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Issue #1,129 |Inside the Business of CAD | 2 May 2022
Spatial held its 3D Insider’s Summit in Munich, whose city hall is shown here (image credit ralph grabowski)
The Spatial division of Dassault Systemes is in charge of licensing components to companies wanting to develop 3D software.
It’s best-known product is the ACIS solids modeler, first developed in the late 1980s. Then, a decade ago, Dassault handed its CGM kernel used by Catia to Spatial to license and componentize. (CGM is short for core geometric modeler.) The other major product is the InterOp file translator.
Spatial last month held its first post-Covid 3D Insider’s Summit in Munich, at which it revealed new features to be released this year, as well as its new guiding principles:
“What is important to you is important to us
We are highly motivated to be best, and set the standard”
I won’t comment on Spatial’s past business practices, as my knowledge is based on merely a couple of anecdotes. Nevertheless, I found significant the emphasis throughout the conference on a changed-for-the-better Spatial, as well as during my interview with executives.
I interviewed ceo-since-2010 Jean-Marc Guillard and vp-since-2018 of worldwide business development Frederuc Jacqmin. I was especially interested in understanding what it was like for them being a component supplier of two kernels. The text of the interview is not verbatim, and has been edited for clarity and brevity.
Q&A
The room was nearly packed, so don’t be fooled by what my picture appears to show here
Q: What kinds of firms license CGM?
A: Our business is to solve problems for customers, how they want to move in the future, what will make them successful.
We position CGM as going beyond a modeler: it is a set of technologies. What kind of data do you want to use? What are the most common formats you want, the geometric foundation you need, the industries you will target? Hybrid data is more common today. We are checking most of the boxes, we have the most technology. We do not force ourselves on anyone.
Ten years ago, when we started promoting CGM, most of our customers were on ACIS. Today, 1/3 of our 400+ customers are on CGM, two-thirds on ACIS.
It is not a decision between ACIS or CGM; they are just technologies available. Importance is what technology can provide customers over a long period of time. The starting point is what the customer needs not just today, but also over the long-term.
Q: Can you tell me your financial picture?
A: We do not give out financial information, as Spatial is a division of Dassault. I will say that we are increasing new customers each year.
Q: Who do you consider your competitor, other than Siemens Parasolid?
A: OEM-based solutions like Inventor, Tech Soft 3D. It depends on what the need of the customer is.
Q: Are you familiar with C3D Labs?
A: We keep track of our competitors.
Q: I noticed that constraints were not mentioned during the conference.
A: Market for constraints seems to be limited, compared to other components.
Q: Do you get your DWG tech from the Open Design Alliance?
A: We cooperate with the ODA.
Q: Do you license HOOPS [for visualization], or do you have a technology exchange with Tech Soft 3D?
A: We are a reseller for HOOPS Visualize, and so Tech Soft 3D is a partner. But we compete when it comes to InterOp translation and other technology. We try to provide value for customers, and so are working hard on an integrated portfolio.
Q: Why not use rendering from Dassault?
A: There is a cost to making a technology as a component. There are different facets to consider, such as the cost of turning it into a component, what the market size might be. Or is it intellectual property you want to keep, to help you differentiate? We came to the conclusion that it is good for Spatial to partner with Tech Soft 3D.
Q: I am not sure I fully understood your AGM product.
A: Application Graphics Manager accelerates development by providing standard functions for any 3D application, so that the developer doesn’t start from scratch. The cost of our source code is very affordable compared to doing it on your own.
Q: So it is example code, that programmers can copy and paste into their own code?
A: Step by step, you make it your own. The idea is that firms can focus on their IP, their functions. It reduces the number of bugs. Fifty applications already use it.
What people expect from us is to integrate things so that they are transparent to them. Technologies are good for solving specific problems. There are still lots of software developed in-house, but we are good at solving complex problems. We would like to solve every problem, but we are humble and know we cannot solve every problem. In this, we are doing quite well. We want the community to move forward.
[Disclosure: Spatial provided me with hotel accommodation.]
And in Other News
Simulation giant Ansys acquires Web-based upstart OnScale (no relation to Onshape), which scales simulations online using a variety of open-source solvers, even though Ansys already has Web-based solvers. Monica Schnitger puzzles through the story at schnitgercorp.com/?p=19674.
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IMSI Design updates its TurboCAD line to 2022 with these new functions:
Keep Size scales distances between objects, not objects themselves
Smart dimensioning is associative between model and paper spaces
Intersection curves are associative with 3D objects
Physics-based rendering
...and lots more. The line of TurboCAD programs varies in capabilities but always comes with permanent licenses:
TurboCAD Platinum - $1,500
TurboCAD Professional - $1,000
TurboCAD Deluxe - $250
TurboCAD Designer - $70
“2022” really doesn’t do this software justice, as at 36 years old TurboCAD (first written in Turbo Pascal) is one of the longest running PC CAD packages chugging along. More at turbocad.com.
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Transoft Solutions lands a patent for using video cameras to record and analyze vehicle traffic at intersections, while filtering out errors. I’m old enough that as a transportation engineer I hired part-timers to record those movements on clipboards, back in the day. transoftsolutions.com/transoft-video-analytics-patent-approved/
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Nanosoft ships version 22 of its AutoCAD-workalike nanoCAD software with floating drawing windows, associative arrays, and an interactive interface for 3D clipping volumes. It’s a free update to existing users. All the details here at nanocad.com/products/nanocad-platform/updates.
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Lumafield emerges from stealth with $32.5 million for the world's first x-ray scanner for engineers. Neptune uses CT [computed tomography] to look inside products and then create a 3D reconstruction of external and internal features like cracks and voids. Price is $3,000/month (hardware+software) when it ships by the end of this year. lumafield.com
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Pulsonix updates its 3D PCB design software, Pulsonix, to version 12.0 with one hundred new functions, such as 64-bit multi-core processing, additional design rules, and collision detection useful for folded board designs. It’s always good to see a software company giving its customers value through three-digit feature upgrades. pulsonix.com/latestversion
Notable Quotable
“I’m confused why @elonmusk bought Twitter for like billions of dollars when i downloaded it for free.” - Carter Andrews (on Twitter)
Thank You, Readers
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Issue #1,128 | Inside the Business of CAD | 25 April 2022
User interface of Arcol, which is not yet shipping
Arcol is certain it will change the way AEC is done, advancing the discipline from “20-year-old Autodesk” to a modern architectural modeler: edit a sketch in a Web browser to change the 3D model. The software is not yet in alpha, but it hopes to ship by year’s end. More info at https://arcol.io.
The problem for Arcol is that other similar browser-based AEC design programs are already available, such as Infurnia and Snaptrude, which also are meant for collaborative BIM, interior design, and kitchen work. Pricing of them is in the range of $50-$120/user/month. A limited-function free version of each is available:
These three join Qonic (also in pre-alpha mode) being developed by former Bricsys employees like Erik de Keyser, Dmitry Ushakov, and Sander Scheiris. Qonic hopes to automate the conversion of design intent into construction models — to fill in missing parts and data using, I suspect, an intelligent search and replace system not too dissimilar from that found in BricsCAD BIM.
There Was A First Wave
Kitchen design by Infurnialinked to parts catalog
This splurge in Web-based CAD is a second wave, coming a decade or so after an initial wave of independent browser-based CAD programs with names like sunglass.io, TinkerCAD, To3D, and Onshape. (In addition, desktop CAD vendors like Graebert and Autodesk developed their own browserCAD programs.)
The first wave was made possible by the then-new technology in Web browsers, which made it easier to run CAD on remote servers and interact with drawings and models locally.
While doing CAD on the cloud is fabulous in theory, it’s not so much in practice. We saw what it took for Onshape to produce a Web-based MCAD program: $100 million or so. Eventually, all four first wavers were acquired, some at the brink of death.
The second wave, for now, largely operates on funding to cover the cost of free plans.
Infurnia is looking to go public (getting funding through shareholders), while Arcol is running on $5 million from investors; one of the firm’s investors is former Autodesk co-ceo Amar Hanspal. Snaptrude has taken in at least $600 thousand. Qonic, I believe, is self-funded.
Catching Up, Frantically
Sun study by Snaptrude
AEC CAD is a much tougher problem to solve than MCAD. As Martyn Day points out, these new companies not only have to catch up function-wise with the ArchiCADs and Vectorworks of the world, but also attempt to displace existing seats. A tough moat to leap.
We see the dire need to catch-up feature-wise in Snaptude’s what’s-next list for 2022, most of which we take for granted in “20-year-old Autodesk”:
2D drawings
Parametric objects
NURBSs and splines
Advanced booleans
Live link to Revit
Quick costing and quantity bills
Switch between massing and BIM
Sustainability analysis and climate studies
Onshape in its early years issued updates every six weeks to catch up to Solidworks, even as Solidworks continued to stride ahead. The pace for these four needs to be just as frenetic.
Still, browserCAD has functions that for the most part escape desktop CAD, such as these ones offered by Infurnia, some of which was pioneered by Onshape:
Models and changes saved to the cloud; no drawing files
Access to design data through APIs; models shared through links
Browse change history; revert to earlier versions of models; branch designs
The thing these newcomers have easy is that the road forward has been surveyed and graded by the earlier firms. The end game is known: all of desktop CAD + all of browserCAD.
What Ralph Grabowski Thinks
Qonic is still in stealth mode
Like the first wave of browserCAD companies, these four will, in the end, most likely survive through acquisitions. That, perhaps, is the game plan(s) of them and their investors anyhow. One suitor, I expect, will be Autodesk; my pick for it is Snaptrude.
So, why the new flurry of browserCADs? The last several years have seen central banks flood too much money into the economies of the world, and so investors are floundering, looking for something, anything in which to invest and make moar $$$ (c.f. NFTs — non-fungible transactions).
Each founder of these new CAD systems speaks of his passion, which enabled him to land funding. In turn, investors have something in which to invest, and then hope to profit from later, after someone else pays big bucks to acquire the firms.
What Others Think
Two industry insiders have opinions contrary to mine.
Robert Graebert, chief technical officer, Graebert GmbH:
“I get the skepticism with respect to the viability of these new market entrants. I think Onshape is a great example when industry veterans + tons of cash were not enough to stay independent. In our market, a great product still needs a [dealer] channel to realize its full potential.
“But I have to say, I am excited about the new batch of market entrants. Even if that just means that some of the market leaders change their posture to meet this challenge. I think there is real frustration in AEC about the lack of evolution.”
The editor replies: We saw changes in MCAD posture in the past decade with new entrants like SpaceClaim (direct editing is possible) and Onshape (serious MCAD on remote servers is possible).
Architect (name withheld):
“I doubt that [these firms] will eat the dinosaurs in the AEC industry. But the one thing I do know, is that the leaders in AEC have grown content and are ripe for disruption. Some more than others.
“I see the TestFits of the world, and tools like Arcol, having great promise to address the redistribution of scarce resources so that architects can afford the new demands on them.”
The editor replies: Someone could become pretty rich figuring out how to disrupt legacy BIM packages. In the meantime, the second wave could find its place alongside bigCAD in Rhino-like fashion.
== Converting 3D CAD & DCC to Virtual/ Augmented Reality ==
With the explosive growth of VR/AR, the ultra-massive 3D datasets produced by CAD and DCC programs need efficient conversion to the popular Unity and Unreal development platforms. Okino of Toronto is the long-time provider of the PolyTrans|CAD translator, which easily handles the interactive datasets required by VR and AR for Microsoft HoloLens, HTC VIVE, Oculus Rift, Meta, and other VR headsets.
PolyTrans provides you with
Massive dataset handling
Node compression
Adaptive CAD tessellation
Intelligent polygon reduction
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. Contact CTO Robert Lansdale at lansd@okino.com.
ManneQuin/HumanCAD was the first software to simulate human bodies in CAD programs, going back to 1990. I still have a copy of the original software package. Now NEXGEN ERGONOMICS updates the software to v6 with new body types, such as Japan, elderly, and more child options, as well as new clothing styles. The Task Analysis wizard handles hand strength and arm force.
HumanCAD-MQSW is the version that runs inside Solidworks. More info from nexgenergo.com.
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Navisworks was designed by Autodesk to display models from multiple sources simultaneously. Now “any” CAD program can export Navisworks-formatted files — all geometry, model hierarchy, object properties, and materials — without needing Navisworks.
Yes, I still have manuals for Matrox’s Space Machine/640 for the IBM XT/AT from April 1987 :=)). It was the “smartest” graphics card at the time, incorporated solid modeling and shading in hardware. - Jure Spiler Basic CAD/CAM, Slovenia
The editor replies: Desktop computers from that era were not powerful enough to handle solids modeling, so workarounds like this one were needed. The “640” refers to the horizontal resolution, so it displayed CAD drawings at 640x480 -- considered “high resolution” at the time.
From a real-world trial, it seems driverless cars will not address many of the problems their promoters claim they will solve. See Zombie Miles And Napa Weekends: How A Week With Chauffeurs Showed The Major Flaw In Our Self-Driving Car Future from alopnik.com/zombie-miles-and-napa-weekends-how-a-week-with-chauffe-1839648416. - Robin Capper (via WorldCAD Access) New Zealand
- - -
I really enjoy your articles, by the way. Thank you, Ralph! - Ben Beaumont
- - -
I heard an interesting comment (I won’t say where) that “the complexity of Revit has been increasing with the purpose of driving small architectural firms out of business.” - Dave Edwards
The editor replies: From what I hear, it is the large architectural firms that are most vocal about the inability of programs like Revit to handle today’s challenges. This is why there are many competitors already on the stage, or at least putting on makeup.
- - -
A friend of mine worked for a tech firm back in the ’80s. He said they couldn’t get a decision from corporate on which CAD software to implement, even though a team had been created for that and been working tirelessly for years. Every engineer in the place used AutoCAD and every single one was bootlegged.
Someone finally ratted them out to Autodesk. A rep came into their office with the sheriff and made them shut down. When the dust settled, and the lawyers and salesmen and management were finished talking, they paid Autodesk for every seat that they were using, and AutoCAD became their official CAD software. Management formally disbanded the CAD Selection Committee.
I think about that story every time I get in the “"How can a little company ever hope to compete with a big company?” conversation. - Jess Davis
The editor replies: I can understand the CAD selection committee’s hesitation. There were so many CAD software upstarts in the mid-1980s, just as there were many PC hardware upstarts -- each one partially incompatible with the next. Not knowing how the market would shake out, picking the wrong software and hardware would be an expensive mistake.
My first PC, a Victor 9000 in 1983, would cost $16,000 in today’s dollars; a word processor and spreadsheet cost $1,300 each in today’s inflated bucks. We were so excited, dreaming of having the power of computers at our fingertips, but oh so frightened by the cost.
Notable Quotable
“Inflation so bad, PI is currently at 5.74.” - Matt’s Idea Shop (on Twitter)
“PI Day is just a holiday invented by math companies to sell more irrationality.” - Author unknown
Thank You, Readers
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Issue # 1,127 | Inside the Business of CAD | 21 March 2022
HOOPS 2022 exports 3D models with PBR rendering in glTF and GLB formats
Tech Soft 3D is a “plumbing” company for the CAD world. They are one of the companies providing underlying SDKs [software development kits] that make CAD work.
The secret behind the CAD software you are using is that the CAD vendor probably didn’t write most of it; instead, it bundled together a bunch of modules like reading/writing files, displaying models, the user interface, solids and mesh modeling, translating files, and printing.
In Tech Soft 3D’s case, the HOOPS Visualize [hierarchical object-oriented picture system] platform provides components for doing tasks like displaying 3D models, generating PDFs, and translating between disparate systems. As well, the company bundles software components from other suppliers, such the geometric kernel from Siemens, and then offer a complete package.
I spoke with ceo Ron Fritz and chief tech evangelist Jonathan Girroir about trends in our industry, and about how their company works.
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Tech Soft 3D is seeing the market for SDKs expand by many new types of firms. More are seeing the value of 3D data in their workflows, such as in manufacturing and building construction.
Tech Soft 3D sees an increase in BIM [building information modeling], which is due in part to the IFC [industry foundation classes] having caught on as the standard, through which vendors know that they will be compatible down the road. The company also has an SDK to read Revit files, and in some areas is cooperating with the Open Design Alliance, besides doing work on their own.
There is a critical interest in building and construction firms taking data from IFC and Revit files. A large building can have regions, such as kitchens in apartments, and users want to be able to navigate it in different ways. Tech Soft 3D’s software allows that.
Outside of AEC, there is metadata in mechanical CAD that tells users how parts are connected in assemblies. This is useful for employing higher level concepts, such as what happens when a constraint is removed or a part is swapped out.
For many years, AR/VR [augmented/virtual reality] didn’t care about CAD, but now firms involved in these areas see the value of CAD models and want to visualize scenes with them. Between visualization and translation, Tech Soft 3D feels it can help populate the metaverse [digital worlds] with CAD data, such as through Unity.
Hardware companies are becoming software companies. For instance, companies that make milling machines are acquiring software, or else are building their own systems. The benefit to them is that the software distinguishes them from their competition in that they own the entire stack. As well, owning the software allows faster iterations and optimizations. (In this area, 3D printer manufacturers were ahead of the game, as they had to include software from day-one.)
Last year, Battery Ventures invested funds in Tech Soft 3D, allowing it to acquire Ceetron AS (3D visualization of CFD [computational fluid dynamics] and FEA [finite element analysis]) and Visual Kinematics for its CAE [computer-aided engineering] software components. The investment amount was not announced. The reason for the acquisitions is that Tech Soft 3D saw the trends of simulation analyses moving closer to the design stage. Before 3D printing a design, you need to know that it is printable. Before you finalize a design, you need to know that it will stand up to stresses in the field.
Another area of growth is in cloud apps, which these days need to accompany desktop software.
Visual fidelity is more important these days. So the company is seeing PBR [physics-based rendering] with multiple layers of materials, without the GPU-hit from photo-realistic rendering. So the company created an animation engine SDK for animating, for example, a construction site over time — assembly of construction parts, disassembly, making sure piles of dirt are not in the wrong place, and so on.
Q&A
HOOPS Visualize 2022 platform supporting spatial relationships in IFC model definitions
Ralph Grabowski: How big is your company in terms of employees and revenues?
Ron Fritz: We have 120 employees, and are seeing 10-15% growth a year. We don’t report revenues. We have 700 companies using at least one of our components, and we support specific features asked for by customers.
Jonathan Girroir: Back in 2010 we bought translation company, TTF, from Adobe. Our data exchange platform now supports 30 CAD file formats. Last year, we updated 13 of the formats.
Grabowski: Who do you see as competitors?
Girroir: We have a broad portfolio of software products, so it is hard to name competitors. Depending on the vertical market, it could be Autodesk Forge, Open Design Alliance, Datakit; Spatial might be considered the broadest competitor because they have a full portfolio of components, but in fact we have a reseller relationship with Spatial, as well as with the Parasolid group at Siemens.
New from us last year was a collection of integrated SDKs through our Integration Partner Program where we package our products with those from others. An example is that we can include high-end rendering or a solids modeler, which we do not provide ourselves. As we have already integrated them, there is no further development for customers to get rendering or solids modeling in their software.
Our Integration Partner Program makes it easier to get cool stuff faster. Customers can start at a low level with just one SDK, or at a high level with several SDKs working together.
Grabowski: What do you do with software you sell that isn’t yours?
Fritz: We integrate them with ours to provide a single-vendor advantage, such as bundling our tools with Parasolid. A CAD program has to bring together a number of building blocks, and connecting them is labor-intensive, so we provide those bridges between them, and then customers just customize them for their industry.
