decided to fill the gap by releasing several features in xDesign, xShape, and 3D Sheet Metal Creator based on geometric data processing and machine learning. As Gian Paolo Bassi described them, these are “little delighters” that help in automating some of the dull and time-consuming user actions. In his opinion, machine learning in these cases works just awesome.
What was actually implemented:
A tips system that suggests the use of certain modeling features based on the operations performed by users earlier
Recognition of user-created patterns on two-dimensional sketches
Automated method of adding mates to assemblies
Solidworks plug-in developers are obviously very much interested in an API [application programming interface] for 3Dexperience Works. Would it be possible to develop new applications and customize existing ones? There is no answer to this question yet, but the good news is that the ecosystem and capabilities of the desktop version of Solidworks remain the same, so you can continue using your own and third-party plugins.
The Future of 3Dexperience
Dassault Systèmes CEO Bernard Charles guided a tour of 3Dexperience and noted that he is glad that the community is growing. (See figure 4.)
Figure 4: Dassault Systèmes CEO Bernard Charles at 3Dexperience World
In between, he mentioned a concept new to Dassault Systèmes: the use of digital twins for human beings. What Mr. Charles talked about became clear only a few weeks later, when it turned out that this new concept of “creating life” is already replacing 3Dexperience.
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Nikolay Snytnikov is the chief operating officer at LEDAS. He has long been involved in the management and development of key geometric components of CATIA.
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It is not just software but hardware. If you lease workstations and your staff levels plummet you get stuck with those lease payments regardless.
If companies instead buys workstations outright each time, then those firms tend to let them stretch, often too far. The performance hit then hits the productivity bottom line and even worse it often discourages upgrades due to the fact that upgrades often require operating system upgrades and those then slow machine performance down even further.
All of this begs the question, in light of Covid-19, of how best to manage these costs with ebbs and flows. Month-to-month leases of both hardware and software seem much more attractive now given this pandemic. Virtualized workstations like BOXX's new offering seem interesting.
At the architecture firm where I am a principal, we now have half of our workstations sitting empty, fair-market lease agreement payments be damned. Ugg! - Anthony Frausto-Robledo, architect, editor-in-chief www.architosh.com
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Outstanding job as always. - Scott Shuppert Cad / Cam Services
I converted to USB-C with my last Windows Phone, which had a USB- C dock option. (See photo at https://flic.kr/p/KNMALs.) Using it with the dock, to HDMI or a wireless display adaptor, made a very portable mobile solution. I was trialing it for cycle trips, where you really don't want to take a notebook, even a small one. (See the setup at https://flic.kr/p/Lj3rLW.)
Then I had to go back to USB mini with the Samsung Android One, a step backwards as they are so 'fragile'. At least the dock etc is still fully compatible with other USB-C gear like my Surface Book 2 & Go. - RobiNZ (via WorldCAD Access)
Thanks a lot for your fix. You have just saved me the cost of a replacement mouse.
I have been cleaning it, changing battery, nearly smashing it with a hammer, and now, after plugging it into my BenQ 32inch 4k monitor, it's working perfectly again. A very happy Linux user here! Cheers - Phil (via WorldCAD Access)
Thank You, Readers
Thank you to readers who donate towards the operation of upFront.eZine:
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