Issue #1,115 | Inside the Business of CAD | 29 November 2021
The problem with 3D models, especially ones with high LODs [levels of detail] like of skyscrapers or aircraft, is that the detail overwhelms us. Rob Snyder notes that focusing attention is the role of 2D drawings we generate from 3D models. But 2D plans, elevations, and details fail to provide immediate context: where are these elevations and floor plans in the 3D model, other than by cross-referencing them with section callouts (as illustrated below)?
A floorplan referenced through section callout 1-1 (image source Autodesk)
So, Mr Snyder developed a focusing assistant, called TGN rigs. Rigs return the focus back to the 3D model through a UI and an API. Rigs lets you see, for instance, elevations in the context of the 3D model.
The key to his rigs is the viewing arc (in red, in the figure below). Arcs guide you to specific parts of the model.
Viewing arc in red, view cube in green, stops along the way in blue
You can specify different kinds of visual styles and viewpoints along the arc. For instance, the blue square in the figure above specifies an elevation section (as shown below), where the view filter is set to Section Elevation and the display style to Blueprint, with a markup added manually.
This stop along the viewing arc shows the 3D model in elevation
A second, horizontal timeline lets you specify properties of the view, such as changes of style (like “Blueprint”) and filtering, such as “Glass Off”.
A project could have many TGN rigs. They look like display cubes (in green in the figure below). Clipping planes are optional; click on a face of the cube to toggle specific clipping planes.
You drag a handle to rotate the view along the path from p1 to p3, during which elements can explode or implode, or even show assembly animations. (The square at p2 indicates a parallel projection at this point.) So, while a 2D drawing is static, the TNG rig is interactive.
Viewing arc (left) with its settings (right)
Viewing arcs can be shaped just like an arc, or tilted in space, or S-shaped. TGN includes a library of default viewing arcs.
Every rig has a name, such as “Section Elevation,” and hosts settings that specify the GUID [globally unique identifier], a link to the model source, model motions, graphical styles, sound toggles, and so on. Some of these are dependent on the software. Rigs are stored in TRE files and can be shared through social media.
Mr Snyder writes, “Digital 3D modeling, as it is used in the design and construction industry (and similar industries), has obvious and great value. However, decades of evidence show that its value is commonly overstated, and that the farther one travels down the path established so far for BIM (or for digital twins), the farther one gets from utility, and the closer one is drawn into a never-ending slough through the muck, the purpose of which seems to be only some kind of competition to see who is more macho.”
He describes two limitations imposed by today’s massive 3D models:
As models are wide and expansive things, they surpass our human ability to wrap our minds around them.
Models by themselves provide no means by which we can assert and affirm that at any particular location that what should be shown there is shown there, and that nothing that matters is missing from there.
Mr Snyder hopes that many CAD vendors will take on his API, to make the attention focusing tool broadly available. tangerinefocus.com
And in Other News
nTopology, who we’ve talked about before, lands a fourth series of funding ($65 million), bringing the total to $135 million to further develop its generative design software for 3D printing, which TechCrunch generously described as “The company effectively offers CAD software.” ntopology.com
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SolidSpac3 debuts SolidSpac3 QA/QC [quality assurance, quality control] analysis and reporting system for commercial construction sites. It compares 2D and 3D models with construction site laser scans, identifying construction errors and problems within 24 hours. www.solidspac3.com
CADLine is offering 15% off permanent licences to its ARCHline.XP line of software until, um, today (Nov 29). As the company puts it, “Say NO to forced software subscription pricing. We offer perpetual licenses — now with 15% off. Pay once, use forever.” archlinexp.com/buy
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Meanwhile, Allplan reminds us that “Section 179 allows businesses to reduce their tax obligation by deducting software (including Allplan) purchased or financed during the tax year.” The email blast does not, however, tell us in which country. (It’s USA. But similar deductions are available in some other countries, too.) info.allplan.com/us_en/tax-deduction-section-179
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AgaCAD is cutting 50% or 30% off the prices of all their perpetual licenses until Christmas Eve for their Revit solutions, like the Smart Assemblies add-on. Get the deets at agacad.com/blog/thank-you-offer-2021
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Here are some of the posts that appeared recently on my WorldCAD Access blog:
It’s interesting that technical challenges/opportunities that I explored back in the ’80s are still relevant today, if not moreso. You know that old saying, “The more things change, the more they seem to stay the same.” - John Callen
On the almost $500 price on that mouse: as I understand it, a vendor may sometimes jack up the price to a “nobody will pay this” level to preserve the product listing, rather than removing it altogether. The in-stock status (in China) may be more aspirational than real. - Rich Webb (via WorldCAD Access)
Re: Flooding
So sorry to hear of your flooding troubles. Sadly, no stranger to disastrous flooding here in Houston. - Becky Stevens
Notable Quotable
“In the end, the term metaverse will be nothing but a bunch of incompatible messy digital constructs from visions of companies who have no idea what exactly it does to improve human life.” - Avadiax
Thank You, Readers
Thank you to readers who donate towards the operation of upFront.eZine:
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Issue #1,114 | Inside the Business of CAD | 22 November 2021
C3D Labs produces kernel software, and so can be considered a competitor of Parasolid/D-Cubed (from Siemens) and Spatial from Dassault Systemes.
