Issue #1,126 | Inside the Business of CAD | 14 March 2022
Actify released SpinFire in 1997 as a 3D file viewer in a field crowded with 3D file viewers. It, however, survived.
Within five years, the viewer was downloaded a million times. In 2005, Actify made Actify Publisher a mature program by adding batch publishing, rules-based jobs, automated email notifications, and centralized archiving of native CAD files. The company today has 2,000 customers with 10,000 licenses, many of which are site-wide licenses — so lots and lots of users.
More recently, Actify hired David Opsahl as CEO to help define a specific market for the company. He found that three-quarters of SpinFire customers were automotive suppliers, and so today you see the company’s Web site targeting automobile manufacturing. He concentrated the company’s goal to 3Cs: Communicate, Collaborate, Comprehend.
Actify’s primary software is the Actify APM Suite [automotive program management] that consists of the following packages:
-
Centro is the cloud-based platform for the APM Suite that uses graph database technology
-
Program Development
-
Program Analysis
-
Program Management
[A “graph” database handles records as nodes, and links relationships between nodes as edges.]
Actify continues to offer SpinFire Enterprise for CAD viewing in all areas of a manufacturing organization, to view, interrogate, and translate CAD files, as well as CAD Publisher, which automatically processes and publishes CAD files according to rules.
Q&A
Ralph Grabowski: Centro is new to me. What is its role?
David Opsahl: Historically, Centro was a parts catalog that customers adapted to meet their program needs. We found that there were many iterative loops between suppliers and automotive manufacturers, reassuring each other that this is what will be built. Also, they frequently collaborate on data.
We were getting requests from suppliers for extensions to Centro, found that many of them were similar requests, and so we added a set of applications on top of Centro. This is what lead us to look deeper at the problems our customers were trying to solve in managing their programs, giving more visibility to all program data across multiple teams throughout the enterprise to improve collaboration. Today it is the platform supporting the Actify APM suite, which enables suppliers to win and launch automotive programs.
Grabowski: Actify’s Web site says that your SpinFire Reader views only .act3d files. What does this format consist of?
Opsahl: We use the HOOPS toolkit from Tech Soft 3D to translate CAD files to PRC, but we needed more, so we added a way for it to better handle assemblies, to store legacy data or prior data, and so on.
[HOOPS is “hierarchical object oriented picture system,” a hardware-software graphics interface developed in the 1980s at Cornell University, and then commercialized by Ithaca Software. Some of the original developers went on to work at Autodesk, so it was little surprise when Autodesk acquired Ithaca, but it was a surprise when just three years later it handed HOOPS over to Tech Soft 3D.]
[PRC is “product representation compact,” a format invented two decades ago by the French translation firm TTF. We often read of Adobe inventing PRC, but Adobe acquired TTF, and then embedded PRC in PDF so that the file format could display 3D models interactively. Four years later, Adobe lost interest in 3D CAD, and it sold PRC to Tetra 3D. Adobe buying and abandoning 3D CAD translation in so few years shook our industry at that time.]
SpinFire can import and work with more than 30 different CAD file formats, and our customers are often working with multiple file formats from different sources on a daily basis.
Grabowski: Most automotive companies use CAD software from either Dassault Systemes or Siemens. Why should a supplier buy your viewing solution, when they might already have it from these other two?
Opsahl: We are focused on companies that want to standardize on one visualization product across the entire company. SpinFire Enterprise offers a normalized way to use data to see what changes took place, no matter the source, with one site license that has no use-limits.
Individual viewers from CAD vendors don’t necessarily handle other formats, and sometimes you have to buy other software just to use the viewer from the CAD vendor. In any case, the viewer from a CAD vendor would not have a collaboration thread that goes through the files from different CAD vendors and that is a key requirement for our customers who are managing incredibly complex designs that get shared back and forth multiple times
Once you get past tier-1 suppliers, smaller suppliers do not necessarily have a sophisticated IT stack, so SpinFire Enterprise is an affordable solution for them.
Grabowski: So, suppliers don’t necessarily use the same CAD software as automobile manufacturers?
Opsahl: Auto manufacturers all use different CAD software, and suppliers who support multiple OEMs have to support multiple CAD file formats. GM once tried to force all suppliers to use the same CAD system, but financially it was something suppliers couldn’t deal with. [High-end MCAD systems cost $15,000 to $100,000 per license.]
Automotive is the biggest manufacturing industry (outside of consumer electronics), so a different way to solve the different-CAD-systems problem was through viewers. SpinFire Enterprise is much more than just a viewer; it gives suppliers a common platform with which to communicate and collaborate with customers, from the start of the design process to final production. This lets downstream interpretation of CAD files be consistent.
Grabowski: One of the concerns of aircraft manufacturers is that they be able to read and process CAD files fifty years from now. Does your software handle old data?
Opsahl: Product lifecycles are getting longer with automotive. Cars have a regulatory framework like aircraft, such as for lawsuits and recalls.
