upFront.eZine News Archives

The Man Behind WikiIfc: Interview with a firm in stealth mode

Issue #1,134  |  Inside the Business of CAD  |  25 July 2022

WikiIfc displaying an IFC model

Executives of new firms from time to time quietly tell me about their projects that are in stealth mode. The most (in)famous perhaps was Visio’s stealth purchase and redevelopment of Project Phoenix (IntelliCAD). Sometimes, a new company declares itself to be in “stealth mode” for the marketing mystique. Sometimes, employees acccidently splash details on sites like Linked-In.

Today, we have the reverse: the product is public, but the ceo wishes to remain under wraps for now: “Products above personalities,” is how he put it. I know him, his company, and location, and can vouch for him; we have been exchanging emails since 2016. Last year he told me, “I am waiting for something to fructify — if that happens, it will make a good story.”

Then last month he updated me: “You can try to guess the product by googling (or binging) ‘free online IFC viewer’. After I tracked down WikiIfc.com, he explained, “We already have regular users, uploads of 10-15 real life IFC files per day. And no, I don’t intend it to remain a viewer.” (Files you upload are used to improve the viewer, and are not sent outside the company.)

“WikiIfc will focus on collaboration, analysis, and correction. Machine learning [ML] is going to be used heavily. The advantage of it being an online viewer is that the ML analysis program grows smarter with each upload. We have a wealth of AI [artificial intelligence] engineers here.”

 

Q&A

WikiIfc displaying a complex piping model

Grabowski: How did WikiIfc came about?

Anonymous: I have been developing CAD applications for different disciplines for a couple decades now. Of them, BIM interested me the most as it was an interesting problem to solve, with a limitless scope.

Then when covid hit, there was an existential crisis, “What can we do?” This time I wanted something large, something I could work on for, say, the next 20 years. This IFC project is open-ended.

In the area where I live, there was an RFQ [request for quotation] to write BIM-checking software. The idea was to upload IFC files, and then have software crunch the files to report parts that didn’t conform to the building code. We didn’t win it, but we got inspiration from it, given that the bids came in the range of $20 to $50 million.

That told me that there is a market, that there is a need. Some architectural councils specify 3,700 rules. So our idea is to check BIM models for conformity using automation, instead of humans.

Grabowski: How do you plan to differentiate yourself?

Anon: A typical conversation at an architectural office goes like this:

“Do you use BIM?”
“Yes.”

“What software do you use?”
“We use BIM.”

I realize that they mean Revit, and that they are talking about just the authoring part, the 20% of the entire lifecycle of a building. And everyone [BIM software vendors] is going after this one slice.

Well, we are going to look at a tiny part of authoring, such as correcting metadata. When designing, you have no time to make sure the right BIM information is getting in there. So, we want to do everything, except modeling.

Grabowski: What are some of your ideas for expanding your online IFC viewer?

Anon: What is my vision? Our product, WikiIFC, is not stealth, because I believe it should not be hidden. People should be using it, and we learn from what they are doing with it. I’m putting features out there to see which ones stick and which don’t, to see what people are doing, and then enhance the features.

WikiIfc is going to be model-oriented. (For other firms, the model is an afterthought, and so their products are document-oriented.) The types of things we want it to do are check that all the pieces are spatially in the correct place.

Another part is standards. You don’t reinvent the wheel; authorities want everything to follow standards, which makes it faster to build. So WikiIfc will attach standards. I plan to start with the low-hanging fruit with a 80/20 strategy of which rules are used the most. While there are other programs attempting to do it, they are very document-oriented.

You’ll be able to place views, sections, place notes, link views of the live model, such as ‘click on note 5’ to see a specific viewpoint, and then edit it collaboratively.

I want it to run on iPads to use it on-site. Click on views to quickly get to the area in question, which is faster than viewing the entire model.

I’d like it to split the model to disciplines, called ‘federated views’.

It needs change management, which supports maintenance after the building is completed. Upload a file, we calculate the delta, and update the main model.

Grabowski: Who funds you?

Anon: We are self-funded. I am open to  innovative funding ideas.

