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The Rendering Challenges IKEA Faces

Issue #903

 

by Martin Enthed Each year, X3DMedia holds its one-day Develop3D Live conference in Warwick England. The conference last year boasted the official launch ofOnShape, and this year's event featured a keynote speaker from IKEA, Martin Enthed. (See figure 1.) Mr Enthed has been working with computer graphics for 26 years, and nine years ago IKEA hired him as part of the team that moved the company from photography to rendered images. This talk was Webcast on March 31 2016.   Figure 1  Martin Enthed is development and operations IT manager at IKEA Communications The IKEA Communications division has 250 employees in Sweden creating the content used by the company for the 49 countries in which it operates. (Interestingly enough, not in India.) They used to have a huge photo studio where they created sets for the catalogs, ads, and Web sites.   Why Start in 3D? In 2005, IKEA had a problem: how to create lots of images in a lot of combinations for their Web site. (The catalog usually has just one image of a product, which can be taken by camera; Web sites usually show the same product from several angles.) Then they got the idea, "How if we use the CAD information we have to create the images?" The problem was that there were many products, multiplied by numerous color combinations, resulting in 18,000 images just for the kitchen products sold in Europe. Plus more images for kitchen products sold in North America, other lines of household items, other countries, and so on.  The first rendered image from a CAD drawing was of one chair, which made its appearance in the catalog in 2006. But most images still came by photography through to 2009. Having proved renderings could work, the communications department got approval to create a library of all IKEA products: 9,500 products per country, times the number of countries, although some are the same in multiple countries. It took three years, so that by 2012 all products could be illustrated digitally. But they hit a roadblock. Their initial library of 2,300 rendered models did not work well and so had to be abandoned. The problem was that staff had saved rendering assets in each model, so that updating them "was not a nice job." The lesson learned was to separate the files -- models, textures, and materials.     Hi-Res Textures and Materials To create textures, they photograph materials in a large studio with black-painted walls and four lights. A high-end digital Hasselblad camera mounted in the ceiling takes pictures of wood, fabric, etc. Four pictures are taken, one with each light turned on. Software takes away the effects of the lights, and then later any lighting needed is added digitally, such as from a lamp or a window. "Without this, it doesn't really work to go photoreal," said Mr Enthed. To create materials, they get their normal maps from the same digital photograph. [Because images have just one side, the normal determines which way the image faces.] To make the digital images realistic, they take the biggest possible photograph of non-repeating textures, such as wood and cowhide. They determined the biggest size they would need for all non-repeating textures. For wood, for example, they photograph a physical piece sized about 1.5x2.5m (5x8 feet). In this way they can reuse the same texture for all products made of the same material; they just adjust the u,v-coordinates as needed. [U,v-coordinates refer to the local x,y coordinates of the material's image placed on a 3D surface; by adjusting the u,v coordinates, the image can be rotated and moved independently of the surface.] IKEA now has a library of 10,000 textures. See figure 2.   Figure 2  The IKEA materials library standards IKEA began using V-Ray in 2005 for their material library, and continue to do so today. To establish the materials library standards, they decided on a scene that they liked, and then set every material with the same lighting setup. This ensures that materials have a consistent look when they are moved into scenes. When IKEA began developing their 3D model library, they realized early on that they needed different LOD (levels of detail). [Levels of Detail determine the quality of complex 3D models: more details (higher LOD) can result in huge file sizes.] They had to develop their own LOD standard, as they could not find one that took into consideration the sizes of objects. IKEA's LODs range from low for planning purposes (LOD = 10cm or 4", the size of the smallest detail) to high for photorealistic images (LOD = 0.2mm or 0.008"). At the 0.2mm LOD, cloth threads in a sofa are actual polygons. They now have 30,000 3D models. The digital work is done in Bulgaria.   Photographers vs 3D Artists IKEA ran into another problem. On the one hand, they had a group of photographers who did excellent work creating the images needed by the company. On the other hand, they had 3D artists who were very good technically, but not artistically. How to get these two groups together? Their manager came up with the solution: make each a junior in the other's field.  So IKEA implemented a half-year program where every photographer becomes a junior 3D artist, and every 3D artist a junior photographer. They become each other's mentor. "This is the one of the reasons we are able to produce the photoreal quality," said Mr Enthed. "Of course, the technical side is important, but without the mentoring, the quality would never have happened." So now everything is fully rendered, such as a kitchen complete with morning sunlight streaming through. (See figure 3.) The next problem was how to deal with kitchens for different countries. Germans have small ones typically [in my experience], while Americans have big ones; the look and size of typical appliances differs with each market, too. [As compensation, Germans have big bathrooms, and Americans small ones.] A single room may need nine variations to allow for country differences.    Figure 3 The cramped German kitchen Before going digital, IKEA shipped appliances from other markets to be photographed in the Swedish studio. Not just the waiting time for transport was a problem. If from Japan, for instance, then the Japanese goods couldn't be afterwards used in Sweden. "So what do we do with them then?" [We didn't learn what happened to them then.] (The exception for no-photography is television ads, which use green screen rooms to mix people, digital models, lighting effects, and static backgrounds like cityscapes.) The staff works at making the images look as if someone is living in the scenes by filling up drawers with items, put cooking pots on stove tops, and so on. (More on this later.) The next step in realism is adding steam coming out of cooking pots, water coming out of taps over randomized produce in an IKEA strainer. Every day the IKEA Communications staff create about 15 new CAD models, 180 final product images at 4.5K resolution, and 40 scenes. Multiple this daily output by 250 for their annual output. Ironically, they are now taking more photographs than ever before: "the studio is as packed as ever, because the total number of images is more than 5x than five years ago."   Development Issues When IKEA sent their photographers away to learn digital rendering, the company thought the biggest problem for them would be learning the user interface of the 3D Studio software. But no; the photographers found the software easy to use; the difficult aspect was locating assets in libraries and then placing them in scenes. To solve the first problem, IKEA added a Web-based interface for finding 3D models stored on central servers. The problem of placing assets in scenes came from the difficulty in using the move, rotate, and scale functions in 3D Studio; they were not intuitive. [Assetsare what we call objects in libraries.] It was like working with holograms in 3D, where objects don't collide (can't place a dish on a shelf, it will happily sit inside the shelf) and there is no gravity (things don't land on surfaces). To solve this problem, IKEA added a new mode called "pick and place" that adds the missing collision detection and gravity -- as well as links assets. Place a bowl on a table, and it does not fall through the table; move the table, and the bowl moves with it -- "like it should in real life," said Mr Enthed. To implement collision detection and gravity, IKEA integrated a games engine into 3D Studio. For example, to create a stack of plates, the dozen plates can be placed one on another, and they know that they must stack and cannot fall through the bottom one. "We persuaded Autodesk to put it into the toolset." Pick-and-place solved 60% of the artists' problems. IKEA wanted to add a random effect so that objects do not line up perfectly, such as macaroni in a glass jar or cutlery in a drawer or apples in a bowl. They call it Earthquake mode: hold down the Alt key, and the longer it is held down, the more randomly the selection set of items is shaken. (See figure 4.) "We do this [randomization] all the time," said Mr Enthed. "We developed this four years ago, but haven't seen it any software."   