upFront.eZine News Archives

Where BIM Hasn’t Gone

Issue #899

 

From the Editor This week I am in Chicago for the Vectorworks Design Summit, being held Monday-Wednesday at the Fairmont Hotel,  Millennium Park. I plan to blog live from the event on WorldCAD Access, and then report more fully in a future issue of upFront.eZine. See http://www.vectorworks.net/design-summit. And elsewhere... See that #899 above? It means that next week is a double-anniversary for upFront.eZine: the 900th issue and 21 years of publishing since May 1, 1995. We'll run a special issue next week that looks back at the history of CAD during one very special year. As always, all 899 of our our back issues are available for your perusal at http://www.upfrontezine.com.

Where BIM Hasn’t Gone Guest Editorial by Peter Mann

I was pleased to see your article about BIM inhttp://www.upfrontezine.com/2016/02/the-tao-of-bim-being-data.html. BIM[building information management] is the natural development of CAD for the construction industry, and so is worthy of discussion. I agree with much that Allan Partridge of CanBIM said, especially his comment that the information part of the BIM mnemonic is data, not documents. It is also commendable that awareness among the Canadian players is established. I have observed projects in Canada going to international organisations that can talk the talk, even if they are no more capable than local ones. Allan is also correct in pointing out that some government initiatives build awareness and create an export opportunity, and that CanBIM developing that local awareness is worthwhile.  Over the past few years, it has been interesting to see where the leading BIM usage has occurred. In the 1990s, the procurement process in the UK resulted in all disciplines working together and coordinating their design decisions, although technology lagged. With CAD and relational databases we were attempting BIM before it was known as "BIM." Today with programs, like Revit, better databases and the cloud all contribute to what can be achieved.    Back in the USA Back in the 1990s I visited the US to show them my CodeBook software. At that time, there was little interest in BIM, because design teams worked in isolation. Builders coordinated the documents of the various parties before they could begin construction. Autodesk contributed greatly to the advancement of BIM, partly with Revit [which they acquired in 2002], but more importantly they spent a large amount of their marketing budget on educating the industry as to the benefits of coordination and what BIM can be. The result was greater awareness of BIM in the USA. It was embraced by some USA government organisations, and some design teams took the lead as they experienced the benefits. I am not sure, however, that since then it has been adequately mandated by government organisations in the USA or proactively encouraged. Although organisations are implementing BIM, it is to achieve benefits within their remit, rather than to the overall project’s outcome.   Meanwhile in England In the UK, government laid out a timetable with deadlines for which data should available and what deliverables should be provided. This stimulated design teams through the reality of needing to comply with and understand the BIM framework. However, too much discussion is on the technical rather than the conceptual implementation of why-BIM.  As a result, we have deliberations over the choice of Cobie, IFC, or other standards. While these debates are necessary, they distract from the central issue, which should be about the Why and the How. The current situation appears to be that the required outputs can be rather onerous project deliverables, rather than a beneficial contribution to the process of creating and running a successful facility. Usually, the data created by design and construction teams is what each party needs to merely fulfil their roles in the process. This often is just a placeholder for the data the facility owner needs, rather than the actual data with its high-value benefits, such as asset details, serial numbers, and commissioning dates.   Improvement Needed For BIM It’s easy for the BIM evangelist community to focus on developing standards that move data from one piece of software to another, but I believe a strong educational voice is still needed for building and facility managers. This should develop the understanding by client and facility owners of the benefits of what BIM data should contain, so they can specify what information they need and then budget for the cost of collecting the data.  The misconception about BIM is that it includes the entirety of the project as constructed. In reality, this is not the case, because the only information in BIM models is the data that the contributors need to carry out their role -- whether architect, mechanical and electrical engineers, or contractors. The data contained is generic, even that provided by the contractor, such as procurement and cost data, and may not actually reflect what was installed, and where.   It is less common that we have seen the concept of BIM taken through to provide a fully operational BIM that contains the information needed to feed into asset management programs that produces maintenance work orders and cost effective management of the facility. Yet it costs so much more to collect model and serial numbers, warranty dates, and so on at a future date. Another use of the information part of BIM for complex projects is to prove compliance. For each room in the project there needs to be a check and record kept that the constructed room meets the performance requirements of the program.  (A brief mention of my software: The design team collects and coordinates production information among them, and then links the information with Revit and AutoCAD. CodeBook provides contractors access to useful data directly, which they link to their procurement and estimating systems. This has been especially useful for PPP [private-public partnership] projects, where the construction team is involved early and so knows that they need to ask for the data they require upfront.)  [Peter L Mann heads up CodeBook Solutions at www.CodeBookSolutions.com]

And One More Thing...