Grabowski: Are you solo or do you have a programming team?

Anon: I have a team. WikiIFC was conceived in August, 2020, and went online January, 2021.

Grabowski: Where did the name come from?

Anon: Wiki is Hawaiian for “quick” but due to Wikipedia, wiki has come to mean “information.” I want WikiIFC to be quick (it now loads large models in 90 seconds) but also to provide information.

To make it quick, we compile C++ to the browser, which is super fast and hides the code, unlike JavaScript. We run it on a multi-core CPU.

https://wikiifc.com

 

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And in Other News

Canadian portable 3D measurement firm Creaform, now a business unit of Ametek, celebrated its 20th anniversary in June. 20.creaform3d.com/milestones

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MachineWorks offers source code to show how to transfer 3MF files with Polygonica to and from STL and PGS formats, which avoids the need to employ API [application programming interface] calls.

MachineWorks provides software for CNC [computer numerical control] simulation and verification, with its Polygonica software handling polygon mesh modeling. www.polygonica.com

- - -

progeSoft releases the M1-compatible version of iCADMac 202, an AutoCAD-workalike that’s able to handle 5K monitors. New functions include constraints, sheetsets, and improved PDF printing.

Permanent licenses ensure this software can’t ever be locked out remotely. See the full what’s-new list at icadmac.com/product.

- - -

Members of VDMA (German Association for Mechanical and Plant Engineering) are demo’ing use-cases in storing these kinds of CAD-related data in blockchains:

• Forgery-proof exchange of 3D printing and process data

• Unequivocal identification of printed components

• Storing history of CAD model creation by multiple users in the blockchain

• Full proof of the authorship of data (useful in court cases)

Just a little bit more information at prostep.us/category/vdma.

- - -

President Bob Mayer of IMSI/Design retired at the end of June after nearly 40 years in the PC CAD business, most notably selling TurboCAD.

- - -

Dave Edwards ends his PragArchDesignTech newsletter, in which he explained and critiqued architectural design software. Here is his final issue: pragarchdesigntech.substack.com/p/im-done.

- - -

COO Paolo Guglielmini will be replacing Ola Rollen as president and ceo of Hexagon AB at the end of 2022. Mr Rollen continues as chairman of the board.

- - -

Siemens Digital Industries (the latest name for UGS) adds electronic design collaboration from Mentor Graphics to the new release of NX, which no longer suffers the indignity of being assigned a number at its release. Also added are codeless feature templates, algorithmic modeling, and a new topology optimizer.

Or, as the German headline to the press release put it, “NX von Siemens ermöglicht eine bessere disziplinübergreifende Zusammenarbeit und Wissenserfassung.” To celebrate, the company posted a launch video to YouTube:

- - -

Here are some of the posts that appeared recently on my WorldCAD Access blog:

• Review: I don’t like Bluetooth earbuds, but this Soundcore model I do like

• Tutorial: How to decode Android’s WiFi-password QR codes

• Update: Solving Eudora’s June 2022 problem with GMail

You can subscribe to the WorldCAD Access blog’s RSS feed through Feed Burner at feeds.feedburner.com/WorldcadAccess.

 

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Letters to the Editor

Here’s my take on why a lot of BIM applications will fail: engineering support.

Engineers want to be able to take the architect’s BIM and create their drawings and be able to run their calculations. It’s this last part that throws a lot of applications under the bus. Do walls show up as walls? Do rooms and windows allow for HVAC calculations? Are materials transferred for structural calculations?

All very important to their work, and some don’t want to recreate the BIM in their preferred application.
            - Dave Edwards

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Re: Retirement

I’ve been somewhat out of the CAD world for the last year and only popped in every so often since then, but I was surprised to read today that you are retiring. I’ve been a reader since sometime in the ’90s, maybe around about ’96 when we first got Internet in the office!

I just wanted to wish you a happy retirement and to thank you for the incredible work you have done over the years.
            - M. J. Smyth

- - -

We met years ago at a Solidworks press shindig.