Figure 4 IKEA software creating the earthquake effect "Getting things into scenes simply and then placing them inside of each other [and looking realistic by being somewhat disorderly] is a tremendous amount of work if you don't have the tools," said Mr Enthed. "So that is where we are focusing on things to build these [software routines] internally."   Fine-Tuning Render Farms In 2011, IKEA built its own render farm  using the Amazon cloud.  It worked, but when it was given to the 3D artists, it took only a week for IKEA to realize that the artists were no longer using their own computers; they just used the render farm with as many virtual computers as they wanted, which were required as they cranked up the realism levels. The problem is that the resources were not being used correctly. [And, I expect, costing IKEA a big Amazon bill.] So, the first effort was halted. The new approach was to use internal computers fully before going to the cloud. IKEA had, after all, given all their artists high-end desktop computers with 24 cores, 48 threads, and 200GB RAM. IKEA wanted to make use of the computers when they sat idle as their operators were in meetings or had gone home. IKEA wrote a never-idle utility that starts running when a computer is idle for more than 15 minutes.  Meanwhile, a render queue is running all the time, and when a computer becomes available, it helps with the render queue. With all that compute horsepower internally, IKEA finds it can empty the render queue each night using their own computers.  Sometimes, however, a 3D artist might set parameters so high that the rendering doesn't get completed overnight, creating a virtual paper jam. Solution: when a render job is sent to the queue, another utility does a sanity check to make sure the settings won't jam other rendering jobs. In 2014, they began looking toward the future with real-time rendering. [I think he means displaying interactive 3D images on Web pages.] This is like the rendering IKEA has been doing for the last nine years, Mr Enthed said, but at 25-90 frames a second in stereo.    IKEA's Big Problems With Rendering Software "Why am I here [at Develop3D]?" asked Mr Enthed. "I am here for your brains. I want you to know our needs for the future. This is a call to the industry. This is what I think we need to do." He then listed the top problems IKEA has with today's rendering software: Problem #1 (the top problem): Need to have a generic material description so that it can be translated to different renderers, whether running OpenGL, WebGL, and/or V-Ray. This would allow IKEA to switch between rendering engines as they want; right now, they are stuck with V-Ray, as much as they like using it. Problem #2: Need to define snap points so that objects connect property, such as legs to the correct bottom corners of a table, the shelves in the holes in a cabinet, hinges on screw holes of a door. [It was not clear from the presentation, but I think he implied they use different CAD systems, between which snap points do not translate. He never named CAD programs in his talk.] Problem #3: Need a way to create LODs automatically. The problem with all polygon reduction software, Mr Enthed found, is that they shrink curves to interior rectangles, instead of out to bounding boxes. "I can't have the products shrink, it doesn't really work." The problem could be solved using solids, but curvaceous sofas cannot be modeled efficiently using solids.  Problem #4: Need soft-stuff simulation, such as where a cushion deforms correctly as it is placed on another object, complete with hand-chop indent. "How do you work with sofas, cushions -- anything of cloth, complete with strands?"   Conclusion IKEA works in the middle of gaming (which uses assets in different light conditions, like IKEA does), CAD (half of the models are designed in CAD using solids), film (high image quality), and architecture (everything is in an architectural context). But IKEA finds that no software company combines the four fields in the way that IKEA needs. "Maybe they will after this [presentation]," he concluded. http://develop3dlive.com/videos/martin-enthed-ikea/ 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, lansd@okino.com) 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... Maybe it was HP's two-year-old threat to come out with its own brand of multi-color, multi-material 3D printer, or maybe not. Stratasys nevertheless is releasing its multi-color (360,000 colors shades), multi-material (up to six materials ranging from rigid to flexible, opaque to transparent) 3D printer, theJ750, supported by the most impressive list of marketing slogans: Stratasys invents 3D printing again Transformational market disruptive 3D printer Eliminates time-consuming processes, accelerating product concepting Unprecedented range of materials to achieve one-stop realism Drives near instantaneous decision-making Changing the way products are designed and launched Incomparable 3D printing versatility Breaks restrictive technology barriers A true industry milestone Harnessing more than 25 years of experience to set a new historical milestone in 3D printing Reaffirming our commitment to keeping customers always on the cutting edge of innovation Recalibrates the impact of 3D printing Truly raising the bar in 3D printing versatility The J750 is quite simply a game changer Layers can be as thin as 0.014 mm (14 microns). Color textures are loaded via VRML files exported from CAD software. Price not announced, but my guess is that it would be in the quarter-million range. http://www.stratasys.com/3d-printers/production-series/stratasys-j750 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: Customers are rightfully reluctant to pay Autodesk rent From the "Why We Hate Microsoft" File Where is Revit 360?  We're on Twitter at @upfrontezine with late-breaking CAD news and wry commentary throughout the day, such as....  upFront.eZine ‏@upFronteZine  May 22: Autodesk to change Suites to Collections; official announcement next week. upFront.eZine ‏@upFronteZine  May 22: Sounds like Collections will come at three price levels, and then customers choose which software they want in a collection. Letters to the Editor Greetings. I've just discovered your blog and ezine articles. Very good stuff. Thank you. I'm an architectural CAD guy, having worked in the industry since the days of DOS and monochrome monitors and yet I am pitifully ignorant about what's going on in the industry today, and since I will need to work for at least another ten years, thank you tech bubble, I would like to do a better job of keeping informed. So sign me up.      - S. G.  Thanx for your nice summary of the future of Autodesk @http://www.upfrontezine.com/2016/03/coming-october-1-autodesks-future-is-different.html . This sentence pretty much says it all: "Autodesk execs have stated that the future of their company rests on two cornerstones: subscriptions, and the cloud." Subscriptions + Cloud = Slavery + Socialism. I guess we can call it Commercial Tyranny.     - Cadman Thank You, Readers! Thank you to readers who donate towards the operation of upFront.eZine: Cristiano Sacchi and Franco Folini of Novedge: "Keep up the great work!"  Michael Raphael of Direct Dimensions: "Thank you for your newsletter.  I am a big fan." Stanley Przybylinski  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 $500 for for large companies > paypal.me/upfrontezine/500 Should Paypal.me not operate in your country, then please usewww.paypal.com and the account of grabowski@telus.net. Or mail a cheque (US$ or CDN$ only, please) to upFront.eZine Publishing, Ltd., 34486 Donlyn Avenue, Abbotsford BC, V2S 4W7, Canada.   Notable Quotable "The key is to find the appropriate mechanism to hold on to a consumer for life. Part of this is the leasing culture."     - Jeremy Rifkin

