upFront.eZine News Archives

DrawingSearcher from Docupoint; Tailor Made Software

Issue #881

 

From the Editor: Actrix Translation Over the years I sometimes receive requests from readers to help them translate drawings they made using Autodesk's long-abandoned "Visio Killer" Actrix Technical software. I last week found the CD and successfully installed Actrix 2000 on a Windows 7 workstation. Technically, my 18-month-old granddaughter found it, randomly pulling CDs out of my massive collection of yesteryear software. Contract [email protected] should you have AXD files needing translation to DWG, etc.   DrawingSearcher from Docupoint  by Ralph Grabowski It was upon the occasion of the 2015 release of DrawingSearcher that the folks at Docupoint called me up for a chat -- president David Hughs and head of BizDev, Brad Bishop. New to the software is support for Microstation DGN files.  DrawingSearcher works by searching CAD files for text. Not just properties or file names, but every piece of text stored, including attributes in AutoCADdrawing files and database links. Among CAD formats, it reads MicroStation and AutoCAD files, along with quite a few Office formats, PDF, OCR'ed TIFF and CALS files, and document managements systems like Autodesk Vault, Microsoft Sharepoint, and Cyco Blue Cielo. (Seehttp://www.docupoint.com/silver-vs-gold/ for the full list.) Note that the Silver Edition handles DWG, DXF, and DWF files only ($1,240); the Gold edition is needed for all the other formats ($1,475).  Following installation on one computer within an organization's data center and inside its firewalls, DrawingSearcher indexes all files on the network automatically based on installation settings, and then makes them available to users in DWF or PDF formats through any Web interface, who can then view and print the found files. Docupoint says indexing takes 3-12 seconds per file and runs as a background task. The Web interface is customizable by system administrators, as it is built from open HTML files. As an alternative, it can be integrated with Autodesk's free Design Review software.  Figure 1 Search results being returned by Docupoint   Doccpoint is fond of stating that its system is Google-like, and the interface certainly is, with a single input field, along with a button for Advanced Search. (See figure 1.) You can try out the software online, as well as download a demo version of the software from http://www.docupoint.com/projects.   Tailor Made Software by Ralph Grabowski While in Prague, I met up with Scott Taylor of Tailor Made Software. Even though  in North America we live two hours apart, we happened at the same conference in Europe. He wanted to show me the latest of what his software company is working on. As you can probably tell from the name, he specializes in writing software customized for clients. "Java is dying," he told me, "and since our CD Viewer software is based on Java, we are working on a non-Java viewer.  Everyone has to look for an alternative to Java, and in our opinion it is HTML5. We use SVG, however, for displaying graphics and JavaScript for programming. JavaScript is fantastic for this, because it is interpretive Java, and it has become a lot more popular recently in client-server cases." "We didn't like the accuracy of the HTML5 canvas [where HTML does its drawing in the Web page], so we went with SVG [XML-based scalable vector graphics]. SVG has the accuracy CAD needs and can do both raster and vector.  "One of our clients does intelligent lighting systems for office buildings. Our software lets him visualize heat from occupancy. We can take any drawing source, such as CAD drawings or PDF, then convert them to bitmaps -- well, bitmaps in this case because that's what the client wanted. Normally a CAD file would convert to a vector SVG. If the file size is not too large, then PNG can be used. For a given size, raster is more efficient than vector for complex drawings, but vector allows you to zoom in better where needed. "From the drawings, we identify the locations of sensors, and then we make them hot spots. The users click on sensor locations to get information about them. They can draw on top of the drawings, and so add data as new elements. Users can control lighting in each room by moving a software switch, and can set up lighting scenes [groups of lights according to time of day]. "The user is anyone who is an administrator in charge of lighting controls. They can even use an iPhone to change their lighting settings remotely. "The sensors detect movement, which shows occupancy: how many seconds ago someone moved within the realm of the sensor. Our system is updated in real time, so users can watch as people arrive at work and go home.  "A single sensor measures heat, movement, and amount of power used by each electrical outlet. Heat sensors indicate which rooms are warmer than others. The shape of the sensor is a cone, and can be wide (7') or narrow (3'). Some rooms have multiple sensors, such as conference rooms. "This [our] application is a visual aid for helping control intelligent lighting, but the framework can be used for any other type of business. The front-end software is a lightweight viewer that runs in any browser -- Android, iOS, any browser, even on older versions of browsers. It is a graphical canvas that at the back end allows us to import bitmaps, PDFs, and CAD files to show whatever is needed. http://www.tailormade.com And One More Thing... Remember Business Advantage? They're the research agency out of London and San Francisco who provided those eye-opening survey results I reported on in "The State of the MCAD Industry in 2015," upFront.Zine #874. They are now conducting their next global CAD trends survey. To start the survey, click http://5.79.25.7/Surveys/0009/0009_Survey.php. The survey takes 10 minutes. Business Advantage offers to provide a summary of the results for all those who take part in the survey (CAD vendor staff excluded). You are entered for a prize draw and a chance to win an iPad mini. Even More News Read the blog at WorldCAD Access as I write more about the CAD industry, and give tips on using hardware and software. You can also keep up with the blog through RSS feeds and email alerts.  I'm also on Twitter at @upfrontezine  throughout the day with late-breaking CAD news and wry commentary, such as.... upFront.eZine (@upFronteZine) Nov 20: "Autodesk Faces Topline Trouble in Earnings" -- 24/7WallSt. I predicted this a year ago due to ADSK's intolerance of perpetual licenses. upFront.eZine (@upFronteZine)  Nov 20: The more Autodesk cuts customers from perpetual licenses, the lower their revenue. Everyone who wants a subscription already has one. upFront.eZine (@upFronteZine)  Nov 20: Carl Bass: "Traditional P&L metrics like revenue...were driven by slightly more perpetual license sales than expected." OTOH... ..."Metrics like billings and total subscription additions were below our expectations [for Q3]."  upFront.eZine (@upFronteZine) Nov 20: "As a reminder, we'll stop selling new perpetual licenses for individual products on Feb 1 & most of the rest of the products August 1st." Thank You, Subscribers! Thank you to you subscribers who donate towards the operation of upFront.eZine. Should you wish to support upFront.eZine through PayPal, then the suggested amounts are like these: $25 for individuals > paypal.me/upfrontezine/25 $125 for small companies > paypal.me/upfrontezine/125 $500 for for large companies > paypal.me/upfrontezine/500 Or you can mail a cheque (US$ or CDN$ only, please) to upFront.eZine Publishing, Ltd., 34486 Donlyn Avenue, Abbotsford BC, V2S 4W7, Canada Letters to the Editor Re: When the Result of CAD is Failure Reading your posts and articles I came to a conclusion that you would be a guy who can put some dents in certain subjects that all of us, who are using CAD software, have been thinking about or having problems with. From almost day one I had many problems with hatching using AutoCAD. And from 90s till today there are still problems and errors, glitches. I am not sure how come that Autodesk never came out with a good hatching tool for all these years. I have no such problems when I use Bricscad and that just makes me more frustrating when I go back to AutoCAD. Anyhow, that is what I wanted to say -- and I feel a little better now. Cheers!     - Neb Radojkovic The editor replies: Hatching manually used to be the toughest drafting job, even worse than lettering. Sad when a computer does it more poorly than us with our straightedges!   - - - BCAD USA ‏@bcadusa  Nov 23: CAD is a great tool but engineers still need to THINK! Another thoughtful post by RG. @bricscad        - via Twitter - - -   You said, 'It is unwise to upgrade CAD systems during projects; always keep using the old system until the deliverables are complete'.  During the keynote address at SolidWorks World several years ago, it was blithely announced that a future release of SolidWorks would not be available as a stand-alone installation, but would only be available through Web servers, with a big advantage being that users would always be running the current release without having to go through the hassles of installing updates.  The silence from the audience was deafening. During one-on-one interviews later with company executives, they asked me why users didn't like this. My answer was almost word-for-word the same as your quote.  I went on to suggest that users would not want to arrive at work a day or three before the final delivery date of a major design project, only to be faced with a new interface and new file format.     - Bill Fane The editor replies: I read an another CAD exec (I don't recall who) excitedly say the same thing. He's looking forward to all his CAD users being on the same release, because that would  make things (like support and patches) so much easier for his company. - - - The first example of the smoke exhaust has nothing to do with CAD and everything to do with engineering.  The second example doesn’t make sense because making a radius larger will shorten the length of the wire, will it not? The third example with Saw Stop has nothing to do with CAD failing; many people have bought those so they can keep their fingers.  I looked on Design Engineering’s website to see if the original article had more information but I could not find the article on their site.     - Kent Elrod The editor replies: I consider simulation as part of CAD. As for Design Engineering, they had a change of ownership recently, and so things may be falling through the cracks. - - - I think that's backwards:  greater bend radius requires less actual length. But not really important. As for aircraft drawings being readable for 50 years, this doesn't only apply to aircraft. It applies to anything that has a longer half-life than a cellphone. For my money, it applies to anything with a longer half-life than a tuna sandwich. There is a lot of machinery in the world that is expected to last decades. We publish all of our drawings in PDF format, which we hope will be readable forever. We WISH we could count on CAD data being useable for decades, but don't have much hope of that actually happening.     - Jess Davis - - - KnowledgeSmart ‏@KnowledgeSmart  Nov 24: Loving this article from Ralph Grabowski @upFronteZine on when the result of #CAD is failure:http://tiny.cc/9qsp6x       - via Twitter - - - Very interesting read. Thanx! IMO (from an end-user perspective), the element of CAD software which is at the heart of most of my errors is data management. By data management, I mean the way the developers manage every piece of meta data (or fail to do so). By the time my projects reach completion, there's so much meta data invested into each and every file, that it requires a good program to manage it without the user having to go back to the beginning and re-check every piece of data to ensure it's all correct. This is especially true when changes are made after drawings are released.  Just think about it: If you change one part in a 1000-part general assembly, you have to track backwards every relationship of that ome part to the whole, and to every part/subassembly in between, which requires an enormous amount of extra work. Then you have to update your drawings to suit. WAY too much work. WAY big waste of time.  The more expensive programs do all that for you (like TEKLA does). That is what Autodesk and Solidworks should be doing. So, if software developers would focus on making their CAD products able to manage any piece of meta data, in any area it's used, with the same basic tools, which DO NOT require the CAD operator to have programming skills, I think a substantial % of errors would disappear. There are many of these pesky little details which daily eat-up our lives, yet none of the mid-range modeler developers seem to care about fixing them.      - Chris - - - What a FANTASTIC article! I have shared this all over the office and we are already beginning to look at what we need to do to move to a neutral output format for our [aircraft carrier] models and 2D drawings. Keep up the great work!     - Paul Hamor    Notable Quotable "You're a team player? That's nice. Do you have anything less generic?"     - @managerspeak on Twitter

