upFront.eZine News Archives

How Vention Uses CAD to Predict Demand

 Issue #929

 

by Ralph Grabowski with  Etienne Lacroix When I first learned of Vention and visited the Web site, you might forgive me for thinking it is a new CAD software company. (See figure 1.) Turns out it's not; Vention are an industrial parts distributor, adding a software front-end to make the design of industrial equipment easier. That's the niche: providing the parts that make the machines that make parts.  Figure 1 Vention's CAD program was not ready at time of writing, and so this is a marketing image Vention ceo Etienne Lacroix comes from consulting firm McKinsey, with management experience gained while at GE, and before that getting design experience with a contractor working with AirBus and Boeing designing landing gear fixtures for the A380 and 787 aircraft. In speaking with designers of industrial equipment, he found that their pain points are in these areas: Finding the industrial parts needed Assessing the compatibility between parts Importing 3D models into the desktop CAD Managing multiple purchase orders from multiple suppliers, and then coordinating arrival times that need to be roughly simultaneous So he decided to fix the problems by taking these steps: Warehousing modular parts needed by the machine design niche  Validating compatibility between all parts Providing a Web-based CAD program that embeds his parts library (see figure 1) Storing all models in a single format, while allowing import and export Packaging the parts ordered by designers into a single shipment Vention (an abbreviation of "invention") began as a company last July, was in alpha at the time I interviewed Mr Lacroix in January, and launched as a public beta last week. Here is my transcript of our talk over Google Hangouts:   Q&A Q: Tell me what Vention is. A: Vention allows engineers to be hyperfast at designing and building custom industrial equipment. It’s a single environment where manufacturing engineers can design and then order their custom industrial equipment -- the machines that build machines. These machine do not exist off-the-shelf; they are always custom designed and built. It is a $36-billion market with 400,000 users. Q: How does Vention work that's different from other CAD parts sites? A: The way things work now is that engineers go to an industrial distributor's website to find the parts they needed for a design. Then they try to figure out compatibly between those parts,  and import them in their desktop-based CAD. Lastly, they have to design custom parts to be made by local machine shops. All these steps are time-intensive and costly. Vention is providing a single environment to do all of that: start new product design session, plug parts into Web-based CAD -- I call it my "industrial grade LEGO kit." All the products we list are compatible with each other. Once the design is finished, engineers submit their order, and we send them their machine in a box the next day, ready for assembly with assembly instructions -- it's like assembling something you get from IKEA. I have to say that the most fun part for the engineers is assembling what they designed! Q: You plan to have an online CAD system. Tell me how it is different from other Web-based CAD programs out there. A: Let me start by saying that we aren't a CAD company. We have a powerful CAD configurator, but we don’t intent to compete in the CAD space. Our Web-based CAD configurator operates at a high-level of abstraction. Other CAD systems -- like Solidworks, Creo, or Catia - are low-level CAD program designed to be very good at handling any kind of geometry, whether surfaces or solids.  Our program is higher level CAD, so lots of uncommon intelligent features can be incorporated. The software tells you the ways in which two parts can connect, it suggests the next best parts for your assembly, and it provides the cost in real time.  Q: How did you build your CAD system? A: It has just two parts. There is the Web-based rendering engine that shows the image, which was developed by one of our strategic partners. The other part is the constraint solver, which we built ourselves Q: There are several constraint servers on the market, so why build your own? A: This is true, and they are amazing at handling any use case. But for our high-level CAD, a custom solution was needed. It enables the intelligent features I described earlier. Q: I am guessing that someone has go through to find the connection points on all the parts you sell? A: The parts we use are metadata-rich, and we embed all the interface points in the model. In Creo it might take a dozen mouse clicks to bring two parts together, in Solidworks four or five clicks; we like to say that in Vention it’s “one part -- one click.” (See figure 2.) Figure 2 Part being selected on the Vention Web site Q: Do you  have your own file format to define parts? A: Since we are a Web-based solution, the concept of file format does not really apply, but we are compatible with 20 import file formats and support export formats like STEP. This number will expand over time Q: Can users bring in their own parts? A: Yes, but then they have to position them manually, using conventional part-mating functions. Q: Can users convert their parts into your one-click parts? A: We are considering this as part of future release. Q: Signing up to the site and using it is free, so how do you make money? A: We make no money from the software we provide. We make money from the parts sold to customers. We are an industrial distributor with a “sexy front-end.” We also plan to compensate design authors  through a crowd-sourced marketplace. Users will be able to start their designs from someone else's designs -- which can be shared privately or publicly -- and then earn royalties when another user buys the design   Q: Where you do you get your start-up funding? A: Our idea was funded in just three months, I'm proud to say. We are funded by Real Ventures venture capitalists in Canada, and Bolt from Boston. Prominent angel investors include Jon Stevenson (formerly with PTC and GrabCAD), and Rob Stevens, a former executive at GrabCAD. Q: This is sounding to me that you are more like an Amazon than an Onshape. A: We are a hardware company. Our industry is never going to be able to compress machine designers’ pain points unless the hardware is integrated with software. All the problems I listed are external to the CAD system, and so design-to-build is 1.8x to 6.6x faster with cost savings between 7% and 80%, depending on how complex the assembly is. We have our own warehouse operations where we package the boxes with the parts spec'd by users. A box might contain high-precision aluminum extrusions, assembly plates, caster wheels, other parts, all the nuts and bolts needed. We provide assembly instructions grouped by sub assemblies.  