Customers want universality for this data: to be able to read, edit, visualize, and publish data. This is what a platform means.
Our ultimate goal is to make it as easy as possible for our customers to be able to build the applications they need using the highest quality tools.
Matrox sold its imaging division to Zebra Technologies, while keeping its video division. At one time, Matrox concentrated on graphics boards for CAD displays, but left when the field got too crowded.
Anyone still remember Artist Graphics/Control Systems (threw the best parties at A/E/C Systems), Renaissance Graphics, Nth Engine (introduced display-list processing), Vectrix, Hercules (first to combine text and monochrome graphics), Sigma Graphics, or 3Dfx (first with a GPU)?
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PTC appoints former Autodesk co-ceo Amar Hanspal to its board of directors.
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Monica Schnitger reports that Swedish holding company Addnode acquired Microdesk to create the world’s largest Autodesk dealer network under the brand name of Symetri. Addnode also acquired DESYS Gmbh, a German Dassault Systemes dealer. Earlier CAD-related acquisitions include ProCAD (Irish Autodesk dealer) and Budsoft (Polish Dassault Systemes simulation dealers).
CAD vendors normally don’t tolerate software from competitors being sold by the same reseller; perhaps in this case the conflict of interest is tolerated as a holding company is doing business at an arm’s length.
“I am not saying that we have restarted the strategy or that a green light has been authorised, but we have unpaused the situation.” - Management Speak
Thank You, Readers
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Issue #1,126 | Inside the Business of CAD | 14 March 2022
SpinFire displaying models from CAD files
Actify released SpinFire in 1997 as a 3D file viewer in a field crowded with 3D file viewers. It, however, survived.
Within five years, the viewer was downloaded a million times. In 2005, Actify made Actify Publisher a mature program by adding batch publishing, rules-based jobs, automated email notifications, and centralized archiving of native CAD files. The company today has 2,000 customers with 10,000 licenses, many of which are site-wide licenses — so lots and lots of users.
More recently, Actify hired David Opsahl as CEO to help define a specific market for the company. He found that three-quarters of SpinFire customers were automotive suppliers, and so today you see the company’s Web site targeting automobile manufacturing. He concentrated the company’s goal to 3Cs: Communicate, Collaborate, Comprehend.
Actify’s primary software is the Actify APM Suite [automotive program management] that consists of the following packages:
Centro is the cloud-based platform for the APM Suite that uses graph database technology
Program Development
Program Analysis
Program Management
[A “graph” database handles records as nodes, and links relationships between nodes as edges.]
Actify continues to offer SpinFire Enterprise for CAD viewing in all areas of a manufacturing organization, to view, interrogate, and translate CAD files, as well as CAD Publisher, which automatically processes and publishes CAD files according to rules.
Q&A
Centro, foundation of Actify Automotive Program Management, managing automotive components
Ralph Grabowski: Centro is new to me. What is its role?
David Opsahl: Historically, Centro was a parts catalog that customers adapted to meet their program needs. We found that there were many iterative loops between suppliers and automotive manufacturers, reassuring each other that this is what will be built. Also, they frequently collaborate on data.
We were getting requests from suppliers for extensions to Centro, found that many of them were similar requests, and so we added a set of applications on top of Centro. This is what lead us to look deeper at the problems our customers were trying to solve in managing their programs, giving more visibility to all program data across multiple teams throughout the enterprise to improve collaboration. Today it is the platform supporting the Actify APM suite, which enables suppliers to win and launch automotive programs.
Grabowski: Actify’s Web site says that your SpinFire Reader views only .act3d files. What does this format consist of?
Opsahl: We use the HOOPS toolkit from Tech Soft 3D to translate CAD files to PRC, but we needed more, so we added a way for it to better handle assemblies, to store legacy data or prior data, and so on.
[HOOPS is “hierarchical object oriented picture system,” a hardware-software graphics interface developed in the 1980s at Cornell University, and then commercialized by Ithaca Software. Some of the original developers went on to work at Autodesk, so it was little surprise when Autodesk acquired Ithaca, but it was a surprise when just three years later it handed HOOPS over to Tech Soft 3D.]
[PRC is “product representation compact,” a format invented two decades ago by the French translation firm TTF. We often read of Adobe inventing PRC, but Adobe acquired TTF, and then embedded PRC in PDF so that the file format could display 3D models interactively. Four years later, Adobe lost interest in 3D CAD, and it sold PRC to Tetra 3D. Adobe buying and abandoning 3D CAD translation in so few years shook our industry at that time.]
SpinFire can import and work with more than 30 different CAD file formats, and our customers are often working with multiple file formats from different sources on a daily basis.
Grabowski: Most automotive companies use CAD software from either Dassault Systemes or Siemens. Why should a supplier buy your viewing solution, when they might already have it from these other two?
Opsahl: We are focused on companies that want to standardize on one visualization product across the entire company. SpinFire Enterprise offers a normalized way to use data to see what changes took place, no matter the source, with one site license that has no use-limits.
Individual viewers from CAD vendors don’t necessarily handle other formats, and sometimes you have to buy other software just to use the viewer from the CAD vendor. In any case, the viewer from a CAD vendor would not have a collaboration thread that goes through the files from different CAD vendors and that is a key requirement for our customers who are managing incredibly complex designs that get shared back and forth multiple times
Once you get past tier-1 suppliers, smaller suppliers do not necessarily have a sophisticated IT stack, so SpinFire Enterprise is an affordable solution for them.
Grabowski: So, suppliers don’t necessarily use the same CAD software as automobile manufacturers?
Opsahl: Auto manufacturers all use different CAD software, and suppliers who support multiple OEMs have to support multiple CAD file formats. GM once tried to force all suppliers to use the same CAD system, but financially it was something suppliers couldn’t deal with. [High-end MCAD systems cost $15,000 to $100,000 per license.]
Automotive is the biggest manufacturing industry (outside of consumer electronics), so a different way to solve the different-CAD-systems problem was through viewers. SpinFire Enterprise is much more than just a viewer; it gives suppliers a common platform with which to communicate and collaborate with customers, from the start of the design process to final production. This lets downstream interpretation of CAD files be consistent.
Grabowski: One of the concerns of aircraft manufacturers is that they be able to read and process CAD files fifty years from now. Does your software handle old data?
Opsahl: Product lifecycles are getting longer with automotive. Cars have a regulatory framework like aircraft, such as for lawsuits and recalls.
We can account for old data in our file format. But if libraries from Tech Soft 3D do not support that old data, then we are stuck. We have not had a complaint about access to legacy data in the 2.5 years I’ve worked here.
Grabowski: I suppose it helps that software vendors are no longer changing file formats as quickly, and in some cases even making them ISO standards. DOCX, PDF, DWG are pretty stable these days.
Opsahl: Formats have evolved to the point where they can be stable, but again, since SpinFire is able to support nearly every file format. Customers can be confident that they’ll be able to work with whatever is sent their way.
== Okino's PolyTrans|CAD Software for Professional 'Load & Go' 3D Conversions ==
For over three decades, mission-critical 3D conversion software from Okino of Toronto has been used effectively by tens of thousands of professionals. We develop, support, and convert between all major CAD, DCC, and VisSim formats. CTO Robert Lansdale and his team tailors each package to the specific conversion requirements or problems of each customer.
Popular CAD data sources we support 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. Contact CTO Robert Lansdale at lansd@okino.com.
April 7 is the day Graebert launches the next release of its ARES series of desktop, Web, and mobile CAD programs. The neXt event features guest speakers Niknaz Aftahi (aec+tech), Anthony Frausto-Robledo (Architosh), and Randall Newton (Consilia Vektor). Register to watch live or to watch the replay at next.graebert.com.
Other CAD events happening on April 7:
Siemens media and analyst day in Detroit
Spatial new software launch day in Munich — I’ll be attending this one.
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If you would like to donate to an agency that has already been helping people in Ukraine, Moldova, and Romania for decades now (“boots on the ground”), and which upFront.eZine supports annually, then I would like to suggest Mission Without Borders at mwbca.org/ukraine. We did.
Donations are used to provide emergency aid and food packages for people in eastern Ukraine. (Tax receipts available for Canadian donors only.)
Letters to the Editor
It strikes me as weird that Manish Kumar is now ceo of Solidworks, without dropping any of his old job. Maybe a smaller future for Solidworks, since everything is going to 3DExperience? Still seems risky to me, given what a cash cow that product is.
Thanks for the recent coverage of Solid Edge. I always tell everyone it’s the best CAD-for-CAM system ever. Synchronous Technology is extremely good at model changes, and CNC programmers need that kind of capability. - Name withheld by request
The editor replies: Making the cto the ceo tells me that Dassault had a change of heart, and has gotten serious about keeping Solidworks a solid competitor against the likes of Solid Edge and Inventor. Perhaps the change-of-heart is at its core financial, as Solidworks now brings in a billion dollars a year for the French company.
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Re: Meta, Meet Reality
Thank you for this valuable summary and its insights, Ralph. We all certainly need to speak out and do everything we can in this moment, and in the understandings that follow that can prevent such a nightmare conflict from happening again. - Miles Parker Parker Group
Fascinating reminiscences in this thread. Here are some from my long association with Generic CADD:
I obtained an early version of GCADD for the equities analytical research group at Morgan Stanley in the 1980s, where it was used to create graphically-precise illustrations of portfolio hedging processes.
I later employed it to design the rural studio and stables which I still enjoy today in my retirement. Coincidently my home in upstate New York is not far from Cherry Valley, where GCADD’s successor General CADD is based. Small world.
I continue to design with GCADD v.5 using DOSBOX v0.74-3 on W7, and print as follows:
In the Print dialog, select Send to = Postscript
Port = File / EPS
Page size = 7.5 long and 10 wide
Then use Page setup to scale, and fit origin appropriately (zoom out helps).
In Word, the resulting EPS file may be inserted directly into a 8 1/2 x 11 landscape page and readily printed from there.
- PB Turgeon (via WorldCAD Access)
Notable Quotable
“Is Web3 just libertarian nonsense with planet-destroying energy consumption? Probably.”
- Jeremiah Lee
Thank You, Readers
To support upFront.eZine through PayPal.me, then I suggest the following amounts:
Issue #1,125 | Inside the Business of CAD | 28 February 2022
Liminal: The state of being in-between
Autodesk executives recording presentations for AU 2021 (all images sourced from Autodesk)
At Autodesk University 2021, Autodesk executives put the emphasis on digital transformation: it is inevitable, and it is urgent that it happen now.
“Digital collaboration is now a necessity; cloud workflows are the norm; and time-saving is a must,” said vice president of cross-industry strategy Mimi Hoang. Never mind that Autodesk has been talking about collaboration since Carol Bartz was ceo in the mid-1990s; that the cloud already is the norm for everyday people; and that every CAD vendor promises to save designers’ time.
A survey by consulting firm Accenture found that 90% of 700 construction firms are already digitizing their processes, but that two-thirds of them admitted they weren’t seeing benefits. The survey was presented during AU, and so it comes as little surprise that Accenture recommended that these firms (1) reorient themselves by implementing Forge, Autodesk’s cross-platform programming interface, (2) become data-centric, and then (3) use the data to make decisions earlier.
(Forge first was the name of Autodesk’s now-discontinued 3D printing API.)
Forge is key to understanding Autodesk today, and tomorrow. The software rental firm dreams of the day when all of its programs are rewritten in Forge and intercommunicate data incrementally through Forge APIs [application programming interfaces]. Competitor CAD vendors, like Siemens and Graphisoft, also offer cross-platform programming (Mendix) and incremental data transfer (BIMcloud).
The Forge-ian dream is, however, not fully realized. “We’re investing heavily in connections across Autodesk products, improving interoperability,” said vp of AutoCAD family of products Rob Maguire, speaking in the present-continuous tense. “We’re excited about the potential this has... With Forge, we’re making strides towards fluent workflow capabilities.”
Fusion is crucial, but it is not yet pervasive. Until it is, Autodesk Docs (formerly BIM 360 Docs) is the placeholder. A Web site, it lets users view, markup, and manage files in many formats, but so far is integrated only into AutoCAD and Revit (as of November 2021).
Autodesk is scrambling to interconnect AutoCAD with its other incompatible software, because competitors are already there. Graebert (ARES), Hexagon (BricsCAD), and Nanosoft (nanoCAD) took the faster route by unifying general, mechanical, civil, GIS, P&ID, and architectural designs within a single program and storing all models in Autodesk’s DWG format, albeit with proprietary extensions. They do not suffer the internal incompatibility problems Autodesk does.
For AutoCAD, the AU keynote was brief. It described some features added to last year’s release, such as Trace (for marking up drawings collaboratively) and Count, another way to count entities in drawings.
For the future, Autodesk promises AutoCAD will get some automated drafting workflows, such as these ones:
Connected Paper recognizes markups that are hand-sketched or added to PDF files, and then converts them to AutoCAD geometry.
AutoCAD Automation suggests combining repetitive command sequences into macros.
My Insights shows users how they employ AutoCAD, and then suggests alternative commands that might be more efficient.
In the 1980s, Autodesk separated itself from bigger competitors by allowing users to customize the CAD program on their own — unique at a time when other systems like Intergraph and Computervision charged customers big bucks for customization.
Customization of the next generation of AutoCAD, the AutoCAD Web app, is, however, a distant dream. Autodesk says users will “perhaps someday in the future” be allowed to embed their in-house applications in the browser version of AutoCAD.
Fusion 360 modifying a model generatively following heat and electrical analysis.
The AU keynote for mechanical CAD treated us to a liturgy of gloom: “The cost of doing nothing is too high,” said vp of design and manufacturing industry strategy Srinath Jonnalagadda. “Continued reliance on home-grown data management systems perpetuates the ongoing struggles in the supply chain... Not dealing with complexity can lead to lost profits and opportunities.”
The solution, of course, is to employ Autodesk to “empower innovators everywhere.” But even so, Mr Jonnalagadda noted that the complete solution — a single cloud platform unifying all tools, from concept to manufacturing — lies in the future: “And that is what we’re working towards with Autodesk Forge Platform.”
Happily, there is a significant exception. Fusion 360 shows off today what Forge is capable of tomorrow. This partly-cloud-based 3D mechanical CAD program handles sketches, direct modeling, sheet metal, PCB designs, generative design, and so on.
Fusion 360, however, isn’t like PTC Onshape or Graebert Kudo. Users access these CAD apps by simply logging in from any browser on any hardware. Fusion 360 instead requires a 1.9GB download and then runs only on Windows or MacOS. That there is a free version for anyone’s personal use suggests to me it might not be selling well.
New in Fusion 360 is the ability to add parametrics to imported meshes, and converting them to solids. Sub-division modeling is also parametric now. Other new features include these ones:
What I found particularly interesting is a new form of generative design that changes models according to the results of simulations. See figure above. Many CAD vendors also offer generative design, but I don’t see algorithm-based design being particularly popular among designers.
A unified cloud-native PDM/PLM [product data management/product lifecycle management] system was missing from Forge 360, so last year Autodesk acquired Canada’s Upchain cloud-based PDM/PLM software to combine design, manufacturing, data, and process management in Fusion 360.
Autodesk really wants to customers to stop using desktop Inventor, and switch to Fusion 360 for all their design work. Here is a reason: as we use the program, Autodesk runs parts of Fusion 360 on cloud servers, through which Autodesk collects the data we feed to it.
Autodesk has a lot plans for our data. It’s thinking of using A.I. to generate design concepts; to detect repetitive design work; and to report underused production machines. After hearing how Facebook and Google misuse our data, users may become hesitant in being open-books to Autodesk.
These sorts of data-use things are not possible with desktop-only CAD. But, as other CAD vendors have found, desktop MCAD is what customer prefer, and so Inventor managed to get a mention during a keynote speech.
New in Inventor is its ability to use multiple CPU cores to open, edit, and update models more quickly. To embed behaviors in assemblies, like hospital flows and supply chain logistics, Autodesk acquired ProModel.
Also new this year is selective import from Revit files, so that machines models are associated with building models. “This is an approach we’ll be developing across the rest of our entire portfolio in the coming months,” explained vp of design and manufacturing Stephen Hooper speaking of the future, “bringing Fusion, Inventor, AutoCAD, and even Revit data to the Forge Platform.”
Autodesk continues to update Inventor for desktop users
What Ralph Grabowski Thinks
Forge is so important that executives at AU called it “the Autodesk platform.” Moving data between Autodesk’s myriad data-incompatible programs is a long-haul project, with the initial effort starting back in about 2008 (getting Inventor and AutoCAD to talk to each other). Autodesk subsequently released the “universal” Navisworks viewer, but that didn’t quite make the grade. A decade later, Autodesk turned to Forge to solve its interoperability problem.
While Autodesk pins its future on Forge, progress in Forge-ifying its software appears to me to be progressing remarkably slowly. Each year, we hear how it’s going to be great, making me wonder in which year of AU the company announces that its programs are islands and isthmuses no longer.
Autodesk is using the meantime to emphasize how Fusion 360 puts data at the center of customer-corporations involved in manufacturing. As the Forge API connects the program with more third-party software, Autodesk aspires to make Fusion 360 the umbrella for all industry.
So far, the brightest point is Fusion 360, and it does well showing what Forge can do. I expect that the long-promised cloud version of AutoCAD is being rewritten in Forge. Or, maybe just maybe, they’ll shift to a new underlying paradigm and start over.
Q: Why did these vendors pivot away from Russia but not, say, China?
A: Some estimates I have read suggest that Western firms make only 1%-2% of their revenues from Russia.
Q. Will western CAD software shut down when Russian users cannot renew their subscriptions?
A. Perhaps. It depends on how the subscription confirmation and payment systems are implemented. Permanent licenses are unaffected.
Q. Will these CAD vendors be allowed back into Russia after, um, peace breaks out?
A. Perhaps not. Russia has local versions of many kinds of software, which it has being trying to promote. Lowered foreign competition gives domestic firms greater opportunities for regional growth.
Russian replacements for western CAD software include nanoCAD (for AutoCAD), Renga (Revit), KOMPAS-3D (Inventor/Fusion, Creo, Solid Edge/NX), Neolant (P&ID, plant design), and C3D Labs (Parasolid).
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Minimalist BIM format Dotbim handles geometry and data exchange in a way to reduce the problem of translators missing parts of the now-complex IFC format.
With the Open Design Alliance’s release of .Net software development kit for BimRV, the following kinds of Revit data can be handled by any dot.net application:
All Revit elements and properties read
Model viewing
Revit data to IFC format conversion
The SDK [software development kit] so far is limited in creating Revit elements and is available only to ODA member companies. More info at opendesign.com/products/bimrv.
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NemetschekAllplan becomes exclusive supplier of BIM software to the newly formed Autobahn GmbH that now builds and maintains Germany’s 13,000km freeways and trunk roads: 2,850 licenses for 52 offices. allplan.com/us_en
In other Nemetschek news, the company appoints Yves Padrines as ceo. He is the former ceo of video software company Synamedia.
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Sometimes manufacturers release CAD files for their products, and here are two sets that came out in the last few weeks:
So that’s why there was sudden silence from Steve Johnson, Don Strimbu, and other “old timers.” Problem is, as a CAD customer, I switched to BricsCAD based on that group of people’s advice and the clear vision of Mr. de Keyser. I feel doomed now. -Fa3ien (via Twitter)
The editor replies: I see no negative trends with BricsCAD under Hexagon. Future versions seem to be tracking in the same direction as previous ones. BricsCAD has, so far, not been Visio’ed.