About Hybrid Modeling with ACIS

Issue #902

 

by Ralph Grabowski with Brian Rohde Exact modeling (or precise modeling) kernels have been used for over 30 years. "Much of the world we live in has been designed with these precise or b-rep [boundary representation] modelers," said Brian Rohde, senior product manager at Spatial. They do not, however, handle organic entities (like body parts and plants), point clouds, voxels, additive manufacturing, and geological entities (like underground ore bodies) well. Organic shapes are well-represented through polyhedral, polygonal, and faced models -- approximating surfaces with polygons, usually triangles but could also be quadrilaterals or other convex polygon. Because it is an approximation, it is fast, and does well with complexity (by reducing it) and very large models. Because polyhedral modeling uses approximations, it suffers from accuracy, and so makes simple shapes unnecessarily complex, a like sphere.(See figure 1.)  Because it uses flat polygons, it takes many of them to approximate curved surfaces. "You can get very close with polyhedrons, but it is not perfect," said Mr Rohde. "All [exact modeling] needs to do to store and describe [a sphere] is to know its radius and its position." Figure 1 Polyhedral modeling (at right) cannot model spheres exactly as does b-rep (at left) For Spatial, hybrid modeling takes the best of both worlds. For example, a replacement rib cage is best designed with exact modeling and then 3D printed, whereas the natural irregularity of human rib bones are best modeled with polyhedral modeling. (See figure 2.) Another example is designing services (precise) inside tunnels (polygonal). Spatial's hybrid modeling combines precise and polyhedral modeling in a single body, maintaining the original representation when possible. Spatial sees hybrid being really useful for the fourth industrial revolution that involves custom manufacturing, fast delivery, minimal inventory, and higher margins. Examples include integrating internet-of-things into physical things. It's also used in hybrid manufacturing that mixes additive (like 3D printing) and subtractive manufacturing (like milling and polishing machines). The limitation today is that Spatial cannot freely go back and forth between the two formats. Currently some simple polyhedral bodies can be converted to b-rep entities (a.k.a. reverse engineering). In the meantime, both formats can coexist in a single model, and you can perform operations, like Boolean, using the polyhedral objects on the b-rep model, like cutting away or adding on.   Figure 2 Combining organic polyhedral (bone) with exact b-rep modeling (implant) For the future, Spatial is looking to adapt hybrid modeling to architecture, a discipline that parent Dassault Systemes keeps saying it wants to go into. One example is integrating scan data of buildings into a 3D model, or using it for augmented reality to find where the pipe is in the wall. [The presenter in the Webinar spoke about using robotics in the future to scan, manufacture, and insert replacement teeth many times faster than today. I had a tooth implant recently and so speak from experience. Two aspects were not addressed by the seminar. Major: it takes months to make the gum build up additional tissue in which to place the socket; the body will not be hurried. Minor: the new artificial tooth needs to be color-matched to surrounding teeth.]   Q&A Q: Will hybrid modeling become part of the ACIS kernel? A: Polygonal modeling has been in ACIS since last year. True hybrid modeling will be released in a little more than two months. Q: What is the ratio between a sphere and its polygonal representation in terms of the space it takes up in the disk? A: In precise modeling, the primary definition of a sphere is its radius, along with its position in space. This takes up very little space on disk [a few bytes]. Whereas in the polygonal case, it will depend on the level of accuracy. An octagon is a very crude representation but you haven't taken all that many facets to represent the sphere. But you can also take that sphere and represent it with thousands or millions of triangles [which takes up much more memory, such as kilobytes and megabytes].  Q: Are we going to be seeing new tools in our CAD package to handle reverse engineering using this new paradigm of hybrid modeling? A: It takes much more to do reverse engineering than just the conversion of polygons into b-rep. I think that over time this is going to become more common in CAD packages. Reverse engineering is not all that different from bespoke [custom] manufacturing, in that you have a scan or some other representation of an object or body part from the real world, and then you represent that in a 3D modeling environment -- measure it, perform analysis, customize it, make use of existing parts, and then manufacture it.  Q: What performance advantage do polyhedral models have? A: The performance improvements depend on the shape of the entities being modeled. A sphere will be more complex, but a bone will be more accurate and contain less data than b-splines and solid models. But operations like offsetting, fillets, and Booleans slow things down; the same operations with precise modeling is more efficient. Hybrid modeling lets you use whichever approach is best for the data. Q: Do you think parametric and b-rep modeling will disappear in the future, and that polygonal and hybrid modeling will become de facto? A: I think that is possible, and I hope it will happen, but I don't think it is possible because of the sphere example. As storage becomes larger and processing power more powerful, then the drawbacks to polyhedral representations might become less significant.  