Q: How international is your operation? A: Our team is based in Montreal, Toronto, and Boston. We have warehouses in Canada and plan to open US warehouses in 2017. Q: The Internet is global, and so could someone use your Web site to place an order from, say, Burundi? A: They could, but there would be custom fees payable, and shipping costs might become prohibitive. That's why warehouses need to be within 1-2 days of shipping time  Q: A lot of parts are made in China these days.  A: We use a mix of parts made in US, Canada, Mexico, and China. Some firms have software architects; we have hardware architects who make sure that the "lego kit" is consistent, even when the parts come from different vendors. Q: A lot of online stores offer free shipping for orders over $25 or $50. How do you handle for shipping? A: The customer pays for shipping, it is a line item on the invoice. We use UPS for our next-day delivery. Based on the biggest parts, 1.5m long, everything can fit into their ground trucks. We do not use big things like 40' containers. Q: How do you keep the warehouses stocked for next-day delivery? A: Most distributors look at the history of sales to determine which parts sell faster and so need more stocked. Because I have a CAD platform, I can use the future to predict the future, and so not run out of parts. Our main value proposition is speed. Admittedly, not every use case makes sense with Vention. But we will be flawless in speed, because our system lets us better predict what will be needed. https://www.vention.io/   And One More Thing... Onshape adds sheet metal design to its browserCAD, with a unique capability: designers see and work on sheet metal parts in folded and flat views at the same time, along with the the tabular view, like BOM. (See figure 3.) Figure 3 Three views of sheet metal design (image source Onshape) Videos of the new features at https://www.onshape.com/cad-blog/whats-new-in-onshapes-latest-update-2/13/17 Even More News We're on Twitter at @upfrontezine with late-breaking CAD news and wry commentary throughout the day, such as.... upFront.eZine (@upFronteZine) Feb 18:  Predicting the future is a lot like throwing dice: IDC: global IoT revenue by 2020= $7.065 trillion  AT Kearney: IoT revenue by 2020 = $344B upFront.eZine (@upFronteZine) Feb 18:  Of the two IoT-by-2020 revenue numbers, which one do you think IoT providers will promote --  $7.065 trillion (yes) or $344 billion (no)? Letters to the Editor Re: Readers Respond to 'BIM Angst' Large construction projects that are the poster children for successful BIM implementations always have a second feature that is rarely touted, especially by vendors, consultants, and techno-cheerleaders of all stripes. That it is IPD, Integrated Project Delivery in which many subcontractors are required to regularly attend large design meetings, and frequently in which key subs are brought on much earlier in the project than in typical design-bid-build, well before the  design is fully finalized. Often there are also risk-sharing  agreements (more or less a sharing of efficiencies and of cost-of-errors). No question that BIM can be a very powerful and useful tool, but typically architects cannot  possibly have the broad and deep knowledge necessary to fully model the structure. Hence the participation of subs-with-knowledge is a component.       - Leo Schlosberg, ceo        Cary Concrete Products, USA - - - If a government or an investor prescribes BIM in its projects, then it is legitimate. However, it is not a direct constraint for entrepreneurs to have to use BIM. Every entrepreneur can and must decide for himself. An active design of BIM requires that companies redesign their work processes. Previously, the builder stood in the center of a project. Then it was the architect, and today it is the BIM model. The architect, whether he wants it or not, now has to redesign his new role as "guardian of the BIM model". BIM is not the tossing of IFC files. BIM is then a little more. It is always easier for people to complain about the absurdity of progress than to accept the new challenges.      - Ulf-Günter Krause, business consultant        AVACAD CONSULT, Germany The editor replies: I don't think it is a matter of progress vs, challenges. There are significant problems with BIM, which we will not hear about from vendors, and so users end up discussing them. Mr Krause responds: Actually, BIM is not the problem. The construction industry is the last major industry to implement the three-dimensional component-oriented design. Digitization is progressing and will not stop even before construction. In the beginning unfortunately, often the sellers of the software made full-bodied promises. This is a pity, but it is so. It is not just the seller who is responsible but also the buyers. I can still remember how the architects have caressed about AutoCAD and about the manufacturers and sellers. Actually, it is nevertheless after 30 years the time, the active active the next digital revolution positively. In most cases, the problem always ended up in front of the computer.   Thank You, Readers! Thank you to readers who donate towards the operation of upFront.eZine.  Should you wish to support upFront.eZine through PayPal, then the suggested amounts are like these: $25 for individuals > paypal.me/upfrontezine/25 $125 for small companies > paypal.me/upfrontezine/150 $500 for for large companies > paypal.me/upfrontezine/625 Should Paypal.me not operate in your country, then please use www.paypal.com and the account of [email protected]. Or mail a cheque (US$ or CDN$ only, please) to upFront.eZine Publishing, Ltd., 34486 Donlyn Avenue, Abbotsford BC, V2S 4W7, Canada.   Notable Quotable "There's an arms race among manufacturers, egged on by the media, to put more and more technology into cars -- stuff which fewer and fewer people know how to use, or want. "     - Bob Lutz, executive formerly with GM, BMW, Ford, and Chrysler     http://www.roadandtrack.com/car-culture/a32537/go-lutz-yourself-1-16/