The C3D kernel was originally developed 25 years ago by ASCON Group for their KOMPAS-3D solid modeler, but then a decade ago spun off the kernel group as an independent company, C3D Labs. The company has been very aggressive at building out functions, such as its new programmable F-curves.
The company has held an annual conference for a while now, but in Russian. Given the modern switch to Zooming conferences, this year it was held in English. (See figure below.)
C3DevCon being broadcast live from St Petersburg
Oleg Zykov, ceo of C3D Labs, reported during his keynote address that the company is doing well, having hired nine more employees and released updates to C3D Toolkit in 2020 and 2021 on time.
The company offers its programming toolkit with five modules for developing software in the areas of MCAD, BIM, CAM, and so on. Each can be used on its own, or together with the others:
C3D Modeler — geometric kernel
C3D Solver — parametric solver
C3D Vision — visualization engine
C3D Converter — data exchange
C3D B-Shaper — polygon mesh to b-rep converter
There are two more modules that C3D is releasing, C3D FairCurve Modeler and C3D Web Vision.
During the conference, customers described how they deployed C3D’s modules, including professor Rushan Ziatdinov of industrial engineering in South Korea (see figure below).
Rushan Ziatdinov describing how C3D FairCurve Modeler works
The C3D kernel has displaced other kernels in nanoCAD, Altium, VR Concept, and so on. It is used by developers at LEDAS Group and is available to members of the Open Design Alliance. c3dlabs.com/en
Thank you to friends and readers checking in to see how we are doing during what is now called “Canada’s worst natural disaster” with thousands displaced by flooding, all Canadian roads out of here cut, and Canada's largest port in Vancouver isolated. The flooding was the result of a tremendous rainstorm last Sunday and Monday, along with warmer temperatures melting snow.
Here is a picture I took last Monday morning of a pedestrian bridge in our local park in which we go for walks. Normally, the water goes under the bridge.
Wrong-way creek
It’s weird: Thousands are stranded by mudslides and wrecked bridges or forced out of homes by flooding. For the other couple of million living in this region, life is normal, other than grocery stores running low on some food staples, gasoline being rationed, and we having to take detours around closed roads.
Restrictions on some grocery items and maximum fills of 30 litres of gasoline
The reason for life being mostly normal is due to our region’s agricultural farmland retention policy: most homes in our region are built on non-agricultural land, which means higher up, and so farms primarily inhabit the flood-prone flat lands, as this aerial photo of flooding at the Watcom interchange of the Trans Canada Highway amply illustrates.
Flooding at the Watcom interchange of the Trans Canada Highway in east Abbotsford, Canada
The unknown is the longer-term impact. While mudslides are being cleared (one highway is already reopened to one-way traffic), the broken bridges on the critical Coquihalla and Trans-Canada freeways will take weeks to get replaced by temporary bridges and then years to fully replace.
Two of the bridges destroyed by flood waters on the Coquihalla freeway
The immediate solution is to work on bringing in goods (food and fuel) through the USA, with which our region has four border crossings and two rail crossings. We are, however, not the EU, so things don’t pass effortlessly between the two countries.
And in Other News
Contact Software launches a new version of its low-code Elements platform for handling digital business processes end-to-end.
Here is one example of its use: If your firm know that parts will have to be replaced at some point in the future due to new DIN standards, then you can define until-when or from-when parts are valid. The new validity takes effect automatically on the specified date, and also updates the parts list. contact-software.com/en/products/integration-platform
It is striking how both Hexagon and Bricsys seem to completely stonewall any mention, or awareness of, photogrammetric reality capture as an essential complement to acquisition by point cloud.
Other firms in the reality capture/digital twins arena, such as Bentley Systems and Autodesk, have a foot firmly in both camps. Point cloud seems to have reached maturity as an expensive technology, while photogrammetry continues to evolve (and democratize) by leaps and bounds. How long can Bricsys ignore photogrammetry? - Tom Foster Tom Foster Architecture
The editor replies: I don’t know that they are ignoring it. BricsCAD has the ability to place images and maps from a variety of sources.
Mr Foster responds: That’s not photogrammetry. Photogrammetry is taking hundreds or thousands of photos of the subject, such as with programs like capturingreality.com.
They identify same object in several images, thus triangulate the object’s 3D position, hence create a 3D model of the subject as a surface mesh (not points), which can optionally be wallpapered with fragments of the JPGs for a solid-looking, photorealistic model, which can be rotated and viewed from any angle.
Photogrammetric models are an alternative to point cloud models. Each is best for different purposes or different kinds of subject. Hybrids using both techniques are possible.
Photogrammetry is widely used in the construction industry. Bentley, for example came to photogrammetry first, then added point clouds later. Bricsys under the influence of Leica has so far done it the other way round. As with point clouds, Bricsys needn’t do the processing in-house (which Bentley does), but can reprocess/display/integrate various proprietary formats of external programs.
Notable Quotable
“Saturday is an adaptive cross-functional work/leisure hybrid day.” - Management Speak (@managerspeak on Twitter)
Thank You, Readers
Thank you to readers who donate towards the operation of upFront.eZine:
Nick Busigin
3dbrains Pte Ltd (small business donation)
To support upFront.eZine through PayPal.me, then I suggest the following amounts:
Issue #1,113 | Inside the Business of CAD | 15 November 2021
Re: The State of STEP
Man, that first paragraph was an eye-opener for me!