Steve Johnson wrote extensively about BricsCAD, but was never an employee; Don Strimbu is still with Hexagon Bricsys.
Steve Johnson replies (thru Twitter): My silence is hardly sudden, and has nothing to do with this new enterprise. I’ll check it out, though. Meanwhile, BricsCAD is still a great product that is improving at a rate that outstrips the competition.
The editor replies: Well, not so much dead as unable to present complexity in a way that humans and computers can handle, so that the dream of ‘one BIM to rule them all’ is becoming tarnished.
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Wow! Dimitry Ushakov gone? Presumably, LEDAS is still helping Hexagon develop BricsCAD? - Dominic Seah
The editor replies: It is normal for executives of an acquired company to leave after a year or so. LEDAS stopped working on BricsCAD in 2011, after it sold part of its company to Bricsys.
Re: Old Timers on New Technology
Holy cow! Half-way into reading Leo’s letter, I was thinking “Did I write this and forgot that I did?” Very true! I’m not as close to the design industry world as I used to be, but from what I gather (talking with old friends still in the business) the biggest challenge has been QA [quality assurance]. Mostly due to pressure to reduce costs. - David Stein
The editor replies: When I see new and astounding freeway interchanges in our area, which were presumably designed with CAD — astounding, as in “astoundingly bad” — it makes me think that the designs were made with CAD-command experience, not road-design experience.
Mr Stein responds: I also worry about the jump to A.I. in design and engineering. The methods and preferences A.I. will use will be entirely dependent on the humans after which they are patterned.
I don’t have a lot of faith in shareholders and suits choosing the best minds over the most affordable minds.
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Notable Quotable inupFront.eZine #1,121 quotes Elsergio Volador, but when I Google this name he doesn’t seem to exist. There are a lot of close matches, but not an exact one. - Bill Fane
When I entered the quote into Bing, Microsoft expressed its concern for my mental well-being:
Notable Quotable
“Sometimes I think $GOOG purposefully does slightly illegal things in its ad tech unit, which is worth like $14, in order to distract everyone from its core business, which makes all the money.” - Willis Cap
Thank You, Readers
To support upFront.eZinethrough PayPal.me, then I suggest the following amounts:
Issue #1,124 | Inside the Business of CAD | 28 February 2022
Families taking refuge at a Ukrainian Catholic church in Kyiv (image source Alexander Laschuk)
Someone once said that software eats the world, but now software is being eaten by war.
Europe and North America ought to be at the front lines helping defend the borders of Ukraine against the Russian invasion, but for Western leaders steeped in a “The End of History” mindset, such a move is inconceivable. Better to lead from behind with sanctions.
Sanctions are, nevertheless, useful as an initial counter-attack against the evil that desires to kill fellow humans to satisfy its greed for moar empire. This is not the way of Christ, even when the Russian Orthodox believe Moscow to be the Third Rome, Kyiv to be the spiritual mother of Rus, and the Ukrainian Orthodox church an illegitimate breakaway sect.
When sanctions, like BDS, are small, we barely notice the impact; in this case, however, they are against the world’s second largest energy exporter, and — significantly for our industry — the source for many contract programmers who create, debug, and update the CAD software we use. As is Ukraine.
(China, also a major outsourcing center, may well one day also be cut off, as its leader continues his reckless pursuit of territorial expansion.)
How might war in Ukraine and sanctions with Russia affect software? I asked some CAD-related firms.
A North American developer:
“As of February 25, there are no sanctions in place that would block our ability to work with programmers based in Russia; the current sanctions affect only specific Russian banks.
“The situation with programmers based in Ukraine is unstable right now, as people are rightfully concerned about their own lives and the lives of their families, and work necessarily takes a back seat.”
A Russian developer:
“The war in Ukraine is a big tragedy for both our nations. The only hope is that this will stop as soon as possible.
“We keep operating as a company on a regular level, but some actions are not a top priority now.”
- - -
As for upFront.eZine Publishing, our policy is that we work with individuals, not politicians. We have clients in Russia, with whom we continue to work.
At one time we had clients in China. By 2015, however, we came to realize that the Chinese Communist Party is embedded in all companies, and cancelled our work there.
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Kyochi Myogo reminds us that the war against Ukraine is not an isolated event, sadly. “People who don’t know or care what’s going on in, for example, Yemen, Myanmar, or Sudan, but who are very worked up about Ukraine, should ask themselves why that’s the case.” The horror is everywhere.
Countering the horror takes courage. David Burge notes that “the most courageous leadership seen in this world in the last 40 years has come from a coal miner, a satirist, and a comedian: Lech Walesa, Vaclav Havel, and Volodmyr Zelensky.”
Contact!
upFront.eZine is published most Mondays. This newsletter is read by 4,600+ subscribers in 70 countries. Read our back issues at www.upfrontezine.com.
Editor: Ralph Grabowski Copy editor: Heather MacKenzie
Letter the editor are welcome at grabowski@telus.net. All letters sent to the editor are subject to publication, and may be edited for clarity and brevity.
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Issue # 1,123 | Inside the Business of CAD | 21 February 2022
From the Editor
Not much of a newsletter this week, as my dad (98 next month) moved (willingly!) from his condo to a very fine old folks home. This meant that family and friends spent the last week clearing the condo of 30 years of memories. Regular newsletter next week.
There was, however, one bit of new news I want to share with you.
And in Other News
With the sale of Bricsys to Hexagon, and much of the old Bricsys crew leaving Hexagon, we wondered what was up next for Erik de Keyser and his team of serial entrepreneurs.
It turns out to be Qonic, “the next generation building design modeling tools.” The old team has gotten back together, with people like Erik de Keyser, Mark Van Den Bergh, Sander Scheiris, and Dmitry Ushakov.
Reflecting, the new endeavor should comes as no surprise to us. Mr de Keyser’s aim always has been to create easy-to-use architectural design software. This, by my reckoning, is phase V in his journey.
The Web site, for now, is largely a placeholder. qonic.com
Issue #1,122 | Happy Valentine’s Day! | 14 February 2022
Guest editorial by Leo Schlosberg
Glass fiber reinforced concrete (image source Al Blair Construction)
I received a call from a roofer who needed a price on some GFRC [glass fiber reinforced concrete] fascia for an addition to a school. Neither GFRC nor fascia was normally in his scope of roofing work, but he was stuck with it in his bid package. He’s been at this for 40 years and so we chatted.
We went over some of the known industry issues. He said he was glad he did not own the roofing company, because he did not see how he could his price work high enough to cover all the assorted risks. He has been around so long that he could complain about the decline of drawings as the industry moved to CAD.
I had forgotten that people could still complain about that. I had commented on this two decades ago in Ralph Grabowski’s newsletter, when he mentioned my words on the occasion of the newsletter’s 20th anniversary. My post was the most controversial editorial he had in those 20 years. (See https://www.upfrontezine.com/2015/05/857.html.)
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I follow constructech news loosely. I mostly get veiled sales pitches. Forty years ago, when I was a minor pioneer in a different industry (IT – focused on what was then called “office automation” or word processing, integrating text and data, and so on) it became clear that sales efforts focused on the benefits of new technology and glossed over, or omitted, the steep implementation costs. This is still true in tech sales.
The big issue in much of constructech, especially in the segment related to design (CAD, BIM, generative design, and so on), remains knowledge, or rather the lack of it, embedded in designs. The complaint that CAD made drawings worse is based on the observation that the knowledge embedded in the drawings has declined. This is undeniably true.
When I used to work on restoration projects, I would be struck by how the original drawings of century-old structures were so much more detailed and in better correspondence with what was actually built, than modern drawings. The challenges created by all the complex knowledge embedded in the built environment are typically underestimated by those who have not spent a lot of time and effort in the muddy swamp water of the physical realities of materials and structures.
I clearly recall, with fondness, an engineer who was a salesman of admixtures (chemicals) for concrete, sitting me down at lunch one day and patiently explaining to me that “sand” is not one thing, not a simple homogeneous material, but a source of lots of relevant complexity. Everywhere we turn in this business, we run into that sort of complexity.
Software people are not used to complexity, because “data” is an abstraction and computing is full of wonderfully controlled interfaces. By contrast, construction is a collection of physical realities that may not be nicely consistent and homogeneous; that change with changes in moisture and temperature; and are subjected to environmental forces (wind, rain, hail, lightning, earthquakes, soil settlements, and so on). In turn, these complex materials have to interface with other materials. Some of the interfaces are well understood and standardized; others are not, and so become a common point of failure. Data does not have to deal with this sort of thing.
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In conjunction with an extremely seasoned and knowledgeable fabricator, I delved into the school renovation project manual and searched for photos of the existing school to better understand the limited information in the contract documents. Turned out the documents made little sense. There was zero correspondence between the detail (called out as one kind of GFRC, but we thought it should be another type, or maybe even cast stone) with no spec for the GFRC.
Before becoming mostly retired, I dealt with this regularly. Now I am astonished and reminded that industry has made so little progress in the problems of design-bid-build as it exists in the real world.
Leo Schlosberg was the founder of Heavyware.com and is now the retired owner at Cary Concrete Products.
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Siemens released an NX With No Name, calling last week’s update to its flagship MCAD program “latest release” sans version number (although captioning during the launch video seems to label it NX 2007). New functions include
NX topology optimization
Design space exploration
NX voice command assistance
Part orientation optimization
The official launch video can be viewed on YouTube.
I’m a little biased, since I sell Solidworks, but everything “new” you described in Solid Edge has been available in Solidworks for several years. I’m not sure I understand why any company would choose Solid Edge over Solidworks. - Sam Scholes, senior account manager Go Engineer
The editor replies: The reluctance could be due to a number of reasons:
Political — they don't want to buy from Dassault
Top-down — they've been told to buy Solid Edge
Compatibility — the customers they deal with also use Solid Edge
Checkboxes — Solid Edge does things competitors do not
UX — they might prefer the way Solid Edge works
For me, UX is the #1 concern in the software I select, followed by checkboxes.
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Thanks for the article on Solid Edge. I already used (giving you credit) the comment [below] to some of my colleagues about our need to learn our interdepartmental processes better so that we can develop better programs that solve the right problems.”
“Solid Edge benefiting from their use of its CAD in its own engineering projects and how that offers insights into development of functions that are otherwise hard to program and that many of their rivals can only dream of offering someday”
Also, Jeremy has a good eye. Thanks for the Dogbert. Scott Adams is another of my favorite authors! -Ron Powell
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I used to work for one of Siemens’ divisions. The engineers weren’t very happy when word came down from the Mother Ship that they had to start using NX, instead of pre-Wildfire Pro/E and ancient seats of AutoCAD. The story everyone heard was that the NX sales force was tired of hearing the question, “So, what CAD software does Siemens use themselves?”
It’s a good example of how weirdly unscientific the sales world is. That question about the software the parent company uses is exactly the kind of question I like to ask of salesmen, just because it’s fun to back them into a corner and watch them flail. But trust me, what software companies use has absolutely zero impact on my buying decisions.
I’ve been on the receiving end of this stuff, too, and remember having to design an optional set of wide tracks for a piece of machinery, on a salesman’s insistence that the customer said the only reason he was buying Deere, instead of ours. was because their tracks were an inch wider.
The older, wiser salesman tried to explain to me that it was just an offhand comment to get the pesky salesman to go away, and that it didn’t matter what we did, the customer wasn’t buying our machines. (He had a large fleet of exclusively Deere equipment).
We did the wide-track option, tested it, and ordered parts for production. As far as I know, those sets of tracks are still on their pallets, twenty years later, slowly rusting into the ground.
Great write up on Solid Edge. It’s one of those options that doesn’t seem to get much attention. - Jess Davis
The editor replies: I worked at a consulting firm before the transition to CAD. They had a look at Intergraph, but $100,000 per seat was too much. Civil engineering is, after all, not all that complex.
Next, they had AutoCAD demo’ed, but when the salesman suggested that a 10MB hard drive would be needed for AutoCAD to work properly, the added cost was deemed prohibitive, about $2,000 at the time. (Later, I found AutoCAD v1.4 worked just fine with two floppy drives.)
They decided on Anvil CAD as their first CAD system, which, as you might guess, was not the best choice. I have no idea how that came about. Some years later, they bought into AutoCAD, but then found they were now somewhat incompatible with Microstation, which the Ministry of Highways used.
Mr Davis responds: I worked for some years at a trencher manufacturer. When I started, they were using Intergraph on Interact workstations. What a strange world that was! I remember the tech replacing a graphics board that was the size of pizza box. He mentioned it was $12,000 or something like that.
I heard about a gigantic inter-departmental war where the IT priesthood locked horns with engineering, they being natural enemies. When it was finished, engineering triumphed by going with a CAD system that ran on a DEC mainframe instead of the IT department’s beloved IBM mainframe, which is what the rest of the company ran on.
By the time I left five years later, they were on Intergraph Microstation PC [written by Bentley Systems, marketed by Intergraph], and at my next job I instituted CAD with a copy of Microstation on a PC that I got from our in-house buyer, because he didn’t like it, and wanted to go back to his green-screen terminal.
I remember harassing the poor guys demo’ing Pro/E with questions like “So, if we buy your software, can we still run in on hardware from Wal-Mart?”
As an electronics and computer tech for > 40 yrs I’ll explain a few things that people don’t get [about erratic cursor movement caused by poorly-located mouse dongles].
No, it’s not Microsoft’s (or the mouse manufacturers’) fault with driver updates. The problem isn’t software, it’s hardware. These devices are radios. Unfortunately (or not, lol) we can’t “see” radio waves. So we can’t see what’s happening, but there are so many devices transmitting in the frequency range used by mice that there can be countless combinations as every environment varies. This is totally a radio interference problem.
It’s not the receiver’s fault, nor faulty design. The need for such small receivers (nano) came from our need for small portable setups (laptops). People hated the large receivers we used to have, they often hit them and broke them. Since the nano receiver is so small, it has a tiny antenna. Larger antenna are less likely to pick up interference. People wanted small. They gave it to us.
Current Logitech Unifying receiver (top), older one (above)
USB plugs are usually grouped. They’re always placed in clumps. That means the device plugged in next to it can interfere, as it’s right beside the mouse receiver. I’ll give you a real example: my Logitech MX mouse’s nano Unifying receiver is plugged directly in the front USB port of my large tower. Worked great. But when I plugged a USB DVD player into the next port, it went nuts! As it’s not unusual to have four or six ports next to each other, your odds aren’t good.
The standard technician’s response to naughty mice has always been “change the port.” While this works, most techs don’t understand why, as they’re computer people, not electronics people. It’s radio interference.
“But it worked for years like this!!” Your environment changed. You got a new printer that’s plugged in next to it. You got a new cellphone or cordless phone, etc, etc, etc. You can’t see radio waves. Something changed, not the mouse.
The batteries are low. A strong signal can cut through the interference, but as the batteries get weaker (or in the case of built-in rechargeables, they’re aging and aren’t as strong), that lowers the power and raises the interference effect. Your mouse isn’t shouting loud enough to be heard.
It’s money! Yep, the good ole $$$. Not the receiver’s fault. The USB plugs next to or near it are not shielded. Virtually all wires nowadays are fully shielded or our electronic world would grind to a halt with interference problems between devices. Unshielded wires act as long antennas and everything would be interfering with every other thing that had a cord. However, it’s expensive and difficult to shield the plug, and the bean counters object to a pair of $0.50 plugs on a $1 wire, so the engineers are overruled and they ahve to use a $0.10 plug that’s not shielded. Guess what’s right next to your nano receiver? Yep, that unshielded plug.
So there you go. It’s spelled “i n t e r f e r e n c e!” This is the solution: moving the receiver away from the interference allows it to be heard. Awesome fix, Ralph! - RM (on WorldCAD Access)
Notable Quotable
“Let’s face it, Facebook and Twitter are charities that allow you to donate free data to needy billionaires. Say what you want about Bezos and Musk, they actually produce something other than mental illness.” - Iowa Hawk
Thank You, Readers
Thank you to readers who donate towards the operation of upFront.eZine. To support upFront.eZine through PayPal.me, then I suggest the following amounts:
Issue # 1,121 | Inside the Business of CAD | 7 February 2022
CAD Direct integrating parts and assemblies from NX and Solidworks
The Siemens CAD universe centers around NX, with Solid Edge the oft-overlooked stepchild. It’s just as powerful as any mid-level MCAD rival, such as Solidworks or Inventor from Dassault Systemes and Autodesk, yet lacks the mindshare of these rivals.
Part of the problem stems from a history of bouncing between homes. Born at Intergraph, it was adopted by Unigraphics, passed along to EDS, sent back to UGS, and now calls Siemens its home.
Another issue affecting Solid Edge, as I see it, is that its powerful hybrid Synchronous Technology (ST) is saddled by a perplexing (and initially over-hyped) combination of smart direct and parametric modeling. The typical machine shop designer hasn’t shown much in the way of enthusiasm for ST, its biggest differentiator from competitors.
Yet, if it’s stability you want, then Solid Edge is the one for you. Autodesk and Dassault are bedazzled and distracted (and so far failing) in moving their mid-range MCAD offerings fully to the cloud.
By contrast, Siemens repeatedly makes clear that MCAD belongs on the desktop, full stop. Sure, ancillary functions, like co-designing and PLM, are suitable for running on the cloud. So, Siemens offers Solid Edge users cloud-based products like Xcelerator Share for collaboration and Teamcenter X for product lifecycle management.
What’s New in Solid Edge 2022
When I saw what is new in Solid Edge 2022, I felt like I was back in the glory days of CAD. Here was a release claiming over 500 enhancements, a far cry from other CAD systems that these days might be satisfied by offering customers a third way to view symbols and such.
Let me walk you through some of the new and improved functions that I found most interesting.
CAD Direct places parts and assemblies from NX, JT, and Solidworks files into Solid Edge models. Copies of the foreign b-reps are stored in an intermediary format, called “internal components,” in Solid Edge’s assembly file. There are no external files, solving that particular data management problem.
To the user, the imported part/assembly looks and acts like a Solid Edge one. In the figure at the top of the article, an imported part is highlighted in green. Mates, constraints, and so on work with it.
You are, for instance, designing a locomotive but are sourcing the electrical generator from another supplier. You don’t need to edit the generator; it’s done. You just need to place it so that you can connect bolts and electrical connections to the locomotive. Should the supplier update the generator, the copy in your locomotive design changes, should you wish it to.
In Pathfinder’s model tree, foreign models are tagged as “external.” Nevertheless, a link is maintained if possible, so that when changes are made to the model in the originating CAD system, they are reflected in Solid Edge.
Dan Staples, Siemens vp of mainstream engineering, told me that in the future additional MCAD systems will be supported by CAD Direct, but that it works most reliably with Parasolid-based CAD programs, as they use the same geometric kernel as Solid Edge.
Point clouds are new to Solid Edge 2022, catching up with competitors. In the past, points were displayed as triangles or b-reps; now they remain points.
Each point of the millions or billions point generated by laser scanners carries color and x-y-z data. An assembly in Solid Edge can have multiple point clouds, components can be placed among them, and measurements take between solids and point clouds. “Rendering them, as they are being rotated at high speed, is secret sauce stuff,” explained Mr Staples to me, with a straight face.
Convergent modeling is the technology through which Solid Edge lets you work with b-reps (solids) and meshes (facets) at the same time. Meshes are typically imported from scans and non-CAD sources like 3D gaming development software. In Solid Edge 2022, you can, say, scan a handle in 3D, bring it into Solid Edge, and then cut a hole into it using Boolean subtraction of solids, as shown in below.