Q: How will tolerances be managed in hybrid modeling? A: That's a perfect case for hybrid, because your design is in the precise form. But the measurements might be from a laser cloud scan or high-precision metrology machine, and then overlay them to see if they are within spec. Q: How is the stitching of two models done in hybrid modeling? A: Take a precise-modeled sphere, place it on a 3D scan of a bone, and then do a Boolean operation to join them. At the surface where the two meet, there is a set of triangles on the bone's surface. The triangles have to be modified to line up with the sphere. Our Boolean operation adapts the triangles at the point of intersection between the sphere and the bone. The sphere becomes a polyhedral model. http://www.spatial.com And One More Thing... ASCON Group's Renga Architecture is getting frequent updates since its release last year, and now v2.3 imports 3D models from the company's KOMPAS-3D MCAD software.  No longer displaying models only in shaded gray (although it did look classy), Renga now does wireframe and color rendered display modes. Other new functions include tables, multiple views per floor, column and beam styles, and rotated beams (see figure 3). The company keeps dropping hints about Renga Structure, "our upcoming building structures design system."  Figure 3 Renga Architecture rotating a beam Price is e1,599, with 50% off for competitive upgrades from other CAD systems. Download the demo version from http://rengacad.com/en. Even More News We're on Twitter at @upfrontezine with late-breaking CAD news and wry commentarythroughout the day, such as.... upFront.eZine (@upFronteZine) May 18: Google Home sounds as creepy as pundits promised Google would eventually become. Video showing how Google Home replaces a need for parents. upFront.eZine (@upFronteZine) May 18: New video calling app from Google lets you spy on callers before you agree to accept their call. upFront.eZine (@upFronteZine) May 18: Depressing to see Android users no longer need to be alive to respond to my texts, etc. They just need to ensure Google chat bot is running. Letters to the Editor Re: In the Year '96, '96 Great retrospective. What a bizarre, twisted business CAD has been since the advent of the PC. So many wrong turns for so many companies, and the future doesn't look much better as everyone chases cloud-based CAD/BIM while neglecting the day-to-day needs of typical users.      - Larry Leake (via WorldCAD Access)     Leake Associates - - - I enjoyed your recap of 1996, but I was surprised to see no mention of Computervision or CADDS 5 amongst all the others. In '96 CV was still the "elephant in the room" with a large share of the CAD market. Of course, just a year later in 1997, there was the surprise acquisition of Computervision by PTC.     - Steve Huffman     Draftware Inc. The editor replies: I condensed what I reported on that year in upFront.eZine. I had no relationship with Computervision or PTC, but would have liked to have reported on them. - - - Congrats on 900 issues! Also, thanks for visit back to 1996; I'd not thought of the names of some of these products and companies for many years!  Since your eZine was the inspiration for my now-retired GIS Monitor newsletter, I feel obligated to offer one correction. Autodesk did not sell MapGuide; it turned it open-source in 2004 and later submitted it to what is now the Open Source Geospatial Foundation, OSGeo.     - Adena Schutzberg, principal     ABS Consulting Group Inc. - - - That was a lot of digging, Congratulations, son.     - Herbert Grabowski - - - Thanks for the history. Based on a forum post, the C4a patch for AutoCAD Release 13 was released on or about August 2, 1996. If I recall correctly this was the final patch issued for R13 and it was from that point on a pretty stable version, despite the historical lore of how bad R13 was in general.     - R.K. McSwain The editor replies: The worst part was then-ceo Carol Bartz insisting it was a marketing problem, not a technical one. - - - Very good history Ralph. I remember those days well. I recall quite a bit of those stories since a lot of them were right up my alley. For instance, about five years ago, I finally threw out the binder that contained the entire AutoCAD Release 13 bug list. It was over 400 entries. I hang onto stuff far too long.     - Ron Powell - - - Like a time machine -- loved it!  And the Zager and Evans reference, which resonated immediately without having to look for your footnote.     - Lynn Manning The editor replies: I grew up in Northern Canada, where there wasn't much available in the way of music, so I remember hearing it at the local swimming pool -- oddly enough. Mr Manning responds: Didn't think it would ever be warm enough in Northern Canada to swim :) . That was a pretty strange song, though. But obviously memorable! - - - I have lived through/survived CAD since 1984. I was intrigued by all the buying/selling/reselling/buying back/selling again of all the various companies and/or specific products that you outlined. Sometimes you can't tell the players even with a program!     - Bill Fane - - - I was an expert witness for Bentley Systems in the Baystate lawsuit. Baystate had a very unique theory in the case: basically, they said, "Since the Cadkey PRT documentation was copyrighted, you could not write software based on the information contained in the document." I had a very hard time not breaking out laughing when they rolled out that line of argument. I asked their lawyer if he was really asking me that.     - Scott Taylor     Taylor Made Software The editor replies: I'm thinking CADkey wanted any means to stop Bentley, and that was the best they could think of. Thank You, Readers! Thank you to readers who donate towards the operation of upFront.eZine.  Solid Modeling Solutions, USA Ross Goulter, Australia Robin Capper, New Zealand 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 $500 for for large companies > paypal.me/upfrontezine/500 If PayPal.me does not work in your country, go to www.paypal.com and make payment to the account of grabowski@telus.net. Or you can mail a cheque (US$ or CDN$ only, please) to upFront.eZine Publishing, Ltd., 34486 Donlyn Avenue, Abbotsford BC, V2S 4W7, Canada.   Notable Quotable "My own personal litmus test for AI breakthrough is whether a computer can distinguish between sarcasm and irony. So far, none can."     - Andrew Orlowski, The Register     http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/05/19/you_wanted_innovation_we_gave_you_clippy/