We can account for old data in our file format. But if libraries from Tech Soft 3D do not support that old data, then we are stuck. We have not had a complaint about access to legacy data in the 2.5 years I’ve worked here.
Grabowski: I suppose it helps that software vendors are no longer changing file formats as quickly, and in some cases even making them ISO standards. DOCX, PDF, DWG are pretty stable these days.
Opsahl: Formats have evolved to the point where they can be stable, but again, since SpinFire is able to support nearly every file format. Customers can be confident that they’ll be able to work with whatever is sent their way.
== Okino's PolyTrans|CAD Software for Professional 'Load & Go' 3D Conversions ==
For over three decades, mission-critical 3D conversion software from Okino of Toronto has been used effectively by tens of thousands of professionals. We develop, support, and convert between all major CAD, DCC, and VisSim formats. CTO Robert Lansdale and his team tailors each package to the specific conversion requirements or problems of each customer.
Popular CAD data sources we support 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].
And in Other News
CADline is close to releasing ARCHLine.XP 2022, and so last week revealed the new functions we can expect:
-
Physically-based rendering materials; artificial light temperatures
-
Enhanced Revit import; OneDrive support; PDF 3D export
-
Sliding doors wizard; adjustable stair landing thicknesses; variable slabs
-
Phases for wall layers; profiles for road materials
-
Align in 2D/3D; set equal distances; make multiple copies
-
Clean up project files
For the full list of major and minor changes, check out help.archlinexp.com/hc/en-us/articles/4412202495889-Overview
- - -
April 7 is the day Graebert launches the next release of its ARES series of desktop, Web, and mobile CAD programs. The neXt event features guest speakers Niknaz Aftahi (aec+tech), Anthony Frausto-Robledo (Architosh), and Randall Newton (Consilia Vektor). Register to watch live or to watch the replay at next.graebert.com.
Other CAD events happening on April 7:
-
Siemens media and analyst day in Detroit
-
Spatial new software launch day in Munich — I’ll be attending this one.
- - -
If you would like to donate to an agency that has already been helping people in Ukraine, Moldova, and Romania for decades now (“boots on the ground”), and which upFront.eZine supports annually, then I would like to suggest Mission Without Borders at mwbca.org/ukraine. We did.
Donations are used to provide emergency aid and food packages for people in eastern Ukraine. (Tax receipts available for Canadian donors only.)
Letters to the Editor
It strikes me as weird that Manish Kumar is now ceo of Solidworks, without dropping any of his old job. Maybe a smaller future for Solidworks, since everything is going to 3DExperience? Still seems risky to me, given what a cash cow that product is.
Thanks for the recent coverage of Solid Edge. I always tell everyone it’s the best CAD-for-CAM system ever. Synchronous Technology is extremely good at model changes, and CNC programmers need that kind of capability.
- Name withheld by request
The editor replies: Making the cto the ceo tells me that Dassault had a change of heart, and has gotten serious about keeping Solidworks a solid competitor against the likes of Solid Edge and Inventor. Perhaps the change-of-heart is at its core financial, as Solidworks now brings in a billion dollars a year for the French company.
- - -
Re: Meta, Meet Reality
Thank you for this valuable summary and its insights, Ralph. We all certainly need to speak out and do everything we can in this moment, and in the understandings that follow that can prevent such a nightmare conflict from happening again.
- Miles Parker
Parker Group
- - -
Re: Running Generic CADD in 2013
Fascinating reminiscences in this thread. Here are some from my long association with Generic CADD:
I obtained an early version of GCADD for the equities analytical research group at Morgan Stanley in the 1980s, where it was used to create graphically-precise illustrations of portfolio hedging processes.
I later employed it to design the rural studio and stables which I still enjoy today in my retirement. Coincidently my home in upstate New York is not far from Cherry Valley, where GCADD’s successor General CADD is based. Small world.
I continue to design with GCADD v.5 using DOSBOX v0.74-3 on W7, and print as follows:
-
In the Print dialog, select Send to = Postscript
-
Port = File / EPS
-
Page size = 7.5 long and 10 wide
-
Then use Page setup to scale, and fit origin appropriately (zoom out helps).
-
In Word, the resulting EPS file may be inserted directly into a 8 1/2 x 11 landscape page and readily printed from there.
- PB Turgeon (via WorldCAD Access)
Notable Quotable
“Is Web3 just libertarian nonsense with planet-destroying energy consumption? Probably.”
- Jeremiah Lee
Thank You, Readers
To support upFront.eZine through PayPal.me, then I suggest the following amounts:
-
$25 for individuals > paypal.me/upfrontezine/25
-
$150 for small companies > paypal.me/upfrontezine/150
-
$750 for large companies > paypal.me/upfrontezine/750
Should Paypal.me not operate in your country, then use www.paypal.com to send funds to the account of [email protected].
Or ask [email protected] about making a direct bank transfer through Wise (Transferwise).
Or mail a cheque (US$ or CDN$ only, please) to upFront.eZine Publishing, Ltd., 34486 Donlyn Avenue, Abbotsford BC, V2S 4W7, Canada.
*4650
Comments