Performing solid modeling operations on a mesh part
“The big nut to crack was Boolean operations between b-reps and facet meshes, but the result [in the past] was facets; now, everything stays in their form,” Mr Staples said. Meshes stay meshes, solids stay solids. (Dassault Systemes has something similar that it calls Polyhedra.)
Some mesh elements can be converted outright to equivalent solids. When it comes to exporting hybrid models, however, solids still are converted to meshes. “You’re never complete, but I’d say we’re very close to completion,” said Mr Staples.
Related to this, Solid Edge Simulation gains hydrostatic pressure simulation. It now performs analyses on mesh models, and is better at remeshing frames prior to stress analysis.
Dynamic visualization creates visual reports by colorizing models according to rules. For example, you can color all components that are from a specific supplier in blue, designed by a specific employee in green, or made from a specific material, such as copper, as shown below.
Dynamically visualizing parts in an assembly
Parts are filtered, colored, and hidden according to rules that you write; rules can be shared with others. This lets you see if the assembly is made from the correct materials, or search more easily for suppliers already being tapped for components in the model.
Free computer-aided manufacturing is now available to all Solid Edge 2022 users on subscription. The CAM Pro 2.5-axis milling software runs as an external program, but is associative with Solid Edge models. It automates tool path creation and generates machining visualizations. New in 2022 is adaptive tool paths, as shown below.
Running CAM Pro on a part designed in Solid Edge
Not free, but also new to Solid Edge 2022, is Simcenter Flomaster from Siemens. It extracts geometry from your model, and then simulates 1D fluid flows through full and partial networks of pipes. In the demo that I saw, it handled pressure pulses from compressors.
Other improvements include Solid Edge opening very large assemblies ten times faster than before. It does this by first showing just a 3D image of the assembly, which you can rotate and turn the visibility of parts off and on. To edit parts, you select just the ones you want loaded.
Synchronous Technology gains the radiate function. With it, you make changes to diameters of shafts, with holes and slots changing automatically to accommodate the new size.
Rules-based configurators are used to design variations of products, based on a single model. Solid Edge 2022 embeds a new Design Configurator (not based on RuleStream or Driveworks) that stores configuration rules with the CAD model.
Xcelerator Share is much like using a CAD-oriented Dropbox for sharing files and commenting on them. It is similar to collaboration offerings from other CAD vendors, and it runs on any computer or tablet, including Chromebooks. Like PTC’s Vuforia, it includes augmented reality for placing Solid Edge models visually in the real world.
What Ralph Grabowski Thinks
Never mind the cloud.
Solid Edge benefits from a company with deep pockets making advances in NX, and then spinning them off to Solid Edge. On top of that, Siemens uses its CAD in its own engineering projects. No other CAD vendor can make the claim.
So, Solid Edge offers functions that are otherwise tough to program and that many of its direct rivals dream of offering some day.
Project Newplex 2.0 is the advanced SHX font designed for technical documents; compatible with every DWG-based CAD program that supports Unicode SHX files.
Features!
Advanced character forms for readability & clarity
Tech Soft 3D updated its HOOPS 2022 SDK [software development kit] for 2022 with support for Apple’s M1 CPUs, an updated animation manager, new physics-based rendering, and IFC spatial relationships. Register for a 60-day evaluation from techsoft3d.com/products/hoops/native-platform.
In related news, multiple reports suggest Microsoft is dropping its Hololens XR hardware. As well, Mozilla is shutting down its VR Web browser, and Meta during the last fiscal year lost $10 billion on its meta operations.
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Here are some of the posts that appeared recently on my WorldCAD Access blog:
Regarding the slanted toaster in your January 10th newsletter. Perhaps a designer at T-Fal had seen this strip from Dilbert: dilbert.com/strip/1989-04-19. - Jeremy TePaske, mechanical designer Smithco
Notable Quotable
“If expert advice does not align with the government/corporate desires, then experts are changed until the advice meets the government/corporate goal.” - Elsergio Volador
Thank You, Readers
Thank you to readers who donate towards the operation of upFront.eZine. To support upFront.eZine through PayPal.me, then I suggest the following amounts:
Issue #1,120 | Inside the Business of CAD | 31 January 2022
Guest editorial by Ivan Rykov
Plug-in adding a toolbar and a panel to Rhino
Many projects developed by LEDAS are plug-ins for CAD software programs, ranging from powerful systems like CATIA, to lighter weight solutions like Rhino. Oftimes, we help our customers decide on the direction in which their ideas are best developed: in the form of a plug-in or as a standalone program.
Pros and Cons of Plug-ins
Plug-ins either solve specific problems, or else add functions missing from CAD systems. A good example is CAMWorks from HCL, an advanced plug-in that adds computer-aided manufacturing functions to the Solidworks MCAD system.
Comparing plug-ins with independent applications, we found that plug-ins are better suited to software used in-house by design engineers, with the aim of assisting their day-to-day work. In certain cases, the plug-in approach significantly reduces the cost of development. Ready-made CAD systems work with plug-ins through their APIs [application programming interface].
The drawback to plug-ins that you have to run them on a host application. Before the plug-in can be used, you have to pay a license fee and then install the host software. Plug-ins intended for wider distribution have their demand limited by the number of seats found of the target CAD system.
The APIs provided by CAD systems are often thought of as a way to extend and tailor functions of the CAD system itself, rather than for creating customized processes to solve particular problems. Also, it’s not always an easy task to make a focused plug-in which overrides the user interface of the host application to substitute its own workflow.
We have found that, in general, end-user plug-ins are not usually at the top of our customers’ wish lists.
Pros and Cons of Standalone Applications
More commonly, our customers want software made as standalone programs for the desktop and, more often in recent years, a client-server Web application.
When considering the development of an independent application, either for desktop or the Web, keep in mind that it will require a geometric kernel with which it constructs, represents, and tessellates 3D objects. (We talk more about kernels on our 3D Modeling page.) The annual cost of a subscription license for a kernel is usually significantly higher than a one-time payment for a single license of a lightweight or middle-class CAD system on which plug-ins can run.
Another source of cost is the effort to implement 3D scenes: visualization, camera manipulation (zoom, pan, rotate), object manipulation (selection, movements), and so on. With a plug-in, the host application provides all these features via its API. In case of standalone applications, these have to be programmed at a low level, or else with the help of licensed visualization components.
Types of Plug-in Solutions
From our experience, Rhino is an excellent example of a customizable system. It allows us to hide most of its default panels and toolbars, and then we can easily create our own panels using WPF [Windows Presentation Foundation]. This gives us almost the level of same control over the Rhino’s user interface as do independent WPF applications. (See figure at the top of this article.)
In other CAD systems, this could become problematic as they might use outdated GUI frameworks (do you recall WxWidgets?) or are limited to UI controls predefined by their APIs.
If, however, the application has an external API that can be called from another process, such as through COM or WCF, then we can build a plug-in UI as an external application that interacts with the host CAD system through the API. (Technically, this is then not strictly considered a plug-in.)
This allows us to build the UI using modern technologies exactly matching the required processes, yet still using the geometric kernel and 3D scene capabilities of the host CAD application. This approach is quite popular with our customers, although a somewhat more complicated approach.
How to Decide
So, we have trade-offs that can be resolved by knowing the number of simultaneous software users:
When the cost of copies of the host CAD system does not exceed the cost of a custom application (with licenses for geometric kernel, visualization components, and 3D scene implementation), a plug-in is the cheaper option.
It’s worth noting that the cost of licensing the host application can at times be considered to be zero when company engineers are already using the software in their daily work. In this case, a plug-in based on such a system possesses the additional benefit of fitting a familiar environment.
Thus, in our experience, plug-in solutions are quite popular for semi-automation of certain CAD-related processes performed by a small group of engineers, or else by a large group already using a suitable CAD system. Many of our digital medicine projects, for example, are in the form of plug-ins.
[Ivan Rykov is chief technology officer at LEDAS since 2004. Dr Rykov graduated from the mechanics and mathematics department of Novosibirsk State University, and in 2009 received his PhD in physics and mathematics specializing in discrete mathematics and mathematical cybernetics. More at ledas.com/en.]
Project Newplex 2.0 is the advanced SHX font designed for technical documents; compatible with every DWG-based CAD program that supports Unicode SHX files.
Features
Advanced character forms for readability & clarity
Autodesk launches Flex, its token-based pay-as-you-go system for renting software by the day. AutoCAD, for instance, costs 7 tokens (US$21) for 24 hours, which can be paused by closing the application. Netfab Ultimate, at 55 tokens daily, is the most expensive.
For the very intermittent user, like me, this would be a useful duration, but, alas, I cannot buy a day’s worth, because the minimum purchase is 500 tokens that last just one year, and costs just C$365 less than an annual subscription. Maybe that’s the point. Autodesk warns that “daily rates are subject to change,” meaning the cost/token could rise at any time. autodesk.com/benefits/flex/estimator-tool
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OpenDesign Alliance initiates development of a scan-to-BIM software development kit. Or more accurately: laser scans > polygonal surfaces > AEC objects (b-reps) > parametric parts classified in IFC, Revit, and other formats.
To join the dozen other firms working on it, you first have to become a SIG member at $20,000/year; details at https://opendesign.com/scan-to-bim.
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Here are some of the posts that appeared recently on my WorldCAD Access blog:
While experiencing the same problem with my Logitech M185 and reading through suggestions [on WorldCAD Access], I took a hint from a very old post that referenced the jumpy problem on an old mouse with a rubber ball. It suggested cleaning the ball and inside the mouse.
My newer M185 did not have a ball, but rather a movement sensor window. I took a Q-tip and cleaned the little window on the underside of the mouse, [see figure above] and the problem disappeared. - Roger Carlsen (via WorldCAD Access)
Re: Which Comes First: Models or Drawings?
The usefulness of either a model or a drawing depends, in part, on what you are using it for. If you are a developer, a rough hand sketch might do fine. If you are an estimator you may be able to get by with fewer details (and less accuracy, whatever that means) than if you are trying to build a building.
Two issues run throughout a real-life examination of models and drawings:
1. Knowledge. Does the creator have the knowledge necessary to create the desired level of detail? In construction it is ridiculously impossible for an architect to have the requisite knowledge for the final design of every component in a building. The less knowledge implicitly contained in a drawing or model, the less useful it is. Each type of use requires a different amount of knowledge to implicitly dwell within the model.
2. Responsibility. Who is legally required to get it right? In USA, architects, who most typically create a model, have a low bar for liability for the design; that is pushed contractually to general contractors and from there to subcontractors.
Subs cannot stay viable in the business without serious knowledge; the others can shrug off any liability for not getting a design quite right. - Leo Schlosberg
The editor replies: Back in the day when I designed traffic signal installations, we used symbols like the ones shown below, which contractors interpreted.
“The experts predicted the future, but nature had other ideas.” - Richard Fernandez (@wretchardthecat)
Thank You, Readers
Thank you to readers who donate towards the operation of upFront.eZine. To support upFront.eZine through PayPal.me, then I suggest the following amounts:
[McKinsey is consulting firm to large corporations. SaaS is “software as a service” via subscriptions.]
That was in 2019, and now it is 2+ years later. What do you think about this estimate today?
Ralph Grabowski: I didn’t believe it at the time, and I don’t believe it now.
The CEOs of PTC have been known for making extravagant claims. In this case, I wonder if the CEO was justifying the purchase of Onshape, while (I think) hoping secretly it would not prove to be a costly mistake.
Getting full CAD on the cloud has proved elusive, even for a hardcore cloud promoter like Autodesk, which has been plugging away at the problem for a decade now, as has Dassault with its 14-year (and counting) failure to put Solidworks on the cloud. PTC will find the same,
Indeed, PTC admitted as much when it spent (perhaps) around $700 million (purchase price + assumption of debt, my estimate) on Onshape, saying paying for an acquisition was quicker and cheaper than writing the code on its own. So think how much it might have cost to write cloudCAD from scratch. But now it faces the problem of delivering on its promise of Onshape-ifying Creo with 100% of functions of the desktop version. It ain't gonna happen.
Siemens, Hexagon, and mid-tier CAD vendors (Bentley, Bricsys, Graebert, et al) know better. Their solution is hybrid: hard-core CAD on the desktop with ancillary activities on the cloud where it make sense, such as collaboration and remote drawing access.
Mr Przybylinski: I second all of those emotions. I think that McKinsey does not know enough about CAD authoring tools to understand how they are different.
This next article illustrated their feelings about enterprise software more broadly: “The next software disruption: How vendors must adapt to a new era. Over the turbulent past decade, many legacy software players proved to be remarkably resilient. Now they must adopt a new strategic playbook to weather the different challenges ahead.” [Source.]
Mr Grabowski: I feel that McKinsey suffers from a conflict of interest: it needs change to occur so that it can charge firms to advise them in how to navigate and implement the upcoming changes predicted by McKinsey. By proactively announcing that inevitable change is coming for pretty much darn sure, they prime the pump for lucrative contacts.
Mr Przybylinski: I agree. While we at CIMdata are known for doing market research in this space, we often don't get asked to do things like this, because we are normally more conservative. Plus, we do not have the cachet of “McKinsey” in a press release.
[Stan Przybylinski is the vice president of PLM market research firm CIMdata. He is the former manager of market and competitive intelligence at Dassault Systèmes.]
== 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. Contact CTO Robert Lansdale at lansd@okino.com.
Project Newplex 2.0 is the advanced SHX font designed for technical documents; compatible with every DWG-based CAD program that supports Unicode SHX files.
Features
Advanced character forms for readability & clarity
Dassault Systemeslost the prize for holding the first post-covid in-person CAD user conference, after abruptly cancelling the in-person part for health reasons. You can still watch 3DExperience World (nee Solidworks World) on your computer-connected big screen tv from the comfort of your comfy armchair February 6 - 9 after registering at 3dexperienceworld.com/overview.
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Open DesignAlliance shipped the initial release of its open STEP software development kit in January. The SDK handles CIS/2 schemas, accesses EXPRESS metadata, and supports the following application protocols:
AP203 (configuration-controlled design)
AP214 (automotive design)
AP238 (STEP-NC integrated CNC)
AP242 (managed model-based 3D engineering)
To come later this year: advanced creation, visualization, and .NET support. upFront.eZine wrote about the ODA’s plans in issue #111.
LEDAS reports that for the third year in a row its revenues increased by 15%. The software consulting company specializes in solving tough problems in CAD, BIM, and CAM. ledas.com
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IntelliCAD Technology Consortium updates IntelliCAD Mobile Platform:
Opens and regenerates drawings using multiple threads
Previews files before opening them
Names views and visual styles
Mobile Platform is not a retail product but meant for ITC Mobile SIG members to distribute. As a CAD file viewer, it handles .dwg, .dxf, .dgn, .dwf, .dae, and image files; architecture and civil objects; and underlays, and runs on Windows, Android, macOS, and iOS. www.intellicad.org
Letters to the Editor
Re: What Remains to Be Solved in Mechanical CAD
Matt Lombard's article on the above topic is riveting, I read it in one swoop. What are your thoughts about how future developments will work out? Still via China? - Name withheld by request Canada
The editor replies: The amount being produced for us in China is so overwhelming that we cannot properly comprehend it. It is expensive to move production back to the West, and would take years to build the factories.
The related problem is that the West moved it factory pollution to China, so bringing factories back would shift the pollution back to our skies and waters.
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Matt Lombard wrote, “And when is A.I. going to show up, or do we not have the piles of unsorted data required to make A.I. successful?”
Amen to the second clause! That said, I find BricsCAD's Bimify and Blockify commands pretty awesome examples for A.I. in CAD/BIM. - Michael Hasse France
The editor replies: As impressive as commands like Bimify are, I don’t consider them A.I. but advanced forms of search and replace.
Re: The Complexity of Simplicity
I like this chapter/discussion. Let’s call this “smart stupidities”! - Jure Spiler Slovinia
One of my brothers is one of those who will not live inside. He's been offered a brand new suite in condo towers for the “homeless” a number of times over the years, but prefers the mental and emotional peace he finds sleeping outside a church in the upper-middle class area we grew up in as kids.
I visit him every couple of days at a predetermined time and place to give him his allowance of funds to keep him fed and with smokes. With the recent very cold weather in Vancouver, there were a couple of times my fear of not seeing him alive arose, thinking he might have not made it through the frigid night, but he showed up with no mention of the cold.
He's 74 years old, so he’s done well to live this way for decades. He’s labeled as being homeless, but, in reality, his home is what we call the outside. - Name withheld by request (via WorldCAD Access)
The editor replies: The inability to live inside four walls is a common among the homeless, which, I agree, would better be named “the houseless,” as they have a place they call home.
Volunteering at a cold weather shelter, I’ve seen people leave in the middle of a frigid night due to their anxiety of being inside. As they leave, we remind them to shelter from the wind in a doorway and to huddle with someone else.
Notable Quotable
"Metaverse: it’s the tech bro version of New Coke." - David Burge (@iowahawkblog)
Thank You, Readers
Thank you to readers who donate towards the operation of upFront.eZine:
Red Roof Industries: “Keep up the great work!”
To support upFront.eZine through PayPal.me, then I suggest the following amounts:
There is a way to determine people’s ability to structure designs. Ask them to arrange virtual furniture in a room:
When they draw rectangles and they annotate them with words like “wardrobe,” “bed,” and “table,” then place dimensions and distances, you are looking at a designer. The designer is a planner solving the “What can and should be done” problem.
When they create perspective views with details like armrests and cushions, it seems that they are “constructors” who would be better trying their hand at mechanical engineering. (See figure below.) Constructors solve the “How to make” problem using original, non-standard solutions. This is welcome in mechanical engineering, which has a pre-production testing stage, which does not exist in the design of buildings where non-standard solutions are risky.
Perspective drawing made by a constructor
“What is a model for, if you already have drawings?” This is the question I am asked during discussions on automatically generating 3D models from 2D drawings. People have no idea that it’s possible to make drawings without first constructing 3D models. For instance, this is the weighty opinion of a developer of one 3D modeling program: “The model is the only source of information for drawings. Drawings are nothing more than views of the model.”
And what do standards and textbooks say? When we consult them, we read terms like “projections,” “sections,” and “cross-sections,” such as illustrated by the figure below.
Orthogonal and other projections of a 3D model
When we read further, we learn that a floor plan is a horizontal section at the level of the window openings, or 1/3 of the story’s height. We might think that this confirms the priority of models over drawings. An example from a real project, however, casts doubt on this conclusion.
Depicted in the figure below is a shop. This is practical, clear, but how can it be called a “horizontal section” when it shows a variety of elevations? Some are at -2.500; there is a rail track at floor level; some platforms at +1.000 and +4.000; many columns and vertical bracings (above the floor, and below the crane rails); walls at level of windows; bridge cranes and a crane landing platform (just under the roof).
Production building plan at a variety of elevations
This exactly is a plan, a schematic representation of what should be built. It is an extremely simplified representation, with all plan objects refined and detailed elsewhere. By the way, sections are the same as plans, except that they describe builds from different aspects.
PROJECT NEWPLEX v2.0
Project Newplex 2.0 is the advanced SHX font designed for technical documents; compatible with every DWG-based CAD program that supports Unicode SHX files.