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Q&A With Vectorworks' New CEO

Issue #901

 

by Ralph Grabowski Biplab Sarkar was just three weeks in his new position as ceo of Vectorworks when I interviewed him in Chicago during the 2016 Vectorworks Design Summit. He’s been with the company for 16 years, previously serving as its chief technology officer, and before that worked for Intergraph and then as director of R&D at PTC. The new ceo immediately created two new positions in the company, which became the basis of my first question to him. Traffic circle and irrigation design by Vectorworks Ralph Grabowski: The new positions of "product management" and "product development" sound to me like one is for managing software, the other for developing software. What do the roles entail? Biplab Sarkar: Product management is outward facing. Darick DeHart talks to customers and distributors, determines industry features, especially for our key verticals like architecture, entertainment, and landscape. Product development is inward looking, focused on the core of Vectorworks software, as well as research and innovation, and Steve Johnson handles that.  Grabowski: Have you solved the QuickTime problem? I have a copy of Vectorworks that's a couple years old, and when I tried to install it earlier this year, it wouldn't, complaining that QuickTime was not installed.  Sarkar: Vectorworks no longer uses QuickTime, so that problem is solved. You heard about the FBI warning? Grabowski: Yes, and when I went to uninstall QuickTime, I found it wasn't on my machine anyhow. Now, with the Parasolid kernel, Vectorworks can create all kinds of fantastical shapes. Do you check for manufacturability of designs? Sarkar: We check for watertightness of STL models; we check orientation of vertices so that machining is done correctly. For example, InteriorCAD is cabinet design based on Vectorworks, and does a lot of checking to make sure there are no gaps, that things don't overlap, and so on. Vectorworks does a validation check for polylines. For example our software is used for NC [numerical control] carving of signage for exhibits. Most of the CAM is 2.5D, there is not a lot of 5-axis machining with our software. Grabowski: You have been adding more functions made possible by the Parasolid kernel. How much of the kernel has been implemented in Vectorworks? Sarkar: We have implemented about 75% to 80% now. And now we are also using Pixar's library for sub-d [subdivision] modeling in Vectorworks.  Grabowski: I'm sorry, who? Sarkar: Pixar Animation Studios, who does movies like Toy Story and Finding Nemo. They have their own sub-d modeling kernel that they now license. We use it for mesh modeling, and in the future will get into more functions, like decimation. Grabowski: I had no idea! Sarkar: When done with modeling the mesh, the user presses a button to convert it to a Parasolid solid. Grabowski: Nemetschek has a lot of companies that it owns. Three CAD programs [Allplan, Vectorworks, and ArchiCAD], along with many more companies that have software for doing structural design analysis, rendering, and so on. I was speaking with someone from Bluebeam at the show yesterday, and he reminded me that Nemetschek has owned them for 1.5 years now. When I asked how much of Bluebeam's PDF capabilities were incorporated into Vectorworks, he told me none. I am surprised that none of the technology Nemetschek owns is being integrated into the CAD programs. Sarkar: This is because there is no platform that connects, so that the programs can talk to each other. In Sean's [former Vectorworks ceo Sean Flaherty] new position, the first thing he will be doing is to look at how to share models and talk with each other. One of our goals is to establish a way for customers to move information between Nemetschek Group products smoothly, especially BIM models.  Grabowski: What is happening with MiniCAD? Here at the conference I heard that it still has proud users; there even were buttons being given out extolling MiniCAD. [Vectorworks grew out of MiniCAD.] Sarkar: MiniCAD is not being developed. There are users who still like using it after all these years. The badges were there to recognize their loyalty.  Grabowski: Your parent company Nemetschek owns three CAD programs. Why so many? Sarkar: Nemetschek started with Allplan, and then in 2000 acquired Vectorworks to grow its AEC market share in other geographic markets. After Autodesk acquired Revit[in 2003], Nemetschek wanted to enter the BIM market, and so they acquired Graphisoft in 2005 [its ArchiCAD software was the first to do BIM]. Today Vectorworks Architect also has BIM. Grabowski: I understand Vectorworks is popular in Germany [home of AllPlan]. Sarkar: Vectorworks' top five markets are Japan, US, Germany, UK, and Switzerland. Japan overall is #1, in terms of revenues. Grabowski: That surprises me! Why Japan? Sarkar: When CAD was new, distributors from Japan came to North America looking for software and one of them decided on MiniCAD. Distribution began 30 years ago, so we had an early start.  Grabowski: When Graphisoft flew us to Japan two years ago for their BIM server launch, I was a bit surprised.  Sarkar: ArchiCAD has recently become popular in Japan with some of the largest construction companies, while Vectorworks is widely used in their design departments. Grabowski: In your keynote speech, you said you wanted to expand to other verticals. What are some of the ones that interest you? Sarkar: Other verticals would be ones adjacent to the areas we already serve[architecture, entertainment lighting, and landscaping]. Adjacent to entertainment is audio design, which is a bigger market than lighting. The main thing Vectorworks would be used for is making connection diagrams for all the wiring running inside walls, determining wire lengths. Not just in homes, but also needed by museums and other large buildings.  We also have a growing interest from the urban planning community, and are adding new customers taking up Vectorworks Landmark because of our addition of GIS features each year.  http://www.vectorworks.net Sponsor: CodeBook 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,lansd@okino.com) 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... It is probably not surprising that I hadn't heard before of Volume Graphics, as I am not really into metrology. No, not weather reports; super accurate measurements and inspections.     As the company's business developer Gerd Schwaderer told me: "It's true, we are a bit under the radar of CAD and inspection. We are a German company wiht 90+ people. Our software is the most used in technical CT business. The metrology part does also handles STLs from any scanner -- especially 'porosity, inclusion and transport phenomena analyses' is a colorful development, making produced products really transparent, especially in 3D printing, as nobody knows 'what's inside'." More info from www.volumegraphics.