Three years ago, after about 35 years gainful self-employment writing about factory automation tech and management strategies for trade journals and corporate clients, including several years of semi-retirement (not that I told my clients that), I too decided to end the ‘every 30 days’ deadline and retire.
     - Lary Gould

 

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Notable Quotable

“How to connect with an ethernet cable:

1. Connect cable to device and then to a switch or router.

2. Enjoy.

How to connect with WiFi:

1. Find wireless access point or router.

2. Make sure signal is strong enough.

3. Walk to access point and push WPS button.

4. Walk back to device.

5. Enter password anyway, because the WPS button didn't work for some reason.

6. Re-enter password because your fat fingers messed up.

7. Enjoy.

WiFi has a useful purpose, but replacing ethernet ain't one of them.
     - Wade Burchette

 

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Thank You, Readers

Thank you to readers who donate towards the operation of upFront.eZine:

• Michael Starr: “I have enjoyed your column only over the last three years, having discovered it by accident.”

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Scoping Infurnia: Interview with Lovepreet Mann

Issue #1,133  |  Inside the Business of CAD  |  13 June 2022

Infurnia running in a Web browser and producing a kitchen design

Infurnia is doing it backwards. First, they developed a interior design package that runs in Web browsers, and now they are porting it the desktop.

The aim of Infurnia is to build an design platform for architecture, interior design, and construction at a “disruptive” price. After I mentioned the company in an earlier issue of upFront.eZine, Lovepreet Mann contacted me to explain the company plan in greater detail. He is a co-founder of the firm and its chief marketing officer.

The eight-year-old Infurnia spent the last two years re-architecting their Web-based software to make it multi-platform. “Multi-platform” does not mean it runs in a Web browser on any kind of device, as some other CAD vendors have described it; for Infurnia, multi-platform means running the code native, locally, on desktop computers with Windows and MacOS, as well as in browsers.

The company took the reverse route after it determined that browser-based software, which tends to be written in JavaScript, is not powerful enough to compete with the best design software out there. So, they rewrote most of the code in C++, with a thin UI layer on top. This was such a big job that they stopped taking new customers during the rewrite.

As of today, they have a proof-of-concept program running native on Windows, with the full version planned for next year, along with a MacOS version. Infurnia will also run in VR [virtual reality] environments, for which they have a viewing app working. All the versions run the same code, and access a single database.

Mr Mann showed me simultaneous editing on multiple platforms. He added a wall in the Windows desktop version, which showed up in the browser version.

“Being Web-based Web-first, helps us,” Mr Mann said. “We do not have a file format, per se. We store data in a database, which can be accessed by API [application programming interface] calls. Any properly authorized app can access it; a design license from Infurnia is not needed.”

“Design data is decoupled from the software,” he said. “Data belongs to the user; Infurnia simply defines it.” There is no longer a need to rely on a specific software program, should it be able to access an Infurnia database.

The core of the software can be embedded through an SDK [software development kit] in other apps, which gives, say, structural software its own UI and access to the data only it needs, such as for procurement, from the Infurnia database.

 

Q&A

Infurnia specifying wall layers

Ralph Grabowski: Who would prefer Infurnia?

Lovepreet Mann: We have several large clients, like Livspace and Spacewood.

We began writing software for modular furniture in 2016, then added a floor planner, then a detailed parts modeler, while working towards the long-term goal of architecture. Our code base is done, so we can really develop fast now.

We want to be self-reliant. We use funding from the interiors division to fund our development on the architecture side. It is currently free to users, so that we can get feedback from them.

Grabowski: What is the goal for your architecture software?

Mann: It should handle every kind of architecture construction in the industry, from small homes to big buildings. If something can be built, then it should be able to be designed in Infurnia.

We plan to have programming by scripting, like Grasshopper.

Grabowski: Were you following Onshape’s approach to the CAD market?

Mann: It is somewhat similar to Onshape, but more like Figma [a collaborative interface design tool]. Onshape is not truly multi-platform.

The problem with Onshape is that it places all the computation on the back end [on remote servers]. We don’t see Infurnia going in this direction [because it runs code locally on the desktop].

Grabowski: Is India your target market?