Features
Advanced character forms for readability & clarity
The synthesis of spatial objects from their projections is called “the inverse problem of descriptive geometry,” and is an unsolved technical problem. Nevertheless, for hundreds of years, designers and builders have been synthesizing mental versions of 3D building models from 2D drawings. Then, builders transform the mental objects into real ones — how do they do it?
It is impossible to build models using projections, but it is possible using conditional images that have parameters tied to them. When we draw a circle (even if it is not perfect), and then write just two words, such as “Sphere d1800,” we create the parametric description of a sphere as a spatial object.
A parametric description consists entirely of conventional signs, and as a result is a linguistic description. Parametric modeling is essentially linguistic modeling. As a rule, parametric descriptions include the following elements:
Object type designations, formatted as text (e.g., “sphere”)
Conditional graphical representations of objects (e.g., drawing of a circle)
Parametric designations as text (e.g., “d1800”)
Conditional auxiliary images (e.g., dimensions and extension lines)
There are cases where the object type designator is not explicitly presented. In such cases, it can be reconstructed from the drawing context. For instance, the context may be provided by the drawing’s name, such as “column layout scheme.”
Any parametric description assumes the existence of an associated execution procedure, such as a mathematical formula, a computer program, or a detailing algorithm linked to detail drawings. From a programming point of view, a parametric description is a function call with parameters passing to it. When executed, the function transforms conventional signs and images into mental or digital models.
We can come to the conclusion that the primary method for analyzing drawings is to establish parametric descriptions for each building element. In drawings, the same building elements are usually described in several different contexts, such as being present in different views, on different drawings, in different drawing sets, and so on.
As an example, let’s try to restore the parametric description of the column located at A-17 in the figure below. The type of object (column) is easily determined from the context: column sections in this drawing are rectangles. There is, however, no other information tied to the object.
Identifying parameters of column A-17 from the equivalent column A-4
So we apply this well-known rule:
If, in a group of objects that are identical in appearance and purpose, there is only one object provided with parameters (dimensions, marking, designations), then all other objects in the group inherit these parameters.
In the group of columns along the A-axis, we see column A-7 is associated with detail #4. (See figure below.) If we were to refer to detail 4, we would see a refined column section with its dimensions, and snaps of the section to the co-ordination axes on the plan.
Detail 4 describing column A-7 and referencing Section 1-1
Using the details of section 1-1, we can determine the column’s top and bottom elevations. We apply the parametric description we obtained from A-7 to all columns (except for the corner ones) of row A, including the column at A-17.
Step-by-step Detailing of Objects
So. We managed to determine the definition of a simplified architectural column. A short parametric description cannot completely define complex structures, as real columns are. Nevermind: during the early stages of planning, our knowledge of objects is very approximate and vague.
During the planning process, structural drawings appear following the architectural ones, from which the columns obtain designations (that will be marked). A separate drawing of an abstract column representative of the columns of this type will appear. The structural elements of this abstract column — the formwork, rebars, embedded items — will, in turn, be detailed.
The essence of step-by-step detailing can be described this way:
Any project detail is itself a project
Any project is itself a project detail
During step-by-step detailing, a hierarchical structure is built by which the types and parameters of the upper-level objects are the context for lower-level objects.
Knowledge and Data
Parametric descriptions and their associated execution procedures are knowledge of what and how the work should be done. As a result of the execution of the parametric description, we get an object’s 3D model, which is the object’s database. Let’s take a closer look at the process.
In the figure below, there is a drawing fragment explaining the principle of reinforcing the floor slab.
Drawing of slab reinforcement as a representation of knowledge
The recipient of the drawing extracts a parametric description from it, applies the execution procedure, and, as a result, gets a mental model of the slab reinforcement. When the recipient is a builder, he will transform his mental model into real reinforcement in the field.
The process of creating a model in a 3D modeling program is, in principle, no different from a traditional drawing. By some means or other, the reinforcement contour is defined; the diameter, steel class, spacing, and possible overlap of rebars are specified.
The end result is, however, different. The execution procedure creates a computer model of a set of rebars with attributes attached to every bar. This model is saved. The figure below represents a top view of the reinforced slab as displayed by a computer model.
Top view of the reinforced slab model as a form of data representation
As mental models are built solely on the basis of visual perception, let's compare the two figures:
Drawing — shows a single abstract bar, with information attached. The bar defines the size, location, and attributes of all other bars in the planned reinforcement slab. We do not see individual bars, but we get a very good idea of the slab reinforcement.
Model — shows lots of bars. Annotations need to be added to all bars, and many dimensions need to be placed. When the slab is large and contains a lot of rebar, we get a messy, poorly readable picture. The result is a poor-quality mental model and, accordingly, a poor understanding.
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Collaboration begins with understanding. Like it or not, we have to do what BIM calls "automatic" extraction of drawings from models.
A comparison begs. We cook borscht according to a recipe, throw away the recipe, and then, using complex algorithms, try to extract the recipe (the drawings) from the finished borscht (the models). This is the wrong way around of doing things.
The parametric drawing style is based on the assumption that recipients of the drawings have a professional set of algorithms for drawing analyses and for building mental models based on the analyses’ results.
In practice, this means that drawings should be made so that for each structural element, its parametric description can be restored. The mental object is modeled by calling the appropriate execution procedure associated with the parametric description.
Parametrics Determine Drawing Precision
In many cases, deviations from the image’s scale and accuracy contribute to the readability of drawings and the ease with which they can be adjusted. Consistent adherence to accuracy prevents this, surprisingly enough. The use of parametrics makes the meticulous precision of graphic images meaningless, and so it makes no sense to measure things on drawings. Indeed, the Russian standard prohibits such measurements.
The geometric accuracy of parametric drawings is determined by the accuracy of the values of dimensional parameters. In most cases, editing is limited to adjusting parameters, without affecting the graphic images. (It should be noted that parametric drawings are difficult to read when the proportions of objects are grossly distorted.)
As we see, this contradicts the autocad-style of drawing with its associative dimensions. The autocad style is based on drawing graphic images with tools that ensure great accuracy; the primary method for adjusting drawings is by editing the graphic images as required.
Machine Interpretation of Drawings
When professional algorithms are transferred to a computer, we get the ability to carry out automatic drawing analyses and building a computer model based on the results of the analyses.
A set of drawings can be considered a program written in a professional language — the equivalent of a high-level programming language. The program is compiled as a whole; a machine interpreter of drawings is in fact a compiler. As a result of the compilation, an overall execution procedure is formed, such as an IFC text file. In the end, a computer model is created. Note that the primary method of programming drawings is the step-by-step detailing of objects, better known as top-down design.
How is this different from the traditional way of creating models with 3D modeling software? All of them use a command interpreter as the input interface for 3D modeling. Complex objects are created by assembling pre-prepared components, whether primitives or parts. This technique implements the bottom-up principle; it simulates the construction process and so has nothing to do with planning.
It is clear that for many, assembling a building from cubes is easier and clearer than creating a linguistic description of a building with help of drawings. Unfortunately, except for the model in the computer’s memory, what’s actually needed are models in our heads. A set of drawings is an algorithm of understanding. It is impossible to replace the reading of this algorithm with something else, such as wandering across a computer model.
Crucially, the delineation of legal responsibility within the framework of this algorithm is also not a problem.
Machine Interpretation of Sketches
The parametric style of drawing allowed engineers with blunt pencils on broken-down Kuhlmann drafting machines to create absolutely accurate (not in the autocad sense) drawings. The independence instrumental to parametrics creates the principled opportunity of interpreting freehand sketches and drawings.
The figure below illustrates an example of such an interpretation. The problem is to turn a freehand line (possibly the sketch of a beam) into an accurate two-dimensional model.
Steps in interpreting the freehand line as a beam
Here are the steps involved:
Step 1. Bridge the gap, created by careless sketching. The extent of the gap is insignificant and is not numerically specified.
Step 2. Straighten the curve. The bend radii and the curve deviations from the straight line passing through the curve endpoints are insignificant and not numerically indicated. From this, we deduce that the curve is a straight line segment.
Step 3. Refine the x coordinates of the line’s endpoints. Horizontal deviations of the line’s endpoints from the A-axis and the 6000-dimension extension line are insignificant and so are not numerically specified. The x-coordinate at the line’s left endpoint is equal to xA (xA is the x-coordinate of axis "A"); the x-coordinate of the right endpoint is xA + 6000.
Step 4. Refine the z coordinates of the line’s endpoints. Vertical deviations of the line’s endpoints from the 3.000 elevation’s extension line are insignificant and not numerically specified, as is the inclination angle of the line. The z coordinates of the line’s endpoints are the same, and both are equal to 3000.
We completely restored the parametric description of the object.
Standards for Preparing Drawings
Current rulemaking in the area of preparing drawings stopped trying to combine the Gaspard Monge legacy with the drafting practice of the 1980s. [Mr Monge invented descriptive geometry, which became the basis for technical drawings.] In my opinion, construction drawings in Russia reached their peak in the eighties. From this, progress regressed, as drawings were made with 3D models and autocad styles of drawing.
Arrested development results in degradation, as shown by the figure below comparing Russian state standards from 1980 (top) and 2018 (below).
Drawing styles from 1980 (top) and 2018 (above)
The Grammar of Drawings
Due to the appearance of 3D modeling programs, a question has arisen about teaching descriptive geometry in technical colleges: Is it still relevant? The crisis in descriptive geometry is a consequence of the same misconceptions about drawings as in engineering practice.
Back in the 19th century, drawings were called “the language of technique,” and descriptive geometry was the grammar of this language. In my opinion, the reasons for misunderstanding were these:
Incomplete awareness that drawings have all the properties of the language in a direct, literal sense
The consequences of not fully thinking this through. For instance, if we speak of drawings as text, then it is not clear what accurate projections have to do with the text
Descriptive geometry can and should develop in the direction of machine analysis of drawings: from classical descriptive geometry to parametric (linguistic) descriptive geometry, a kind of analytic geometry.
[Alexander Yampolsky has designed residential, public and industrial buildings, mainly as a structural analyst. He was an early participant (1982) in BIM at the Minuralsibstroy construction ministry of the Russian government, and developed technology for machine interpretation of drawings. Mr Yampolsky is a graduate of Tula State University.]
Notable Quotable
“The CDC said we can leave the Christmas lights up til January.” - Aubrey Strobel
I keep mourning the passing of CAD as a topic interesting enough to keep producing interesting articles about it. It used to be that you didn’t have to look far to find a great technical topic, or a new way to apply CAD tools. On the Solidworks (desktop — do I really have to specify what the name implies?) side of things, for instance, development has been largely uninteresting.
Developments in design technology seem currently focused on 3D printing: improvements in materials, methods, support structures, finer structures, finishes, and machines to go bigger and smaller. The surge in robotics is related to the hardware side of 3D printing, and also is going gangbusters.
Let’s take a look at what general 3D CAD development has achieved in the last decade or so, and then look forward to what we can hope for in the next decade. The big topics CAD developers have tackled include these ones:
Universal file management
Some CAD systems added file management, but others made it less accessible
Is it possible that Solidworks killed off PDM [product data management] as certain individuals were going out the door to create a new venture with built-in data management?
Alternatives to History-based Modeling
T-splines and related technology
Direct/synchronous modeling
Convergent CAD that combines sub-division meshes + NURBS in the same model
i. Sub-d push-pull ii. 3D scan data iii. FEA meshing iv. 3D print meshes v. Generative techniques for shape optimization vi. Medical, dental meshes
Application Delivery and Data Storage Options
First, decentralizing CAD from mainframes to personal computers
Then, centralizing CAD back to cloud servers
4. CAD in a database
Much data these days is kept in a database format; it makes sense, as it provides built-in data management and turns the idea of file management on its head
5. Various 3D Print Integrations (although most 3D printing advances have been in materials and robotics)
Support structures
Moving specialized functions from specialized software into CAD
Not all of these have been ubiquitous, and not all have impacted all CAD users, but most CAD users have access to these solutions when they need them.
Mechanical CAD with 3D scan-and-print has been a great success in specialty areas like medical and dental. If recent wars have an upside, it in the development of next-generation prosthetics, some strictly mechanical, some with newly developed neural interfaces. Scanning and printing have allowed us to customize attachments to individual injuries, quickly replacing and repairing limbs, and even joints.
Big Ticket Disappointments
When it comes strictly to mechanical CAD, I think we’re in a lull period right now. With all these other interesting things to do, the base technology has been forgotten for a while.
At the same time, some of the big ticket items that CAD developers put on the table haven’t really caught on.
Cloud. I think there was an assumption that cloud computing was going to be embraced in the same way that PC CAD was embraced in the 1990s. But it hasn’t. Clearly, it works for some people, but not for everyone.
This tech will catch on eventually, but too many intransigent engineers have too much invested in overly-complex history-based systems, and so haven’t taken the time to understand the real advantages of synchronous modeling.
Where Do We Go Next?
I’ve made predictions about the future of CAD before. I thought engineer-to-order was the next big thing, as would be synchronous modeling. They weren’t. I predicted CAD-in-the-cloud was not going to be the next big thing; so far, this is my closest to a good guess.
And when is A.I. going to show up, or do we not have the piles of unsorted data required to make A.I. successful?
I really hope the idea of converging different types of data keeps developing, as well as mesh manipulation tools for mechanical CAD. There are so many sub-d tools out there that every big CAD developer should buy one just to understand the data type, the tools involved, their usage, and applications of this kind of modeling. We don’t have to re-develop all of this knowledge.
Another thing I hope gets some play are more specialized tools. We already have tools specific to designing sheet metal parts, frames, piping, and in medical fields. I think more needs to be done with plastic, assemblies, resilience, and local design.
Plastics Design. Plastic parts are so hard to design. The outsides are all minute, custom-made details; the insides, that you don’t even see, can be even more difficult to design. We need a series of functional features that can be applied to models. Maybe this requires a special file format just for plastic parts, as with the other specialized techniques.
Plastic designing and manufacturing need to come closer together. The design of the outside shape and mechanical details, and the manufacturing expertise to make individual plastic parts need to be centralized so that a single person can make the decisions about design and manufacturing. Throwing designs over the Great Wall is not going to be a viable solution going forward.
Assembly Design. And we have to do something about assembly design. Right now, it’s a custom approach every time. We need a tool that follows a process for assemblies, and can reuse information on how assemblies go together. Is it rules based? A.I.? Can it somehow learn about different types of joints, closures, and mechanisms?
We need tools that know how to work with horizontal modeling, resilience, top down, layouts, master models — all these are methods that design software should be able to replicate, and even guide you through. We’re at a point where forcing dumb tools to do smart things is just inadequate. Best Practice rules already exist to help people use tools in poorly structured workflows.
Sustainable Design. Beyond software, I’d like to see product development aim to be more durable and reusable, to get away from single-use products, especially in plastics and packaging. As engineers and designers (and, yes, even marketers), we need to have a conscience. Reject bad ideas.
Throw-away products have always been a bad idea, but someone other than the people for whom this is a religious cause needs to stand up and say so. We need to design stuff that endures, and when it doesn’t endure, it needs to be fixable, and when it can’t be fixed, it need to be recyclable. Not that long ago and certainly in my lifetime, we used to have less stuff, but the stuff we had was more valuable. It lasted longer, because it was built and designed with use in mind, rather than crass consumption.
Local Design. Maybe all of this heads back to more employee-owned companies. I don’t think driving the economy with a bunch of disinterested investors is good for anyone, and obviously centrally-managed economies have shown they don’t work. Globalism is a failure.
Certainly we need to learn to do things locally again. The bigger an organization gets (including government), the more corrupt it becomes, the more disconnected it is from the people who make it work, and should be benefiting from it. Stop sending product development and manufacturing to China. Manufacture molds locally again, make microelectronic chips locally again.
These are things I’d like to see in the next decade.
[Matt Lombard has been working with CAD and as an independent product development professional for 30 years. He is the author of eight books on Solidworks and Synchronous Technology. He blogs at dezignstuff.com/about.]
XVL from Lattice Technologies (part owned by Toyota) is an inbetween format that reads files from most 3D CAD programs, then displays them in an XVL viewer, and used for training and parts lists.
XVL can be exported to 3D PDF, Excel, iPads, and so on. As of 2021, it is native on 3Dexperience; back in 2005, Dassault based its 3DXML on Lattice’s XVL. lattice3d.com/company/xvl-technology
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ARES Commander 2022 from Graebert is now in beta, with an emphasis on the 2D processing of Revit and other BIM models, as well as new features for the Touch tablet and Kudo Web versions of the CAD software.
Desktop beta is downloadable initially for Windows and then later in January for MacOS. graebert.com
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Here is one of the posts that appeared recently on my WorldCAD Access blog:
A.I. projects that attempt to replace humans will fail. A.I. projects that attempt to augment humans have a much more likely path to success. - Randall S. Newton (@RSN_Global on Twitter)
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I recently spent a week working with my colleagues at RIB Software improving the UX and UI in our iTWO software, trying to get a commitment between functionality and usability.
I recall Xerox Parc’s Larry Tesler with his “NO MODES” license plate. I prefer one that reads “NO OPTIONS”, as every option in software is a question to which we programmers have no answer. So we transfer the problem to the user.
I have a new car, the most modern German car, chosen on purpose for being the most digitalized model in its size. It is much more similar to my PC than to my previous car.
You must learn how to use it, as it has lots of options for adapting the car to your convenience. Otherwise, don’t buy this car! Do you really need an acoustic signal when you close the doors? Will you remember that there is a setting for entering car washes? What happens when you forget?
And, of course, it has many “MODES,” which affect my driving. After a day of driving it, I asked the salesman how to stop the car from obeying speed limits, as many of them are nonsense. His solution was completely wrong: he unchecked the “Adapt to road conditions” option; he should have turned on “Ignore speed limits,” which is found in a different menu.
The “Adapt to road conditions” option adapts the car’s speed not only to road conditions, but also to your speed setting and to the car in front. (The car knows the road conditions because it has a GPS; when I tell the car my destination, it reduces speeds in curves, and so on.) Should you think this option is turned on, but it is not, you could easily drive off the road.
Thank you for your insight, your knowledge, and your information. - Fernando Valderrama RIB Spain
The editor replies: I buy old used cars to avoid the electronics shoveled into new ones, which I experienced when renting cars.
The worst was a Ford Edge, where even the heating and cooling required adjustment through a touch tablet, several menu levels deep -- followed by precise 0.5-degree temperature changes that required repeated taps while keeping an eye on the road.
Subsequently, Ford admitted they had gone too far in the digitalization of the car’s UI.
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Thanks for your excellent updates, professional dialogues, and information. Even for us non-mechanical guys, it’s valuable. - Michael David Rubin
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Regarding knowledge: I am a huge fan of Thomas Kuhn's Structure of Scientific Revolutions, from which we got the term “paradigm shift.”
Regarding interfaces: visiting one of my sons I encountered a fancy toaster with a novel (to me) interface. Push the Toast button and the bread is transported down. As I have aged, I have encountered many puzzling interfaces that were once familiar. Ten-15 years ago I could not open the car window to pay the toll. -Leo Schlosberg
The editor replies: I bought a T-fal toaster, because its designers were featured speakers at a CAD conference. They had slanted the top by 45 degrees, so that we could look into it and see how the toast was coming along. (Turns out I never do that.)
Well, you know the special property of 45 degrees: when the toast is released at 45-degrees, it is launched into the air in an arc to land, most times, on the kitchen floor. Not all design improvements are improvements.
Mr Schlosberg responds: Speaking, as we were, of toasters, a cartoon showed up.