BIM software firm Vectorworks acquires PanzerCAD for its CamerMatchplug-in. The plug-in matches perspective views of designs with photographs of sites by aligning 3D views of the model with info contained in the photo's meta data and so on. (See figure below.) PanzerCAD founder and developer Matt Panzer joins Vectorworks as an architectural product planner. The acquisition price was not announced. http://www.panzercad.com

Even More News

There's more at our WorldCAD Access blog about the CAD industry, tips on using hardware and software, and our popular travelogues. You can keep up with the blog through its RSS feed and email alert service. Seeworldcadaccess.com. We're on Twitter at @upfrontezine with late-breaking CAD news and wry commentary throughout the day, such as.... upFront.eZine (@upFronteZine) Apr 11: "Mmm...PR talk: 'Companies in all industries adapting to the disruption fueled by customer demand for experiences instead of simply products'." Jim Wright (@JimWright2) Apr 11:  "Sounds like something @managerspeak would say..."  Management Speak (@managerspeak) Apr 11: "Because companies never had customers before 'disruption'."

Letters to the Editor

Re: Convergent Science Automates CFD Meshing You’ve written about something I know a lot about, so I have to ask: when you say:                  “After gaining 90% market share in North America...” Exactly which market does Convergent have 90% of?     --Dennis Nagy     BeyondCAE.com The editor replies: I asked Convergent Science about your question, and they responded. We currently have 90% of the internal combustion market (OEMs and engine builders).     - Rob Kaczmarek, Director of Global Marketing      Convergent Science Mr Nagy responds: They're probably playing semantics: for example, if there were ten auto OEMS/engine builders and nine of them had a license or two of Converge (along with dozens or even hundreds of seats of STAR-CCM+ and ANSYS/Fluent), then they could say they have 90% ("9 out of 10 use our software"), but their revenue from the internal combustion market might be only 5% of the total CFD revenue in that segment. No one has/compiles accurate enough quantitative data on any one segment of an industry. I've been involved enough during my career in trying to gather accurate CAE data by industry/segment/geography to be willing to bet any amount on that.  So independent industry analysts/bloggers need to be wary of passing on such claims without challenging them to supply some credible detail. Mr Kaczmarek replies: I would welcome Dennis to ask his contacts at GM, FORD, Chrysler Group, CAT, Cummins, John Deere, Toyota, Daimler, Delphi, Eaton, FEV, Honda, Continental, COX, DAF, and even the Department of Energy what they use for internal combustion CFD and he can get validation. A limited version of CONVERGE is shipped with GT-SUITE, so we could say that 99.99999999% of the internal combustion market has CONVERGE, but I was giving a conservative statement around our market share and people actually actively using it!   - - -   Your Convergent Science article was fascinating. I had never heard of them.       - N.S.R. - - -   I could find little information about whether Convergence is implementing any sort of GPU computing in their CFD solutions. Some other folks seem to like it, because it can significantly shorten processing times, such as : http://www.nvidia.com/object/computational_fluid_dynamics.html http://www.hpcwire.com/off-the-wire/ansys-nvidia-deliver-gpu-accelerated-cfd-solver http://www.fluidyna.com Does Convergence have any plans to move in this direction? Thanks as always for your solid reporting.      - Peter Lawton Rob Kaczmarek of Convergent Science replies: We do support GPUs. The work was done with a LLNL [Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory] and NVIDIA partnership. Mr Lawton responds: Thanks. That would be in keeping with the actions of smart people.   Re: Bricsys CEO Responds How Bricsys Plans to Conquer 3D FWIW AutoMATE needs to change focus, and BricsCAD seems to be it! Revit is a dead-end for Amate, and there is the rest of the world! And yet, Autodesk seems willing to change its developer charges by over 50%! Maybe the real-world is catching up with them. We'll see.     - Larry Brock

