Marketing can make some things more important than they really are, and so it is good to get the view from the ground. There is, for instance, a vast difference between what is presented from the main stage at a CAD conference than what goes on in the design firms.
Business Advantage is a British firm that annually quizzes CAD users about the technology they are using and what they plan to use more of -- or less of. The answers they get are, of course, dependent on the makeup of the group being asked, as well as what mood they were in. It is nevertheless an interesting sight into who is using what.
For this year's report, Business Advantage received 626 responses on sixteen topics. (See figure 1.) They were asked if they are aware of the technology, if they perceive it to be important, and if they are using it today and possibly tomorrow.
Figure 1: Sources of responses to the survey
These were the topics:
- 3D modeling
- BIM
- Cloud-based CAD
- Mobile
- Collaboration
- PLM
- Rendering
- Licensing
- PDM
- Augmented reality
- 2D drafting
- CAM
- Virtual reality
- Machine learning
- Artificial intelligence
- Generative design
Here is how the topics ranked. In figure 2, the usage is shown by the blue bar, with 3D modeling #1 and artificial intelligence as dead last. The red bars show awareness. I have to wonder about 27% of respondents being unaware of 2D drafting.
 Figure 2: Technologies ranked in order of importance
Business Advantage has been running these surveys for five years, and so they are starting to be able to generate trends: which CAD processes are gaining, and which are losing. Figure 3 shows that the ones that gained the most in five years are collaborative design and 3D printing. These also are the only ones whose change exceeded the margin of error.
 Figure 3: Change in technology usage is mild
No study goes without its four-pane snapshot, and here Business Advantage has its grid of high- and low-usage technologies arrayed against other factors. Seen this way, 3D modeling is at the top of the heap, while artificial intelligence lags. See figure 4.
 Figure 4: Technologies arranged in the grid
What about the future? That's always a tricky thing to determine, as today's trends do not portend tomorrow's actuality. Business Advantage sees 3D modeling and 2D drafting continuing strong:
- 3D modeling is what the CAD industry is pushing, of course
- 2D drafting is nearly as important, even as most CAD vendors try to ignore it
Meanwhile, the technologies that blast their presence from press releases and technical publications are the laggards: machine learning, artificial intelligence, generative design, and so on. It is fun to see 2D drafting dominating generative design in the real world of the design office. See figure 5
 Figure 5: Future implementation of CAD technology
http://www.business-advantage.com/
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| Here is the most recent post made to the WorldCAD Access blog:
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Archintosh is celebrating its 20th anniversary, covering architectural software running on Macinitoshes -- and more. Founder Anthony Frausto-Robledo describes the origin of his site, "I was tremendously disenchanted with the toiling aspects of architectural practice and wanted to explore digital technologies to see how they could streamline practice" in 1999.He is launching this week the new architosh INSIDER Xpresso newsletter on emerging technologies. architosh.com
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Spacewell is Nemetschek Group's new umbrella brand for its building operations and management division. The name comes about after the German holding company acquired multi-tenant SaaS [software as a service] provider Axxerion. www.spacewell.com
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Siemens PLM Software updates its high-end NX MCAD system with "the first CAD product" with machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI), to determine how to serve up the right NX commands and modify the interface. Siemens hasn't given the new NX a name. plm.automation.siemens.com/global/en/products/nxIt is not uncommon for CAD software to modify UIs [user interfaces] based on the user's activity or which command was entered. AutoCAD brings up supplemental tabs specific to certain commands. BricsCAD goes further, with its Quad cursor examining entities under it and then modifying itself. So it's not clear to me why Siemens PLM needed to invoke ML and AI to just modify the UI. It's not rocket science, and it's probably not ML/AI.
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We now call it "Wi-Fi." From Byte magazine, September 1985:
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Litho's finger-worn AR and VR controller with haptic feedback is available as a $199 SDK. It connects via Bluetooth Low Energy to a smartphone or AR headset, and has a capacitive touch surface for 2D input, scrolling, tapping. www.litho.cc/beta
However, saying stuff like "architects and designers can create precise 3D models in the context of the real world ... simply by pointing and drawing" shows the founders don't understand what's involved in creating precise CAD models.