When the Result of CAD is Failure (With Some Solutions)

Issue #880

by Ralph Grabowski Provided we use their software, CAD vendors promise us output-perfection. So why then do CAD-based designs screw up, costing manufacturers sometimes billions of dollars? The problem can be due to a flaw in the CAD software; but more likely mistakes stem from the ecosystem surrounding the software: the CAD operators, their managers, the design firm's culture, consultants who advise poorly, politicians in over their heads, and so on. Here are four of my favorite design horror stories, along with guidelines to avoid costly errors.   The Wire that Created Airbus's Billion-dollar Delay Perhaps the most embarrassing foul-up in computer-aided design's short history was the multi-billion dollar, multi-year delay in the debut of Airbus's giant A380 passenger aircraft. The problem itself was due to a change order involving electrical harnesses (those complete sets of wires with connectors at either end); the source of the problem might have been a consultant. (See figure 1.)  Figure 1 Example of wiring harness used in aircraft (Image credit BEA) Airbus manufactures aircraft parts in several countries, with the A380's final assembly taking place in France. To design the planes, the company usesDassault Systeme's Catia software, but during this time it was making the difficult transition from Catia V4 to Catia V5. Airbus hired IBM to write a translator so that divisions using the new V5 could read drawings from the old and very incompatible V4. IBM Consulting, however, faced delays delivering the translator, and so French operators using V5 were forced to re-input by hand drawings created with V4. This was a contributing error.  The #1 concern these days in aircraft design is lowering fuel consumption, and one way is to reduce the weight of aircraft parts. Part way through the design process, a decision was made to switch all wiring to lighter aluminum. This would save 10% in weight over copper, or 500kg (1,100 pounds) per aircraft. A shop in Germany designed and manufactured the harnesses using Catia V4, which meant the routing drawings could not be checked against the master plans in V5. When the harnesses arrived for installation in France, they were too short. The reason: aluminum wires require a greater bend radius than copper, and so have to be cut slightly longer overall. While the change had been made to the specification, the change was not reflected in the routing diagrams. This error cost Airbus billions in re-manufacturing costs, delayed deliveries, and lost sales. Solutions. It is unwise to upgrade CAD systems during projects; always keep using the old system until the deliverables are complete. Behemoths like Airbus and Boeing cannot follow this advice, because drawings used to design an aircraft needs to be readable for maintenance up to fifty years later. For this reason, Boeing is keen on neutral file formats (like STEP) so that they are not dependent on the vagaries of CAD software suppliers and their proprietary formats. When a direct translator is not ready, I recommend using a neutral format, which, being open, can more easily be extended and inspected.  (While Autodesk's new subscription-only policy would force manufacturers to upgrade their CAD systems repeatedly during long projects, I have noticed that Autodesk has frozen the DWG format at R2013; perhaps the same will be true for its other file formats.) The harnesses were made too short because at the manufacturing end someone forgot to recalculate the bend radii, while at the assembly end no one could check the routing information due to file format incompatibility. When a significant change is introduced to a design, I recommend doing a one-of prototype to check that the change will work.   Berlin's 21-year-old Non-operational Airport Following reunification, the city of Berlin found itself with three airports. The historic Templehof airport was shut down, and plans were made to replace the other two aging airfields with a new one. It would be a showcase suitable for the capital of the largest, most-prosperous county in Europe. (See figure 2.)   Figure 2 Brandenburg airport under construction in Berlin (Image credit Peri Slabs) Nearing completion in 2010, all of the airport's systems underwent testing: baggage, staffing, security, even people acting as passengers. The first system to fail significantly was smoke ventilation: passengers and staff were in danger of suffocating should a fire break out. "For aesthetics, designers decided that the terminal would have smoke extraction ducts in its roof, but not on its rooftop. In case of fire, smoke would be pumped from the roof into exhaust ducts running down and below the structure, requiring the natural rising behavior of hot air in the duct to be reversed. Achieving this on the scale necessary for this airport is a unique undertaking and, thus far, this elaborate [18km-long] smoke extraction system has not worked as planned," reported German news magazine Der Spiegel. After the ventilation supplier went bankrupt, the airport attempted to speed things along by proposing to hire 700 human fire spotters; this sadly hilarious solution was quickly rejected by the German agency responsible for building safety. Instead, entire walls are being torn down so that the ventilation can be rebuilt. The results are costs and delays even greater than for Airbus. The design and construction had expected to take 12 years and cost e2.8 billion (US$3 billion). But politics and favoritism, lawsuits and bankruptcies, bribery charges and firings, the ventilation problem, and other construction flaws (like incorrect wiring, uninsulated hot water piping, and rain leakage) increased the project cost to perhaps $11 billion and life to 21 years. At this point, an opening date still has not been announced. Meanwhile, it costs $12 million a month to keep the non-functioning airport humming. Nevertheless, the citizens of Berlin don't mind the delay, because the new airport is 18km further away from town and the old ones continue to operate just fine. Solutions. The person in charge of the new airport project had no construction experience, his other job being mayor of Berlin. A project this prestigious inevitably suffer from cost overruns and delays; it is a law of nature. I recommend that government-initiated projects become public-private partnerships, where a private project management and construction firm takes on the full risk, but then profits from the operation of the completed facility. This minimizes the problems created by political motivation, and protects tax payers from cost overruns. One of the reasons I left engineering was because it discourages innovation, which I wanted to implement. But it was best I did not. There are too many lives at risk should engineers be allowed to experiment with radical new designs -- such as ventilation systems that try to force smoke against its natural will, downwards. (I am guessing that someone wanted clean roof lines for the viewing pleasure of passengers on incoming aircraft.)  I recommend that engineers refuse to create designs that buck the laws of physics -- or common sense.    The Safest Saw No One Can Afford On to some smaller design missteps. A Solidworks World event several years ago featured the inventors of a table saw that stops instantly should a finger touches the blade. When it is demo'ed, a wiener is used instead of the demo jock's finger. (See figure 3.) Nevertheless, it's a pretty amazing invention and one you'd think would be a standard feature by now. But it's not. Figure 3 Checking the saw's brake with a finger-like weiner (Image credit Woodworking Adventures) I asked a friend, who runs a chain of tool stores, about it. It's just too expensive, he told me. The brake works by sensing the finger's natural electrical current, then slamming a chunk of metal into the saw, ruining it. So no other vendor has adopted the technology. Solutions. We see here a radical new idea (instant stop) costing too much, but then sparking the development of a cheaper solution after decades of design inertia. Some saws now employ an electric brake that briefly reverses the direction of the motor for a stop that takes a second or two. Not instant and not when a finger touches the blade, but it saves the saw and works when fingers are most likely to touch the blade: after the cut is finished, rather than during the cut. I recommend rethinking expensive solutions, because good-enough solutions become far more widely adopted, being more affordable than perfect solutions.     