Thank-You to Our Readers

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Notable Quotable

"Therefore, I'm now going to disclose a very sad secret of our [reporting] trade. That's the state of affairs, mostly. Everyone's copying from everybody else, and that's not always helpful when one strives to establish the truth."     - Marko Langer, 'Panama Papers' expose copycat journalism      http://dw.com/p/1IPCn  *7257

Readers Respond: The Future of Autodesk, After October 1

Issue #897

 

Our issue on Coming October 1: Autodesk's Future is Different (upFront.eZine #894) was the most-read one over the last 12 months. And so we got a lot of letters from readers, which we share with you here. A reminder that statements are the opinions of the holders, and are not necessarily shared by upFront.eZine Publishing, Ltd. and its staff. Letters are edited for brevity and clarity. - - - You have reminded all of us that, as ADSK is publicly-traded capitalist company, the only reason Autodesk does anything is because it will make them a profit.  Profit is a great thing, but when we, the paying users, are continually shortchanged for the sake of shareholder benefit (profit), we ought to start feeling ripped off and get mad enough to become shareholders ourselves.  We are not helpless sheep who can do nothing to stop this behavior. Autodesk’s corporate activities are not driven by some inexorable tectonic force over which mere humans have no say. Buy stock, and your voice will be heard. If we collectively buy enough stock, then we, the paying users, will dictate the terms. If 1,000,000 suffering, paying users each buy just two shares per month (today about $60 each), in just one year we collectively will own 24 million shares, enough for two seats on the board.  After three more years at that rate, we will own 96 million shares, and be well on our way to full control of the company, which currently has about 240 million shares outstanding. We should form a new AOGI -- Autodesk Owner’s Group International -- whose ultimate goal is to make Autodesk a user-owned company.  From there, we can change the release cycle from every year to every four years, and demand that the software work as advertised. Be warned, however, that the stock will no longer pay cash dividends. Indeed, investors may not see any increase in the value of their shares after the stupid subscription ("leech") business model is gone. The dividend will instead be awarded through lower levels of aggravation at work, higher productivity, fewer hardware upgrades, and less re-training. It may be inevitable that a user-owned Autodesk become a non-profit. This saves tremendously on taxes, and Autodesk would finally become a good corporate citizen. Many folks are intimidated by the thought of taking over Autodesk, but they need to realize that it is the nature of a corporation to simply keep charging more, until it starts losing customers to competitors (which is how they determine what the market will bear). Autodesk’s strategy has been to buy up as many competitors as possible to minimize the possibility of losing customers to them. Thanks as always for your helpful reporting.     - Peter Lawton The editor replies: While your idea has merit, I think the flaw is that most users do not care, because they are the customer; someone else buys the software for them.  - - -   Activist investors are why some companies are issuing non voting shares.     -  Dan M (via WorldCAD Access) - - - Wow! Fantastic article!  I know I send a lot of kudos, but this one really stands out. Nice work!   My gut feeling on this is that with such a preemptive expectation of dread about these three new board members, they would certainly expect a knee-jerking downside on the stock price. Any time bean counters toss a blanket on a creative environment, it leads to departing staff and sinking morale. All of this leads me to suspect they are really shorting the stock. I smell something bad in this.     - David Stein The editor replies:  Clash-of-the-Titans stuff, as there are two forces at play here: Activist investors, who want to make Autodesk into something its executives don't want. Executives, who want to make Autodesk into something its customers don't want. - - - Just saw the write up. It's a perfect piece of reporting.      - R. T.  - - -   The truth is customers have been maneuvered, bit by bit, into a situation where they have no choice: continually pay corporate welfare, or have no access to CAD/CAM tools. Really, there needs to be a class-action pushback on these. The trouble is most users are far too passive about their consumer rights and don't offer an organized opposition, so corporations push it to the max and write their own one-sided rules.      -Neil Larsen (via WorldCAD Access) - - -   By the way, really great and fascinating article on Autodesk you wrote this week!      - Bill Gordon   Article continues following this advertisement... ...article now continues. So glad I did not succumb to the temptation a few years ago to switch over to AutoCAD Inventor. Given that Autodesk has given up on providing products that its customers actually want, and that the new sort-of-owners apparently plan on just looting the company, it sounds like they are a dead duck.  I'm sure they will be successful in driving the price of the stock upward, so they can cash out before it falls apart.   The most valuable thing that they have, which is the ability to create engineering software that people will happily pay for and use, is still in there somewhere. Maybe the end result of this will be that those people will go back to doing that. Seems like an ideal time for some enterprising outfit to hire themselves some good, experienced software developers, free them from the burden of trying to support a massive marketing and customer-looting bureaucracy, and become the dominant supplier of CAD software by selling a good tool for what it's worth.     - Jess Davis The editor replies: Autodesk's direction is a puzzle, given that several of the execs are engineers and other kinds of professionals.   - - -   Dmitry Ushakov translated your recent post [into Russian] athttp://isicad.ru/ru/articles.php?article_num=18458.     - David Levin - - - Institutional investors now on the Autodesk board say all we need to know as customers. Divorced from prudent planning and R&D for the future, since that will become an "unnecessary" expense to creating immediate profits things will at the least stagnate. What I figure will be their undoing will be when it is decided for Autodesk by these hostile investor types to end permanent seats entirely and to renege on the promise made to support them forever. Loot and plunder and make captive your customers and then make their expenses go through the roof.  The breakeven point for permanent seats at full price plus maintenance at the current levels is just under five years for Inventor Pro HSM. At the end of 15 years, subs will have cost $22,000 more at today's prices, prices that are sure to go up once the captives have been contained. Many people in the past never did pay full price (as deals could be made with Autodesk), and so the true break-even point for lots of buyers was probably three years or less.  I am laughing at the latest and greatest offer from Autodesk to expired Inventor seat holders from 2015 and back: cash in your permanent seat for three years subscription at the cost of a one-year. Whoohoo, and enter the world of never-stopping paying whatever they ask in the future, because you gave up your choice.  Trouble in investor paradise is coming. I really hate to see this happen to Autodesk, especially since they have acquired so much top-drawer CAM programing. The future was theirs to give away, or take the market over, and I think the investor piranhas have determined which it will be now.      - Dave Ault (via WorldCAD Access) - - -     Wow. That’s eye- opening to me. Loved the article, especially so since my specialty is AutoCAD customization (using mostly old-school methods).       - P. R. And One More Thing... Opencartis has a new version of Spatial Manager for AutoCAD (2008-2017), BricsCAD (V13-V16), and stand-alone desktop that accesses background maps from OpenStreetMap, Bing, MapBox, and so on. V3.1 of the software lets you design and edit the structure that stores data attached to objects, and manages tables and fields. There are new tools to attach, detach, and select data; data attached to the objects through xdata or eeds is no longer read-only. Download demo versions from http://www.spatialmanager.com/downloads/ Thank You, Readers! Thank you to readers who donate towards the operation of upFront.eZine.  In return, you receive our 56-page whitepaper "MobileCAD is Reaching Maturity," free and unavailable from anywhere else. 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 "Science research is respected and uses confusing jargon; so if I use confusing jargon, my research is respectable science."     - David Burge