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Readers Respond to 'BIM Angst'

Issue #928

 

Great BIM review. Luv the politics!     - Chris - - - The only reason most firms are adopting BIM is because of government mandates. We're pushed into it or we can't bid on the contracts. The workflow is hastily patched together with software that's incomplete and incompatible. It's not like just going from the drawing board to CAD. There is just too much which needs to be learned and formalized before a single wall is drawn.  What used to be an enjoyable career has turned into a nightmare of dis-coordination. Solutions are not ground-up reinventions, but layers of complexity on top of layers of complexity. There is never time for a more incremental approach as there was with CAD.      - David William Edwards     Dave Edwards Consulting - - - It is rare that a statement in your excellent newsletter requires clarification, but in issue #926 you mention, "IFC is bigger than BIM." How can a standard be bigger than a concept? That’s like comparing apples to dreams. Do you mean that a file exported as IFC is larger than the original file?     - Bill Glennie     Autodesk The editor replies: The link provided by IFC reaches out to hundreds of ancillary programs -- analysis, facilities management, and more -- as well as the BIM programs themselves. In this way, the business of IFC is a bigger than BIM. - - - While the adoption of BIM in the marketplace does seem to be lagging compared to the adoption rate we experience with CAD, I still see its dominance as inevitable due to one simple fact: it can save contractors and owners huge amounts of money.  Traditional 2D architectural documents have a massive inefficiency in the lack of coordination of the building trades, which results in added cost. A properly-managed BIM project can significantly reduce those costs, allowing the contractor and/or owner to pocket the savings.  For us architects, there’s no real advantage. I’m a believer that we all do better quality work when we work in a 3D environment, but that doesn’t necessarily translate into increased fees or profits. And it certainly costs us more to buy, maintain, and train for BIM software.  But in the end, we’re the tail being wagged by the dog. Whether we like it or not, our clients will increasingly be requiring we use BIM software. because they receive a huge economic advantage from it.  All the above obviously applies most to large and complex projects, so it will be adopted quickest in that market. Trickle down to the level of getting your bathroom remodel done in BIM will take longer, or indeed, may never happen at all.  The added costs and complexity of BIM might well be enough that the market will bifurcate into a high-end (where large firms migrate to big projects with BIM), and a low-end (where small firms continue doing smaller projects with 2D CAD). Love your newsletter. Keep up the excellent work!     - Andrew G. Blyholder, senior associate architect     Architectural Resources Group, USA - - - I run a very small building company. I do most of the detail design work myself. Most architects are simply not able to do the required detail design work for manufacturing; basically, 95% don't use 3D CAD for final design.  I would love to be able to exchange 3D models with parties involved as the design evolves, but alas this is not possible. The only way to make it happen would be for me to manage the 3D model. This does not really fit the way responsibilities are shared in the building process.  If 3D models are still a problem, BIM is even further off. It would require a complete re-alignment of the building industry. Where BIM can work is in tightly-integrated building teams, but at present this does not fit with current contracting practice. Governments requiring BIM is not the way forward. The benefit to all partners should drive BIM implementation and not a top-down requirement. A requirement would put smaller business to a serious disadvantage. A useful BIM implementation is no simple matter.      - Rene Dalmeijer     The Netherlands The editor replies: BIM vendors are keen to have government mandate BIM so that design firms are forced to buy their software. - - - We barely got CAD translation working. As long as there is profit in locking us into a proprietary vendor format, there will never be interoperability. Autodesk expects Revit to be it, as was AutoCAD. There needs to be a single standard format (similar to SQL) that is managed outside any vendor.     -Charles Haber, client strategist     Haber Group, USA The editor replies: With all the additions to IFC, it has become a kind of STEP or SQL. I am unsure, however, how effective it is, such as if it is good enough yet so that both Revit and ArchiCAD could be used on the same project. - - -  Thank you for going to the conference and reporting to us. (We couldn’t make it, as we were busy waiting for Revit to 'synch to central'.) One elephant in that room was no doubt the unavoidable truth about Autodesk, who have consistently proven themselves to be faithful to their shareholders first, which is as it should be in a free-ish capitalist market. The problem that arises from this (correct) orientation of their mission is that it is rare for the goals of Autodesk and the goals of paying users to align perfectly. This includes paying users who do work that is bounded by state or federal law, licensed AEC firms that design structures to comply with the myriad building codes and energy regulations. Since shareholders come first, Autodesk’s goal is to mete out minimal improvements with every update, in order to maintain revenue flow. The software (Revit) is never going to work as well as it could, because if they were ever to make the software fully functional, the paying users wouldn’t buy the next release, and revenue will dry up for several quarters -- long enough for upper management to be voted out. They learned this lesson with AutoCAD R14, (which was nearly flawless) and they will not be making THAT mistake again. Another scenario that could arise is that Autodesk no longer sees any profit in using a particular add-on or sub-licensed software module, which many customers may have relied on for years. Autodesk chooses to remove that portion, then re-writes their software for the next release, leaving many customers with no way to use the work that they had done previously. This happened with Revit MEP 2011, when Autodesk swapped out energy tool IES for GBS. In short, Autodesk can't be trusted by state or federal entities to do what is best for the designers or for the final customers. Autodesk’s FIRST obligation is to its shareholders, everyone else is secondary. If Autodesk were to be taken over (by millions of frustrated users buying up their stock) and converted into a non-profit, then using their software and file format as a national standard would be far easier, safer, and more likely.     - Peter Lawton, mechanical     Affiliated Engineers, USA The editor replies: I get the feeling that BIM is at the level of PLM, in being complex to implement, and expensive to run. Mr Lawton responds: Since I have only ascended to the middle rowing deck of this particular trireme, I only hear the beat of the production drum, and the occasional cracking whip, so I am not familiar with the level of development in other software silos. This is why it’s so important that we have you to keep an unbiased and experienced eye on these things, so thank you for your dedication. Revit / BIM is an order of magnitude more complex than CAD, possibly two orders of magnitude in certain respects. It requires higher end hardware to run quickly, but it will run slowly on the cheap stuff (which is another frustration altogether). The learning curve is long for old folks, less so for new grads. Revit is terrifically maddening in many ways, and it is obvious that those shortcomings could be readily addressed by Autodesk, but again, they must maintain a steady income. Having said that, the software still has immense and impressive power to extract information from a given model, which can help to very quickly resolve issues that used to take weeks to figure out. Our customers are architects or owners for larger projects (100k square feet+), so they decide what software we need to use. We still use AutoCAD for 5% of our work, and probably will for another five years. Some of that is up to Autodesk – if they were to improve Revit enough, we could drop AutoCAD completely, but that seems unlikely. Many customers will never adopt Revit, because they do not need its power and they can meet the needs of their clients with other, cheaper, less complex software – which should alarm no one. Irrational demands for "everyone to move to BIM" are stupid and pointless, and irrational. It shows a blindness to (or an intolerance for?) the workflows of others.   And One More Thing... C3D Labs is celebrating the 20th Anniversary of St Petersburg's ASCON Group with a free conference being held just before COFES in Scottsdale Arizona. ASCON Group is Russia's largest CAD vendor, and the most aggressive in developing spin-offs, such as Renga.  C3D Labs is responsible for developing the C3D kernel used by the company's KOMPASS-3D MCAD software, as well as by other CAD vendors and a version is available through the Open Design Alliance. C3D consists of modules that handle 3D geometry, 3D constraints, import/export, and rendering.  The two-hour event takes place at 10:00am on April 6 at the Scottsdale Plaza Resort, with the keynote address by ASCON Group ceo Max Bogdanov. Attendees can take home "Geometric Modeling," Dr. Nikolay Golovanov's book on the mathematics of 3D modeling. Register for free at http://c3dlabs.com/en/sources/events/?ev_id=1544#events_reg 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: My new laptop is $1000 cheaper than my old one Why aren't tablet keyboards sporting a second battery? foto of the sunday: a phone recharge - - - We're on Twitter at @upfrontezine with late-breaking CAD news and wry commentary throughout the day, such as.... upFront.eZine (@upFronteZine) Feb 7: Getting ready for retirement, Carl Bass made as much in 2 days as the rest of us make in 320 years: $7.9M Jan 10 and $8M Jan 13, shares sold Letters to the Editor Re: Open Design Alliance opens up the Revit file format I understand the need to be able to interact with Revit files, but I don't understand why this is under the "Teigha BIM" label. To be BIM-compliant in any way you have to be able to interact with a BIM model and that means .ifc or .ifcxml -- Revit is just not relevant in this context.      - Simon Geard (via WorldCAD Access)     CAD-Schroer, England The editor replies: The ODA could not use Revit or RVT in the name, as Autodesk has in the past been particularly litigious with regard to similar efforts by ODA and other CAD vendors. I agree that the use of "BIM" in the name is unfortunate as the product has nothing to do with the pioneer of BIM, Graphisoft ArchiCAD, or any other BIM program -- except that these programs now can read RVT and RFA files directly.   Re: pdf2cad: From PDF to CAD Drawing Did Visual Integrity tell you that we’ve been a reseller of pdf2cad for years and that we actually helped create the Mac version of the product?     - Bob Mayer, president     IMSI/Design, USA The editor replies: I don't recall these items coming up, so it is interesting information to learn from you. - - -    Thanks for writing about PDF and CAD. I found your article to be entertaining. There are a couple of points that you make on which I have a different perspective than yours. I don’t find 3D to be a kludge in PDF at all. Quite the opposite, I find it to be a very useful tool that can create extremely compelling engineering documents. It is true that you have to click on a poster image to activate a 3D model and while I agree that is not optimal, it is a pretty low barrier to overcome. Companies like Boeing, GE and Honeywell and institutions like the U.S. Navy have all had great success using 3D PDF in their engineering processes.      - Phil Spreier, technical director        3D PDF Consortium  - - -  Finally I find out how where and how PDF and Acrobat Reader fit (or fit not) in the picture. Thanks for letting me in into your secrets.     - Herb Grabowski - - -  I want to let you know about a new blog recently started by AGACAD CEO, Donatas Aksomitas called “InfiniBIM: BIM to the point”. It’s linked to some of our current R&D at AGACAD and focuses on new approaches to BIM data management and exchange. Here are two initial blog posts: LOD [levels of detail] is wasting our time and holding BIM back SOI [sets of information] a potential revolution in BIM data management      - Bryan Bradley, communications officer        Agacad, Lithuania  - - -  PDF and CAD.  In one sentence: No chance. I see the same problem in cloud based software.  The idea of installing nothing, letting the browser do it, is a race to the bottom of  a common denominator, HTML5. CAD looked better in 1979, even on the green screen. Looks good on middle management, though. Hey we just took it to the cloud. What can it do? Vapor trails. But hey, it runs on any system. But what can it do? Very little, but the buzz is so loud we can sell it anyways. What if the customer gets informed? No problem, we have a team of 12 in marketing and just got rid of our expensive software developer. China will do it for free. So we can sell a piece of cr*p by spinning it AND eliminate our IT group?  Do it!      - Chris Hannukainen The editor replies: There was a reason we left mainframe-based terminals as fast as our PC-buying abilities allowed us!   Re: Change of CEO at Autodesk Thought you might be interested: http://www.enr.com/articles/41476-autodesk-ceo-carl-bass-steps-down-but-no-successor-named      - Dick Coates        Canada The editor replies: The surprise retirement announcement came just a few months after Autodesk was forced to take on three activist board members last fall. When the ceo announced his retirement, two of the activist board members immediately announced that they too would be leaving -- once a new ceo is in place.My understanding is that the agreement was mutual: the ceo would leave, as would the activist board members. As one insider put it, "Both won, and both lost."   Thank You, Readers! Thank you to readers who donate towards the operation of upFront.eZine.  Should you wish to support upFront.eZine through PayPal, then the suggested amounts are like these: $25 for individuals > paypal.me/upfrontezine/25 $125 for small companies > paypal.me/upfrontezine/150 $500 for for large companies > paypal.me/upfrontezine/625 Should Paypal.me not operate in your country, then please use www.paypal.com and the account of [email protected]. Or mail a cheque (US$ or CDN$ only, please) to upFront.eZine Publishing, Ltd., 34486 Donlyn Avenue, Abbotsford BC, V2S 4W7, Canada.   Notable Quotable "I prefer social media to interviews in the mainstream media as many journalists don’t do their research."      - Black Swan author Nassim Taleb        http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-02-07/not-fascism-nassim-taleb-warns-theres-global-riot-against-psuedo-experts

