Issue #785
SIGGRAPH is not a CAD show, which is why I was surprised when CADdigest publisher Roopinder Tara asked me to help him cover the event last week in Anaheim, California. Siggraph is short for "special interest group, graphics," and this year it turns 40. It had a brief fling with CAD in the late 1980s, and so as technical editor back then of CADalyst magazine I flew to conferences in Boston and Philadelphia. Now Siggraph tends to stick to the West Coast, because the nerve centers for its audience are the technology of Silicon Valley and the movie production of Los Angeles.
My job was to land appointments with vendors, interview them, write them up, and then email the text and pix to Roopinder, who posted them to his CAD Insider blog. Between the two of us, we booked 33 appointments over three days. Following this hectic pace, I had no difficulty sleeping eight hours sleep each night!
So, Is There CAD at Siggraph?
Technically, none. No CAD vendor had a booth there. Even Auto-our-software-is-in-every-movie-Desk had no booth (more later). But ancillary firms have a foot in the CAD world, or at least tried to pitch their product to us CAD media as CAD-friendly. Specifically, 3D-friendly. Here is an overview of just some of the hardware and software vendors who I visited.
zSpace. I had interviewed Infinite Z's ceo Paul Kellenberger way back in 2011 (see http://www.upfrontezine.com/2011/upf-714.htm#a) but it was not until last week that I finally saw his zSpace hardware for real. It was during NVidia/Dell's Limelight dance-floor party in the Platinum Ballroom. zSpace's take on 3D interaction is a large monitor designed to rest on the desk at an angle. As I put on the polarizing clip-on glasses, a 3D model pops out into the air. Grasping ahold of a tethered stylus, I see a green line shoot out, helping me determine which part I am selecting from the model. $6,000 from http://www.zspace.com
Cintoo3D. Booth-sharing is a common practice, in which small companies get affordable spots with larger sponsors, whether NVidia, the province of British Columbia, or the country of France -- and larger sponsors cut their cost of expensive, massive booths on the show floor. In the AMD booth, brand-new company (launched in July as a university spin-off) Cintoo3D promised 50x data compression of meshes and textures through wavelet-based CODECs using vector quantitization running on the GPUs of AMD's FirePro graphics boards. The technology could be applied to CAD models, CEO Andre Labat told me. http://www.cintoo3D.com
Heterogeneous System Architecture. The GPUs installed in our computers and tablets hold a tantalizing key to accelerating many kinds of calculations, but the key has remained of tantalizingly limited use. This is because CPUs are designed to crunch calculations sequentially (and can page data to disk), while GPUs do the job in parallel (and must hold all data in their own RAM) -- and thus the twain are hard to meet. I attended a talk by the HSA Foundation, a group working on APIs that let "any" software run on CPUs and GPUs -- using OpenCL and other software. (HSA consists of nearly all hardware vendors and many software ones, with the haughty exception of Apple.) This November, the first such software may appear. http://hsafoundation.com
Thinkbox. Here is the archetypical Siggraph story: a company figures out how to do special effects for movies and games, then realizes the technology could extend to 3D CAD. Thinkbox CEO Chris Bond spent a decade refining algorithms to create realistic effects of flowing water, burning flames, and blowing smoke by manipulating billions of points. He had seen special effects firms using laser scanners to collect 3D data of buildings, and then add them to scenes digitally. With his new FROST software, he put the two together: it can render 40 billion 3D points in 28 minutes, turning scanned buildings and other objects into meshes. He told me that the software is 37,000 times faster than Geomagic, and costs ten times less. (Mr Bond's ultimate aim is to model every cell in the human body, all 300 trillion of them.) http://www.thinkboxsoftware.com
Dell. A company in transition, Dell this year showed up at Siggraph, determined to sell its MCAD-oriented workstations to the M&E (media and entertainment) crowd. To create some media waves, they invited us to a "whisper suite" in a nearby hotel on an appointment-only basis. Here they showed us hardware that you won't see until the fall, including "the world's lightest workstation" (their claim, not mine) boasting a 3200x1800 resolution touchscreen, and a new 32" monitor with 4K (3840x2860) resolution -- plus some upgraded workstations. No prices were given; when I suggested a $1,500 price-point for the big monitor, the Dell product menager looked aghast: I think it will be much more expensive. "We're spanking our competition, especially one named after a fruit," Dell summarized. http://www.dell.com