How Convergent Science Automates CFD Meshing

Issue #898

 

by Ralph Grabowski with  Rob Kaczmarek Convergent Science, founded in 1997 by a group of PhD students at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, kept a low profile in Europe for the next 20 years. I'll explain why you may never have heard of them, and why you are now hearing more of the CFD [computational fluid dynamics] firm.   At first, they ran a consulting company to manufacturers studying combustion with CFD, such as what happens to the fluids that explode into gasses inside the cylinders of internal combustion engines. (See figure 1.) They would run simulations, but found that the meshing process was a nightmare. Figure 1 Analyzing exploding gasses inside a cylinder   (CFD and FEA [finite element analysis] don't actually analyze fluids-gasses and solids. Instead, the volume is broken into small volumes [cubes] or areas[meshes made of squares], and then the forces acting on each square are calculated and presented as colorful diagrams that show stresses ranging from low [blue] to high [red].)   A great deal of the work by CFD companies goes into figuring out how to optimize meshes: smaller mesh sizes return more accurate results but at the cost of much longer processing times. One of today's solutions is to place big meshes in non-critical areas, with much smaller ones in critical areas.   The founders of Convergent Science learned that the meshing process is a mess after one client, a large OEM, asked, "If our engineers run this simulation, will we get the same answer?"    The answer was "No," because the result was affected by how an engineer sets up the mesh, a manual process. It was after this point that the folks at Convergent Science worked out their solution to the problem, calling it the Adaptive Mesh Refinement system. Here is how it works: At run time, the software creates the mesh at the interfaces that need it, relaxing it where not needed. "We automate and couple the mesh for each time step," explained director of global marketing Rob Kaczmarek during our interview. "Our special sauce is that meshing and chemistry are fully coupled." Their software today handles spray, turbulence, and boundary temperatures.   So on to the reason you are now hearing about Convergent Science. After gaining 90% market share in North America, with customers such as Caterpillar and the big auto makers, they are now expanding into Europe and South East Asia. Overall, sales are growing 30% a year. While the European market grew 120% in the last two years; they expect the Asian market to overtake the North American one in two years.   In summary, Converge Science's software... eliminates all user meshing time automates the setup of moving boundaries eliminates the deforming mesh issues typically associated with moving boundaries creates perfectly orthogonal cells, resulting in improved accuracy and simplified numerics maintains the true geometry, independent of the mesh resolution   Q&A Ralph Grabowski: Does anyone else in FEA or CFD use your flexible mesh approach? Rob Kaczmarek: No one else does it. We have patents on coupled meshing. Others do it through scripting, which pushes, pulls, compresses, and stretches the mesh; but we never do that. Instead, we use our own Grid Convergent Results, where we refine the mesh until the answer is arrived at. This takes out variability from meshing.   Grabowski: If you are unique, do you have an direct competitors? Kaczmarek: All competitors use more generalized code, whether ANSYS FLUENT, CFX, STAR-CD, STAR-CCM+, KIVA, Comsol, and so on. The method used in traditional CFD packages is a postdictive process: they get test results, then run CFD analysis and smear the results to get them to match the test data. We are predictive, in that once we have a grid-convergent result, we can run design alternatives and decide on the best fit for our objectives. We promote using fewer models and more detailed chemistry. When designers use our software, it is easier for them to change geometry. Because the same mesh is always generated, it allows engineering groups in different locations to arrive at the same result.   Grabowski: Have anyone offered to buy you out? Kaczmarek: We have had numerous offers, but the co-founders love what they are doing and feel they have even more innovation that they can bring to the industry.     Grabowski: What are the sorts of things you are working on these days? Kaczmarek: We are currently working on various new applications areas such as exhaust after treatment, gas turbines, valves, and the most recent, reciprocating compressors. Where the code really shines is when we have complex flows and geometry, moving boundaries, reacting flows, transient flows, or any combination thereof.      Grabowski: Tell me about your link to CAD software? Kaczmarek: We import STL files. The traditional drawback to an automated system is that it has to work with watertight geometry, and defeaturing results in an inaccurate model representation. We overcame this challenge by implementing surface healing algorithms from Polygonica, which work stunningly fast. http://www.polygonica.com   Grabowski: Might you have plans for a version that runs inside of CAD software? Kaczmarek: This is something we are definitely considering. We have been approached by numerous CAD companies and personally I believe this type of integration is the future.  Imagine the impact if a design engineer could run a simple CFD result to predict the best design before sending it over for validation to the testing and CFD engineers.    https://convergecfd.com And One More Thing... Pictorex last week released their Artisan rendering add-on for BricsCAD V16. To generate photo-realistic images from 3D models, Artisan includes materials and lighting setups. See figure 2. The software is delivered and supported by a worldwide network of resellers, as well as being available through the BricsCAD on-line store. http://www.pictorex.com Figure 2 BricsCAD architectural model rendered by Pictorex Artisan   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 Even More News There is more at our WorldCAD Access blog about the CAD industry, tips on using hardware and software, and our popular travelogues. You can keep up with the blog through its RSS feed and email alert service. These are some of the articles that appeared on WorldCAD Access during the last week: freeCAD is becoming lessCAD It only took 5 months: reviving a bricked tablet Most popular articles in upFront.eZine We're on Twitter at @upfrontezine with late-breaking CAD news and wry commentary throughout the day, such as.... Thank You, Readers! Thank you to readers who donate towards the operation of upFront.eZine:  Jim Wright In return, you receive our 56-page whitepaper "MobileCAD is Reaching Maturity," free and unavailable from anywhere else.  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 "It's all about people, and what we can get them to buy from us."     - Management Speak on Twitter @managementspeak