pdf2cad: From PDF to CAD Drawing

Issue #927

 

by Ralph Grabowski with Jean Haney The problem with the PDF format is that it was never meant for CAD. When Adobe co-founder John Warnock conceived the portable document format, his dream was that publishing issues like spot colors, fonts, and half-tones be reproduced perfectly, no matter the medium -- screen or printed page.  PDF became pervasive in offices once Adobe made Acrobat Reader free, and it became familiar to everyone, including for sending CAD drawings. Autodesk was a reluctant convert, as its DWF format is far better suited to the accuracy required by CAD drawings; PDF export was not added to AutoCAD until release 2011 -- 20 years after PDF first launched -- and as of last year's release the program also imports PDF files.  PDF was never meant for CAD, and that's is why exported .pdf files are imperfect, and importing them back into a CAD system is even more problematic. There is, for instance, insufficient accuracy for curves, which end up looking segmented or jittery. The accuracy of intersections is degraded compared to our use of object snaps to ensure precision. And don't get me started on text. "Once saved as a PDF, there is no longer much information about the original CAD drawing, other than layers and TrueType fonts," explained Jean Haney. She owns Visual Integrity, a Dutch-based firm that has 21 years of experience in translating files to and from PDF.  Her tip: after exporting PDF from the CAD program, examine the result in Acrobat Reader by zooming to 1000% or more and then looking at curved areas. See if the curves are smooth (see figure 1) or jagged (see figure 2.). If jagged, then the resolution set by the CAD program is too low; aim for 2400dpi. Figure 1 High-resolution PDF file of a drawing exported by CAD program Figure 2 Text and diagonal lines affected by low resolution export by CAD program If it looks blocky instead, this indicates that it is a raster PDF file. A raster PDF (like a scanned drawing) will need to be traced or redrawn. (See figure 2.) Figure 3 CAD drawing exported to PDF in raster format So, we can export 2D drawings to 2D PDFs, because it's expected of us, not because it's an ideal neutral format. What about 3D? Well, 3D PDF is a kludge: the 3D model is inserted into a PDF page as an object. To view in 3D, we click the object, after which we can rotate and zoom. Our 3D models must be translated to U3D [universal 3D] format, a format that otherwise is not universal.  "People also got disappointed of PDF when they discovered that it is a very open standard. Although the PDF standard was usable in a prepress environment, there were simply too many ways in which a perfectly valid but unusable PDF-file could be created," writes Laurens Leurs at presspressure.com. The good news is that PDF is now an ISO standard, meaning it is open for anyone to use for free, frozen at version 1.7, and Adobe in theory cannot make proprietary updates. In practice, it does through "extension levels" that add functions useful to Adobe's line of software. About Visual Integrity Jean Haney and Jan Homan co-founded Visual Integrity in the early 1990s. She does the commercial side, he is the primary developer and CTO. Their first program called PDF FLY, ran on several dialects of Unix to convert PS to EPS [encapsulated PostScript] and MIF [maker interchange format], which technical publishing programs like FrameMaker used. As the market shifted, they added Linux, Windows and then Mac OS X. (See figure 4.) Figure 4 File formats supported by PDF FLY server "But then we saw market for technical publishing programs going away, and being replaced by software like Quark and even Word. We saw that there was a market in CAD, and so sold created pdf2cad (a subset of PDF Fly), initially exporting in DXF and HPGL formats, and then eight years ago added DWG in cooperation with Open Design Alliance." When ODA members license "PDF underlay," they actually are getting Visual Integrity technology. There is a separate plug-in for BricsCAD that converts PDFs to DWG. Visual Integrity also offers Conversion SDK [software development kit], for Windows, Linux and Mac OS X, which allows applications or Web services to input EPS, AI, and PS files and output to DXF, WMF/EMF [Windows and enhanced meta format], SVG [scalable vector graphics] and all standard raster formats. "SVG is a great vector Web-format,” she said, “and I wish it had taken off sooner. It's over 20 years old but now only slowly gaining traction." There are many sources and many types of PDFs, and that affects the quality of drawings. "We get a number of PDFs files a day from people who are wondering how to convert them perfectly,” she said. “If the PDF files are computer-generated, we can usually create an accurate, editable CAD drawing. If they send scanned PDF files, we recommend they look for raster-to-vector tracing software, which will get them part of the way there and then require some manual clean-up." Q & A Q: How do you deal with text in drawings? A: If it is TrueType text, we read it directly. If it is CAD text, such as AutoCAD's SHX, it is “plotted text” [individual strokes, like lines]. We plan to add OCR [optical character recognize] of text to our next release. It can be any kind of plotted text, and we will convert it into a text. We support Unicode for international character support and can even “convert to curves”, which takes care of “strange” characters. Q: PDF files from CAD systems can contain raster images, such as corporate logos and background images. What do you do with them? A: Raster images are converted to referenced DWG image objects. Q: What if the drawing itself is a raster image in the PDF? A: We only do vector-to-vector and vector-to-image conversion. There are specialized raster-to-vector programs out there that make assumptions about CAD drawings, as to what their content means. We recommend customer contact Trix Systems as a starting point. Q: What do you do to educate users about the problems that can happen in conversion?  