Mann: India is a good launch base, but we plan to sell it throughout the world.

Grabowski: The drawback to expanding architectural software internationally is that every country, every state might have its own design standards.

Mann: We have been so far focusing on the tech challenges. If we don’t have strong tech, we cannot penetrate the industry. But we recognize we have to deal with standards in different countries.

Grabowski: Do you have a plan to take on the established players in our industry?

Mann: There is a sense that there is no way the incumbents can be removed. But there always is one company that makes a breakthrough [such as when Solidworks on Windows disrupted Pro/Engineer on Unix]. It is when platforms shift that new entrants have an opportunity.

There is a shift to being able to do design on multiple platforms — on the Web, on VR. Autodesk, for instance, has not been able to shift AutoCAD to other platforms [fully].

Grabowski: Do you have a pricing model for the architecture software?

Mann: We plan modest monthly and annual subscriptions, like $50/month and $500/year.

Grabowski: How did you come up with the Infurnia name?

Mann: When we first thought about it in 2014, a flatmate suggested Infurnia — it is short for “interior furniture.” We thought the name would be temporary, but then it grew on us.

- - -

Infurnia plans to place an IPO [initial public offering] in July on the Indian stock market to raise the equivalent of US$5 million at a nominal valuation of $20 million. The plan is to grow the company to a billion-dollar unicorn over the next half decade.

Infurnia toggles between 3D viewing (above) and 2D floor plans (below)

 

What Ralph Grabowski Thinks

Having seen many firms fail in my 37 years in this biz (remember when all display-list processing vendors disappeared overnight?), I worry about new firms. I love their drive to make a difference, their enthusiasm in bringing better products to market, and their aim to displace existing firms — or at least exist alongside them. Some make it, most don’t.

My suggestion of a business plan to upstarts is develop your wow!-software, sell the firm to an incumbent too sclerotic to do it itself, and pocket the millions.

What Infurnia is doing is a huge job. Others attempting a similar path are walking it in reverse, such as PTC and Zwsoft rewriting their Windows-based CAD programs to run in browsers. Infurnia has an advantage in beginning with a smaller code base and working with more modern programming methods. I will be fascinated to see what happens to all three firms in the long-term.

infurnia.com

 

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via DWF-3D & Okino's PolyTrans|CAD ==

One of the most refined aspects of Okino's PolyTrans|CAD software is in transforming ultra-massive MCAD models of oil and gas rigs, LNG processing plants, 3D factories, and other unwieldy datasets into Cinema-4D, 3ds Max, Maya, and Unity (among others).

What often takes days using blindly incorrect methods takes minutes or an hour with Okino's well-defined optimization and compression methods using its DWF-3D conversion system.

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].

www.okino.com

 

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And in Other News

AGACAD introduces what it says is the first software, called Smart Documentation, for automating the entire process of generating documents and drawings from Revit 2020-2023 models. Makes me wonder why Autodesk hadn’t done it yet. The software ships June 16. Lots and lots of details on how it works at agacad.com/products/bim-solutions/smart-documentation/overview.

- - -

LTS is computer jargon for “long-term support,” and now the Open Design Alliance offers it with all its SDKs as of v22.12. This means, for example, you can work with release 22.12 for two years, during which ODA ships out security patches and critical fixes, with little or no change to the code otherwise. More info at opendesign.com/releases.

- - -

Some of us have become tired of watching many conferences online, even though they are free. Hexagon is charging $149 to watch their conference taking place next week from your home computer, whether in real-time or on-demand later on.

In related news, Hexagon’s PPM (process, power, marine) division, based largely on their 2010 Intergraph acquisition, last week renamed itself “Asset Lifecycle Intelligence,” although the URL remains hexagonppm.com.

 

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Letters to the Editor

Re: Another Way of Doing MCAD

I understand the need for brevity but the following statement is a little too brash for my taste: “Autodesk’s AutoCAD did 3D modeling from day 1.”

I have used AutoCAD from its earliest days, the first versions were definitely not 3D and only later was 3D functionality was bolted on — I don’t know which version. I have always found AutoCAD a rather clunky 3D modeler.