The Imperfectly Designed Perfect Toaster At another Solidworks World keynote, a pair of industrial designers from England showed us how they did their work. Instead of assuming how a consumer product should work, they spend a week watching how people use existing models -- to learn the good aspects and bad. They watch instead of ask, because people often give answers they think researchers want to hear. Only after spending a week observing do they begin developing the new design. One of their solutions was a new toaster: it has a slanted top. From watching people, they found that consumers wanted to be able to look inside to see how the toast was doing. Cool, I thought. The next time I needed a new toaster I bought their design; after all, I actually had met its designers! (See figure 4.) Figure 4: Tfal Avante slope-front toaster (Image credit Tfal) I quickly found that the slanted top is a pain. When the toaster is done, it shoots the toast out with force, often landing on the kitchen floor. As engineers, we know that 45 degrees is the ideal angle for maximizing projectile distance. Nor can I toast a third slice at the same time, because it slides off the sloping top. Plus, it's not particularly good at toasting: one side is always less done than the other, like every other toaster. In any case, I found I never needed to look inside to see how the toast is doing -- maybe that's just a British thing. Solutions. I like innovative improvements to otherwise mature products, like table saws and toasters. (My current favorite is the addition of a laser beam to mitre saws.) CAD, unfortunately, allows us to be innovative for the sake of marketing. That toaster with the slanted top certainly stands out on the retailers' shelves, but otherwise is a fail. I recommend designers employ a feedback loop, where radical new designs are tested in situ: does it solve the problems originally uncovered? Had the design duo done this, they would have found that it didn't work for consumers, and perhaps they could have turned their attention to the real problem: evenly toasting bread.    Conclusion CAD vendors are fond of trumpeting uses of the software that cleanly solve design problems. They are loathe to admit otherwise. So it becomes our job, as customers, to be ready to overcome their hubris. Just because we use CAD for design doesn't mean the design will work out for the customer. Nor can CAD software overcome post-design delays and human-induced problems. The solution is to be hyper aware of these limitations, to factor in incremental checking of radical changes, to even be ready to kill your pet project when it appears that the outcome won't match the initial expectation. No project is too big too fail.  [This article first appeared in Design Engineering magazine, and is reprinted with permission.] Sponsor: Okino Graphics == Professional 3D File Conversion/Viewing/Rendering Software == For over 2 decades Okino (Toronto) has provided mission-critical 3D conversion software used extensively by tens of thousands of professionals. We develop, support and convert between all major CAD, DCC & VisSim formats. Robert Lansdale (CTO, [email protected]) tailors each package to the specific conversion requirements of each customer. Popular formats include 3ds Max, Maya, C4D, LW, ProE, SolidWorks, Inventor, SketchUp, DWF/DWG, DGN, CATIA, IGES/STEP/Parasolid, 3D PDF/U3D, JT, FBX, Collada & more. We know data translation, and provide immaculate developer-to-customer relations. http://www.okino.com And One More Thing... I like it when a CAD vendor sends a cleverly-worded press release and so I am happy to share this one from CCE. Here is the text, edited by me for brevity: At a time when a lot is being written in the press about new cloud solutions for engineering data management, CCE found that a lot of SMBs [small and medium businesses] are too small to justify investing in an expensive PDM solution, however, they have enough product data in their organization to make version control and back-up a nightmare.  These customers are CAD-enabling Dropbox to manage product data across the organization. The part that is missing from Dropbox is its ability to handle engineering/CAD data. CCE's customers use the free CAD viewers available on CCE Labs to address that problem: EnSuite View and LAVA-Cat5. (See figure 5.) Figure 5: Home page for CCE Labs (Image credit CCE) "No knock on other new, cloud-based engineering data management products with multi-CAD support that supposedly do the exact same thing, since they likely use Dropbox infrastructure under the covers, but we have been able to successfully address this a long time ago without having to reinvent the wheel. So, Dropbox plus the free CAD viewers from CCE Labs is your engineering data management solution," said CCE vp of sales and marketing, Vinay Wagle. http://www.cadcam-e.com/CCELabs.aspx Note that these free products require an Internet connection so that CCE can send ads to the software. Even More News Read the blog at WorldCAD Access as I write more about the CAD industry, and give tips on using hardware and software. You can also keep up with the blog through RSS feeds and email alerts. Some of the posts from the last week: Autodesk settles with ZwSoft: the details  foto of the sunday: frozen leaves I'm also on Twitter at @upfrontezine  throughout the day with late-breaking CAD news and wry commentary, such as.... upFront.eZine (@upFronteZine) Nov 9: Remember when CAD execs excitedly told us our phones are more powerful than early NASA computers? Not seeing phones planning moon missions. Thank You, Subscribers! Thank you to you subscribers who donate towards the operation of upFront.eZine.  Ian Mackenzie: "Thanks for your thoughtful and balanced CAD commentary -- keep it up!" Should you wish to support upFront.eZine through PayPal, then the suggested amounts are like these: $25 for individuals > paypal.me/upfrontezine/25 $125 for small companies > paypal.me/upfrontezine/125 $500 for for large companies > paypal.me/upfrontezine/500 Or you can mail a cheque (US$ or CDN$ only, please) to upFront.eZine Publishing, Ltd., 34486 Donlyn Avenue, Abbotsford BC, V2S 4W7, Canada Letters to the Editor Re: State of European CAD I read in some of your recent articles that Graebert has a “secret” agreement with DS restricting our R&D in 3D. I apologize if I ever gave you this impression. SiteMaster BIM is already a counter-example but the main reason why we don’t concentrate our R&D on 3D is different: Graebert is simply customer-driven and we see currently that we can bring more value by investing in Mobile and Cloud. A student once asked me how Graebert could compete and survive against such large companies after so many years. My method is always the same:  Study the market  Invest soon enough in technologies before they become a must-have  In doing so we have something unique to offer, an opportunity to lead the market and have collaboration opportunities with industry leaders. It’s a head start.  I watch some of our competitors instead trying to catch up with mature technologies, such as 3D MCAD. The way I see it is that these segments of the market are already dominated by giants with infinite resources and years of R&D in advance.     - Wilfried Graebert, ceo     Graebert Gmbh, Germany   Re: Where SolidEdge is Heading "...are 61% happier... ​" I've heard it claimed that 83.7% of people are fascinated by statistics. and that 92.4% of all statistics are made up on the spot.     - Bill Fane Following is the source/background information on the Net Promoter Score referenced in John Miller's presentation at SEU15: Net Promoter Score (NPS) is one of the most widely accepted ways to measure customer satisfaction. It asks the question "On a scale of 0-10, how likely are you recommend product/service to a friend or colleague. The overall Net Promoter Score for Solid Edge is very good. And the score among users who frequently use Synchronous Technology is even better -- in fact, it is 61% higher than the NPS of those who do not.     - Kate Eby, public relations PLM     Siemens Another well-written issue! Your review of SEU 15 was very thorough and informative. Without your articles I don't think I'd even want to try to keep up with what's going on in the engineering and design technology space.     - David Stein I wanted to thank you for the mention in your latest issue and ask if you'd be willing to add a link to our site -- www.fra.me. We've had a lot of folks mention they can't easily find our site given the unique URL we're using. We'll be addressing that shortly, but it would be great if you can provide a direct link for now.     - Justin Boitano, vp of marketing     Fra.me   Notable Quotable "The physician can bury his mistakes, but the architect can only advise his clients to plant vines.”     - Frank Lloyd Wright     https://www.britannica.com/biography/Frank-Lloyd-Wright/article-supplemental-information  *7512