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: Transitioning away from AutoCAD We're on Twitter at @upfrontezine with late-breaking CAD news and wry commentarythroughout the day, such as.... upFront.eZine (@upFronteZine) Apr 19: Following its $663-million acquisition of Textura, "Oracle plans to continue to invest in the engineering and construction industry." Letters to the Editor Re: Where BIM Hasn’t Gone Peter Mann’s article (http://www.upfrontezine.com/2016/04/where-bim-hasnt-gone.html) is accurate in multiple respects, but his emphasis on educating the facilities management folks is the most important. The Building Information Model is in the hands of the design and construction teams for perhaps five years, while the ultimate building owner is going to rely on the model for the next 100 years. To get the most out of that model, the owner needs to be thoroughly familiar with the capabilities of the database that it is. The truth is that Codebook, along with other similar product/service packages, will have a huge market for the next few decades, and there is plenty of work to go around. Mr. Mann mentions COBie, which is the brainchild of Dr. Bill East at Prairie Sky Consulting (http://www.prairieskyconsulting.com/index.htm), who sees far into the future on this topic, and is a consistent proponent of a neutral, standard set of data fields that can be adopted by any model and implemented at any time, for the sake of maximizing the benefits for the owners and managers of any facility. I’m not sure that BIM ‘hasn’t gone’ to the facilities management folks, it just that is still has a long way to go with them. Perhaps someone like Melanie Perry can offer some further insights as to the current state of BIM in the FM arena:http://mistressofthedorkness.blogspot.com. Thanks again sir for your original reporting.     - Peter Lawton Re: Dassault Describes Its Plans for Solidworks and Cloud Bernard Charles and analysts share a twilight zone every quarter along the lines of a Steve Jobs product presentation, but -- hey! -- as long as the product is good-looking, the earnings are above-average or can be explained, and there is an impressive sounding (albeit nonsensical) action plan-in-progress, the analysts go away happy and we keep moving along. Does Bernard make claims and assertions that don't ring true? Possibly. Are DS still talking in circles in denial over the great CATIA in the cloud misadventure? As a humble user I couldn't say, however in recent times we have tended to become comfortably numb to disseminated claims and non-stick bravado. Official data like the US jobs report is a case in point: call me a luddite if you must, but I do have suspicions about that too. Regretfully, I have little or no confidence in Bernard's ability to understand Solidworks users needs and set viable directions for Solidworks. I am pretty sure having a fashionably blue mono-toned UI for all apps or having CAD on a smartphone is not regarded by customers as a worthwhile pursuit, but then who are we to say? Perhaps we are just not sophisticated enough to know what's good for us.       - Neil  Larsen via WorldCAD Access        New Zealand The editor replies: You can view the original article on WorldCAD Access at http://www.worldcadaccess.com/blog/2016/04/dassault-describes-its-plans-for-solidworks-and-cloud.html   Re: CAD Vendors Think This Many Customers Want Subscriptions When Autodesk says 100% of its customers want subscription, maybe they missed my survey replies. I am 100% for perpetual licenses with a subscription available and 100% against the new desktop subscription. I think they are using the word 'subscription' in both options to muddy the waters. Autodesk is involved in a lot of flashy and interesting things, which is great, however I work for a living and am not sure how long I can keep paying their bills.       - Dwayne Wilson via WorldCAD Access        Canada The editor replies: I don't think Autodesk ever said that 100% of customers want to pay annually for software. Rather, I am of the opinion that because Autodesk no longer provides the permanent license option, the company implies that 100% of its customers desire it. See http://www.worldcadaccess.com/blog/2016/04/what-cad-vendors-think-customers-want-in-subscriptions.html.  - - -   I did fill out a survey for Autodesk, and was adamant about being against the subs model. Count the stats the P&R people want, I suppose. I get tired of being taken as a fool by these types. Pushing the subscription model is bad enough, but when outright absurdities are trotted out as evidence to bolster this bad thing you have to wonder. It really makes me mad that Autodesk was on the way to market conquest based upon the assembly of vital parts to a complete manufacturing ecosystem and would have earned much more money in voluntary transactions over time with increased seats sales. Maybe I am naive and this subs garbage was the plan all along, I don't know. What I do know is that the second that my permanent license is voided there won't be any subs money forthcoming from me. I will not be alone. I don't know anyone who would place their company's core CAD-CAM data creation and archiving into a subscription based model. As a matter of fact, around me 100% of them won't. There you go, another statistic but perhaps more germane to customers' viewpoints.      - Dave Ault via WorldCAD Access The editor replies: It certainly is a concern that if you fail to be able to pay, the software stops working.   Re: How Bricsys Plans to Conquer 3D On the whole I found this article on BricsCAD BIM very interesting, given I'm an architectural consultant in the UK. (See http://www.upfrontezine.com/2016/03/how-bricsys-plans-to-conquer-3d.html) I've been self-employed since 1991 and so I often review cost effective CAD systems to include in my CAD armoury.  I currently use DataCAD and SketchUP Pro, and also trying to find time to learn STI Spirit. The intention being the latter would replace the other two in time. I've not come across Bricsys before, so I headed off to their Web site to see it first hand with regards to some of their movie tutorials. I do like how one draws in the 3D environment, very much like SketchUP.  Quite a few CAD-based BIM systems use parametric interfaces to form 3D components and building elements, however with BricsCAD BIM it seems to be driven with pre-drawn 3D editable components and other building elements that users can save and so form their own libraries.  This method isn't new to me, as STI Spirit's idea of their architectural component system is similar. You draw up your own architectural items or use supplied pre-drawn items and edit items with Spirit's Object Inspector. I would say BricsCAD BIM looks like SketchUP and Spirit have been merged together.      - Clayton Taylor      Trotman and Taylor, England The editor replies: There are things that puzzle. SketchUp is so well known, yet so incapable; BricsCAD so capable, yet so unknown.   Re: This is How Much More You'll Pay for Autodesk Software  I think Autodesk is making a big mistake. Lots of smaller companies can't afford this endless, ever faster upgrade cycle. I believe that John Walker said years back that they shouldn't alienate their original base of small customers, and he said that when there were few alternatives. I suppose subscriptions had to come, like forced upgrades, because there hasn't been anything of value in a new release since about 2006, aside from a more and more intrusive interface. This is true of most software: drop back a decade and you'd still be able to get your work done without much trouble. There was a time when the software industry would have taken this as a challenge and come up with innovations that made upgrading attractive, but the prevailing attitude seems to be that the customer is trapped and it's easier to make upgrades unavoidable and costs higher. I'm beginning to look into alternatives.       - Augustus White via WorldCAD Access Thank You, Readers! Thank you to readers who donate towards the operation of upFront.eZine:   IMSI/Design  Solid Modeling Solutions Holly Stratford: "I am still enjoying the ezine [after retirement]. Keep up the good work." 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 "Buyers like mobile devices and are buying fewer PCs; enterprise IT departments are struggling to balance their need to reduce investment in hardware with fears over cloud security and what 'the cloud' means for users and system administrators."     - Monica Schnitger, PTC surprised by subs, DS continues to roll     http://schnitgercorp.com/2016/04/21/ptc-ds/