Notable Quotable
“Thankfully, there are still hardware Morlocks* to clean up after the mess the Eloi have made.” - Andrew Orlowski
*) The Time Machine, HG Wells
Thank You, Readers
Thank you to readers who donate towards the operation of upFront.eZine. To support upFront.eZine through PayPal.me, then I suggest the following amounts:
With this issue,upFront.eZine takes its annual break to celebrate Christmas, and then returns in the new year. For January, I have the following topics planned:
2 CAD Guys Talk
Solid Edge 2022
Plug-ins or Apps?
See you again on January 10, 2022!
In the meantime, enjoy the best-ever! version of Little Drummer Boy, by For King and Country:
The Complexity of Simplicity
Another in the upFront.eZine series examining complexity
There are a half-dozen or so books that have greatly impacted my thinking. One of the very first was Alan Bloom’s classic The Closing of the American Mind (1987), which launched my decades’-long longing for a better understanding of understanding, and a clearer knowing how we know (epistemology). In brief, Mr Bloom allows us to see that is not necessary to view life through the prism of our culture; it is possible to step outside of it.
Also, he predicted today’s woke bullies by some thirty years.
The book that a year ago really began this upFront.eZine series on complexity in is “Evolution of Scientific Knowledge: From Certainty to Uncertainty” (Edward Dougherty). I didn’t dare review it at the time, as I found it overwhelming. Not to read, but in its breadth. And so a year later, I take a stab at telling you what it’s about.
For a few thousand years now we’ve been trying to understand how we understand. The movie The Matrix popularized the problem: How do we know what we experience (and what we think we know) is truly what is. Or, as Rene Descartes wondered, suppose there is there an evil being fooling us into thinking we exist, when we don’t.
(In Mr Descartes’ case, he figured that if an evil being were fooling us, then we must exist, otherwise why would the evil being bother fooling us? From this, he came up with his famous cogito, ergo sum conclusion that he must exist, if only because he is thinking about these matters.)
While Mr Descartes’ conclusion has since been countered by other thinkers, he nevertheless launched a many centuries effort to explain everything through the portal of rationality. This approach, however, takes us Westerners only so far, and then we hit barriers: not everything can be understood through rational thinking; not all that there is can be known by humans.
And that’s what Mr Dougherty’s book is trying to teach us: we can’t know everything through logic alone. His book as a pretty good introduction to epistemology. He starts with Aristotle with his theories on certainty, and then arrives four chapters later at Bohr, who ruined certainty.
Mr Dougherty’s conclusion is this: although we desire the certainty of deterministic solutions, we’ll have to be satisfied with the vagueness of stochastic models. There is just too much we can’t ever know for sure.
Publisher SPIE considers this book important enough to distribute as a PDF for free, and I recommend it as a start in understanding epistemology.
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The Essence of Software
There’s a reason all cars, toasters, and televisions interface with humans the way that they do. They have, over time, proven to have pretty good interfaces, ones that through practice have made sense to us humans. All toasters have the same interface; as do cars, and so do tvs. To put it more accurately, these interfaces are what humans have come to expect.
Not to belabor the obvious, but when we push down a toaster’s ejector lever, we do so in expectation that the bread will descend into the toaster. Before doing so, we form a mental image of what will happen.
The good thing about cars, toasters, and televisions is that their configuration is relatively inflexible. There isn’t much designers can do to make their operation puzzling to consumers. Not so for software programs and the computers on which they run. They suffer from being just about infinitely flexible.
For computers with large screens, we are blessed to have a standard based on the original prototype developed by Xerox’s famous PARC research facility. For ones with small screens or even no screens, standards also have been developed. For vague concepts like the cloud, standards are still being worked on.
Here’s the problem: a complex standard cannot stand up to customer expectations. A standard makes things uniform, whereas people are not uniform. We each have our own ways of interacting with hardware and software that suits us, but not our neighbor.
One person I know, who has worked with computers for two decades, still has difficulty grasping the Clipboard concept: once he selects an item and press Ctrl+C, it is not obvious to him that pressing Ctrl-V returns the copied item, for the copied item is invisible to him. Interestingly enough, Windows 3.x offered a Clipboard viewer in 1990, while Windows 3 for Networking had a version that allowed copying and pasting between computers. Later, they were removed; not everything advances. It took nearly three decades for Windows 10 to bring back a visual Clipboard history (press Windows+V).
The Great Disconnect
Between the near-infinite variety in the ways by which software programmers can develop their software, and the near-infinite variety in which humans form a mind-image of how software ought to work, there is a great disconnect.
In areas as simple and as frustrating as UX [user experience], should there be more options, or fewer; longer explanations, or shorter ones? Software being unlimited in scope, programmers include more options, and then hide a bunch of them to make it look like there are fewer; provide both longer and shorter explanations.
In “The Essence of Software,” Daniel Jackson explains that the problem isn’t the number of functions; it’s the mental model users adopt, and so users...
Cannot effectively use functions that exist
Assume the functions they need don’t exist, and so do not actively seek them out
Be nervous of making serious mistakes, and so use a tiny subset of functions
And, in the most severe case, suffer loss of data
In short, the users’ mental model is incompatible with the programmer’s mental model.
The cloud makes the disconnect worse. Files that at one time were securely located on one’s computer might or might not still be there. Mr Jackson describes how design flaws in Google Docs and Dropbox cause people to lose files.
The immediate solution that springs to mind — education — is a partial solution for the same reason: Everyone learns differently. “If only there was a book I could buy,” my mother-in-law sighs.
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Evolution of Scientific Knowledge: From Certainty to Uncertainty by Edward Dougherty 155 pages PDF; free ISBN 9781510607354 spie.org/samples/9781510607361.pdf
The Essence of Software: Why Concepts Matter for Great Design by Daniel Jackson 336 pages, of which nearly half are notes Hardcover; US$29.95 ISBN 9780691225388 essenceofsoftware.com
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A problem in 3D printing is distortion. Parts sag as gravity pulls down on not-yet hardened material; as heated material cools down, it can warp. The solution is to print the part, measure the distortion, and then edit the model. In this regard, Riven has a new Warp-Adapted-Model function that uses full-part 3D data to identify errors in printing, and then produces a new corrected model in minutes that eliminates warp. riven.ai
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IntelliCAD Technology Consortium releases IntelliCAD 10.1a to its member companies, featuring the following improvements:
Siemens lands a replacement contract with Hyundai-Kia, as the car makers switch to NX and Teamcenter for engineering design and product data management. The press release does not name the incumbent; in 2011, Hyundai-Kia implemented Windchill PLM from PTC.
Currently, and so far, Tangerine has no funding for developing TGN as I’ve specified and proposed it as an API, to be made openly available and encouraged for implementation in all 3D digital modeling environments/apps/platforms.
But hope springs eternal. Perhaps willing partners will make themselves known and TGN can move from idea to reality. - Rob Snyder, developer of TNG rigs (via Linkedin)
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My issue with “BIM” is that it tries to be way too many things all at once. Trying to add render-quality components to a model, which already is overblown because of all the data contained, can really explode productivity and file sizes.
I prefer using a much more “hub and spoke” approach. Data is linked to objects in the model, rather than being fully contained in the model. Render-quality components are substituted when renderings are done. In that same manner, construction documents are extracted from the model, and then embellished externally.
What’s often missing is the advantages the model has for external generation of these of parts of the project. Why aren’t details requested or pulled from a library when the model has two different types of wall meet? Or two different types of floor material? There’s much which could be developed for the overall workflow if there wasn’t the need for everything being contained within a model and within a single application. - Dave Edwards, editor PragArchDesignTech newsletter
The editor replies: The dream of BIM was that it indeed would contain all information necessary to design and construct a building. But, as we are seeing, the complexity of the dream is overwhelming us and our hardware/software systems.
I think that one fear BIM vendors have is that, by allowing links to external data sources and apps, they lose monopolistic control of their customers.
Mr Edwards responds: If vendors would just open up their applications so that databases could be linked to unique Component Object Indexes, there’s a ton of things which could be done externally long before they are implemented in the software.
Notable Quotable
“For an app to be secure, you need to trust the hardware, the operating system, the software, the update mechanism, the login mechanism, and on and on and on. If one of those is untrustworthy, the whole system is insecure. - Bruce Schneier
Thank You, Readers
Thank you to readers who donate towards the operation of upFront.eZine:
Joel Gregory (small company donation)
Name withheld by request (small company donation)
To support upFront.eZine through PayPal.me, then I suggest the following amounts:
Issue #1,115 | Inside the Business of CAD | 29 November 2021
The problem with 3D models, especially ones with high LODs [levels of detail] like of skyscrapers or aircraft, is that the detail overwhelms us. Rob Snyder notes that focusing attention is the role of 2D drawings we generate from 3D models. But 2D plans, elevations, and details fail to provide immediate context: where are these elevations and floor plans in the 3D model, other than by cross-referencing them with section callouts (as illustrated below)?
A floorplan referenced through section callout 1-1 (image source Autodesk)
So, Mr Snyder developed a focusing assistant, called TGN rigs. Rigs return the focus back to the 3D model through a UI and an API. Rigs lets you see, for instance, elevations in the context of the 3D model.
The key to his rigs is the viewing arc (in red, in the figure below). Arcs guide you to specific parts of the model.
Viewing arc in red, view cube in green, stops along the way in blue
You can specify different kinds of visual styles and viewpoints along the arc. For instance, the blue square in the figure above specifies an elevation section (as shown below), where the view filter is set to Section Elevation and the display style to Blueprint, with a markup added manually.
This stop along the viewing arc shows the 3D model in elevation
A second, horizontal timeline lets you specify properties of the view, such as changes of style (like “Blueprint”) and filtering, such as “Glass Off”.
A project could have many TGN rigs. They look like display cubes (in green in the figure below). Clipping planes are optional; click on a face of the cube to toggle specific clipping planes.
You drag a handle to rotate the view along the path from p1 to p3, during which elements can explode or implode, or even show assembly animations. (The square at p2 indicates a parallel projection at this point.) So, while a 2D drawing is static, the TNG rig is interactive.
Viewing arc (left) with its settings (right)
Viewing arcs can be shaped just like an arc, or tilted in space, or S-shaped. TGN includes a library of default viewing arcs.
Every rig has a name, such as “Section Elevation,” and hosts settings that specify the GUID [globally unique identifier], a link to the model source, model motions, graphical styles, sound toggles, and so on. Some of these are dependent on the software. Rigs are stored in TRE files and can be shared through social media.
Mr Snyder writes, “Digital 3D modeling, as it is used in the design and construction industry (and similar industries), has obvious and great value. However, decades of evidence show that its value is commonly overstated, and that the farther one travels down the path established so far for BIM (or for digital twins), the farther one gets from utility, and the closer one is drawn into a never-ending slough through the muck, the purpose of which seems to be only some kind of competition to see who is more macho.”
He describes two limitations imposed by today’s massive 3D models:
As models are wide and expansive things, they surpass our human ability to wrap our minds around them.
Models by themselves provide no means by which we can assert and affirm that at any particular location that what should be shown there is shown there, and that nothing that matters is missing from there.
Mr Snyder hopes that many CAD vendors will take on his API, to make the attention focusing tool broadly available. tangerinefocus.com
And in Other News
nTopology, who we’ve talked about before, lands a fourth series of funding ($65 million), bringing the total to $135 million to further develop its generative design software for 3D printing, which TechCrunch generously described as “The company effectively offers CAD software.” ntopology.com
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SolidSpac3 debuts SolidSpac3 QA/QC [quality assurance, quality control] analysis and reporting system for commercial construction sites. It compares 2D and 3D models with construction site laser scans, identifying construction errors and problems within 24 hours. www.solidspac3.com
CADLine is offering 15% off permanent licences to its ARCHline.XP line of software until, um, today (Nov 29). As the company puts it, “Say NO to forced software subscription pricing. We offer perpetual licenses — now with 15% off. Pay once, use forever.” archlinexp.com/buy
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Meanwhile, Allplan reminds us that “Section 179 allows businesses to reduce their tax obligation by deducting software (including Allplan) purchased or financed during the tax year.” The email blast does not, however, tell us in which country. (It’s USA. But similar deductions are available in some other countries, too.) info.allplan.com/us_en/tax-deduction-section-179
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AgaCAD is cutting 50% or 30% off the prices of all their perpetual licenses until Christmas Eve for their Revit solutions, like the Smart Assemblies add-on. Get the deets at agacad.com/blog/thank-you-offer-2021
- - -
Here are some of the posts that appeared recently on my WorldCAD Access blog:
It’s interesting that technical challenges/opportunities that I explored back in the ’80s are still relevant today, if not moreso. You know that old saying, “The more things change, the more they seem to stay the same.” - John Callen
On the almost $500 price on that mouse: as I understand it, a vendor may sometimes jack up the price to a “nobody will pay this” level to preserve the product listing, rather than removing it altogether. The in-stock status (in China) may be more aspirational than real. - Rich Webb (via WorldCAD Access)
Re: Flooding
So sorry to hear of your flooding troubles. Sadly, no stranger to disastrous flooding here in Houston. - Becky Stevens
Notable Quotable
“In the end, the term metaverse will be nothing but a bunch of incompatible messy digital constructs from visions of companies who have no idea what exactly it does to improve human life.” - Avadiax
Thank You, Readers
Thank you to readers who donate towards the operation of upFront.eZine:
Talenting Investments (small business donation)
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Issue #1,114 | Inside the Business of CAD | 22 November 2021
C3D Labs produces kernel software, and so can be considered a competitor of Parasolid/D-Cubed (from Siemens) and Spatial from Dassault Systemes.
The C3D kernel was originally developed 25 years ago by ASCON Group for their KOMPAS-3D solid modeler, but then a decade ago spun off the kernel group as an independent company, C3D Labs. The company has been very aggressive at building out functions, such as its new programmable F-curves.
The company has held an annual conference for a while now, but in Russian. Given the modern switch to Zooming conferences, this year it was held in English. (See figure below.)
C3DevCon being broadcast live from St Petersburg
Oleg Zykov, ceo of C3D Labs, reported during his keynote address that the company is doing well, having hired nine more employees and released updates to C3D Toolkit in 2020 and 2021 on time.
The company offers its programming toolkit with five modules for developing software in the areas of MCAD, BIM, CAM, and so on. Each can be used on its own, or together with the others:
C3D Modeler — geometric kernel
C3D Solver — parametric solver
C3D Vision — visualization engine
C3D Converter — data exchange
C3D B-Shaper — polygon mesh to b-rep converter
There are two more modules that C3D is releasing, C3D FairCurve Modeler and C3D Web Vision.
During the conference, customers described how they deployed C3D’s modules, including professor Rushan Ziatdinov of industrial engineering in South Korea (see figure below).
Rushan Ziatdinov describing how C3D FairCurve Modeler works
The C3D kernel has displaced other kernels in nanoCAD, Altium, VR Concept, and so on. It is used by developers at LEDAS Group and is available to members of the Open Design Alliance. c3dlabs.com/en
Thank you to friends and readers checking in to see how we are doing during what is now called “Canada’s worst natural disaster” with thousands displaced by flooding, all Canadian roads out of here cut, and Canada's largest port in Vancouver isolated. The flooding was the result of a tremendous rainstorm last Sunday and Monday, along with warmer temperatures melting snow.
Here is a picture I took last Monday morning of a pedestrian bridge in our local park in which we go for walks. Normally, the water goes under the bridge.
Wrong-way creek
It’s weird: Thousands are stranded by mudslides and wrecked bridges or forced out of homes by flooding. For the other couple of million living in this region, life is normal, other than grocery stores running low on some food staples, gasoline being rationed, and we having to take detours around closed roads.
Restrictions on some grocery items and maximum fills of 30 litres of gasoline
The reason for life being mostly normal is due to our region’s agricultural farmland retention policy: most homes in our region are built on non-agricultural land, which means higher up, and so farms primarily inhabit the flood-prone flat lands, as this aerial photo of flooding at the Watcom interchange of the Trans Canada Highway amply illustrates.
Flooding at the Watcom interchange of the Trans Canada Highway in east Abbotsford, Canada
The unknown is the longer-term impact. While mudslides are being cleared (one highway is already reopened to one-way traffic), the broken bridges on the critical Coquihalla and Trans-Canada freeways will take weeks to get replaced by temporary bridges and then years to fully replace.
Two of the bridges destroyed by flood waters on the Coquihalla freeway
The immediate solution is to work on bringing in goods (food and fuel) through the USA, with which our region has four border crossings and two rail crossings. We are, however, not the EU, so things don’t pass effortlessly between the two countries.
And in Other News
Contact Software launches a new version of its low-code Elements platform for handling digital business processes end-to-end.
Here is one example of its use: If your firm know that parts will have to be replaced at some point in the future due to new DIN standards, then you can define until-when or from-when parts are valid. The new validity takes effect automatically on the specified date, and also updates the parts list. contact-software.com/en/products/integration-platform
It is striking how both Hexagon and Bricsys seem to completely stonewall any mention, or awareness of, photogrammetric reality capture as an essential complement to acquisition by point cloud.
Other firms in the reality capture/digital twins arena, such as Bentley Systems and Autodesk, have a foot firmly in both camps. Point cloud seems to have reached maturity as an expensive technology, while photogrammetry continues to evolve (and democratize) by leaps and bounds. How long can Bricsys ignore photogrammetry? - Tom Foster Tom Foster Architecture
The editor replies: I don’t know that they are ignoring it. BricsCAD has the ability to place images and maps from a variety of sources.
Mr Foster responds: That’s not photogrammetry. Photogrammetry is taking hundreds or thousands of photos of the subject, such as with programs like capturingreality.com.
They identify same object in several images, thus triangulate the object’s 3D position, hence create a 3D model of the subject as a surface mesh (not points), which can optionally be wallpapered with fragments of the JPGs for a solid-looking, photorealistic model, which can be rotated and viewed from any angle.
Photogrammetric models are an alternative to point cloud models. Each is best for different purposes or different kinds of subject. Hybrids using both techniques are possible.
Photogrammetry is widely used in the construction industry. Bentley, for example came to photogrammetry first, then added point clouds later. Bricsys under the influence of Leica has so far done it the other way round. As with point clouds, Bricsys needn’t do the processing in-house (which Bentley does), but can reprocess/display/integrate various proprietary formats of external programs.
Notable Quotable
“Saturday is an adaptive cross-functional work/leisure hybrid day.” - Management Speak (@managerspeak on Twitter)
Thank You, Readers
Thank you to readers who donate towards the operation of upFront.eZine:
Nick Busigin
3dbrains Pte Ltd (small business donation)
To support upFront.eZine through PayPal.me, then I suggest the following amounts:
Issue #1,113 | Inside the Business of CAD | 15 November 2021
Re: The State of STEP
Man, that first paragraph was an eye-opener for me!
I worked in the field of MCAD for US Navy surface fleet (new construction and overhaul) starting around 1984. Most general design was still 2D on Mylar film mostly using E0 mechanical pencils. The Navy would not allow any contracts to be done on MCAD until 1985, which were relegated to very specific pilot projects. In 1986 they expanded that to CADAM, Autotrol, and about two others. By 1987, they added Intergraph, Computervision and a few UNIX workstation platforms ( before then, it was all mainframe).
Around the time AutoCAD Release 10 shipped in 1988, the folks in NAVSEA issued a letter to contractors that IBM PC-based systems were not considered accurate or reliable enough for modeling design. But they would allow its use for non-design work, such as title sheets, BOM lists, and notes. After a year of that stupidity, they relented, and by 1990-91 we couldn’t move to PC-based AutoCAD fast enough. As we routinely shared model data with other contracts (forcibly by the Navy, and for good reason), we were all in the same situation.