Where Solid Edge is Heading

Issue #879

 

by Ralph Grabowski This year marks the 20th anniversary of Solid Edge, 20 years since Intergraph's Project Jupiter launched a new mid-range MCAD package. This is why Solid Edge is headquartered in Alabama instead of, say, Siemens' hometown of Munich. The Solid Edge University 2015 conference theme was "Design without Boundaries," and started off with the keynote by Siemens PLM sr vp of mainstream engineering software John Miller. According to a survey, he told us, users who use the company's proprietary non-history Synchronous Technology are 61% happier with Solid Edge than those who don't. (See figure 1.) I asked for the source of the survey, but never heard back; maybe it was tongue-in check. Figure 1 Siemens PLM sr vp of mainstream engineering software John Miller giving us the 61% (Image credits Ralph Grabowski) Even if we don't know the source for the number, we know the reason for it: it's not easy for users to get into SynchTech, especially in an industry in which working with history-based MCAD has been normal for nearly two decades. Another tidbit from Mr Miller: There are now over 200 third-party developers who have add-ons for Solid Edge, a dozen or so who showed their products on the exhibit floor, which shared space with the breakfast hall. The online Solid Edge App Marketplace has "a nice selection, with more to come." Numbers-wise, I heard third-hand that "over 500" are at this conference, which matched my visual estimate in the main meeting room. (See figure 2.) It's a perpetual puzzle to me that the conference is so small when the company boasts of a half-million users. Figure 2 Attendees attending the Solid Edge University 2015 keynote Here are some notes I took from sitting in all the keynotes and attending some of the tutorial sessions.    Drafting Roundtable SE U15 this year had more courses than before, running eight parallel sessions over two days. One of them was a series of sessions titled "We're Listening Roundtables." Here attendees are encouraged to describe shortcomings in the software.  The topics included sheet metal design, drafting, data management, and assemblies and routing. I managed to attend the one dealing with drafting. "We are here to know how to make you more productive at drawing creation," said roundtable leader Ricky Black.  One attendee noted that the 3D mouse works everywhere, except in custom rotated views -- and he works in custom views all day long. Mr Black made note of the problem. Some of the problems mentioned by attendees are solved by upgrading to ST8, the current release of Solid Edge.   State of the Art Drafting Black also spent an hour providing tips on how to do 2D drafting with Solid Edge. When drafting, where do users spend most of their time: in drawing views, in tables, in 2D geometry --  no, most users spend most of their time in annotations, he reported.  That's because drawing view creation is fast these days. But not annotations, because of their intrinsic flexibility, which means complexity. Mr Black said Siemens PLM has been improving annotation over the last three releases, and will continue for future releases. In coordinate dimensions alone, Siemens has implemented 200 requests and problem reports. For example, empty callouts and text boxes were not being displayed, but could interfere with locating visible ones automatically. So, Siemens made them visible. But this led to the next problem in that users didn't know that those empty callout boxes represented. So Siemens added a toggle to display them or not. Solid Edge now even lets users specify their own error message for empty text boxes! TIP Here's a quick way to clean up drawing views: press Ctrl+A to select all entities, press Del to erase them, but then respond No to the dialog box that asks if you want the drawing views erased. Everything but the views are erased, including dimension, tables, and text.   Sheet Metal Design in Japan Ashish Kelkar presented a session on the state of sheet metal design in Japan. The normal there is for big companies to provide files to smaller manufacturing shops in non-ideal formats like STEP and even 2D.  In fact, most sheet metal design is still done in 2D. CADMAC, for whom Mr Kelkar works, is a Japanese company, and they find they have 8x more 2D customers of its sheet metal software than 3D customers.   Surface Modeling Synchronous technology is so important to Siemens PLM that it has become part of the Solid Edge name, as in ST [version] 8. Even though there were four courses at SEU15 dedicated to SynchTech, I was surprised to learn that it doesn't work in all areas of Solid Edge.  Most significantly, not in 3D surface modeling. Surfacing has to be done in "ordered" mode, because SynchTech removes the links between the model and the source sketches. Surfacing, however, needs to keep its source curves (or underlaying sketches) in order to be editable. Session hosts Dan Vinson and Doug Stainbrook hoped that one day in the future surfacing will also take advantage of SynchTech. In this session, I learned that Blue Dot is a special command unique to Solid Edge that connects the end of an open 3D curve to another 3D curve by finding the shortest 3D distance.   CloudCAD A Siemens PLM employee asked my opinion on cloud- and mobileCAD. I feel that they represent additional options for those customers who might want it. Siemens PLM now provides a "cloud" version of Solid Edge on an experimental basis for IP addresses in USA and United Kingdom through its online store. See http://www.plm.automation.siemens.com/plmapp/se/en_US/online/Shop.  This is not a true cloud product like Onshape, but simply streaming an instance running on servers maintained by Frame (nee Mainframe2). It works by very quickly pushing raster updates of the Solid Edge screen to your Web browser. I say "simply" because just about any software can be made to run on those servers, such as IntelliCAD. (See www.fra.me.)   Catchbook Back in upFront.eZine #872, I reported on ArcSite, a new Android app from Arctuition that applies constraints to straighten out and connect hand sketched curves. (See http://www.upfrontezine.com/2015/09/arcsite-first-mobilecad-to-draw-with-real-time-constraints.html) Well it turns out that they are not alone. Siemens PLM has Catchbook, simplified parametric software that also converts hand sketches into straight lines and proper curves. Siemens PLM director of innovation, research, and strategy Ken Hosch showed us how the company's D-Cubed DCM constraint manager convert freehand ink into lines, circles, arcs, ellipses, and splines. (See figure 3.) The software also edits the curves, recognizes written notes, places dimensions, uses a wiggle motion to erase, draws over imported images, and exports drawings as PDFs. Multiple drawings are stored in binders to create collections. Figure 3 Ken Hosch showing off the capabilities of CatchBook It's being made for Android, iOS, and Windows tablets. The software is close to going into public beta; to sign up, go to https://www.plm.automation.siemens.com/en_us/products/catchbook/ [Disclosure: Siemens PLM paid my airfare, hotel, and some meals.] And One More Thing... IronCAD LLC releases IronCAD 2016 with a new sketched bend command for sheet metal design, Smart eBehavior that optimizes designs dynamically, and offers a new Mechanical add-on meant for fabricators. See the full list of changes at http://www.ironcad.com/2016-new-features Even More News Read the blog at WorldCAD Access as I write more about the CAD industry, and give tips on using hardware and software. You can also keep up with the blog through RSS feeds and email alerts. These are some of the articles that appeared on WorldCAD Access during the last week: foto of the remembrance day: allied cemetery in germany  I'm also on Twitter at @upfrontezine  throughout the day with late-breaking CAD news and wry commentary, such as.... upFront.eZine (@upFronteZine) Nov 9: Remember when CAD execs excitedly told us our phones are more powerful than early NASA computers? Not seeing phones planning moon missions. Letters to the Editor Re: 3D Insider's European Forum 2015, Munich Thank you so much for the great coverage of the 3D Insider’s European Forum 2015 event! I wanted to send you a quick note to let you know of a few corrections for future reference: Figure 2 is a photo of Sanjeev Padmanabhan, our senior R & D manager for 3D modeling (not Viviken Iyengar). CGM Polyhedra is only currently available for 3D ACIS Modeler not CGM.     - Debra Layton, sr. marketing communications manager      Spatial - - -   That's an interesting concept [that decimation allows users to choose the level of data to work with]. We have a similar problem with vendor-supplied CAD files from engine manufacturers: their models contain far more detail than any of their customers need, and that makes the files so large and cumbersome that they are almost useless to us. We generally need to know outside envelopes, engine mount pads, intake and exhaust, and so on. What we get from Cat, Cummins, et al is a file that has the grade markings on every bolt head meticulously modeled, and crashes the software. And a few years ago I was griping that I couldn't get even a simple 2D side-view, because they didn't want that getting into the hands of their competitors. I've never heard a word of discussion about this in the mechanical CAD world, but now at least the architectural/building world is thinking about it. I think the word they've chosen is crazy: the precise definition of "decimate" is to remove a tenth. The fairly common misuse of it (lately legitimatized by the Miriam-Webster dictionary) is "to destroy."       - Jess Davis The editor replies: Most MCAD packages now include a function that reduces the detail of a 3D model precisely to eliminate unnecessary details and file size. Suggest to CAT, et al that they employ the command. If not, then a vendor-neutral package like SpaceClaim can do the job at your end.    - - -   Those are conformal cooling channels, Ralph. Not gas escape tubes. They cool the injected plastic more evenly, giving you a better part, and usually a slightly quicker cycle time.      - Al Dean, editor-in-chief + co-founder     DEVELOP3D Magazine, England   Re: How Bricsys is Advancing 3D Your comments about Bricsys employing Russian programmers concerns me. My employer bought BricsCAD a few years ago, and we are doing all our mechanical development on it.  I was under the impression that it was being developed in a "friendly country."   When I was searching for an application for my employer, I decided NOT to consider ZWCAD, because it is being developed in Communist China. A few years ago, the public learned that the designs for 26 major US weapons systems, developed at a cost of trillions of dollars, were stolen by the Chinese. How do we know that companies like ZWSoft, aren't putting code into their product that uploads customers' designs (as a background task) to the waiting arms of the Chinese military machine? Now I am concerned about BricsCAD. I suppose industrial spying could occur with software from ANY vendor in ANY country. But I think I have an obligation to do whatever I can to protect our intellectual property. One more thing..   You suggested that legal pressure from Autodesk, might have forced ZWSoft to stop selling their 2nd generation product, and return to marketing the product that was based on Intellicad Consortium common code. I spent a LONG time evaluating various vendors' Intellicad offerings, and found that they all were LOADED with bugs. I hounded the Consortium about this, and they eventually admitted to me that the common code used by all the vendors was the culprit. But no one was exerting much effort to fix the core code. The vendors were all busy adding new features, trying to differentiate themselves from the competition.        - Jim C. The editor replies: All software companies outsource their programming to Russia and India, even "trusted" names like Autodesk and Dassault Systemes. They do it (1) to save money over local programmers and (2) because Russians and Indians are excellent at math. I agree with your concern over IP protection. Problem is that the biggest source of leakage occurs just by our computers being connected to the Internet -- IP tracking, cookies, and so on. - - -   If you use CAD/D, here's another thoughtful read by Ralph Grabowski. Bricsys is advancing the state of 3D by leveraging DWG - the universal CAD format.     -Don Strimbu     via Linked-in    Exciting new developments in an industry that has never stagnated and whose applications have always been innovative. And Ralph Grabowski has always been on the front lines, and a great resource for all. Yes, interesting read!     - Sam Hochberg     via Linked-in - - -   Just in case if Dmitry did not inform you his translation into Russian of your paper about Bricsys:   http://isicad.ru/ru/articles.php?article_num=18147 . Also, I translated your interview with Spatial at http://isicad.ru/ru/articles.php?article_num=18163 . Related in my blog [in Russian]: http://levin-isicad.blogspot.ca/2015/11/spatial-dassault-systemes.html     - David Levin, co-founder     isicad, Russia - - -   Your Bricsys article is your best writing in a long time. I should steal from it shamelessly.     - Name withheld by request   Re: Why the Cloud? Mr. Davis is a paying customer, so he is not first on the list of priorities for Autodesk (if that is the software company about which he is writing).  Autodesk began the push toward the cloud in the early 2000s, when software piracy was rampant.  Autodesk's goal was -- and is -- to stop piracy, because it cuts into the bottom line. This is the main purpose of the cloud software model.   The cloud is NOT for the benefit of the designer end user. The main benefit of the cloud is to Autodesk’s the bottom line, and from there, the shareholder. (Autodesk does promote the mobility aspect heavily, without explaining how to do design with two fingers on a tablet.) Become a shareholder and you will receive the benefits of Autodesk’s business model, along with a little payback on your investment.     - Peter Lawton The editor replies: The master plan by Autodesk is to exert greater control over customers, certainly enough. When I speak with competitors, they cannot fathom taking away choice from customers. I predict declining revenues for ADSK. Thank You, Subscribers! Thank you to you subscribers who donate towards the operation of upFront.eZine. Should you wish to support upFront.eZine through PayPal, then the suggested amounts are like these: $25 for individuals > paypal.me/upfrontezine/25 $125 for small companies > paypal.me/upfrontezine/125 $500 for for large companies > paypal.me/upfrontezine/500 Or you can mail a cheque (US$ or CDN$ only, please) to upFront.eZine Publishing, Ltd., 34486 Donlyn Avenue, Abbotsford BC, V2S 4W7, Canada   Notable Quotable "Reporters don’t just find facts; they look for narratives. And an appealing narrative can exert a powerful gravitational pull that winds up bending facts in its direction."     - Jonathan Mahler     http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/18/magazine/what-do-we-really-know-about-osama-bin-ladens-death.html