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In the Year '96, '96 *

Issue #900!

 

To celebrate the 900th issue of upFront.eZine and its 21st anniversary, I went back two decades -- back, back into our archives to see what was being reported by a one-year-old upFront.eZine in 1996.  At the end of 1995, I had surveyed 40 CAD vendors about their Internet plans. The results was a collective reaction of “Huh?” And so it was in 1996 that we saw the first stirrings of Internet-awareness among CAD vendors.   January 1996 Autodesk ships the c4 service pack of AutoCAD R13, the plagued release that required 11 service packs to repair its problems. The unfortunately-numbered Release 13, on the other hand, set the foundation for the future with objects, ARx, and IFCs -- all still used to this day.  Autodesk and Numera argue over who has the first Windows 95 logo-compliant CAD software. While AutoCAD was the first to receive the logo from Microsoft, Visual CADDwas the first to ship with the logo.   February 1996 Numera hands over manufacturing and distribution of Visual CADD to Corel, following which Corel reduces the price to $495. Novell closes down its Quattro Prospreadsheet (acquired from Borland) after selling WordPerfect to Corel. Later, Corel purchases Quattro Pro from Novell. Amid the deadline for proposals for VRML v2 [virtual reality modeling language],Netscape says it is convinced that "VRML is going to explode in a big way this year." This is the year that computing celebrated its 50th birthday, as the ENIAC computer was turned on for the first time on Valentine's Day, 1946. Windows 95 is proving to be a resounding success for Microsoft's GUI running on top of Digital Research's DOS. We would have to wait four more years for Microsoft to merge its VMS-based NT to make Windows 2000.   March 1996 SoftSource is the first to ship a plug-in for Netscape Navigator so that the popular Web browser can display DWG and DXF files. At the time, nobody cared, what with many CAD vendors questioning the need for such a product. Within four years, however, displaying, editing, and manipulating CAD drawings collaboratively in Web browsers becomes a primary focus of most CAD vendors. Bentley Systems bundles MicroStation with vertical add-on products to concentrate on three specific markets: Building/plant engineering Geoengineering. Mechanical engineering Later, it drops MCAD from the list. Seagate unveils the first 20GB hard drive at a time when 500MB is standard, some ten years after 20MB was considered plenty. By the year 2000, 20GB hard drives become common in most home computers, which will be used to store MP3 music files and JPEG digital photos after Kodak invents the digital camera and Diamond Multimedia popularizes the music player.    April 1996 Five years earlier, CAD vendors had struggled to adapt their software to Windows. Now in 1996, they begin the struggle all over again, except this time it is with the Internet. This month the A-B-C vendors (Autodesk, Bentley, Cadkey) tentatively stick their toes into murky Internet waters. (Murky, because no one at the time really knew which one of many Internet possibilities was the best one to follow.) Autodesk announces DWF [drawing Web format], which later becomes the basis of the Whip! plug-in for Web browsers for viewing drawings online; today Whip is called "A360 Viewer." [I think WHIP was short for "Windows HIgh Performance."]   Bentley licenses technology from Spyglass to add a Web browser to MicroStation; Spyglass is the same company from whom Microsoft licensed itsInternet Explorer.   Cadkey announces SiteSculptor, a shareware VRML authoring tool that uses 3D solids modeling and wireframe models; the product fails in the marketplace.  Neither integrated Web browsers nor VRML become particularly popular, and after a near-20-year battle of DWF against PDF, Autodesk gave in to Adobe. Apple fires ceo Michael Spinder, and then replaces him with Gilbert Amelio. IMSIships TurboCAD 3 for Windows 95.   The box for a later release of CorelCAD   May 1996 More Web-related developments occur this month as upFront.eZine comments that "We see this as a sign that the Internet is moving from being Major Media Hype to Just Another Tool for getting your work done."  Bentley releases a beta of its VRML import-export filter. Intergraph subsidiaryInterCAP converts its 2D CGM [computer graphics metafile] to a Navigator plug-in. (Intergraph was part-owner of Bentley Systems.) Numera muses over releasing Visual CADD as an enormous plug-in to allow users to view, edit, and plot Visual CADD drawings in Web browsers; while the plug-in was released as a beta, it never shipped formally. Nevertheless, the move foreshadows ASP [application service provider] software, in which CAD programs run over the Web, such as Alibre in 2000 and Onshape in 2015. As CAD vendors begin to adapt their file formats and CAD programs to the Internet, industry observers start to question whether VRML has a future in CAD.   June 1996 In a move that stuns the industry, Cadkey, Inc. sells its Cadkey and CuttingEdgemechanical software to Baystate Technologies, but retains its DataCAD architectural software. This event is the first of many mergers and buyouts that occur among CAD vendors over the next decades. Cadkey, Inc. changes back to its original name, Micro Control Systems, saying it wants to focus on developing 3D products for the Internet, such as converting its CODe CAD development system to JavaCODe; nothing comes of CODe or JavaCODe. Baystate later takes back the Cadkey name, but today is known as Kubotek. Nemetschek announces a Windows 95 version of their allPlan FT software for AEC. Until now, the software ran only on Unix and NT systems, creating a market-acceptance problem. The port isn't enough, however, and Nemetschek exits the North American market -- until four years later when it buys Vectorworks. Bentley Systems continues to demonstrate Objective MicroStation 6.0 with gee-whiz features like dragging a symbol from a Web site directly into the CAD drawing; the product never ships. A few years later, this sort of thing became standard in most CAD packages.  TailorMade Software releases a DWF-to-DWG translator; Autodesk never releases such a translator. Corel starts shipping its 3D ACIS-based CorelCAD for $249.   Article continues following this advertisement... ...article now continues. July 1996 Parametric Technology Corp gets into the AEC market with the purchase of the object-oriented Reflex CAD from England. The product fails, and PTC changes direction towards product collaboration with its successful Windchill PLM software.  Microsoft announces that Internet Explorer v4’s user interface will become the future interface for all its Windows applications. While the browser interface indeed becomes the interface of File Manager, it does not for any other application, even for those from Microsoft. Microsoft announces that Windows 97 will ship in a year's time. After a year-long delay, the product is renamed Windows 98. Vincent Joseph Innocentius Everts, the flamboyant Dutch head of Cyco Software, announces that he is marrying an American psychologist he met over the Internet. At 37, he says he thought he never would get married.   August 1996 The VRML v2 specification is released at the Siggraph show, but after taking so long to be developed, few care anymore. The VRML organization later becomes the Web 3D Consortium.  IDG launches JavaWorld as an online magazine, which continues to this day atwww.javaworld.com. While Java doesn’t take over the world as intended by its inventors at Sun Microsystems, it slowly and steadily makes a place for itself as a crucial component and background engine to Web pages, the Android operating system, and so on. At one time, the price of CadKey was reduced to $495 to spur sales but failed to bring greater profits. Baystate Technologies this month announces that Cadkey 97's price will increase from $795 to $1,195. Later, the price increases further to $2,195, and today the renamed KeyCreator stands at $3,295. From the failed experiment in ultra-low pricing, CAD vendors learned that low prices do not equate to higher revenues. Autodesk subsidiary Kinetix (today the Media and Entertainment division) announces a 3D Studio plugin for Netscape Navigator. Pangaea Computer systems releases a DGN plug-in for Netscape Navigator, something Bentley hadn't done. Eagle Point Software acquires SolidBuilder. A Swedish group releases bCAD for Windows 95.   