I was a Computervision Personal Designer reseller. The fact that Personal Designer could 3D models properly was the reason for its niche success. AutoCAD at that time was almost freeware due to the amount of illegal copies floating around.

(There was a specific architectural version called Personal Architect, which was very short lived. One of its features was that it supported the workflow of architects from conceptual to detail design.)

Most early 3D packages like Unigraphics, CADDS, and Personal Designer were direct modellers. Initially they were only surface modellers not solids. I now use Rhino for 3D surface modelling, but sometimes still miss some of the features Personal Designer had like associative geometry. Steve Ford did a wonderful job of porting CADDS to the PC.
     - Rene Dalmeijer

The editor replies: The word ‘direct’ is missing from the sentence. My apologies. It should have read that '“AutoCAD had direct modeling in its 3D from day 1 of solids modeling.” I was dimly aware of Computervision at the time.

I agree with the opinion that the 3D modeling in AutoCAD was dreadful for the most part: first none, then 2.5D, then wireframe, then solids modeling limited so as to not compete with Mechanical Desktop and Inventor.

Little known fact: AutoCAD did have 3D modeling from the very start but the programmers didn’t know how to implement it. Mike Riddle had written MicroCAD, which he contributed to the original Autodesk guys, who renamed it AutoCAD. He eventually settled financially with Autodesk and wrote FastCAD in assembly language. fastcad.com

Mr Dalmeijer responds: Do you know of a book about the history of CAD?

The editor replies: Dave Weisberg in 2008 wrote an exhaustive one, The Engineering Design Revolution, but even it gets some details wrong and misses out some chunks — as all histories do.

He made it available for free, but the official Web site no longer works. I hunted it down and found a safe copy online, which I am making available through my site: pcloud.link/publink/show?code=XZOgHRVZm5EzgTXagkuDCOFFUJ5tyYidNBgy (10MB ZIP file of 24 PDF chapters).

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With regard to “One day, I envision we might employ a clay-like modeling environment, poking and pulling a shape with our fingers through augmented reality, along with some kind of permission assistance,” you might take a look at 3dsystems.com/software/geomagic-freeform.

No augmented reality, but a haptic device to “feel” the “clay” model. It uses voxels.
     - Henry Lamousin

 

Re: Locating the Dystopia in Meta’s Utopia

Your Meta Dystopia Utopia reminded me of this conversation that I transcribed from a video well over a decade ago from a World Economic Forum discussion on Web 2.0 in 2007:

Bill Gates: “We need 3D. You’re seeing it on things like Xbox, where you have Xbox Live for 3D”

Off Camera: “Why 3D?’

Gates: “Well 3D: it turns out the world is in 3D. We used to have only UPPERCASE THEN WE GOT lowercase, and that was fun, then we went from black and white and got this colour thing, that was fun, but in fact 3D, you see glimpses of it, it’s gonna happen.”

And this, slightly edited to remove a country reference, from Douglas Adams:

"Virtually everything we were told turned out not to be true, sometimes almost immediately. The only exception to this was when we were told that something would happen immediately, in which case it turned out not to be true over an extended period of time."

     - Robin Capper, New Zealand

The editor replies: In CAD, some talk of 3D being “just one more dimension” than 2D, when in fact it moves in complexity from just one plane to six planes, many of which are hidden from our view.

 

Re: Retirement

I will miss your reports, analysis and valuable opinion. Unfortunately I started reading upFront.eZine only a few years ago. What a waste. I could have been much better informed decades earlier.

My short paper (1,400 words) on TNG rigs will be printed this summer in the conference magazine for BIM Coordinators Summit 2022 in Dublin. I try to make TGN clearer than I have before: icloud.com/pages/0f782WpnVTEk2vfrS4ameFG_g#The_Form_of_Engagement.

I look forward to any writing you may do in your retirement.
     - Rob Snyder

The editor replies: upFront.eZine reported on Mr Snyder’s concept of TGN rigs in issue #1,115, which place focus on specific portions of the 3D model through a UI and an API, partially solving the six-plane problem.