7529

3D Insider's European Forum 2015, Munich

Issue #877

 

by Ralph Grabowski Spatial is best known for ACIS, the oldest of all 3D geometric kernels still in common use. Many of Autodesk 3D products, for example, are based on an offshoot of ACIS. In 2000, Spatial was acquired by Dassault Systemes, and as a result acquired in recent years a new role: being the distributor of technology developed by Dassault Systemes.     Figure 1 Attendees at the annual 3D Insider's Forum, Munich (All photographs Ralph Grabowski) When we speak of Dassault technology, we mean CGM, the geometric kernel used by its Catia modeling software and other products. (CGM is short for "convergence geometric modeler.") Spatial offers the following software to CAD and CAM vendors, in addition to ACIS: CGM Core Modeler kernel CDS constraint solver CGM HLR hidden-line removal add-on 3D InterOp translator CGM Polyhedra non-precise modeler (new) HOOPS visualization (licensed from Techsoft 3D) Plus other add-ons, like deformable modeling, advanced covering (n-sided surfaces), defeaturing, and 3D meshing of surfaces and volumes Because ACIS and CGM are very different from each other, Spatial has a bit of a job to get CGM technology working with ACIS. So far, they have ported the following CGM modules to ACIS: Polyhedra 2D CDS HLR (due to replace PHL by 2017) CGM Polyhedra is only currently available for 3D ACIS Modeler, not CGM. What's New from Spatial 3D Insider's Forum is Spatial's annual customer event, whose location alternates each year between USA and Europe. This year, it was held in Munich, Germany. Here we get to learn where Spatial is heading with it software components. For this year, Spatial is improving ACIS by adding multi-threading to stitching, making it 10x faster. In model checking, ACIS now reports duplicated edges and overlapping faces; in both cases, a tolerance can be specified. Offset operations are made more powerful by completing their work, reporting on failed offsets.  While we learned about Spatial's plans for future releases of ACIS, I cannot report on them, because they are confidential. The big news was Spatial's foray into non-precise modeling, following 17 years of precise modeling. Polyhedra is the name of the technology brought over from Dassault, and now made available as an add-on to ACIS and CGM. More about Polyhedra in the Q&A that follows. The other item new at the 3D Insider Forum was the switch at the top of the company. Jean-Marc Guillard was leaving after 5 years, returning to his home country of France. Replacing him is the company's vp of marketing and business development, Linda Lokey. Her ambition for Spatial's customers is to "make building 3D applications as easy as building Legos."   Q&A While in Munich, I had the opportunity to interview Spatial vp of R&D Vivekan Iyengar and product manager of modeling Brian Rhodes. (See figure 2.)     Figure 2 Spatial Sr R&D Manager Sanjeev Padmanabhan presenting at 3D Insider's Forum Ralph Grabowski: Tell me how you work with Dassault. How do you decide which technology to adopt from their 3DExperience suite? Spatial: 3DExperience has a suite of technology inside. We look inside it, and see which ones are useful for our customers. We take the base technology from them, and then apply it to additive-separative technology. It is an a la carte approach: we take the pieces that have value to our customers. We got from them the polyhedral component, and then bundled it to make it hybrid [non-precise and precise modeling offered in one kernel]. Others in the industry have polyhedral modeling, but we are the first to bundle it this way. Our job is to provide both precise and non-precise modeling in the kernel so that our customers can use them. Grabowski: Why is the new technology you announced today described as "polyhedral"?  Spatial: We have been helping people creating precise models. Our software turns exact digital models into exact physical products. But there is another version, the existing model, which is physical. Our world does not live in exact models, as so our Polyhedral software takes non-exact physical products into digital format. [Polyhedral is a plural of polyhedron.] If we want to be a 3D company, then we have to do everything that is 3D, including handling physical models. Usually the object is scanned, converted to a polyhedral triangulated mesh, and then worked on in a 3D CAD modeler as if it were a regular ACIS model.  For instance, you can slice the model in half, add conformal cooling channels, create the mold, and then slice the model to send it to a 3D printer, if need be. (See figure 3.) Or model a removed sternum, replacing it with a 3D printed one.     Figure 3 Left to right: Scanned polyhedral model split in two, conformal cooling channels added, mold created (Image source Spatial) One of the pieces of input that is very important is healing. The scan and the resulting STL data are usually quite imperfect. We did a lot of work on making sure we could fill slivers and gaps. I firmly believe that the world is moving towards combing additive and subtractive manufacturing. We have a very big subtractive manufacturing machine maker already adopting Polyhedral, and we only announced it in September [2015]. This week [at 3D Insider's Forum] was our first formal introduction to customers, we are seeing strong interest from the customers here. We have two forms of Polyhedra: one, is for users who want a one-stop solution; the other is where everything is configurable by users, who are shown a list of all the instances.  I would like to add that historically we have done a very good job combining our 3D Interop [translator] with ACIS. We want to do the same with hybrid [precise + non-precise] modeling. We want to support all polyhedral formats. Grabowski: How do you see hybrid modeling working with BIM?  Spatial: All existing buildings are scanned with polyhedral output, and then brought into CAD systems. An important aspect with large structures is decimation. When we scan an existing building, we get a massive amount of data. So the decimation allows users to choose the level of data to work with. This decreases the file size, which makes it easier to share.  Grabowski: What about running ACIS and other products on tablets? I suspect their CPUs not optimized to do solid modeling operations onboard.  Spatial: We are interested in it; we have proof of concepts going on. ACIS and CGM work very well on servers. We are trying to determine what is the best blend of what operates on the tablet, and what operates on the server. Complex geometric operations might best be performed on the remote server, and so we are working on cloud-tablet integration. There is no point making the tablet work harder than it has to.  We are looking at allowing our customers to run our software on Windows or Linux servers, to look at displaying the model in an HTML5 browser. We will see what is practical in a couple of years on a smartphone.  Grabowski: What about the ECAD [electrical CAD] market? Spatial: We have not looked at ECAD formats, we are still primarily in the mechanical space. Grabowski: 3D Interop is your second biggest selling software. Has the translation problem been solved? Spatial: No, not all. The biggest job of a translation is not translation; the goal has to be data reuse [which involves further translation]. Downstream engineering applications have to be able to reuse CAD data. Now we are discussing process automation: geometry along with all metadata, like PMI [product manufacturing information]. We want to be able to import all data in BOMs and in user-defined attributes.  Piping is one new example of metadata support. We now support all data from process and plant layout models.  http://www.spatial.com [Disclosure: Spatial provided me with one night's hotel stay and some meals.]   Additional Coverage 3D Insiders European Forum: Live Blog -- http://www.worldcadaccess.com/blog/2015/10/3d-insiders-european-forum-live-blog.html 3D IE Forum: Tips and tricks for 3D InterOp -- http://www.worldcadaccess.com/blog/2015/10/3d-ie-forum-tips-and-tricks-for-3d-interop.html 3D IE Forum: What's Next in 3D Modeling -- http://www.worldcadaccess.com/blog/2015/10/3d-ie-forum-whats-next-in-3d-modeling.html And One More Thing... Siemens PLM Software releases version 28.0 of its Parasolid 3D geometric modeling component. Improvements are to be found in blending, surface modeling, and general modeling, such as deleting blends in locally non-manifold bodies. More info through http://www.plm.automation.siemens.com/en_us/products/open/parasolid/v28.shtml Even More News Read the blog at WorldCAD Access as I write more about the CAD industry, and give tips on using hardware and software. You can also keep up with the blog through RSS feeds and email alerts. These are some of the articles that appeared on WorldCAD Access during the last week: Q&A with boths CEOs of Dassault Spatial Bricked twice  I'm also on Twitter at @upfrontezine  throughout the day with late-breaking CAD news and wry commentary, such as.... upFront.eZine (@upFronteZine) Nov 5: 3D printer companies suffering losses: 3D Systems has $32 million loss; Stratasys has $938 million loss. Thank You, Subscribers! Thank you to you subscribers who donate towards the operation of upFront.eZine.        Ramesh Madhumati  Should you wish to support upFront.eZine through PayPal, then the suggested amounts are like these: $25 for individuals > paypal.me/upfrontezine/25 $125 for small companies > paypal.me/upfrontezine/125 $500 for for large companies > paypal.me/upfrontezine/500 Or you can mail a cheque (US$ or CDN$ only, please) to upFront.eZine Publishing, Ltd., 34486 Donlyn Avenue, Abbotsford BC, V2S 4W7, Canada   Notable Quotable ...journalism as three buckets of "what," "so what" and "now what."     - Chris Cillizza, Why Grantland mattered to journalism     https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2015/10/30/why-grantland-mattered-to-journalism/