September 1996 The US Department of Justice begins to look at how Microsoft conducts its business. After an investigation and lawsuit that lasts years, Microsoft is found guilty of monopoly-like behavior. Meanwhile back in Burma, ownership of modems and fax machines is made a crime punishable by 15 years in prison. Numera's Web site goes offline and its 800-number is disconnected. Users find out the hard way that the company burned through its investment money in developing a Windows version of Generic CADD. Today General CADD Products sells a Windows version that works like the DOS-based Generic CADD at www.generalcadd.com Autodesk announces "its most significant wave of Internet products to date" at Autodesk University in Chicago: Internet Publishing Kit for embedding URLs in drawings and saving drawings in DWF format (later integrated into AutoCAD 2000i) Internet version of their PartSpec library (later sold off) WorkCenter document management software for the Web (later sold off) Purchase of MapGuide for placing maps on Web sites (later sold off) Java-enabled Whip plug-in for Web browsers (later made obsolete)   October 1996 The managers of DataCAD Product Group form a new company, DataCAD LLC. They purchase the DataCAD software from Micro Control Systems (a.k.a. Cadkey, Inc.). To help improve sales of the problem-plagued AutoCAD Release 13, Autodesk dusts off  the '176 Reasons' campaign it had utilized to launch AutoCAD R12. The ad copy reads, "For all those who have been asking the question, 'Can AutoCAD Release really make my life easier?', we offer 176 yes's [sic]." When keen CAD users pour over the list, they discover four reasons are duplicates and 30 others were already available in Release 12.   November 1996 Corel acquires the source code for Visual CADD from Numera. Later, the code is sold to IMSI (maker of TurboCAD), then on to TriTools Partners, who continue to develop Visual CADD to this day at www.tritools.com. Baystate launches a lawsuit against Bentley Systems and the third-party developer who reverse-engineered Cadkey’s PRT file format. Baystate states it is concerned about the wording used in certain data structures of the translator. Baystate loses the suit. Bentley announces Engineering Back Office (later renamed ModelServer Publisher) at an eye-watering $24,500. They call it a "multichannel electronic publisher of engineering data," and it operates alongside their ModelServer Continuum, a $37,500 server for creating "a contiguous database of engineering and enterprise data."  Owen Wengerd releases CADlock, software that locks AutoCAD drawings to make them read-only. The software becomes popular by allowing clients to view and plot AutoCAD drawings, but not edit them. The software ends its run in early 2016.   User interface of an early version of AutoCAD running on Windows Autodesk announces that all future versions of AutoCAD will be written only for Windows 95/97 and NT, and changes AutoCAD's numbering system to match that of Microsoft's. Meanwhile, Microsoft CEO Bill Gate's new vision is that the computer desktop should be indistinguishable from the Internet; the result of his vision is 20 years of malware-infected misery that affects millions of users and costs the economy billions of dollars in lost data and wasted time. Spynet sues Microsoft over the "Internet Explorer" trade name.  Rumors fly that IBM..., no Hewlett-Packard..., no Microsoft plans to buy Autodesk for $1 billion. None of the rumors come true.   December 1996 The editor of MicroStation Manager magazine calls on Bentley Systems to "embark on a campaign to convert some of those dissatisfied [AutoCAD R13] users." Bentley instead targets Cadkey users after winning the lawsuit brought against it by Baystate. Bentley markets a "Cadkey Migration Package" that bundles its PowerDraft, Draft-Pak Mechanical, Cadkey Importer, QuickVision, and Engineering Links software, along with one year of support for $595. Autodesk announces that AutoCAD Release 14 will ship in July 1997, and raises the dealer price of AutoCAD by $300. Russian software company Top Systems releases T-FLEX CAD, a 3D modeling system. ZD Labs unveils a new benchmark that uses MicroStation 95 as its CAD component, partly because that version of MicroStation is available on thirteen operating systems.  Following several weeks of rumors, Autodesk and Softdesk announce in December a merger agreement valued at $72 million worth of shares. The price had gone up after PTC apparently made a counteroffer. Out of the merger come two entities that irritate Autodesk to this day: IntelliCAD and the resulting host of AutoCAD work-alikes, along with the Open Design Alliance.and its DWG read/write/edit libraries. Samsung Electronics says it will ship 1 Gbit DRAM chips in 2005. (*) A cultural reference. cf. "In the year 2525" by Zager and Evans   And One More Thing... Revizto says they're super-excited to invite all to an open beta of Revizto 4. This is one of the rare Web-based startups of the last few years that has actually survived, so that impresses me.      Here's what's new in v4: new markup system; importing 2D sheets directly from Revit, Navisworks and AutoCAD (including PDF sheets), without a model; the elimination of Revizto Editor being required as project sharing and management can be done through Revizto Viewer; improved merging and sync'ing; and automatic daily or weekly exports to Revizto.  Feel free to access the beta from https://beta.revizto.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 recently: PTC explains how IoT [Internet of things] needs CAD Dassault describes its plans for Solidworks and the cloud Eva Franch keynote at Vectorworks Design Summit What we saw at the Vectorworks night in Chicago What's new in Vectorworks Images of new Vectorworks Features Live blogging: Vectorworks Design Summit Keynote  What's a Vectorworks User Conference? CAD Vendors Think This Many Customers Want Subscriptions This is the CAD vendor PTC worries over most  We're on Twitter at @upfrontezine with late-breaking CAD news and wry commentarythroughout the day, such as.... upFront.eZine (@upFronteZine) Mar 20: Why Adobe is so successful at selling subscriptions: $600/yr for ALL their software. Compare: Autodesk wants $360/yr just for AutoCAD LT. Letters to the Editor Re: upFront.eZine's 21st Anniversary PayPal.me didn’t work here in NZ, just said ‘not available in your region’, so logged in and hopefully sent via normal PayPal!     - Robin Caper The editor replies: Thanks for the tip. To send a donation to upFront.eZine through the normal PayPal channel, go to paypal.com and send an amount to grabowski@telus.net   - - - I use Tri-Tools Partners' Visual Cadd for most of my CAD, have used the product for 15 years and am very proficient.  It is a very easy to use 2D drafting package. I also can do some minor drawing using BricsCAD, enjoy your 'Inside BricsCAD' publications. Am working to learn 3D drawing, which is a bit of a struggle, but I am gaining on it. Have really enjoyed your weekly upFront.eZine. In reading your weekly post, I feel like I am rowing a one-man dingy and those you are talking to in your weekly post own megayachts. Keep up the great work, as I am working diligently to upgrade my vessel.     - Greg Burkhart The editor replies: In the real world most drafting is still 2D. Problem is, for CAD vendors, the money is in selling 3D, and so 2D gets overlooked by them.   - - -   I appreciate your writing.  The recent articles about Autodesk and the upcoming board battle could have appeared in the WSJ.  Thank you for your efforts and keeping a critical eye open.     -Martin van der Roest - - -   This email address is going away because I’m moving. Can you switch it?  If you’d prefer, I’ll cancel the old subscription and create a new one. Just hate to break the old account, since I’ve been such a long time reader.   Just in case there’s a trophy or something years from now for the longest subscriber.  Hate to give up such a huge lead.     - Ken Elliott The editor replies: I looked it up, and you first subscribed 01 Oct 1997 -- 2.5 years too late to be an earliest subscriber. Sorry! Mr Elliot responds: And just like that.... dreams shattered! Thank You, Readers! Thank you to readers who donate towards the operation of upFront.eZine: Donald Strimbu Tamas Badics: "Appreciate your efforts." Malcolm Davies of Techevate Software  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 $500 for for large companies > paypal.me/upfrontezine/500 If PayPal.Me does not work in your country, please donate through paypal.com to the account of grabowski@telus.net. Or you can mail a cheque, money order, or cash (US$ or CDN$ only, please) to upFront.eZine Publishing, Ltd., 34486 Donlyn Avenue, Abbotsford BC, V2S 4W7, Canada.   Notable Quotable "I Can Only Be Angry Or Giddy About This Piece Of Technology"     - Techmeme Heds (@nottechmeme) on Twitter

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