I worked in the field of MCAD for US Navy surface fleet (new construction and overhaul) starting around 1984. Most general design was still 2D on Mylar film mostly using E0 mechanical pencils. The Navy would not allow any contracts to be done on MCAD until 1985, which were relegated to very specific pilot projects. In 1986 they expanded that to CADAM, Autotrol, and about two others. By 1987, they added Intergraph, Computervision and a few UNIX workstation platforms ( before then, it was all mainframe).
Around the time AutoCAD Release 10 shipped in 1988, the folks in NAVSEA issued a letter to contractors that IBM PC-based systems were not considered accurate or reliable enough for modeling design. But they would allow its use for non-design work, such as title sheets, BOM lists, and notes. After a year of that stupidity, they relented, and by 1990-91 we couldn’t move to PC-based AutoCAD fast enough. As we routinely shared model data with other contracts (forcibly by the Navy, and for good reason), we were all in the same situation.
The period from 1996 to 2004 was a fun time. Writing custom apps to run on AutoCAD to automate things was one of the best times of my career. The old “wild west” of CAD is now a suburban subdivision with shopping centers. I left the field in 2004 to transition to Windows systems admin work and Web development.
Oh, and about IGES and STEP. I remember when all the buzz was around STEP support for each of the MCAD products. They would “support” it alright, but almost always made sure to have some feature or data that was so specific to their product that STEP would lose it when importing into competing products.
I was on a committee once for a government agency doing round-trip integrity testing. We would build a reference model in 2D and another in 3D, then export/import through everything they had at the time — IGES, STEP, DXF, and so on — and then score the results to rank products as being most compatible. That era seems like the 1800s now. - David Stein
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Interesting about STEP. In the ’90s I worked for the Industrial Technology Institute in Ann Arbor MI. Its Center for Electronic Commerce did early STEP work and built early tools for conformance testing of CAD systems to STEP.
Famously, one of my colleagues authored a report citing a Detroit-based automotive supplier that had to manage 17 or 18 different CAD systems to deal with all of their customer relationships.
The number of solutions is fewer today, but the problems remain and it is a tough problem. It is hard to innovate within the bounds of standards, which often lag technology and business process. - Stan Przybylinski, vice president CIMdata
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In the construction industry, we have the same problem of data transfer, with possibly a wider range of conflicting needs (or maybe I am just more familiar with construction than mechanical).
While IFC has ruled the roost for the last decade, it is showing its limitations. It is optimized for transferring physical data and some metadata, especially architectural, but has proved hopeless for transferring engineering design data. Yes, it could be extended, but it has taken two decades of argument and compromise to get to its current state and we cannot afford to wait.
Any transfer of data is done so that it can be enriched, but also (invariably) some data must be left behind. The CNC machine, for example, has no interest in the wind pressure on the facade that led to the design of the bracing, only the resulting number and locations of bolt holes.
Similarly, each program has its specialties, which a neutral file can not be expected to handle. Neither IFC nor STEP can possibly handle all project data, ever, without bloating to an impractical size, and without decades of more committees. They will always be behind what the industry needs, and can only be expected to transfer most of the data, not all.
Due to the limitations of IFC and because most engineering design programs now have an API [application programming interface], data exchange systems are being used more and more, especially by the bigger consulting companies. At Arup, we helped to produce Speckle[for exchanging AEC data in real-time], which is open source so that it is free to grow as needed. There are other, similar offerings.
The BIM [building information modeling] ideal of a centralized database is becoming a reality, but is not centered on IFC, as that, by necessity, can never store everything. Instead we now have federated databases, where each product stores its specific data, and then products like Speckle transfer and coordinate what data is needed between the individual consultant models.
IFC might still be used for transferring data to models outside the system. What was BIM is now becoming digital workflows. - Peter Debney, senior consultant Arup Digital Technology
The editor replies: When Autodesk released AutoCAD Release 13, they added the ability to create custom (user-defined) objects. This made AutoCAD incompatible with itself, and so Autodesk provided two solutions:
Object enablers, which understand what custom objects are. This approach failed to catch on industry-wide, as every DWG editor would conceivably need every object enabler ever written.
IFC, which transmits data between incompatible AutoCAD drawings in the form of neutral format. Autodesk quickly handed responsibility for maintaining IFC to an industry group, and then in a reversal earlier this year joined the IFC part of the Open Design Alliance.
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I was gobsmacked by the upFront.eZine article on STEP files. I write a monthly column for The Fabricator that dances around CAD topics. Your article with Martin and Neil on STEP is a gold mine of interesting and possibly useful trivia regarding same.
I remain devoted to Solidworks. It’s been the tool I’ve know for a quarter-century. Scanning heresy of other brands of CADs is useful and keeps me humble. - Gerald Davis, owner GLD Designs
The editor replies: My entry into the world of CAD was AutoCAD v1.4, and then writing about it in CADalyst magazine, starting in 1985. When Intergraph ran an ad with CADalyst headlined “Follow the Leader,” we were gobsmacked. Other CAD dare say that? As you note, it is important to peer above the ramparts from time to time.