The period from 1996 to 2004 was a fun time. Writing custom apps to run on AutoCAD to automate things was one of the best times of my career. The old “wild west” of CAD is now a suburban subdivision with shopping centers. I left the field in 2004 to transition to Windows systems admin work and Web development.
Oh, and about IGES and STEP. I remember when all the buzz was around STEP support for each of the MCAD products. They would “support” it alright, but almost always made sure to have some feature or data that was so specific to their product that STEP would lose it when importing into competing products.
I was on a committee once for a government agency doing round-trip integrity testing. We would build a reference model in 2D and another in 3D, then export/import through everything they had at the time — IGES, STEP, DXF, and so on — and then score the results to rank products as being most compatible. That era seems like the 1800s now. - David Stein
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Interesting about STEP. In the ’90s I worked for the Industrial Technology Institute in Ann Arbor MI. Its Center for Electronic Commerce did early STEP work and built early tools for conformance testing of CAD systems to STEP.
Famously, one of my colleagues authored a report citing a Detroit-based automotive supplier that had to manage 17 or 18 different CAD systems to deal with all of their customer relationships.
The number of solutions is fewer today, but the problems remain and it is a tough problem. It is hard to innovate within the bounds of standards, which often lag technology and business process. - Stan Przybylinski, vice president CIMdata
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In the construction industry, we have the same problem of data transfer, with possibly a wider range of conflicting needs (or maybe I am just more familiar with construction than mechanical).
While IFC has ruled the roost for the last decade, it is showing its limitations. It is optimized for transferring physical data and some metadata, especially architectural, but has proved hopeless for transferring engineering design data. Yes, it could be extended, but it has taken two decades of argument and compromise to get to its current state and we cannot afford to wait.
Any transfer of data is done so that it can be enriched, but also (invariably) some data must be left behind. The CNC machine, for example, has no interest in the wind pressure on the facade that led to the design of the bracing, only the resulting number and locations of bolt holes.
Similarly, each program has its specialties, which a neutral file can not be expected to handle. Neither IFC nor STEP can possibly handle all project data, ever, without bloating to an impractical size, and without decades of more committees. They will always be behind what the industry needs, and can only be expected to transfer most of the data, not all.
Due to the limitations of IFC and because most engineering design programs now have an API [application programming interface], data exchange systems are being used more and more, especially by the bigger consulting companies. At Arup, we helped to produce Speckle[for exchanging AEC data in real-time], which is open source so that it is free to grow as needed. There are other, similar offerings.
The BIM [building information modeling] ideal of a centralized database is becoming a reality, but is not centered on IFC, as that, by necessity, can never store everything. Instead we now have federated databases, where each product stores its specific data, and then products like Speckle transfer and coordinate what data is needed between the individual consultant models.
IFC might still be used for transferring data to models outside the system. What was BIM is now becoming digital workflows. - Peter Debney, senior consultant Arup Digital Technology
The editor replies: When Autodesk released AutoCAD Release 13, they added the ability to create custom (user-defined) objects. This made AutoCAD incompatible with itself, and so Autodesk provided two solutions:
Object enablers, which understand what custom objects are. This approach failed to catch on industry-wide, as every DWG editor would conceivably need every object enabler ever written.
IFC, which transmits data between incompatible AutoCAD drawings in the form of neutral format. Autodesk quickly handed responsibility for maintaining IFC to an industry group, and then in a reversal earlier this year joined the IFC part of the Open Design Alliance.
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I was gobsmacked by the upFront.eZine article on STEP files. I write a monthly column for The Fabricator that dances around CAD topics. Your article with Martin and Neil on STEP is a gold mine of interesting and possibly useful trivia regarding same.
I remain devoted to Solidworks. It’s been the tool I’ve know for a quarter-century. Scanning heresy of other brands of CADs is useful and keeps me humble. - Gerald Davis, owner GLD Designs
The editor replies: My entry into the world of CAD was AutoCAD v1.4, and then writing about it in CADalyst magazine, starting in 1985. When Intergraph ran an ad with CADalyst headlined “Follow the Leader,” we were gobsmacked. Other CAD dare say that? As you note, it is important to peer above the ramparts from time to time.
Mr Davis responds: We punched paper tape with a PDP-8. My first CAM was OptiPlot running on a Textronix vectorscope. My first CAD was AutoCAD v2.5 running on a Tandy 2000. Color! Luxury. When I saw Solidworks 98 my love of wireframes vanished. My excellent keyboard shortcut skills gave way to yanking a 3D puck.
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Isicad has translated your recent posts about STEP and the ODA Summit into Russian:
I have been dealing with CAD conversion for over 40 years and for many years was a member of the IGES/PDES Organization. I led the development of the IGES converter for CATIA V5 as a joint Boeing/Dassault project in 1986.
In those days we referred to IGES and other formats as “write-only formats,” because converters from CAD companies were good about writing proper IGES (or PDES) files but were horrible at reading other CAD systems IGES files.
The marketing groups of the various CAD companies liked to talk about how good their “round trip” conversions were — going from CAD system A to IGES and then back to the same CAD system A. What they were bad at was going from CAD system A to IGES to CAD system B.
That was infinitely more important, and they were usually pretty poor at that job. At times, it seemed intentional. When I formed Tailor Made Software in 1990, most of our business for the first several years was in IGES flavoring: taking the flavor of IGES produced by CAD system A and massaging it so CAD system B could read it properly. - Scott Taylor, president Tailor Made Software
Re: From Facets to Solids to Facets
The period of time that I was at Evans & Sutherland (’81-’91) really could be seen as the golden years of the computer graphics industry. So much technology was being developed that never really saw the light of day (at least not at E&S). I’m sure this is true with many other companies, but E&S barely gets a mention in most histories of computer graphics or modeling systems.
Dave Evans should really be considered the Father of the Digital Twin. His vision for E&S was to create digital models that would allow you to do things that you normally couldn’t do in real life cost-effectively, like pilot training, mechanical design and analysis, and molecular modeling.
E&S’s graphics systems were only developed because there were no systems capable of displaying the various models. There was a famous ‘Fireside Chat with Dave’ where he announced to the company that “E&S was not a computer graphics company,” totally confusing most employees. He later explained to me his vision of creating digital models, which totally jives with his statement. - John Callen, Director of eTools Marketing Lutron Electronics
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EngineeringPaper.xyz solves complex mathematical expressions through documentation cells and math cells, while keeping track of units conversion. To display results in different units, specify them in square brackets. Also, it plots.
You can share your sheets with others through shareable links. Try it out free at engineeringpaper.xyz.
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Agacad comes up with Panel Packer in Revit 2020-2021 for sorting, packing, and loading trucks with prefabricated wood and metal panels. Free demo at agacad.com/products/tools4bim/dock/download.
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IronCAD LLC ships IronCAD 2022 today, and here is some of what’s been added:
Place multiple ordinate dimension at once, and edit more than one dimension at a time
Specify snap increments on parts, and set limits to sizes
Generate structured bills of materials with collapse/expand sections
This 3D design software pioneered concepts common today, such as drag and drop smart parts and 3D at-cursor interactions. IronCAD is most popular among metal fabricators and custom machinery manufacturers. A free trial version is available, following registration, from ironcad.com/free-online-trial.
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The Spatial division of Dassault Systems announced the general availability of Release 2022 1.0 of its geometric kernels. Just skimming the surface, here is one thing new for each module:
3D ACIS Modeler extracts sheet bodies at mid-surfaces between faces of solid bodies
CGM Polyhedra smoothly blends between boundaries of two meshes
CGM Modeler automatically detect cylindrical bends and then unbends them
3D InterOp imports large-scale models whose dimensions range from 1 to 100km
3D Precise Mesh’s Hybrid CFD mixes prismatic and hexahedral elements in boundary layers
SimScale, the first engineering simulation cloud platform, lands an extra €25 million in Series C funding (now totaling US$60 million) so as to add rotating machinery, electronics, and automotive simulations. The press release says the firm has 300,000+ users. www.simscale.com
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Here are some of the posts that appeared recently on my WorldCAD Access blog:
Issue #1,112 | Inside the Business of CAD | 8 November 2021
Guest Editorial by John Callen
In the upFront.eZinearticle on Solid Edge 2022, Dan Staples makes the following comment: “I do think [convergent modeling] is a final frontier here, because meshes for a long time were the domain of the film industry and character modeling.”
It turns out that faceted models were the very first b-rep [boundary representation] structures, referenced in 1977 by CMU’s GLIDE, a polygonal modeler.
The Start of It All
GLIDE stands for “graphical language for interactive design” and was a research program in the architecture department at Carnegie Mellon University. The GLIDE program was funded by the Army Corps of Engineers who wanted a system to model their various facilities.
It was headed up by Chuck Eastman, who is generally acknowledged as the father of BIM [building information modeling]. Kevin Weiler, who originated non-manifold topology b-reps as his PhD thesis at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, was one of the members of Eastman’s GLIDE team. I was a member of the GLIDE team 1979-1981, where I was responsible for implementing the Euler operations from the original BDS [Building Design System], which were written in BLISS, to GLIDE’s Pascal.
Defining polyhedrons with GLIDE
GLIDE was an extension to the higher-level programming language, Pascal. Solid modeling operations were incorporated into an interpretive version of the programming language. Procedural constructors were developed to model aspects of buildings.
GLIDE pre-dated non-polygonal surface representations. Booleans were performed with the faceted representation; the intersection code was relatively straight forward. Later on, b-rep modelers introduced non-polygonal surface types.
GLIDE subtracting polyhedrons (left) to arrive at a new shape (right).
Romulus. Being developed in parallel to GLIDE was Ian Braid’s BUILD project at Cambridge University in the UK, another b-rep program. The BUILD research was commercially spun off into Shape Data, which was the precursor to ACIS and Parasolid.
Romulus introduced analytics and had discrete intersection routines to do surface/surface intersection calculations based on surface type.
Only later were NURBS surfaces introduced and there was a big debate over whether analytics should be converted to NURBS equivalents and all intersections done in NURBS — or whether to continue to maintain the discrete surface types for precision and efficiency.
Performance and Interactivity
Kepler. After graduating from CMU, I joined the Kepler project at Evans & Sutherland. Kepler was an application development environment front-end to Romulus that provided a design space, giving designers a degree of interactivity not possible with solid modelers at the time. (Kepler really wasn’t an acronym; the project lead chose the name due to the historical individual’s role in astronomy.) Objects were built in the Kepler environment, and then the corresponding modeling commands were passed to Romulus to instantiate the design, often taking many minutes to calculate on a DEC VAX 780 mini-computer.
When the Kepler project’s proof-of-concept was completed, it was decided to no longer pursue the approach.
D-Cubed. Shape Data Ltd was the company that originated Romulus and later Parasolid. John Owen at Shape Data developed his dimensional constraint technology, which is the basis of D-Cubed . It can trace its roots to the earlier D/T-D [dimension/tolerance-draughting] work in Romulus.
After Kepler, I ended up relocating to Shape Data and led a project to implement encoding dimensions and tolerances in Romulus and automatically generating engineering drawings, easily a decade or more before PMI. The D/T-D function was released with Romulus v5.2.
During a design review I had with Bob Sproull, Bob pointed out that the D/T-D framework we had implemented in Romulus could be extended to be a parametric modeling system.
The company, unfortunately, had some very strong positions on how a solid modeler ought to be used and, as a result, did not realize advances like parametric modeling and PMI when they presented themselves. The D/T-D function was later removed from Romulus.
Evans & Sutherland was a distributor of Romulus, and then later acquired Shape Data. This was just the first of a long series of acquisitions passing Shape Data from one company to another, ultimately ending up at Siemens.
ACIS. The managing directors of Shape Data split off to form Three-Space Ltd, the company that created ACIS.
The Continual Development of Representations
Gradually, b-rep modelers expanded their geometry classes to support analytics (cylinders, spheres, toroids, and so on), and eventually a variety of surface representations, such as NURBS.
Facets became the primary method of representing scenes in image generation, such as for flight simulators, where the image generation pipeline was built on facets for performance. This need for image generation performance then moved over to the film industry and character modeling. Highly detailed visuals required many, many facets, though. Eventually facets were replaced by texture maps with which image generation reached new levels of realism.
Non-manifold topology (NMT) b-reps introduced the next level of representation, which allowed for interim Boolean results to exist (but not necessarily persist). ComputerVision’s Liberator project of the early 1990s, headed up by Gary Crocker, implemented NMT and supported mixed model representations — wires, sheets, and solids. An example was a chair with wire legs, sheet back, and a solid box seat.
Unfortunately, a real-world application never materialized. At one point, I proposed that NMT be used to model machineable models and associated machining processes, but CAD companies were only focused on design, not manufacturing.
Meshes are again making a resurgence with 3D printing. Again, this is based on the basic technology used to process STL files for 3D printing. By the way, most CAM systems operate off of a faceted representation. This is, again, due to the nature of the algorithms not operating directly off of the source geometry and the fundamental geometry of most CNC controllers, which are predominantly lines and arcs. The ability to specify NURBS curves to a controller is a fairly recent and limited advancement.
Defining a spiral staircase with GLIDE
Interestingly enough, it seems that modeling systems cover the two representation extremes (b-reps and facets), but to my knowledge have pretty much skipped over cellular (homogeneous or adaptive) representations, such as voxels [3D pixels] and dexels [depth pixels]. These are gaining some pickup through today’s scanning and 3D printing technologies.
Through all this time, it has been interesting to see the advances on-going in modeling technology. Probably the most compelling is advancing the model beyond just a geometric representation, but also encoding all the corresponding product data. Who knows where this all will lead? Maybe someday geometric tolerances might be encoded in the solid model similar to how RESABS [numeric precision] and RESNOR [angular resolution in ACIS] are maintained.
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There is so much that isn’t known about the early days of the industry. And there was so much shelved back in the day, because the hardware wasn’t up to it. Imagine if someone dusted off that stuff and migrated it to today’s hardware so that, as the saying goes, “Everything old is new again.”
[John Callen is an architect by training, and spent his 40-year career in marketing and engineering positions at high-tech companies. Much of his career was with mechanical design and manufacturing systems, and now he has returned to his architecture roots as Director of eTools Marketing at Lutron Electronics.]
And in Other News
Companies like PTC and Facebook just know that moving to the next level of abstraction gives them an advantage over competitors. They’ll be spending years and billions on Atlas and Metaverse. Companies should understand what their core is, according to Daniel Jackson.
They’ll fail, because full MCAD doesn't belong on the cloud and people don’t wear shoes on their faces. Better technology is not better humaneness. As technology becomes more abstract, Romanticism is the natural backlash.
Take, for example, the natural technological superiority of ebook readers over dead-tree books: even so, ebook titles now cost more, and the digital format is sinking in popularity to paper.
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Cubic Orb’s plugins for land surveying work with most CAD programs, including those based on AutoCAD, IntelliCAD, ARES, Microstation, BricsCAD, and TurboCAD:
KaliBro - georeferences, edits, manages raster images in CAD
GeoView - operates on sets of coordinates in CAD
Wms2Cad - displays maps from WMS/TMS and WMTS services
TranMap - transforms CAD drawings between coordinates systems
And more.
Demo versions are available to download at cubicorb.com.
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Lantek celebrated its 35th anniversary and reported that Q3 sales of its machining software were 30% higher than a year earlier. It has big plans for the future: increase R&D spending by 70% (from what, we don’t know), and adding 130 more employees from the current 260. www.lantek.com
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Open Design Alliance adds a validation engine for IFC [Industry Foundation Classes] files to its SDK [Software Development Kit]:
Performs multi-level validation on IFC models
Customizable for a range of tasks
Supports simple low-level syntax checking
Custom validation defined in IFC files
Higher-level checking specified by the IDS [Information Delivery Specification] and MVD [Model View Definition] standards from buildingSMART.
The validator is part of Open IFC Viewer v22.9, which is available free from openifcviewer.com.
You wrote that the BricsCAD acquisition was “For Hexagon to get deeper into the AEC space.” Did you choose not to comment on this, to give us readers time to mull this over?
I’m interested in knowing what you think about that statement. It's been three years since the acquisition [of Bricsys by Hexagon] and nothing has really jumped out at us yet. - Name withheld by request
The editor replies: Here is my initial take on the statement. From what I see (I am a beta tester of BricsCAD), Hexagon is putting a lot into BricsCAD, and that is the good news.
Hexagon’s origin is in CCM [computer coordinate measurement], which is a post-MCAD process, so they don’t have experience in AEC [architecture, engineering, construction]. They see BricsCAD as the path to entering the market, surrounded by all their other products, like point cloud acquisition and plant design software
Their mirror is Trimble, which started with surveyor’s equipment and is also trying to get into AEC, starting with the acquisition of SketchUp nearly a decade ago. We’re not, however, seeing any impact on the industry, as SketchUp is not a great entry point for a corporation trying to target a discipline dominated by Vectorworks, ArchiCAD, and Revit; SketchUp began as conceptual design software, not as design design software.
BricsCAD has a reasonable chance of making an impact in AEC, but continues to suffer from the same problem it’s always had: lack of mindshare.
I would say the most important aspect of BricsCAD is that it also works as a DWG platform, which is why the CADWorx division of Hexagon fostered the acquisition of BricsCAD in the first place. I am watching to see if BricsCAD-as-platform spreads to other areas of Hexagon, keeping in mind that Hexagon already owns several other CAD packages.
Re: Rådgivende Ingeniørers Forening
Your conclusion could also be “forming purchasing pools” to buy stock in the design software companies, because those companies listen far more to shareholders than to users.
I would guess that the Norwegian government has sentiments similar to the RIF, so perhaps they could pool resources to buy a larger share of Autodesk stock, which would give them a louder voice in how things work at that company. - Peter Lawton
The editor replies: Good idea, but.
There have been suggestions in that past that users buy up a majority of ADSK stock, but that would never happen. Sovereign wealth funds do not interfere with the running of companies.
Mr Lawton responds: Some of the stock-purchase suggestions to which you refer have come from me, as I have been championing that cause for the past 15 years, at least. 😎
However, to state flatly that it ‘would never happen’ is rather defeatist and I would respectfully submit that big companies count on that very attitude to continue to get away with being poor corporate citizens. “What are those two million frustrated users gonna do about (our latest rip-off maneuver), hunh? Fire the board?!”
Well, if those two million frustrated users are also shareholders, the board will be far less dismissive of our requests. Does that make sense? Not everyone connects those dots.
It will take time, perhaps a decade, but if enough of Autodesk’s corporate victims pool enough resources to purchase a significant portion of Autodesk stock, the company will have to listen.
Also, it may be true that sovereign wealth funds don’t deliberately ‘interfere’ with corporate governance, but they do influence it, if only by virtue of their purchase of stock. If RIF writes a letter to Autodesk, and Norway’s SWF (in conjunction with RIF) is holding 5% of shares (about $3.4B today, or 2.6% of the SWF), how do you think Autodesk will react? It’s just a matter of time and money, and there are many parties interested in getting Autodesk to change its ways. All those parties need is organization and patience.
Notable Quotable
“A model is not evidence. It is a theory expressed in arithmetic terms.” - John Hinderaker
Thank You, Readers
Thank you to readers who donate towards the operation of upFront.eZine:
Stephen Schuller
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Issue #1,111 | Inside the Business of CAD | 1 November 2021
There was no need, in the early days of mechanical CAD, to exchange files. MCAD was rare enough that it did not matter that systems were incompatible. But by 1976, MCAD had become common enough for the US Air Force to demand a way to reduce costs associated with moving files from the design floor to manufacturing contractors. The solution was found in a common format named “initial graphics exchange specification” — IGES, for short.