Leonar3Do. The funnest stuff at tradeshows is for me the unexpected, and for me the funnest was Leonar3Do from Budapest, Hungary. They have 3D sculpting software and infrared tracking hardware. Neither are new; other, larger companies were showing the same at their booths, and to me their Leopoly software was just another Mudbox. But their Go Bird hardware is kewl: a bird-like 3D "mouse" for editing 3D models and selecting commands from the screen ($499). Sales manager Peter KIertesz showed me how it requires polarizing glasses for seeing the model in 3D, and a pair of infrared cameras to track the position of the glasses (moving my head moves the 3D model), and the Go Bird (pressing the buttons select parts of the model or commands from the screen). Two take-aways: Go Bird vibrates when it "touches" the surface of the 3D model; and it was 3D printed. http:// www.leonar3do.com
Christie. At the other end of the hardware spectrum was Christie, the company that makes most of the giant digital projectors used by movie theatres. Senior director of technology and visualization Larry Paul gave me the booth tour. First, the 84" LCD tv screen to which they added infrared six-touch-point technology and whiteboard software for placing and annotating images by hand. Next, a shopping-cart-size projector hooked up to four specialized workstations rendering car models in realtime-3D at 4K resolution and 120Hz. And lastly, the world's first turnkey (all-in-one) CAVE (computer aided visualization environment) that lets a couple of people stand in an immersive modeling environment. This last item fits in an office elevator, and costs around $300,000. http:// www.christiedigital.com
NVidia. This graphics board company had spilled the beans about their new K6000 graphics board the Friday before Siggraph during off-the-record interviews with us media. (See http://worldcadaccess.typepad.com/blog/2013/07/nvidias-new-graphics-board-probably-holds-more-ram-than-your-computer.html). The main features are that it is faster (naturally) and boasts 12GB RAM, which means that it can render much larger models faster. But, it is not meant for CAD users generally, and it costs around $2500, and it doesn't ship until this fall. http://www.nvidia.com
AMD. The other big graphics board company had no FirePro announcements to make, but instead public relations manager John Swinimer showed off his boards supporting 4K monitors. One board can drive not one, not two, but six 4K monitors at once! -- that's 55 million pixels. Also, they gave us media a wonderful no-marketing-talk dinner at a Disneyland restaurant. http://www.amd.com/us/products/Pages/graphics.aspx
As you see, many firms at Siggraph send a we-have-a-foot-in-CAD message to those of us from the CAD media.
An Industry Eats Itself Up; Finds the Taste Distasteful
We got a hint this sumer that Hollywood is in trouble after several blockbusters in a row failed. (The definition of "failed" is failing to make back 50% of the movie's cost after its first weekend of showings.)
When in 2011 I last attended Siggraph, it was all about 3D for consumers, whether through TVs, movies, or games. One research firm foolishly predicted that by next year (2014) all cell phones will have 3D interfaces. But then 3D died, as consumers did back-of-the-envelop cost-benefit analyses and decided to not throw out their recently-purchased monster-size 2D flatscreen TVs for something that gave them headaches.
Autodesk was a sponsor of Siggraph, but did not have a booth. They provided a breakfast for the media in Disneyland, but had few announcements. Instead, they gave us a gloomy outlook for M&E, as did Jon Peddie during a luncheon the following day.
Gloomy? How can this be, what with Playstation 4 and Xbox One about to burst forth, Netflix booming in revenues, and so on. The problem is down at the level of the small companies who specialize in creating special effects (sfx) for the movies, ads, and games -- and are Autodesk's M&E customers. As clients demand increasingly complex sfx, the cost to create them outpaces the growth in revenues. As a result, Autodesk told us, while the film industry is growing 5% year-over-year, none of Autodesk's customers are turning much of a profit. Indeed, revenues at Autodesk's M&E division have been declining annually over recent years, perhaps leading to the lack of the monster booth.
The solutions from Autodesk M&E are to "standardize" and be "open," as follows:
- Standardize production cycles (production houses in the past kept reinventing ways of doing sfx)
- Standardize ways to exchange data, such as using OpenData to access datasets from Autodesk's Maya software
- Scalability
- Support open workflows
The company announced one new program, FBX Review, a stand-alone FBX file viewer, which displays 3D and animation from programs like AutoCAD and Maya. One demo illustrated interactively viewing a model from Revit. http://area.autodesk.com/products/features/2013fbx
Jon Peddie Associates. As worrying as Autodesk's message was the graph produced by Jon Peddie that showed Siggraph attendance declining even as the M&E industry was growing. Worse, vendor participation at Siggraph is declining faster than the number of attendees. I suppose we should be happy Siggraph exists at all, when we consider how many general CAD trade shows have expired in the past decade.