Mr Davis responds: We punched paper tape with a PDP-8. My first CAM was OptiPlot running on a Textronix vectorscope. My first CAD was AutoCAD v2.5 running on a Tandy 2000. Color! Luxury. When I saw Solidworks 98 my love of wireframes vanished. My excellent keyboard shortcut skills gave way to yanking a 3D puck.
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Isicad has translated your recent posts about STEP and the ODA Summit into Russian:
I have been dealing with CAD conversion for over 40 years and for many years was a member of the IGES/PDES Organization. I led the development of the IGES converter for CATIA V5 as a joint Boeing/Dassault project in 1986.
In those days we referred to IGES and other formats as “write-only formats,” because converters from CAD companies were good about writing proper IGES (or PDES) files but were horrible at reading other CAD systems IGES files.
The marketing groups of the various CAD companies liked to talk about how good their “round trip” conversions were — going from CAD system A to IGES and then back to the same CAD system A. What they were bad at was going from CAD system A to IGES to CAD system B.
That was infinitely more important, and they were usually pretty poor at that job. At times, it seemed intentional. When I formed Tailor Made Software in 1990, most of our business for the first several years was in IGES flavoring: taking the flavor of IGES produced by CAD system A and massaging it so CAD system B could read it properly. - Scott Taylor, president Tailor Made Software
Re: From Facets to Solids to Facets
The period of time that I was at Evans & Sutherland (’81-’91) really could be seen as the golden years of the computer graphics industry. So much technology was being developed that never really saw the light of day (at least not at E&S). I’m sure this is true with many other companies, but E&S barely gets a mention in most histories of computer graphics or modeling systems.
Dave Evans should really be considered the Father of the Digital Twin. His vision for E&S was to create digital models that would allow you to do things that you normally couldn’t do in real life cost-effectively, like pilot training, mechanical design and analysis, and molecular modeling.
E&S’s graphics systems were only developed because there were no systems capable of displaying the various models. There was a famous ‘Fireside Chat with Dave’ where he announced to the company that “E&S was not a computer graphics company,” totally confusing most employees. He later explained to me his vision of creating digital models, which totally jives with his statement. - John Callen, Director of eTools Marketing Lutron Electronics
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PolyTrans provides you with
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Popular CAD data sources include SolidWorks, ProE/Creo, Inventor, AutoCAD, Revit, Navisworks, DGN, IGES, STEP, Parasolid, and JT. DCC data sources are Cinema-4D, 3ds Max, Maya, FBX/Collada, and many more.
Perfected over three decades, we know 3D data translation intimately, providing you with highly personalized solutions, education, and communication. Contact CTO Robert Lansdale at[email protected].
EngineeringPaper.xyz solves complex mathematical expressions through documentation cells and math cells, while keeping track of units conversion. To display results in different units, specify them in square brackets. Also, it plots.
You can share your sheets with others through shareable links. Try it out free at engineeringpaper.xyz.
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Agacad comes up with Panel Packer in Revit 2020-2021 for sorting, packing, and loading trucks with prefabricated wood and metal panels. Free demo at agacad.com/products/tools4bim/dock/download.
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IronCAD LLC ships IronCAD 2022 today, and here is some of what’s been added:
Place multiple ordinate dimension at once, and edit more than one dimension at a time
Specify snap increments on parts, and set limits to sizes
Generate structured bills of materials with collapse/expand sections
This 3D design software pioneered concepts common today, such as drag and drop smart parts and 3D at-cursor interactions. IronCAD is most popular among metal fabricators and custom machinery manufacturers. A free trial version is available, following registration, from ironcad.com/free-online-trial.
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The Spatial division of Dassault Systems announced the general availability of Release 2022 1.0 of its geometric kernels. Just skimming the surface, here is one thing new for each module:
3D ACIS Modeler extracts sheet bodies at mid-surfaces between faces of solid bodies
CGM Polyhedra smoothly blends between boundaries of two meshes
CGM Modeler automatically detect cylindrical bends and then unbends them
3D InterOp imports large-scale models whose dimensions range from 1 to 100km
3D Precise Mesh’s Hybrid CFD mixes prismatic and hexahedral elements in boundary layers
SimScale, the first engineering simulation cloud platform, lands an extra €25 million in Series C funding (now totaling US$60 million) so as to add rotating machinery, electronics, and automotive simulations. The press release says the firm has 300,000+ users. www.simscale.com
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Here are some of the posts that appeared recently on my WorldCAD Access blog:
Issue #1,112 | Inside the Business of CAD | 8 November 2021
Guest Editorial by John Callen
In the upFront.eZinearticle on Solid Edge 2022, Dan Staples makes the following comment: “I do think [convergent modeling] is a final frontier here, because meshes for a long time were the domain of the film industry and character modeling.”
It turns out that faceted models were the very first b-rep [boundary representation] structures, referenced in 1977 by CMU’s GLIDE, a polygonal modeler.
The Start of It All
GLIDE stands for “graphical language for interactive design” and was a research program in the architecture department at Carnegie Mellon University. The GLIDE program was funded by the Army Corps of Engineers who wanted a system to model their various facilities.
It was headed up by Chuck Eastman, who is generally acknowledged as the father of BIM [building information modeling]. Kevin Weiler, who originated non-manifold topology b-reps as his PhD thesis at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, was one of the members of Eastman’s GLIDE team. I was a member of the GLIDE team 1979-1981, where I was responsible for implementing the Euler operations from the original BDS [Building Design System], which were written in BLISS, to GLIDE’s Pascal.