*7548

This is How Bricsys is Quietly Advancing 3D

Issue #876

 

by Ralph Grabowski

We've seen MCAD vendors reinvent 3D software several times since the dawn of CAD. Most famous of all was the unleashing of Pro/Engineer and its history-based parametrically-driven design environment, which forever changed the way MCAD was done. Other significant paradigm shifts came from SpaceClaim's anti-Pro/E direct modeling and Autodesk's Fusion of desktop and server-based calculations.

What happens when you give Russian programmers a blank slate, asking them to yet again reinvent 3D CAD? Well, not a fully blank slate; even Pro/E's approach -- also developed by Russian programmers -- was based on earlier work in parametrics from England. So let's put it another way: what happens when you ask them to write algorithms for an ideal 3D CAD approach.

The mathematicians who work at Siberian consulting firm LEDAS had been working on parts of Catia and other software from Dassault Systemes. This gave them the space to think about how 3D CAD ought to work. To anyone who would listen (and frankly there were not many), they evangelized this trinitarian system:

• Direct modeling and editing -- handles any kind of model, native or imported
• 3D constraints and parametrics -- controls elemental relationships, and provides configurations
• Design history -- remembers how the designer arrived at his creation, without the curse of the history tree

When LEDAS implemented their philosophy as software, it found modest success as an add-on to Rhino and SketchUp. What they needed was a savior to believe in them.
 

Bricsys Tech Russia

Big companies expend their energy catering to shareholder opinions. Small companies have no such worry, and so get to energize their passions. I wrote last week about the passion of Robert Graebert to expand his brilliant OS/hardware-independent CAD system onto everything through OEMing -- but limited in areas related to 3D due to an arrangement with major licensee Dassault Systemes. 

Enter Bricsys, a company that in one form or another has been around since 1999. Four years ago, they aqui-hired staff and intellectual property from LEDAS, forming Bricys Tech Russia. CEO Erik de Keyser gave programmers this instruction: Make BricsCAD the leading 3D CAD program by 2020. Notice I didn't write "MCAD"; Bricsys wants to dominate in both BIM and MCAD through that triad developed earlier by LEDAS. (Bricsys is, for now, ignoring mobileCAD and cloudCAD, but are on simultaneous release schedules for the Windows and Mac versions of BricsCAD, with Linux also available.)

So, what can a relatively tiny company in Belgium bring to the table that should make the Solidworks and Revits of the world bother noticing? A break from the rigors of history-based modeling (not a new idea) based on the DWG file format exclusively (also not new). It's the combination of the two that makes Bricsys' future possible. 

CAD systems that bring something new to the table -- think of ones like SpaceClaim and Onshape -- are housed on the foundation of new, incompatible file formats so that they can make a complete break from the limitations of the past. By contrast, BricsCAD sits on the universal CAD format, DWG, and then uses an optional add-on to translate parts and assemblies to and from major MCAD formats:

• Import and export STEP, IGES, VDA-FS, Catia V4 and V5
• Import Parasolid, IAM and IPT (Inventor), PAR and PSM (Solid Edge), PRT (NX), ASM and PRT (Creo and Pro/E), SLDASM and SLDPRT (Solidworks)
• Export 3D PDF

Figure 1
BMW Welt, Munich, hosting last month's Bricsys International Conference 2015
(All photos by Ralph Grabowski)
 

BricsCAD V16

One fact that makes us sit up and notice Bricsys is that it spends 43% of its revenues on research and development. (See figure 2.) Other CAD vendors spend 25% or less.
 

Figure 2
CEO Erik de Keyser revealing R&D spending by Bricsys
 

The result of this spending is that BricsCAD V16 offers users these functions:

• Command, file, and API compatibility with AutoCAD
• Wireframe, surface, and solid modeling
• Direct and deformable modeling and editing
• Assemblies, including import of assembly structures from other MCAD systems
• Drawing view extractions from 3D models
• 2D and 3D constraints and parameters
• BIM modeling with IFC import and export
• Sheet metal design with CNC export (an optional add-on) 
• (See http://bricsys.com/common/releasenotes.jsp for the full list)
• 1,200 members of a no-charge third-party developer network

Building on a single platform means Bricsys need only write functions once for multiple disciplines, something that an Autodesk cannot do for a Revit or an Inventor. For instance, constraints and drawing views are equally valid for BIM and MCAD designs.