*7272

Bricsys CEO Responds: How Bricsys Plans to Conquer 3D

Issue #896

 

Guest Editorial by Erik De Keyser In his response to my two-part article "How Bricsys Plans to Conquer 3D," the ceo of Bricsys Erik de Keyser lays out his plan to attack underserved verticals using his company's unique 3D variational direct modeling technology and spending 40% of revenues on R&D  -- all the while running an extreme-lean organization in which fewer than 100 employees serve 250,000 customers. - - - Interesting article -- with exception of the quote, "I aim to make BricsCAD #1 in 3D by 2020," which indeed made me choke on my morning coffee, because I never said it. Aiming to be in a #1 position in 3D is for me irrelevant, even if it ever were at all possible. I don’t expect Dassault or Siemens or Autodesk to shrink that much by 2020!.  But I do agree with a lot of your analysis, and so I want to clarify what we do, and how we do it.  Our plan is to enter step-by-step specific vertical markets where we can make a difference with our 3D variational direct modeling technology. In those markets, yes, we aim to attain a forefront position. So our developments in sheet metal and BIM are not there to encourage third-party developers or to impress potential customers (as you suggested), but we aim these products to really be the best-in-class. Allow me to explain how.   Sheet Metal Development Although we are the youngest player in the field of sheet metal design, today we can stand any comparison with all well-known competitors. We model quickly and accurately. For example, BricsCAD Sheet Metal has unfold capabilities for lofted bends that no other software has. Recently we added batch unfold processing for large assemblies, which gives you warnings when errors were made while modeling.  A sheet metal part modeled in BricsCAD can be imported into CAM systems without needing to partially or completely remodel it; it can be processed immediately for machining. This seems normal to me, but ask CAM software providers about the major players, and they will tell you this is not standard practice.  This is our first sheet metal product, and we will continue in the field for sure. You can view our movie about how well it works at https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=bricscad+sheet+metal.   BIM Development The three main BIM [building information modeling] products we encounter worldwide are Revit, ArchiCAD, and VectorWorks, and all have a long history in the field. None of the three is based on .dwg, even though AEC [architecture, engineering, construction] market is the biggest .dwg environment of all.  These software packages date back to an era before direct modeling became widely applied. Through SketchUp (a great product) everyone got to know how easy direct modeling is. But SketchUp is not a solid modeler nor a precise CAD package, and it lacks the tools to modify models on the fly when needed.  In the conceptual phase, most projects are modeled first in SketchUp and after the job is approved, it is redesigned from scratch again in a Revit to produce a full BIM model. For final detailing, AutoCAD or BricsCAD is used in many cases. So, drawings travel from SKP to RVT to DWG with the resulting loss of intelligence. By contrast, our BricsCAD BIM unifies all of these steps in one single step using only .dwg files and in a familiar software environment. For AEC customers familiar with .dwg, it is an easy step to take. BricsCAD BIM is in its final stage of development, and we plan a major upgrade with V17 this October. We soon will deliver APIs [application programming interfaces] that enable third-party applications to tale part in our implementation of BIM and provide all the extras needed by users. We would not have stepped into the BIM market unless we were convinced that we could deliver a winner.   BIM Trends Let me point to a recent analyst report, "CAD TRENDS 2016" from http://www.business-advantage.com/CAD-Trends-Results-2016.php. Pages 7-9 report on the evolution of BIM awareness and the BIM adoption rate: for 2016, awareness is 46% and the adoption rate is 19%. In the last three years it grew, but we can hardly call it a major shift.  