Defining polyhedrons with GLIDE
GLIDE was an extension to the higher-level programming language, Pascal. Solid modeling operations were incorporated into an interpretive version of the programming language. Procedural constructors were developed to model aspects of buildings.
GLIDE pre-dated non-polygonal surface representations. Booleans were performed with the faceted representation; the intersection code was relatively straight forward. Later on, b-rep modelers introduced non-polygonal surface types.
GLIDE subtracting polyhedrons (left) to arrive at a new shape (right).
Romulus. Being developed in parallel to GLIDE was Ian Braid’s BUILD project at Cambridge University in the UK, another b-rep program. The BUILD research was commercially spun off into Shape Data, which was the precursor to ACIS and Parasolid.
Romulus introduced analytics and had discrete intersection routines to do surface/surface intersection calculations based on surface type.
Only later were NURBS surfaces introduced and there was a big debate over whether analytics should be converted to NURBS equivalents and all intersections done in NURBS — or whether to continue to maintain the discrete surface types for precision and efficiency.
Performance and Interactivity
Kepler. After graduating from CMU, I joined the Kepler project at Evans & Sutherland. Kepler was an application development environment front-end to Romulus that provided a design space, giving designers a degree of interactivity not possible with solid modelers at the time. (Kepler really wasn’t an acronym; the project lead chose the name due to the historical individual’s role in astronomy.) Objects were built in the Kepler environment, and then the corresponding modeling commands were passed to Romulus to instantiate the design, often taking many minutes to calculate on a DEC VAX 780 mini-computer.
When the Kepler project’s proof-of-concept was completed, it was decided to no longer pursue the approach.
D-Cubed. Shape Data Ltd was the company that originated Romulus and later Parasolid. John Owen at Shape Data developed his dimensional constraint technology, which is the basis of D-Cubed . It can trace its roots to the earlier D/T-D [dimension/tolerance-draughting] work in Romulus.
After Kepler, I ended up relocating to Shape Data and led a project to implement encoding dimensions and tolerances in Romulus and automatically generating engineering drawings, easily a decade or more before PMI. The D/T-D function was released with Romulus v5.2.
During a design review I had with Bob Sproull, Bob pointed out that the D/T-D framework we had implemented in Romulus could be extended to be a parametric modeling system.
The company, unfortunately, had some very strong positions on how a solid modeler ought to be used and, as a result, did not realize advances like parametric modeling and PMI when they presented themselves. The D/T-D function was later removed from Romulus.
Evans & Sutherland was a distributor of Romulus, and then later acquired Shape Data. This was just the first of a long series of acquisitions passing Shape Data from one company to another, ultimately ending up at Siemens.
ACIS. The managing directors of Shape Data split off to form Three-Space Ltd, the company that created ACIS.
The Continual Development of Representations
Gradually, b-rep modelers expanded their geometry classes to support analytics (cylinders, spheres, toroids, and so on), and eventually a variety of surface representations, such as NURBS.
Facets became the primary method of representing scenes in image generation, such as for flight simulators, where the image generation pipeline was built on facets for performance. This need for image generation performance then moved over to the film industry and character modeling. Highly detailed visuals required many, many facets, though. Eventually facets were replaced by texture maps with which image generation reached new levels of realism.
Non-manifold topology (NMT) b-reps introduced the next level of representation, which allowed for interim Boolean results to exist (but not necessarily persist). ComputerVision’s Liberator project of the early 1990s, headed up by Gary Crocker, implemented NMT and supported mixed model representations — wires, sheets, and solids. An example was a chair with wire legs, sheet back, and a solid box seat.
Unfortunately, a real-world application never materialized. At one point, I proposed that NMT be used to model machineable models and associated machining processes, but CAD companies were only focused on design, not manufacturing.
Meshes are again making a resurgence with 3D printing. Again, this is based on the basic technology used to process STL files for 3D printing. By the way, most CAM systems operate off of a faceted representation. This is, again, due to the nature of the algorithms not operating directly off of the source geometry and the fundamental geometry of most CNC controllers, which are predominantly lines and arcs. The ability to specify NURBS curves to a controller is a fairly recent and limited advancement.
Defining a spiral staircase with GLIDE
Interestingly enough, it seems that modeling systems cover the two representation extremes (b-reps and facets), but to my knowledge have pretty much skipped over cellular (homogeneous or adaptive) representations, such as voxels [3D pixels] and dexels [depth pixels]. These are gaining some pickup through today’s scanning and 3D printing technologies.
Through all this time, it has been interesting to see the advances on-going in modeling technology. Probably the most compelling is advancing the model beyond just a geometric representation, but also encoding all the corresponding product data. Who knows where this all will lead? Maybe someday geometric tolerances might be encoded in the solid model similar to how RESABS [numeric precision] and RESNOR [angular resolution in ACIS] are maintained.
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There is so much that isn’t known about the early days of the industry. And there was so much shelved back in the day, because the hardware wasn’t up to it. Imagine if someone dusted off that stuff and migrated it to today’s hardware so that, as the saying goes, “Everything old is new again.”
[John Callen is an architect by training, and spent his 40-year career in marketing and engineering positions at high-tech companies. Much of his career was with mechanical design and manufacturing systems, and now he has returned to his architecture roots as Director of eTools Marketing at Lutron Electronics.]