All at a cost that makes a year's worth of $100 monthly rentals look overpriced:

• BricsCAD Platinum is $990
• Communicator translation add-on is $610

Not that this effort is isolated to inside of Bricsys. The company is said to be the most active participant in the Open Design Alliance, meaning some of the stuff they come up with is being distributed more widely among the 1,260 members of the ODA. (See figure 3.) In one area, expect an earthquake of an announcement in a year's time. 
 

Figure 3
ODA presenting at Bricsys International Conference 2015
 

Russian programmers, given a challenge, like exceeding it.
http://www.bricsys.com

 

Update: Autodesk vs ZwSoft

Autodesk in March 2014 launched a lawsuit against ZwSoft of China, claiming that its ZWCAD+ software used programming code taken directly from AutoCAD. Autodesk made the claim based on ZWCAD+ exhibiting identical buggy behavior during certain obscure operations. Autodesk asked a judge in Holland to order an immediate halt to ZwSoft distributing its software; the judge refused, saying the case was too complex for a snap decision. He ordered that the two sides arrange to inspect the ZWCAD+ code. You can read some court documents athttps://www.scribd.com/pzchen72.

Since I first reported on the case, I get asked once in a while where the suit is at. One source recently suggested to me that the two sides were in the settlement stage. We now have a strong hint that Autodesk is prevailing: we need only to read between the lines of a press release issued last month by ZwSoft. The company appears to be celebrating the 15th anniversary of its CAD software; see http://www.zwsoft.com/zwcad/press-release/20151014/ZWCAD_Classic_Witnesses_the_15th_Anniversary_of_ZWSOFT_Flagship_Product_ZWCAD.html.

But...

ZwSoft is re-releasing its first generation software (now named "Classic"), which was based on IntelliCAD. It is working on a third-generation product, presumably one that is free of code from the ITC or allegedly from AutoCAD. The second generation ZwCAD+ is no longer available at the company Web site. (See figure 4.) ZwCAD 2017 is listed as "Coming soon." 
 

Figure 4
Software available today on the ZwSoft Web site

 

In summary:

• ZwCAD (1st-gen code) is re-released as "Classic"
• ZwCAD+ (2nd-gen code) is pulled from the market
• ZwCAD 2017 (3rd-gen code) is in development to replace the first two generations

I asked a contact at ZwSoft about the case, and received no reply. I asked Autodesk, and they replied that they don't comment on ongoing cases -- indicating that the case is ongoing, and not yet resolved.

PS: Also ongoing is the ITC's lawsuit against Gstarsoft of China.

 

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And One More Thing...

 

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Altair is shipping SimLab 14.0 with a new user interface for performing solid meshing. The analysis software automates meshing and modeling tasks so that they don't need to be done manually. (See figure 5.) And we all know how error-prone we humans are. New UI elements include Japanese language support, ribbon interface, improved optimization workflow, redesigned dialogs, and a customizable toolbar. It runs on Windows and Linux, and so has the same UI on both.

Figure 5
Analysis being performed by SimLab
(Image credit Altair)
 

You can learn what's new through their Webinar this week; register at  http://web2.altairhyperworks.com/simlab14

Even More News

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Read the blog at WorldCAD Access as I write more about the CAD industry, and give tips on using hardware and software. You can also keep up with the blog through RSS feeds and email alerts. These are some of the articles that appeared on WorldCAD Access during the last week:

• Q&A with a Sr Product Manager of Corel Corp
• Q&A with the CEO of Graebert Gmbh
• Live blogging Solid Edge University 2015 

I'm also on Twitter at @upfrontezine  throughout the day with late-breaking CAD news and wry commentary, such as....

upFront.eZine (@upFronteZine)Oct 29 "PTC divides into 2 divisions. Solutions and Technology Platforms. IoT so big to PTC's future that it gets to be the other new division."

Letters to the Editor

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Re: What the ODA is Doing 

Is Prague beautiful or what? Thank you for your diligence in keeping us informed. Quote me on that.
    - Tom Fay, key account executive
    Ketiv
 

Re: The State of MCAD

As an industry analyst I always read your newsletter to keep perspective on events and trends. A question if you will please about 'The State of MCAD'. Did the survey pick up any interest in search applications for Design Reuse? It might have been in the PDM category. For instance, I see gallons of publicity for Exalead's OnePart, but not much about successful use. 
    - Dick Bourke
    Bourke Consulting Associates

The editor replies: I saw no results for design reuse, and so that might be a topic for Business Advantage to add to their survey. As for products like Exalead, I think there is far less demand from users than CAD vendors think. It's like of like voice input: nice to have in theory, but ultimately not practical. LEDAS is another company working on parts shape comparisons: http://ledas.com/group/press_releases/?press_num=214
 

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This is the best analysis of the CAD business that I've ever read. "Highly-hyped technologies... suffer from low use and low importance." That is exactly what you get when you let your tech people make your marketing decisions: 'Because We Can'. While it seems to work as an all-purpose design rationale for German car companies, isn't really a valid strategy for CAD software companies, apparently.

Remember the very popular video (from some TV show) where they 3D printed a 12-inch crescent wrench, and pretended to use it as an actual wrench? And pretended that the CAD "operator" modeled it in just a few minutes? And pretended to print it in just a few more minutes?

Nobody ever comes up with reasons FOR doing cloud-based software. It's not just emerging countries with poor infrastructure, but also rural Oklahoma where I live. I checked my download speed today: 0.61mbps. Think the cloud will work for me?

Computing power at my desk is dirt-cheap. Memory at my desk is dirt-cheap. Hard-drive storage at my desk is dirt-cheap. The only part of my whole entire CAD experience that is expensive is the transportation of bits. Oh, and the software. Absolutely wonderful to read stuff by someone who gets it. Keep up the great work!
    - Jess Davis, president
    Davis Precision Design
 

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Good article http://eepurl.com/bAHtc5 from @upFronteZine with a survey showing the High Usage and High Importance attached to #PLM #PDM
    - DesignDataManager 
    ‏@DDM_PLM via Twitter
 

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I wanted to thank you very much on behalf of all of us at Business Advantage for reading and reviewing our annual CAD Trends Survey.  We have taken note of your suggestions on 2D Drafting and CAM, as well as geographic coverage. We are in the process of preparing the latest iteration of the survey to send out and will try to incorporate your suggestions.

By the way, if you’d like us to analyze an area of the data from a particular perspective that would interest you and/or your readers, we’d be pleased to do that for you, provided we have enough data in the survey to give you meaningful results. If there is anything you’d like, or analysis you think you might like, please do let me know. 
     - Bill Gordon, VP Business Development
      Business Advantage

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That is quite an issue you put together, congratulations.
    - Herbert Grabowski
 

Re: State of European CAD: My Travel Notes

I translated (a part of) your fresh newsletter in Russian at http://isicad.ru/ru/articles.php?article_num=18123.
    - David Levin, chairman of the board
    LEDAS
    
Great content, sir. Thanks for sharing it with the world.
    -Tunc Sahin 

Notable Quotable

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"We... ask ourselves, how can we make this better? You’d be surprised at how often the answer to those questions is to not do anything. If users want their applications and screens to look different, they’ll download the app they want. Android’s great flexibility lets you do this..."
    - Seang Chau, senior vp of software engineering, Motorola
    http://www.greenbot.com/article/2933474/android-influencer-motorolas-seang-chau-chats-bloatware-and-motorolas-lack-thereof.html