- - -

To be truthful, I am upset that you will be ending producing upFront. I’m upset that I and the many others who read upFront will no longer have access to your thoughts which have a very wide range beyond simply CAD.

Unlike your neighbour who used to drive a concrete truck, there actually is no one to replace you. No one who has your depth of experience. No one who has your understanding. No one who will give their opinion free of commercial bias. No one who provides nuggets of technical information (you turned me on to wireless backlit keyboards). No one who shares their thoughts on so many things not directly related to CAD. No one who can provide others a forum to present their knowledge, thoughts and opinions. I will miss Notable Quotable and the emails you receive which helps us realize that we are not alone with our CAD frustrations.

Not receiving upFront each week will be a very big loss.

I wish you the very best post-UpFront, but honestly hope that you will reconsider.
     - Dairobi Paul

The editor replies: I plan to continue to write for other publications (their editors are relieved to hear this!) but will wind down this newsletter in mid-September. I hope to also continue writing for my WorldCAD Access blog.

 

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Notable Quotable

“Since any criticism of Apple can result in excommunication, I feel unable to trust Websites that can get access to Apple’s stuff.”
     - Caps Lock

 

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Thank You, Readers

Thank you to readers who donate towards the operation of upFront.eZine:

• Robert Melnyk

• Avontus Software Corporation (small business donation): “We appreciate your hard work in the newsletter that you’ve done over the years (decades actually). I was constantly blown away by your reporting on the CAD industry, especially lately as the pace of technology changes so fast. Happy retirement!”

• Christopher Cleary

• Nicholas Busigin: “Thank you for writing and publishing your ezine. Much appreciated over the years.”

To support upFront.eZine through PayPal.me, then I suggest the following amounts:

• $25 for individuals > paypal.me/upfrontezine/25

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Spatial 3D Insiders' Summit Conference 2022: Q&A with ceo Jean-Marc Guillard

Issue #1,129  |  Inside the Business of CAD  |  2 May 2022

 

Spatial held its 3D Insider’s Summit in Munich, whose city hall is shown here (image credit ralph grabowski)

The Spatial division of Dassault Systemes is in charge of licensing components to companies wanting to develop 3D software.

It’s best-known product is the ACIS solids modeler, first developed in the late 1980s. Then, a decade ago, Dassault handed its CGM kernel used by Catia to Spatial to license and componentize. (CGM is short for core geometric modeler.) The other major product is the InterOp file translator.

Spatial last month held its first post-Covid 3D Insider’s Summit in Munich, at which it revealed new features to be released this year, as well as its new guiding principles:

• “What is important to you is important to us

• We are highly motivated to be best, and set the standard”

I won’t comment on Spatial’s past business practices, as my knowledge is based on merely a couple of anecdotes. Nevertheless, I found significant the emphasis throughout the conference on a changed-for-the-better Spatial, as well as during my interview with executives.

I interviewed ceo-since-2010 Jean-Marc Guillard and vp-since-2018 of worldwide business development Frederuc Jacqmin. I was especially interested in understanding what it was like for them being a component supplier of two kernels. The text of the interview is not verbatim, and has been edited for clarity and brevity.

 

Q&A

The room was nearly packed, so don’t be fooled by what my picture appears to show here

Q: What kinds of firms license CGM?

A: Our business is to solve problems for customers, how they want to move in the future, what will make them successful.

We position CGM as going beyond a modeler: it is a set of technologies. What kind of data do you want to use? What are the most common formats you want, the geometric foundation you need, the industries you will target? Hybrid data is more common today. We are checking most of the boxes, we have the most technology. We do not force ourselves on anyone.

Ten years ago, when we started promoting CGM, most of our customers were on ACIS. Today, 1/3 of our 400+ customers are on CGM, two-thirds on ACIS.

It is not a decision between ACIS or CGM; they are just technologies available. Importance is what technology can provide customers over a long period of time. The starting point is what the customer needs not just today, but also over the long-term.

 

Q: Can you tell me your financial picture?

A: We do not give out financial information, as Spatial is a division of Dassault. I will say that we are increasing new customers each year.