Mr Peddie did, however, provide some good news. He feels that tablets are at the tipping point between being consumption devices (of old) and creation devices (the future). This is due partly to this year's addition of OpenGL 3 to mobile CPU-GPUs, and accompanying improvements in the Android operating system. In the end, however, the hope dies hard, as the 25 July issue of Peddie's TechWatch newsletter pleads, "3D needs its Napster moment." http://jonpeddie.com
Summary
If there was a theme to Siggraph 2013, it was big data: working with lots of points and pushing lots of pixels. Siggraph 2014 next year will be back to Vancouver, Canada, after Los Angeles Conference Center apparently jacked up its price tag way too high. http://www.siggraph.com
[Disclosures: Tenlinks.com paid for my airfare, ground transportation, hotel, and some meals. Siggraph provided me with a media pass and some meals. Some vendors mentioned in this article gave me corporate gifts (mostly small-capacity USB thumbdrives) and some meals. Don Beaton gave me a tour of the desert outside Anaheim.]
Further coverage of Siggraph 2013
- CAD Insider blog's coverage of Siggraph 2013: http://cadinsider.typepad.com
- Much to my surprise, I am at SIGGRAPH 2013: http://worldcadaccess.typepad.com/blog/2013/07/much-to-my-surprise-i-am-at-siggraph-2013.html
- Why the 3D hype of SIGGRAPH 2011 failed by SIGGRAPH 2013: http://worldcadaccess.typepad.com/blog/2013/07/why-the-3d-of-siggraph-2011-failed-by-siggraph-2013.html
Letters to the Editor
Re: RTC NA 2013
"I really loved the Revit and Design Technology Conference reports. Having made the jump from AutoCAD to Revit Structure for one project, I completely get it (the degree of difficulty, that is)."
- Ron Powell
"I see you report on BIM a lot. I recall back from the late 80s to early 90s when what appeared to be BIM in Intergraph's Microstation that I used. What ever happened to Microstation's building design program? Does Microstation compete in BIM today?
"How does it take the industry so long to not quite perfect an ever churning building software that should have been perfected ten years ago?"
- Chris
The editor replies: "You are speaking of Microstation TriForma, but I don't know what has happened to it. Financially, Bentley seem to be stuck at making around $500 million a year -- plus or minus.
"The difference between MCAD and AEC software, is that MCAD designs one part of which millions will be made, while AEC software designs one thing made of millions of parts, which is a problem that's a lot tougher to solve through software."
Mr Chris responds: "Thanks for your info bank of current market news. Ever think of joining Bloomberg's news reporting?"
"Isn't part of the problem that the end goal is somewhere in between what you say Autodesk and DS think: the end product is getting a building/plant/physical asset that meets the clients' requirements. As you say, the tools should make generating the things you need to reach that goal, including 2D drawings and information to support purchasing, subcontracting, etc. as easy as possible.
"It took the mechanical side quite some time to get to understanding that having a 3D master was a desirable end, but it took vendors like DS a while to understand that you cannot change the dominant paradigm by fiat. 2D drawings are part of the AEC dominant paradigm, just as they still are in parts of the supply chain where the OEMs have 3D masters."
- Stan Przybylinski, vp ofresearch
CIMdata
The editor replies: "While software companies have differing programming priorities, I think that for the last ten years the big push was in the area of 3D and rendering, and only now are they coming back to what matters, 2D."
"Thanks for providing an unbiased, honest report!!"
- Ellen Stevens
"You reported, 'We would rather hire an architect and teach them Revit, than hire a Revit user and try to teach them architecture.' As you may have heard, rumour has it that I know a little bit about AutoCAD. I have taught it to a lot of people, and I have also taught mechanical engineering. Back in the days when I worked in the real world, I had occasion to hire mechanical designers. AutoCAD was the last thing I looked for on the resume, because I could teach them AutoCAD a LOT faster than I could teach them mechanical design.
"(I cringe whenever I see the job title CAD Operator. There is no such job. They didn't used to call them a 'pencil, paper, T-square & eraser operator'.)
"Having CAD software proficiency certification doesn't prove much, in the same way that knowing how to touch-type doesn't make you a writer. Shakespeare couldn't type worth a darn, but he was a pretty good writer.
- Bill Fane
- - -
"Your readers may be interested in this study of phoney product reviews:
http://www.dpreview.com/news/2013/07/15/new-study-investigates-online-reviews "
- Don Beaton
"upFront.eZine has helped me immensely during my drawing career. Thank you."
- Randall Abbey
"Thank you for all the good and to-the-point information you provide."
- Antoine Reymond
AMD Professional Graphics
Notable Quotable
"RSS, semantic markup, microformats, and open APIs all enable interoperability, but the big players don't want that -- they want to lock you in, shut out competitors, and make a service so proprietary that even if you could get your data out, it would be either useless (no alternatives to import into) or cripplingly lonely (empty social networks)."
- Marco Arment, creator of Instapaper
http://www.marco.org/2013/07/03/lockdown
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