And in Other News
Companies like PTC and Facebook just know that moving to the next level of abstraction gives them an advantage over competitors. They’ll be spending years and billions on Atlas and Metaverse. Companies should understand what their core is, according to Daniel Jackson.
They’ll fail, because full MCAD doesn't belong on the cloud and people don’t wear shoes on their faces. Better technology is not better humaneness. As technology becomes more abstract, Romanticism is the natural backlash.
Take, for example, the natural technological superiority of ebook readers over dead-tree books: even so, ebook titles now cost more, and the digital format is sinking in popularity to paper.
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Cubic Orb’s plugins for land surveying work with most CAD programs, including those based on AutoCAD, IntelliCAD, ARES, Microstation, BricsCAD, and TurboCAD:
KaliBro - georeferences, edits, manages raster images in CAD
GeoView - operates on sets of coordinates in CAD
Wms2Cad - displays maps from WMS/TMS and WMTS services
TranMap - transforms CAD drawings between coordinates systems
And more.
Demo versions are available to download at cubicorb.com.
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Lantek celebrated its 35th anniversary and reported that Q3 sales of its machining software were 30% higher than a year earlier. It has big plans for the future: increase R&D spending by 70% (from what, we don’t know), and adding 130 more employees from the current 260. www.lantek.com
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Open Design Alliance adds a validation engine for IFC [Industry Foundation Classes] files to its SDK [Software Development Kit]:
Performs multi-level validation on IFC models
Customizable for a range of tasks
Supports simple low-level syntax checking
Custom validation defined in IFC files
Higher-level checking specified by the IDS [Information Delivery Specification] and MVD [Model View Definition] standards from buildingSMART.
The validator is part of Open IFC Viewer v22.9, which is available free from openifcviewer.com.
You wrote that the BricsCAD acquisition was “For Hexagon to get deeper into the AEC space.” Did you choose not to comment on this, to give us readers time to mull this over?
I’m interested in knowing what you think about that statement. It's been three years since the acquisition [of Bricsys by Hexagon] and nothing has really jumped out at us yet. - Name withheld by request
The editor replies: Here is my initial take on the statement. From what I see (I am a beta tester of BricsCAD), Hexagon is putting a lot into BricsCAD, and that is the good news.
Hexagon’s origin is in CCM [computer coordinate measurement], which is a post-MCAD process, so they don’t have experience in AEC [architecture, engineering, construction]. They see BricsCAD as the path to entering the market, surrounded by all their other products, like point cloud acquisition and plant design software
Their mirror is Trimble, which started with surveyor’s equipment and is also trying to get into AEC, starting with the acquisition of SketchUp nearly a decade ago. We’re not, however, seeing any impact on the industry, as SketchUp is not a great entry point for a corporation trying to target a discipline dominated by Vectorworks, ArchiCAD, and Revit; SketchUp began as conceptual design software, not as design design software.
BricsCAD has a reasonable chance of making an impact in AEC, but continues to suffer from the same problem it’s always had: lack of mindshare.
I would say the most important aspect of BricsCAD is that it also works as a DWG platform, which is why the CADWorx division of Hexagon fostered the acquisition of BricsCAD in the first place. I am watching to see if BricsCAD-as-platform spreads to other areas of Hexagon, keeping in mind that Hexagon already owns several other CAD packages.
Re: Rådgivende Ingeniørers Forening
Your conclusion could also be “forming purchasing pools” to buy stock in the design software companies, because those companies listen far more to shareholders than to users.
I would guess that the Norwegian government has sentiments similar to the RIF, so perhaps they could pool resources to buy a larger share of Autodesk stock, which would give them a louder voice in how things work at that company. - Peter Lawton
The editor replies: Good idea, but.
There have been suggestions in that past that users buy up a majority of ADSK stock, but that would never happen. Sovereign wealth funds do not interfere with the running of companies.
Mr Lawton responds: Some of the stock-purchase suggestions to which you refer have come from me, as I have been championing that cause for the past 15 years, at least. 😎
However, to state flatly that it ‘would never happen’ is rather defeatist and I would respectfully submit that big companies count on that very attitude to continue to get away with being poor corporate citizens. “What are those two million frustrated users gonna do about (our latest rip-off maneuver), hunh? Fire the board?!”
Well, if those two million frustrated users are also shareholders, the board will be far less dismissive of our requests. Does that make sense? Not everyone connects those dots.
It will take time, perhaps a decade, but if enough of Autodesk’s corporate victims pool enough resources to purchase a significant portion of Autodesk stock, the company will have to listen.
Also, it may be true that sovereign wealth funds don’t deliberately ‘interfere’ with corporate governance, but they do influence it, if only by virtue of their purchase of stock. If RIF writes a letter to Autodesk, and Norway’s SWF (in conjunction with RIF) is holding 5% of shares (about $3.4B today, or 2.6% of the SWF), how do you think Autodesk will react? It’s just a matter of time and money, and there are many parties interested in getting Autodesk to change its ways. All those parties need is organization and patience.