A: We have a Web site, and we instruct those who contact us about problems. We also offer a free test conversion where we explain what we did to create the file when returning the resulting CAD drawing. Q: Autodesk added PDF import to AutoCAD 2017. How does this affect you? A: It will be interesting to see if they can handle all the support calls that the conversion results will generate. We still sell our software to customers of earlier releases of AutoCAD, as well as most other CAD systems. Q: Do you have software that converts DWG to PDF? A: We do not, but we could think about that. Q: What are some of the things your pdf2cad software does to import PDF files more accurately? A: We don’t use a print driver, as some programs do, because every extra step dilutes the conversion accuracy. We don’t depend on a specific CAD program, either. When converting to vector formats, we have our own powerful proprietary format-mapping engine which compensates for deficient features in the PDF file. This is unique.  Our software imports characters as strings [of text] or curves. We look at the characters next to other characters to determine which are words and to figure out the alignment. Our "Characters as Curves" option is useful for recreating symbols. Since curves are not ideal for text (because it makes characters too large), we have the "Unknown Fonts" option that handles them as symbols. If fonts used in the PDF are missing from your computer, then you can specify which similar-looking one to use through font mapping.  The "PDF cropping" determines if, say, a fill pattern, should not extend beyond the clipping boundary. "Crop Picture" removes white margins from the edges of the PDF page, while "Page Mapping" converts multi-page PDF into a single one, because many CAD systems cannot handle multi-page PDFs. We can force nearly horizontal or vertical lines to be orthogonal, and combine compound objects into blocks. Layers can be manipulated so that entities are grouped onto layers by color, by lineweight, or other layer definitions in the PDF file. - - - Pdf2cad is $199 with 30-day support, and there  is an annual subscription of $40/year for updates and support.  The SDK starts at $1,999 for fewer than 10,000 conversions a year, with max price of $9,999, plus a separate version for OEMs and ODA members. The SDK takes just two calls and one day to implement: open, convert the file; create an INI file to control conversion options. "PDF was never designed to do all this, so it is remarkable that it works at all for CAD drawings," Ms Haney concluded. http://visual-integrity.com   Sponsor: Okino Graphics == Professional 3D File Conversion/Viewing/Rendering Software ==   For over 2 decades Okino (Toronto) has provided mission-critical 3D conversion software used extensively by tens of thousands of professionals. We develop, support and convert between all major CAD, DCC & VisSim formats. Robert Lansdale (CTO, [email protected]) tailors each package to the specific conversion requirements of each customer. Popular formats include 3ds Max, Maya, C4D, LW, ProE, SolidWorks, Inventor, SketchUp, DWF/DWG, DGN, CATIA, IGES/STEP/Parasolid, 3D PDF/U3D, JT, FBX, Collada & more. We know data translation, and provide immaculate developer-to-customer relations. http://www.okino.com And One More Thing... Siemens has for three years been helping Land Rover develop their 15-meter entry to the 35th America’s Cup catamaran race. (See figure 5.) The boat has 1.2km of cabling connecting 190 sensors and four video cameras, whose data is fed into 85,000 hours of design and build. Land Rover BAR (Ben Ainslie Racing) used NX software for design, Teamcenter for data management, Fibersim for composites engineering, and Femap and STAR CCM for engineering analysis and computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analysis. Figure 5 British team posing with their catamaran and a couple of Land Rover SUVs that happened to be on the dock (image credit Lloyd Images) The America's Cup was first raced off the waters of England in 1851., and is named after the country that won it that year. This year's race is off the coast of Bermuda, with Land Rover being the challenger against Golden Gate Yacht Club. http://www.siemens.com/plm 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:   We're on Twitter at @upfrontezine with late-breaking CAD news and wry commentary throughout the day, such as.... upFront.eZine (@upFronteZine) Jan 29: The overhype is finally over: LG and Sony, the last two makers of 3D TV, announce they will no longer make them -> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/01/29/3d-television-set-dead-major-manufacturers-stop-making/ Letters to the Editor I received so many letters about BIM angst that I will run them all next week in upFront.eZine.   Thank You, Readers! Thank you to readers who donate towards the operation of upFront.eZine.  Sion Silyn-Roberts (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/150 $500 for for large companies > paypal.me/upfrontezine/625 Should Paypal.me not operate in your country, then please use www.paypal.com and the account of [email protected]. Or mail a cheque (US$ or CDN$ only, please) to upFront.eZine Publishing, Ltd., 34486 Donlyn Avenue, Abbotsford BC, V2S 4W7, Canada.   Notable Quotable "SXSW is a sweltering, often stupidly boring brand orgy, where panels with intriguing names often turn out to be little more than distillations of Wikipedia pages on a given topic."     -  Kaitlyn Tiffany, The Verge     http://www.theverge.com/2016/3/15/11225314/george-hotz-self-driving-car-autopilot-tesla-speech-sxsw-2016