From IGES to PDES to STEP
IGES became verbose and unwieldy as over time it supported more and more data types specific to the increasing number of MCAD systems. In Germany, the automotive industry came up with its own widespread standard for exchanging surface data of the skins of automobiles, VDA-FS. What was needed as a modern replacement.
So the IGES Steering Committee began work on a new file format, PDES (product data exchange specification), to do a better job at defining an all-encompassing format: “PDES is envisioned to support all aspects of product description, from initial conception through product design, manufacture, support, and disposal,” said the US Department of Commerce, sounding a lot like PLM today.
In 1985, the committee contributed PDES to an ISO initiative that was creating a universal file format flexible enough to handle “anything from a microchip to a battleship.” This became known as STEP, the “STandard for the Exchange of Product model data.”
STEP was an extensible format, one that could be extended as new technology came along. It handles inheritances, such as a spoke inheriting the properties of the steel wheel in which it resides. Definitions are determined by an object-oriented data programming language, EXPRESS.
The first release of STEP came out in 1995. Sometimes you also see it referred to as “AP203” (short for application protocol level 2). Today, STEP consists of 800 standards (see figure below), of which four are for end users, with the remainder a library of reusable definitions.
To learn where STEP is headed next, I spoke with Martin Hardwick, CEO of STEP Tools, and Neil Peterson, president of the Open Design Alliance.
STEP for Machining
The original purpose of IGES was to make it easier for manufacturers, like General Electric, to deal with 3D models arriving from suppliers using incompatible MCAD file formats. The process looked like this, and today still looks a lot like this:
CAD operator makes drawings with no regard for the manufacturing process
CAM operator designs the manufacturing process
Postprocessor in CAM software generates the G-code that instructs the machine
CNC operator closely supervises the machining to make sure the initial parts were made correctly
The desire today is to go direct from CAD to CNC, Martin Hardwick told me.
CAD operator makes the 3D model suitable for manufacturing
Postprocessor in CAD makes the STEP-NC file
CNC machine uses STEP-NC for automated, optimized machining (see figure below)
STEP has been extended to parts machining, where it is known as STEP-NC (numerical control):
AP238 version 1 for precision machining (2005)
AP238 version 2 for precision assembly (last year)
It was the addition of AP242e2 tolerances that allowed STEP to expand into automated manufacturing. When you know the tolerances that manufacturing needs to meet, you can machine parts to those tolerances. Before this, machines controls worked blindly, not knowing what was allowed.
A NIST-created test file showing AP242 presentation and semantic geometric tolerances
There is complexity inherent in CAM. “Before, the operator figured it out; now software has to be rewritten to figure it out,” said Mr Hardwick. The change means a massive rewrite of CAM software, something not all firms can afford. Partly as a result of this industry change, many CAM firms — like Cimitron, GibbsCAM, MasterCAM, SigmaNEST, and Vericut — have in recent years sold themselves to larger companies, like Sandvik.
Year by year, STEP-NC is adding more to the process data needed to know how to mill, drill, or lathe a part, how to lead in, the speed at which to run, and so on. The key is to know which operations have to be done in which order with the minimum viable tool path. When the data is rich, intelligent software on the controller should be able to figure out the rest.
Each year since 2017, STEP-NC has been used to machine millions of 5-axis parts for commercial aircraft, such as the Boeing 787. Now STEP-NC is being prepared for direct-CAD-to-CNC 2.5-axis milling for features on airframes. As well, it is getting ready for 3D printing, leading Mr Hardwick to call STEP-NC “the PDF of machining.”
ODA Expands to STEP
The Open Design Alliance develops code, such as for reading and writing DWG and PDF files, that is used commercially by its CAD software member companies. By developing the code on behalf of them, the 1,200 members don’t need to develop it themselves.
Five years ago, the organization expanded its offerings dramatically. It moved from offering individual SDKs (since 1998) to a complete technology package for working with CAD and BIM files, including Web collaboration, version control, and visualization on any platform, supported by a natively developed solid modeler and constraints engine.
Then earlier this year, the ODA announced support for STEP based on a strong demand from ODA members, because existing STEP libraries are expensive and are royalty-based, ODA president Neil Peterson told me in an interview. In some cases, STEP is not licensed as an individual component; rather it is bundled with a larger group of converters. Some libraries are in the public domain, but suffer from insufficient development. So there is no economical, high-quality library on the market that’s affordable for small firms, he said.
How STEP fits into the APIs/SDKs offered by Open Design Alliance
Some ODA members just want access to STEP files. Other members, who make use of the ODA’s IFC APIs for architectural design, want both: IFC for building designs, STEP for machinery that goes inside the buildings. ODA is taking on STEP support as a long-term priority.
With STEP files and the EXPRESS programming language being hugely complex, I wondered how the work could get done so fast. PDES, after all, had been working on the problem for nearly three decades.
“We gained expertise by developing IFC,” said Mr Peterson. “Similar to IFC, STEP is defined using EXPRESS schema, and so we can reuse the automation framework we developed for IFC to quickly build a high-quality STEP solution.” As well, the ODA is a member of PDES, the group that maintains the STEP standard, just as it works with buildingSMART on IFCs. From PDES, the ODA gets test data and works on committees that establish extensions to the standard.
The ODA’s timeline looks like this:
By the end of this year, it plans to release an initial version of the STEP SDK (software development kit) with read/write support for AP203, AP214, and AP242 (all conformance classes).
By the end of 2022, the ODA plans full visualization support for the same three APs running on desktop, mobile, and Web, including a free-to-all, commercial-grade STEP viewer similar to the ODA’s IFC and DWG viewers.
The alliance plans to offer publishing of STEP models to 2D/3D PDF, and conversion of STEP to formats, such as Navisworks and DWG.
The cost of getting the STEP APIs from the ODA will be “free.” That is, members, who pay an annual membership fee to the ODA starting at $1,800 a year, pay nothing extra once STEP becomes available, and there are no royalty payments involved. This presents the possibility of undercutting other STEP suppliers, such as STEP Tools in USA, EPA in Sweden, and ProSTEP in Germany.
Longer term, the ODA is interested in AP238 STEP-NC, and the conversion of model data to formats like IFC and Revit. Mr Peterson notes that “Priorities in these areas will be based on requests from our members.”
What Ralph Grabowski Thinks
The MCAD/CAM industry needs a universal file format to minimize the cost and inconvenience of translating data between CAD systems, and for the machines that do the manufacturing.
Other industries like AEC/BIM have found, however, that arriving at universality is a terribly complex problem. That’s because every CAD vendor desires to maintain unique advantages over competitors, and so prefers to stay with its unique file formats.
Lip service is given to data interoperability, so while data flows easily into CAD systems, it emerges rather reluctantly. There is, after all, a programmer cost to implementing exchange standards like STEP and IFC, both of which are increasing in complexity as they expand in capability.
The 2020s find the STEP standard expanding in two directions, towards greater complexity with STEP-NC, and towards lower cost with ODA STEP. The toolkits provided by the ODA, one can hope, ought to make implementing data exchange universality in architectural and mechanical worlds easier.
Rådgivende Ingeniørers Forening represents 140 Norwegian engineering consulting firms with 500 offices and 13,000 employees. RIF is unhappy with “major software developers hiking up prices by 30% annually with only a few months warning.” The one vendor mentioned is Autodesk, for its disparate country pricing.
It seems to me that organizations like hospitals and design firms ought to be forming purchasing pools to negotiate rock bottom pricing from suppliers.
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Nanosoft launches release 21 of nanoCAD as a CAD platform supporting five modules:
3D Modeling — direct, sheet metal, mesh, and parametric 3D solid modeling with 2D/3D constraints
Mechanica — mechanical drawing, engineering calculation utilities, and library of parametric parts
Construction — AEC drafting utilities and library of parametric parts
Raster — (new) import, correct, and vectorize raster images
Topoplan — digital terrain modeling
nanoCAD 21 starts at $200/yr; each module is $150/yr. Permanent licenses are provided with a three-year subscription. nanoCAD 5 is available free. https://nanocad.com/
[Disclosure: I produce training videos for Nanosoft.]
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At the Bricsys conference last week, Hexagon answered the question that puzzled executives when I asked them two years ago: Where does the BricsCAD acquisition fit into Hexagon?
We have the answer from ceo Ola Rollén: For Hexagon to get deeper into the AEC space, and for BricsCAD to get into the discrete manufacturing market.
[Disclosure: I have written books and produced training videos for Bricsys.]
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Stratasys turns GrabCAD into a software pipeline for 3D printing (aka additive manufacturing). Its new GrabCAD AM Platform manages multiple 3D printers at multiple locations, monitors output quality, automates materials management, and integrates all this with the enterprise.
The platform is a combination of GrabCAD software, software from partners, and an SDK. Wannabe partners pay an SDK licensing free, following approval. https://grabcad.com
[Disclosure: Following the launch of GrabCAD as a 3D part sharing site, the founder joked he named the site after me.]
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Here is one of the posts that appeared recently on my WorldCAD Access blog:
For most attendees (at least for non-media, but I suspect also for media) the real value of conferences is the networking and informal discussions that take place during and outside the conference. After attending dozens of AU and a few other CAD conferences for many years in different capacities, it became clear to me that the best conferences are
a) in-person, with at least one or more organized social event
b) small enough that individuals don't get lost in the crowd
c) with wide coverage area (i.e. national or worldwide, not local)
d) including vendors and their cool new tech (plus free swag)
It surely is not easy (nor inexpensive), but if I was running a CAD company I would pounce on the opportunity created by the pandemic to capitalize on the natural human hunger for fellowship. - Owen Wengerd (via WorldCAD Access)
The editor replies: I suspect the difference between small conferences (which we like) and monster conferences (which we don’t) is that it’s the staff of the small company that puts together the small conference and who are in touch with the needs of users. I’ve had organizers of small conferences ask me what I would like to see.
The giant conferences put on by giant companies are, I am guessing, organized by marketing departments, whose day job is to promote the company. Hence the disconnect.
Notable Quotable
“With a few exceptions, most previously successful founders rarely replicate their success in their second company. Financial success weakens determination and fighter mentality.” - Don Dodge
Thank You, Readers
Thank you to readers who donate towards the operation of upFront.eZine:
Novedge LLC (small company donation): “Keep up the great work!”
John Brunt: “Thanks for your coverage of BIM issues.”
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Issue #1,110 | Inside the Business of CAD | 25 October 2021
We’re all too familiar with big-spending CAD vendors like Autodesk, Dassault Systemes, and Siemens and their millions of users. We might even have some familiarity with smaller CAD vendors, who are content to serve tens of thousands of customers.
Then there’s a class of CAD vendor that never made it big – or at all. For instance, the years 2012 to 2014 were the start of a fresh era that saw the birth of a brand-new style of design software: collaborative, cloud-based CAD.
Companies had names like Onshape, sunglass.io, TinkerCAD, and To3D. All took advantage of the power granted by then-new WebGL and JavaScript APIs that made interactive 3D CAD graphics possible in Web browsers. None did well.
One that you may not have heard of is SolidFace. (See figure below.)
User interface of SoldFace
I was alerted to this MCAD vendor when a reader told me of the company’s odd condition for getting their free 30-day demo: before downloading, you need to provide a credit card number.
Typically, demo software simply de-activates after 30 days or significantly cripples the available functions. What isn’t immediately apparent is that downloading SolidFace represents acceptance by the potential customer of the software’s terms and conditions, a link to which is alluded to during the download process. Within those terms is a paragraph revealing that using the software past the 30-day demo period incurs a monthly charge.
Searching around, I found others caught off guard by the company’s terms. In online forums like Reddit, SourceForge, TrustPilot, and Better Business Bureau and as recently as in May of this year, users complained of credit cards being charged for amounts ranging from $65 to $89. Said one complainant, “I requested a refund and they said it would take 1-3 months for it to be processed due to the COVID situation.”
The Many Pivots of SolidFace
Curious, I spent two weeks digging deeper. The history of SolidFace appears to have begun in 1994 with the launch of a Brazilian 2D CAD program named UniCAD. Over its life, it gained 4,000 customers, primarily in Latin America. According to tech startup community site F6S, SolidFace co-founder Oscar Leite spent more than 20 years at UniCAD before exiting the company in 2008 with $2.8 million. He describes himself as a back-end programmer and UI/UX designer, obtaining his university training in Germany
In 2013, Mr Leite formed SolidFace with Rafael Lima, according to Linked-In. Mr Lima, then 28, had spent his first post-university years dabbling in Bitcoin mining. “During the dark days of BTC [bitcoin] as a younger, savvy tech teenager, I was looking for something different to do with my computers and found BTC in the corners of the Web or dark-Web,” Mr Leite wrote on Linked-In.
The idea developed by Messrs Leite and Lima was to release a collaborative 3D parametric CAD program by combining Mr Lima’s knowledge of bitcoin mining with Mr Leite’s CAD experience. The program would be free of charge, making money through the novel idea of mining bitcoins in the background on the computers of SolidFace customers, with their permission. According to Austin Business Journal, the company could make 4 cents/minute per user through this technique.
At the time, Mr Leite described the new software as “Google Docs for 3D models”, even though SolidFace would run on the desktop, save files to the desktop (for intellectual property protection), and use the cloud to store files and to collaborate. Today, this hybrid approach is common among CAD programs.
According to its Tumblr account, the company spent $2.5 million developing SolidFace, releasing the first beta version in the middle of 2012.
By 2014, the company was working to attract dealers and looking to advertise in publications, such as upFront.eZine. Potential dealers were told, “SolidFace’s growth is in the mid-range CAD market. SolidFace is fully compatible with SolidWorks, Solid-Edge, AutoCad and others through SIEMENS-Parasolid core. The core also allows us to use full 3D modeling power.”
An overseas dealer approached by SolidFace told me, “I tried SolidFace once. For me it wasn’t worth the extra learning curve compared to Rhino and BricsCAD, and also no money in it as far as I could see.”
Pivot to Solid Share
Nor was SolidFace itself making enough money: “Bootstrapping both of our CAD companies, UniCAD and SolidFace, has proven to be a significant challenge. During this period we’ve invested over $1.5 million in research and development...” So in 2015, the company pivoted to services by launching a Kickstarter campaign for Solid Share.
Solid Share was to be a 3D printing, scanning, and modeling service that used SolidFace as the CAD engine. Users would design models with the CAD program for free, and I presume Solid Share would collect a fee on the services accessed by customers.
The campaign failed, raising just US$1,823 toward its US$385,000 goal. (See figure below.)
Solid Share’s page on Kickstarter
That same year, the company took a stab at selling SolidFace 2015 through Steam, the online computer games portal. For the first and only time, pricing was on a non-rental basis; the student version went for US$199, while commercial versions seemed to range in price from US$500 to $1,000. This sales channel fell through after the company decided the software was “considered not profitable enough to warrant bringing [version] 2016 to Steam.”
By 2017, SolidFace had sold just 600 licenses. Of these, 100 were paid for by bitcoin mining, making the company $1,400 a month, according to the Austin Business Journal. The non-mining version was $29.99/month.
The same year, the company looked to raise $500,000 as a seed round. According to CrunchBase, it landed $50,000 from four venture capital funds, lead by growth accelerator firm Turn8. (See figure below.) I contacted Turn8 about the investment, but received no reply.
Funding report on SolidFace by CrunchBase
Pivot to Solid Network
In either 2018 or 2019, Messers Leite and Lima formed Solid Network for distributing software packages. “We partner with software companies to distribute their software for free in our marketplace using their user’s hardware (GPU) to monetize it while the device is online,” Solid Networks reported on its Linked-In page. I found a solidnetwork.com domain, which appears to have been set up in early 2020, and today resolves to an empty placeholder site.
I contacted Mr Leite about the software, but received no reply. I wrote to SolidFace company, and also received no reply. The SolidFace Web site still lives today. (See figure below.)
A page on the SolidFace Web site today
The site offers these software packages:
SolidFace PTV — 2D CAD at $89 per quarter with “30 days free and cancel anytime.”
SolidFace 3D Pro — 3D modeler at US$129 per month and listed as “coming soon.”
That the 3D version is not available could perhaps be due to this possibility: I speculate that the firm could no longer afford to pay Parasolid’s royalties.
While the company’s software does not seem to have found success in the marketplace, the training materials it provides are very good. There are lots of 2D and 3D tutorial videos on Youtube (some of which which I watched) and the user manual (which I skimmed) is well written. The most recent video was posted in July of this year.
To test SolidFace, I downloaded a 2015 version from C|Net, installed it in Windows 10 Sandbox, but it did not run. So, I cannot attest to its abilities, but in videos it appears to have supported advanced functions like parametrics.
What Ralph Grabowski Thinks
The story of SolidFace is a remarkable one, as two founders, flush with cash and full of ideas, launch a CAD program, and then pivot repeatedly in multiple attempts to succeed.
As the founders of Onshape, sunglass.io, TinkerCAD, and To3D discovered, launching a MCAD program as new does not predict success.
Onshape, for example, spent $100 million on development to gain just 5,000 paying customers, and then sold itself to PTC. Sunglass.io was acquired by Wikineering, a engineering knowledge sharing platform. TinkerCAD sold itself to Autodesk just as it was running out of funds. To3D, as best as I can determine, disappeared.
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Virtual reality/augmented reality metaverses are bound for failure with consumers, because VR/AR demands increased inconvenience, the face goggle. Consumers don’t do inconvenience. Smartphones replaced digital cameras slung around the neck not because they were better, but because they were more convenient.
VR/AR does have a niche in environments in which inconvenience is expected, such as with safety gear in workplaces, or spending what it takes to get an edge in gaming.
“One day son, all this will be yours” (cartoon by Matt Percival)
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TestFit is algorithmic configuration software for optimizing the design of “commodity buildings” — like apartments, offices, hotels, industrial buildings, and parking structures — during the feasibility phase, which I wrote about in upfrontezine.com/2020/02/upf-1040.html. The software is now integrated with Enscape for real-time visualizations; TestFit in turn is Enscape’s first SDK partner. More info from testfit.io/lp-enscape-in-testfit/.
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EnSuite-Cloud ReVue from CCE always has been a Web-based viewer of 3D models, and now the software has taken its first step into the realm of 2D.
The first to be supported are CATIA V5 2D Drawing viewables, with 2D drawings from Solidworks and NX coming in the next few months. You can try it out free for 15 days at viewer.cadcam-e.com/EnSuite-Cloud/Login/index.html.
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Matrox celebrates 45 years in the business, having been launched in 1976 with the VideoRAM alphanumeric display controller as its first product. In 1979, the Canadian firm released the first ever video board to handle four monitors. More on the history of the longest-lasting graphics hardware company in the world at matrox.com/en/corporate/history-of-innovation.
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CIMdata reports that “…with free registration to Autodesk University’s virtual live content and streaming sessions, they expected over 100,000 global participants. According to Autodesk, the first three days attendees watched more than 51,000 hours of content.”
Notable Quotable
“We need to find an emotion that hasn’t been hijacked by one of the big brands.” - Management Speak
Thank You, Readers
Thank you to readers who donate towards the operation of upFront.eZine:
Denis Senkinc
Rod Levin: “Thanks for your consistent attention to this industry that has seen so much change over the last 30 years.”
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