Notable Quotable
“A model is not evidence. It is a theory expressed in arithmetic terms.” - John Hinderaker
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Issue #1,111 | Inside the Business of CAD | 1 November 2021
There was no need, in the early days of mechanical CAD, to exchange files. MCAD was rare enough that it did not matter that systems were incompatible. But by 1976, MCAD had become common enough for the US Air Force to demand a way to reduce costs associated with moving files from the design floor to manufacturing contractors. The solution was found in a common format named “initial graphics exchange specification” — IGES, for short.
From IGES to PDES to STEP
IGES became verbose and unwieldy as over time it supported more and more data types specific to the increasing number of MCAD systems. In Germany, the automotive industry came up with its own widespread standard for exchanging surface data of the skins of automobiles, VDA-FS. What was needed as a modern replacement.
So the IGES Steering Committee began work on a new file format, PDES (product data exchange specification), to do a better job at defining an all-encompassing format: “PDES is envisioned to support all aspects of product description, from initial conception through product design, manufacture, support, and disposal,” said the US Department of Commerce, sounding a lot like PLM today.
In 1985, the committee contributed PDES to an ISO initiative that was creating a universal file format flexible enough to handle “anything from a microchip to a battleship.” This became known as STEP, the “STandard for the Exchange of Product model data.”
STEP was an extensible format, one that could be extended as new technology came along. It handles inheritances, such as a spoke inheriting the properties of the steel wheel in which it resides. Definitions are determined by an object-oriented data programming language, EXPRESS.
The first release of STEP came out in 1995. Sometimes you also see it referred to as “AP203” (short for application protocol level 2). Today, STEP consists of 800 standards (see figure below), of which four are for end users, with the remainder a library of reusable definitions.
To learn where STEP is headed next, I spoke with Martin Hardwick, CEO of STEP Tools, and Neil Peterson, president of the Open Design Alliance.
STEP for Machining
The original purpose of IGES was to make it easier for manufacturers, like General Electric, to deal with 3D models arriving from suppliers using incompatible MCAD file formats. The process looked like this, and today still looks a lot like this:
CAD operator makes drawings with no regard for the manufacturing process
CAM operator designs the manufacturing process
Postprocessor in CAM software generates the G-code that instructs the machine
CNC operator closely supervises the machining to make sure the initial parts were made correctly
The desire today is to go direct from CAD to CNC, Martin Hardwick told me.
CAD operator makes the 3D model suitable for manufacturing
Postprocessor in CAD makes the STEP-NC file
CNC machine uses STEP-NC for automated, optimized machining (see figure below)
STEP has been extended to parts machining, where it is known as STEP-NC (numerical control):
AP238 version 1 for precision machining (2005)
AP238 version 2 for precision assembly (last year)
It was the addition of AP242e2 tolerances that allowed STEP to expand into automated manufacturing. When you know the tolerances that manufacturing needs to meet, you can machine parts to those tolerances. Before this, machines controls worked blindly, not knowing what was allowed.
A NIST-created test file showing AP242 presentation and semantic geometric tolerances
There is complexity inherent in CAM. “Before, the operator figured it out; now software has to be rewritten to figure it out,” said Mr Hardwick. The change means a massive rewrite of CAM software, something not all firms can afford. Partly as a result of this industry change, many CAM firms — like Cimitron, GibbsCAM, MasterCAM, SigmaNEST, and Vericut — have in recent years sold themselves to larger companies, like Sandvik.
Year by year, STEP-NC is adding more to the process data needed to know how to mill, drill, or lathe a part, how to lead in, the speed at which to run, and so on. The key is to know which operations have to be done in which order with the minimum viable tool path. When the data is rich, intelligent software on the controller should be able to figure out the rest.
Each year since 2017, STEP-NC has been used to machine millions of 5-axis parts for commercial aircraft, such as the Boeing 787. Now STEP-NC is being prepared for direct-CAD-to-CNC 2.5-axis milling for features on airframes. As well, it is getting ready for 3D printing, leading Mr Hardwick to call STEP-NC “the PDF of machining.”
ODA Expands to STEP
The Open Design Alliance develops code, such as for reading and writing DWG and PDF files, that is used commercially by its CAD software member companies. By developing the code on behalf of them, the 1,200 members don’t need to develop it themselves.
Five years ago, the organization expanded its offerings dramatically. It moved from offering individual SDKs (since 1998) to a complete technology package for working with CAD and BIM files, including Web collaboration, version control, and visualization on any platform, supported by a natively developed solid modeler and constraints engine.
Then earlier this year, the ODA announced support for STEP based on a strong demand from ODA members, because existing STEP libraries are expensive and are royalty-based, ODA president Neil Peterson told me in an interview. In some cases, STEP is not licensed as an individual component; rather it is bundled with a larger group of converters. Some libraries are in the public domain, but suffer from insufficient development. So there is no economical, high-quality library on the market that’s affordable for small firms, he said.
How STEP fits into the APIs/SDKs offered by Open Design Alliance
Some ODA members just want access to STEP files. Other members, who make use of the ODA’s IFC APIs for architectural design, want both: IFC for building designs, STEP for machinery that goes inside the buildings. ODA is taking on STEP support as a long-term priority.
With STEP files and the EXPRESS programming language being hugely complex, I wondered how the work could get done so fast. PDES, after all, had been working on the problem for nearly three decades.