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BIM Angst

Issue #926

 

by Ralph Grabowski "Why isn't this universal yet," is the question that ran through the four BIM conferences I have attended in four years. Agreement is universal that BIM ought to be wonderful for all involved, but then is offset by the brow-furrowing over those who have not (or cannot) implement it fully -- or at all. When we consider that BIM arrived with ArchiCAD more than two decades ago, the impatience is understandable. Think of MCAD operating without CAM. (BIM is short for "building information modeling," and describes that software that some architects are using to design buildings and incorporate information that can be reused in later stages, such as during construction and operation. Think 3D CAD + BOM. The drawback to incorporating all information is that then all details must be modeled, resulting in cumbersome -- even unwieldy -- models in large projects.)   CanBIM Vancouver 2017 conference underway CanBIM Vancouver 2017 I was at last week's annual CanBIM conference in Vancouver, Canada. The organization promotes the use and certification of BIM in Canada, and coordinates with organizations in other countries. Of these, England is the most aggressive in implementing BIM. Canada, like the USA, has, however, a political problem that prevents it from implementing a nation-wide mandate to use BIM: construction is a provincial (state) concern. It is illegal for the federal government to impose a BIM agenda outside of its purview. (A BIM mandate may be enforced for buildings funded by the federal government.) But no province has done so, either; I suspect the reason is ignorance but not in a negative way: BIM is not something government ministers have on their radar, no more than, say, CAM. We saw this in action at CanBIM, where the keynote speaker was a minister of technology. He was knowledgeable about his portfolio (a pleasant change from most government ministers), and spoke of his plans for high-speed Internet to every home, a $100 million development fund for technology firms, every student from kindergarten to Grade 12 being taught computer programming,... Government Involvement, or Interference? But when an attendee asked if the provincial government had plans to mandate BIM for construction projects, the minister talked around the question. I was surprised, given he was at a BIM conference, but also not surprised, as the topic is a niche. So, BIM cannot be mandated across Canada and USA by government. The workaround is for smaller jurisdictions to mandate it, such as regional hospital systems, cities, and large design-build firms. Then, it might spread to the rest of the country. But it might not, either. Throughout the conference day, several speakers called on governments to fund BIM, such as subsidizing the high cost of software for SMBs [small and medium businesses] or setting up agencies of some kind or another. That approach is problematic as it is a selective tax cut that favors some businesses over others. Government programs tend to ignore the very small firm of, say, under 50 employees. Another speaker at CanBIM noted that BIM is used typically by certain disciplines, and in urban areas; other disciplines and firms in rural areas tend not to. Some disciplines lend themselves better to BIM than others. The tight-knitness of urban living allows quicker information sharing -- even a level of peer pressure -- than widely-spaced rural areas. What is crucial to some micro-cultures is inconsequential to others. BIM As Its Own Enemy There are, of course, drawbacks inherent in BIM that prevent it from dominating architecture the way parametric CAD did in mechanical design. Formats are Proprietary. By integrating parametric design with data intensity, BIM software programs have turned themselves into islands. ArchiCAD does not read Vectorworks does not read AllPlan does not read Revit. (The first three are owned by the same software company.) As a result, designers in a geographic area must all use the same program, or else they do not get to work on projects together. Each BIM program is successful in pocketed areas.  When I mentioned this to the architect sitting next to me, he immediately protested, "We have Navisworks!" But not at the design level, to which his neighbor nodded. BIM vendors love their proprietary formats, for it gives them an economic monopoly over entire regions; and hate it, for it locks them out of other areas. Vectorworks is, for instance, very strong in Japan, so when you do design work in Japan, you use Vectorworks. But among the Big Five Japanese design-construction firms, ArchiCAD is the standard.  (Open Design Alliance last year made Revit's file format non-proprietary by writing a public API that eventually will allow reading, viewing, editing, and writing of RVT and RFA files independently of Revit.) Data are Complex. The solution to proprietary BIM file formats was invented accidentally by Autodesk to solve the same problem in a different sphere. I won't go into the history of IFCs, except to say that they were invented in 1994 and 15 releases later are still being updated as buildingSmart thinks of more data to add. IFC is bigger than BIM, which is silly. (IFC is short for "industry foundation class," and is the primary method of exchanging data between BIM design systems and ancillary software, such as analysis and facilities management. buildingSmart is the organization responsible for IFC globally.) Buildings are One-off. Unlike the mass production that CAM affords (repeated production of a single design under near-ideal conditions), nearly all buildings are unique and built on ground that might or might not be stable before, during, and after construction. Think of building 747s in muddy fields, one at a time, each in a different city, and with different fuselages.  