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Dassault Systemes is expecting revenues of €3.81 - €3.84 billion for this year. Translated into US$, that's roughly $4.6 billion, using Dassault's own stated exchange rate of 1.2 during Q2-Q4.
CFO Pascal Daloz confirms financial analyst Jay Vleeschhouwer's estimate that the company for the first time sold more than 80,000 licenses of Solidworks in 2018 -- and "about double your next closest competitor."
Financial analyst Michael Briest: "Can you talk anything on the volume of cloud business you're seeing?" CEO Bernard Charlès: "...right now, I think it's below 10%, for sure, of the revenue."
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Bricsys continues to hire ex-Autodesk employees. New is Anna Maria Romeo, director of partner development. She worked in cross-industry partner program development at Autodesk.
Robert Green is now full-time director of implementation overseeing users moving to BricsCAD.
In other Bricsys news, its free 3D Shape software is beefed up with
- Quickdraw walls (single level)
- Drag and drop materials
- Create components (blocks)
Also, new export formats:
- FBX and DAE for external rendering
- WMF and BMP for documents
- STL for 3D printing
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The long-promised addition of ANSYS Discovery into PTC Creo has finally arrived. Creo Simulation Live will be the name of the real-time FEA add-on. The long-term plan is to eventually incorporate all of ANSYS software into PTC software. www.ptc.com/en/products/cad/creo/simulation-live
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A couple of years ago, I did a small technical presentation to the Rolls-Royce Owners' Club on 3D printing, and its possible effects on the collector car hobby. One member had a cracked, worn part on his 1926 Phantom II that he needed to replace, and you don't find such things at your local auto parts store.
He photographed it, submitted the photos to 123D Catch, and then forwarded the resulting model to a 3D print service. Several hundred dollars later his replacement metal part arrived. It was a perfect reproduction, including all the wear and the cracks!
The good news is that aided by the 3D printing book that I co-authored he was able to measure the defective part and use the free 123D on-line modeling app to build and eventually 3D print a correct part. He isn't an engineer, he's a businessman.
- Bill Fane
The editor replies: Autodesk replaced 123D Catch with Recap Photo.
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I can never figure out what the term "real-time" means. It seems to just mean "fast".
- Jess Davis
The editor replies: Things happen as fast as you move the cursor, such as real-time zoom. Back in the 1980s, each zoom took several minutes to complete in CAD software. Expensive graphics boards that cached the screen image at the time boasted of zooms taking two seconds -- or less!
The famous nozzle.dwg took 4.5 minute to do a regen or a zoom, without the math co-processor, which was optional back then in computers running AutoCAD 2.x and earlier. (I paid $450 to add a math co-processor to my first PC.) With the math co-processor, we had to wait only 30 seconds.
AutoCAD 2.5 added screen caching, which helped a great deal, but still was not real-time.
Mr Davis responds: I think my confusion stems from exposure to data acquisition and controls terminology long ago. Not much of it stuck.
Re: What 2019's looking like for Autodesk
You wrote, "I think more than any other software vendor in the history of the world." How about app and game companies? But it's still a silly amount of software, much of it doomed to be lopped as soon as it doesn't make enough money or goes out of fashion.
- Steve Johnson (@SteveJohnsonCAD on Twitter)
Re: Varjo Targets Industry With its VR-1 Headset
Very well-written story, my friend!
- Jonathan Hirschon, principle
Horizon PR
I talked to an Autodesk rep where I got my copy, about why the product I bought was not available anymore. (I had bought 3d max 2008 and paid subscriptions up to 2014, plus bought all plug-ins that were compatible with 2014.) The problem was that after reinstalling the software from DVD on my main PC, it did not activate. Everything in my Autodesk account is gone, too.
The rep said he can't do anything about that, and his only advice was to use the installed original copy and use a crack to skip activation. I never thought I could be this mad at Autodesk.
- Kris (via WorldCAD Access)
Germany
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