“We gained expertise by developing IFC,” said Mr Peterson. “Similar to IFC, STEP is defined using EXPRESS schema, and so we can reuse the automation framework we developed for IFC to quickly build a high-quality STEP solution.” As well, the ODA is a member of PDES, the group that maintains the STEP standard, just as it works with buildingSMART on IFCs. From PDES, the ODA gets test data and works on committees that establish extensions to the standard.
The ODA’s timeline looks like this:
By the end of this year, it plans to release an initial version of the STEP SDK (software development kit) with read/write support for AP203, AP214, and AP242 (all conformance classes).
By the end of 2022, the ODA plans full visualization support for the same three APs running on desktop, mobile, and Web, including a free-to-all, commercial-grade STEP viewer similar to the ODA’s IFC and DWG viewers.
The alliance plans to offer publishing of STEP models to 2D/3D PDF, and conversion of STEP to formats, such as Navisworks and DWG.
The cost of getting the STEP APIs from the ODA will be “free.” That is, members, who pay an annual membership fee to the ODA starting at $1,800 a year, pay nothing extra once STEP becomes available, and there are no royalty payments involved. This presents the possibility of undercutting other STEP suppliers, such as STEP Tools in USA, EPA in Sweden, and ProSTEP in Germany.
Longer term, the ODA is interested in AP238 STEP-NC, and the conversion of model data to formats like IFC and Revit. Mr Peterson notes that “Priorities in these areas will be based on requests from our members.”
What Ralph Grabowski Thinks
The MCAD/CAM industry needs a universal file format to minimize the cost and inconvenience of translating data between CAD systems, and for the machines that do the manufacturing.
Other industries like AEC/BIM have found, however, that arriving at universality is a terribly complex problem. That’s because every CAD vendor desires to maintain unique advantages over competitors, and so prefers to stay with its unique file formats.
Lip service is given to data interoperability, so while data flows easily into CAD systems, it emerges rather reluctantly. There is, after all, a programmer cost to implementing exchange standards like STEP and IFC, both of which are increasing in complexity as they expand in capability.
The 2020s find the STEP standard expanding in two directions, towards greater complexity with STEP-NC, and towards lower cost with ODA STEP. The toolkits provided by the ODA, one can hope, ought to make implementing data exchange universality in architectural and mechanical worlds easier.
Rådgivende Ingeniørers Forening represents 140 Norwegian engineering consulting firms with 500 offices and 13,000 employees. RIF is unhappy with “major software developers hiking up prices by 30% annually with only a few months warning.” The one vendor mentioned is Autodesk, for its disparate country pricing.
It seems to me that organizations like hospitals and design firms ought to be forming purchasing pools to negotiate rock bottom pricing from suppliers.
- - -
Nanosoft launches release 21 of nanoCAD as a CAD platform supporting five modules:
3D Modeling — direct, sheet metal, mesh, and parametric 3D solid modeling with 2D/3D constraints
Mechanica — mechanical drawing, engineering calculation utilities, and library of parametric parts
Construction — AEC drafting utilities and library of parametric parts
Raster — (new) import, correct, and vectorize raster images
Topoplan — digital terrain modeling
nanoCAD 21 starts at $200/yr; each module is $150/yr. Permanent licenses are provided with a three-year subscription. nanoCAD 5 is available free. https://nanocad.com/
[Disclosure: I produce training videos for Nanosoft.]
- - -
At the Bricsys conference last week, Hexagon answered the question that puzzled executives when I asked them two years ago: Where does the BricsCAD acquisition fit into Hexagon?
We have the answer from ceo Ola Rollén: For Hexagon to get deeper into the AEC space, and for BricsCAD to get into the discrete manufacturing market.
[Disclosure: I have written books and produced training videos for Bricsys.]
- - -
Stratasys turns GrabCAD into a software pipeline for 3D printing (aka additive manufacturing). Its new GrabCAD AM Platform manages multiple 3D printers at multiple locations, monitors output quality, automates materials management, and integrates all this with the enterprise.
The platform is a combination of GrabCAD software, software from partners, and an SDK. Wannabe partners pay an SDK licensing free, following approval. https://grabcad.com
[Disclosure: Following the launch of GrabCAD as a 3D part sharing site, the founder joked he named the site after me.]
- - -
Here is one of the posts that appeared recently on my WorldCAD Access blog:
For most attendees (at least for non-media, but I suspect also for media) the real value of conferences is the networking and informal discussions that take place during and outside the conference. After attending dozens of AU and a few other CAD conferences for many years in different capacities, it became clear to me that the best conferences are
a) in-person, with at least one or more organized social event
b) small enough that individuals don't get lost in the crowd
c) with wide coverage area (i.e. national or worldwide, not local)
d) including vendors and their cool new tech (plus free swag)
It surely is not easy (nor inexpensive), but if I was running a CAD company I would pounce on the opportunity created by the pandemic to capitalize on the natural human hunger for fellowship. - Owen Wengerd (via WorldCAD Access)
The editor replies: I suspect the difference between small conferences (which we like) and monster conferences (which we don’t) is that it’s the staff of the small company that puts together the small conference and who are in touch with the needs of users. I’ve had organizers of small conferences ask me what I would like to see.
The giant conferences put on by giant companies are, I am guessing, organized by marketing departments, whose day job is to promote the company. Hence the disconnect.
Notable Quotable
“With a few exceptions, most previously successful founders rarely replicate their success in their second company. Financial success weakens determination and fighter mentality.” - Don Dodge
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