This is my analysis of the slow adoption rate: today's offered solutions targeting AutoCAD users are far too complex. One solution to complexity is much costly education, which results in small groups of experts per company. It is our bet that a majority of AEC users is still using .dwg products and so we are at the forefront to catch a substantial part of the future growth in this market, because we are the only ones offering a BIM solution on the so-popular .dwg format. But we offer it only on the condition that we have technology that includes the following criteria:  It is intuitive, and fast to learn  It covers all needs, from initial conceptual design to as-built  It has a strong SaaS [software as a service] collaboration component compliant with standards like IFC and CoBie [construction operations building information exchange] It offers a flexible, hybrid licensing for desktop and cloud-based use of the software It offers an ecosystem of vertical applications serving international and regional users We are working simultaneously on all of these criteria, and I see none of them as being out of reach for us.    Chapoo Collaboration, Communicator Translator As I said, a BIM solution needs a collaboration platform as well. We are extendingChapoo to be our model server for BIM collaboration. Chapoo can be extended for PDM [product data management] and PLM [product lifecycle management]. That’s one of the things that is on the short list. Each function of Chapoo is available in a REST[representational state transfer] API for third parties. You mentioned correctly our universal approach to enable direct import and export of 3D models with our Communicator module. You can import almost every mechanical 3D model into BricsCAD. At that moment it becomes a full .dwg model which can be edited with direct modeling operations, it can be sectioned and annotated within an environment that is familiar to the majority of the market. Models can be exported back into CATIA, NX, Creo, STEP, etc.  It makes BricsCAD an exchange platform accessible for the vast majority of the market.   2D and Cloud In the meantime we continue to extend the 2D capabilities of the BricsCAD platform. Along the improvements to our 3D technology, we will step into more vertical 3D categories when we see winning capabilities. As for "all the Web, only the Web," Bricsys has been preparing itself, and is close to making an announcement. We expect this will be a complementary offering for our users. Today, I see no need for only cloud-based offerings; in some circumstances, certain users might need cloud-based CAD and will combine run it together with desktop licenses. We are sure we can now deliver that too, with stability and performance.   About Our Marketing  When it comes to marketing, it is true that Bricsys took another road than SpaceClaim. We decided to grow organically (no rounds of investors money [such as SpaceClaim and Onshape]). We indeed invest heavily in R&D [research and development], and less in marketing. It is a choice to grow slower, but then deliver more.  As a result, we built a solid, profitable, debt-free company controlled by Bricsys people, along with an ecosystem with more than thousand third-party applications. Hidden from view is our in-house cloud-based CRM [customer relationship management] system, the backbone of our very lean growth model. It allows us to automate all of our business processes and link with partners and customers. We can scale our business for future growth, while minimizing overhead. As I recall, upFront.eZine referred a while ago to our support system as probably being the best in the industry, and we have improved it since then. We entered the US market only recently on purpose. We have only one chance to do it right, and so we preferred to have advanced technology, solid products, a solid backbone with an outstanding support system, and some seasoned people in the field before starting big-scale marketing. You’re right that as yet we are almost unknown in the USA; let’s see what happens next. http://www.bricsys.com [Erik De Keyser is ceo of Bricsys, located in Gent Belgium.] And One More Thing... Two of the BIM organizations in Canada -- CanBIM and IBC/buildingSMART Canada -- are merging two committees to further the interests of BIM users in Canada. The Owners Committee and the Education Committee address issues facing AECOOs[architecture, engineering, construction, owner, operators]. http://www.canbim.com Thank You, Readers! Thank you to readers who donate towards the operation of upFront.eZine:  Thomas Enzmann,Switzerland: "Thanks for 'Autodesk's Future is Different' -- difficult times ahead." Lamar Henderson: "Great insightful info." Name withheld by request: "Thank you for all of the interesting & valuable information you share." In return, they received a copy of our 56-page whitepaper "MobileCAD is Reaching Maturity," free and unavailable from anywhere else. 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 "I can't see that hippy spirit of free love laying long beyond whichever C[placeholder character]O is driving this as a pet project."     - Roq D. Kasba     http://forums.theregister.co.uk/forum/1/2016/03/23/hp_inc_3d_printing_cto_speaks_out/

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