BIM is Non-intuitive. To use BIM properly, designers need to load it with data upfront, working in 3D. This is non-intuitive. Humans sketch some ideas in text or 2D, develop them further, adding details and data later as the path to completion become clear. BIM does not work the way we work. The other barrier is cost. BIM software is expensive to buy and even expensive to operate, compared to traditional CAD, such as the many under-$1000 AutoCAD knock-offs available today. Don't even bring up the dreadfully expensive solutions to sharing massive data-heavy BIM models with global clients!  - - - When I think back to the first BIM conference I attended four years ago in Australia, a closing slide seems apropos of what I heard at this year's event: BIM culture needs to be led from the top The top needs to know what they're talking about Presentation at BIM conference in Australia   The problem that the most successful revolutions emerge from below. This is because those below have deep knowledge of their narrow areas, and so are the best suited to finding change that increases efficiency (think introduction of the PC); those at the top have limited knowledge of borad areas, being human, and so are unsuitable to lead wholesale change. (Think Autodesk and Optis insisting on being subscription-only and cloud-only, and so not comprehending the need of significant segments of their user base.) Yet, BIM is not an isolated agent of change, as were personal computers (or even CAD was) in the early days; BIM requires buy-in from all actors or it's not a buy-in. It requires executive decision-making by executives who don't necessarily realize a decision needs making. This, and the near-anarchistic complexity of construction work sites, is why BIM is doomed to lag in the way that CAM never did. Nevertheless, as one frustrated CanBIM attendee exclaimed in the line-up for lunch: "BIM has to succeed eventually by us going forward; I can't see us ever going back." http://www.canbim.com   #vanbim17 Some of my tweets from the conference: upFront.eZine ‏@upFronteZine  Feb 2: Hearing CFO of Mountain Equipment Co-op, high-end outdoor clothing company, on how they reduced energy consumption of new bldgs. #vanbim17 upFront.eZine ‏@upFronteZine  Feb 2: Hearing from a firm that designed an office tower that towers on tripod stilts to retain old building that sits underneath. #vanbim17 upFront.eZine ‏@upFronteZine  Feb 2: Speaker from UBC says architects spending only 1.5% on R&D, but I think CAD vendors do that mostly. #vanbim17 upFront.eZine ‏@upFronteZine  Feb 2:  3D is not necessarily the best way to view a project. Sometimes it makes more sense to search and filter data. #vanbim17   And One More Thing... Abvent releases Artlantis 6.5 3D visualization software for architects and designers as a free upgrade to Artlantis 6.0 users.   Image in Artlantis from 3D model made in ArchiCAD The new Render Manager optimizes rendering calculations of images, panoramas and animations on an unlimited number of networked computers -- distributed rendering at no extra charge. Previews are available in draft mode, including ones at high definition. Photo-real renderings add realistic clouds and God rays. The new release exports to the TMA format read by Abvent's Twinmotion 2016 3D immersion tool. Download the 30-day trial version of Artlantis 6.5 from https://artlantis.com/downloads/ 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: A USB cable more useful than most - - - We're on Twitter at @upfrontezine with late-breaking CAD news and wry commentary throughout the day, such as.... upFront.eZine (@upFronteZine) Jan 17: Any comment on the future is opinion, not fact: "$11.6 billion by 2025, according to Goldman Sachs." The .6 faux accuracy is a nice touch. Letters to the Editor Re: Betting on DWG for the Ecosystem My current understanding (and I’m open to correction) is that Quantum is a platform for all things BIM and AEC. I understand that it can and will coexist with the Fusion platform and both are built on common backbone.     - Allan Behrens     taxal Consulting The editor replies: "Me, too, but I speculate that Quantum will (have to) extend to other verticals to solve Autodesk's interoperability problem."  - - - As I read more and more complaints about issues with cloud storage and processing, I keep coming back to a comment I have made several times before: "Most computer users today aren't old enough to remember that the 'P' in PC stands for 'personal', and the tag line of the day was that a PC would free you from the tyranny of being connected to a mainframe computer. Substitute "cloud" for "mainframe" and we're back where we started.     - Bill Fane The editor replies: It is indeed sad that the elite in Sillycon Valley wish to re-enslave us. When we can't afford their rent, they won't let us farm.   Re: We Talk with Optis about Light Thanx for another good issue. Very interesting optics stuff. Watched the space probe video:  excellent!     - Chris - - - I am a big fan of upFront.eZine and your insight into the industry.     - Chantale   Thank You, Readers! Thank you to readers who donate towards the operation of upFront.eZine.  Luc Michel (Bricsys Canada): "Keep on doing your 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/150 $500 for for large companies > paypal.me/upfrontezine/625 Should Paypal.me not operate in your country, then please use www.paypal.com and the account of [email protected]. Or mail a cheque (US$ or CDN$ only, please) to upFront.eZine Publishing, Ltd., 34486 Donlyn Avenue, Abbotsford BC, V2S 4W7, Canada.   Notable Quotable "Facebook: Everything is happy. Instagram: Everything is beautiful. Twitter: You're all going to hell."     - C. C. Pecknold (via Twitter at @ccpecknold )

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