 

Q: Who do you consider your competitor, other than Siemens Parasolid?

A: OEM-based solutions like Inventor, Tech Soft 3D. It depends on what the need of the customer is.

 

Q: Are you familiar with C3D Labs?

A: We keep track of our competitors.

 

Q: I noticed that constraints were not mentioned during the conference.

A: Market for constraints seems to be limited, compared to other components.

 

Q: Do you get your DWG tech from the Open Design Alliance?

A: We cooperate with the ODA.

 

Q: Do you license HOOPS [for visualization], or do you have a technology exchange with Tech Soft 3D?

A: We are a reseller for HOOPS Visualize, and so Tech Soft 3D is a partner. But we compete when it comes to InterOp translation and other technology. We try to provide value for customers, and so are working hard on an integrated portfolio.

 

Q: Why not use rendering from Dassault?

A: There is a cost to making a technology as a component. There are different facets to consider, such as the cost of turning it into a component, what the market size might be. Or is it intellectual property you want to keep, to help you  differentiate? We came to the conclusion that it is good for Spatial to partner with Tech Soft 3D.

 

Q: I am not sure I fully understood your AGM product.

A: Application Graphics Manager accelerates development by providing standard functions for any 3D application, so that the developer doesn’t start from scratch. The cost of our source code is very affordable compared to doing it on your own.

 

Q: So it is example code, that programmers can copy and paste into their own code?

A: Step by step, you make it your own. The idea is that firms can focus on their IP, their functions. It reduces the number of bugs. Fifty applications already use it.

What people expect from us is to integrate things so that they are transparent to them. Technologies are good for solving specific problems. There are still lots of software developed in-house, but we are good at solving complex problems. We would like to solve every problem, but we are humble and know we cannot solve every problem. In this, we are doing quite well. We want the community to move forward.

www.spatial.com

 

Additional coverage:

• Gfx Speak: Spatial continues to expand on a ‘kernel’ of an idea

• WorldCAD Access: Spatial’s 3D Insiders Summit conference 2022

[Disclosure: Spatial provided me with hotel accommodation.]

 

---

And in Other News

Simulation giant Ansys acquires Web-based upstart OnScale (no relation to Onshape), which scales simulations online using a variety of open-source solvers, even though Ansys already has Web-based solvers. Monica Schnitger puzzles through the story at schnitgercorp.com/?p=19674.

- - -

IMSI Design updates its TurboCAD line to 2022 with these new functions:

• Keep Size scales distances between objects, not objects themselves

• Smart dimensioning is associative between model and paper spaces

• Intersection curves are associative with 3D objects

• Physics-based rendering

...and lots more. The line of TurboCAD programs varies in capabilities but always comes with permanent licenses:

1. TurboCAD Platinum - $1,500

2. TurboCAD Professional - $1,000

3. TurboCAD Deluxe - $250

4. TurboCAD Designer -  $70

“2022” really doesn’t do this software justice, as at 36 years old TurboCAD (first written in Turbo Pascal) is one of the longest running PC CAD packages chugging along. More at turbocad.com.

- - -

Transoft Solutions lands a patent for using video cameras to record and analyze vehicle traffic at intersections, while filtering out errors. I’m old enough that as a transportation engineer I hired part-timers to record those movements on clipboards, back in the day. transoftsolutions.com/transoft-video-analytics-patent-approved/

- - -

Nanosoft ships version 22 of its AutoCAD-workalike nanoCAD software with floating drawing windows, associative arrays, and an interactive interface for 3D clipping volumes. It’s a free update to existing users. All the details here at nanocad.com/products/nanocad-platform/updates.

- - -

Lumafield emerges from stealth with $32.5 million for the world's first x-ray scanner for engineers. Neptune uses CT [computed tomography] to look inside products and then create a 3D reconstruction of external and internal features like cracks and voids. Price is $3,000/month (hardware+software) when it ships by the end of this year. lumafield.com

- - -

Pulsonix updates its 3D PCB design software, Pulsonix, to version 12.0 with one hundred new functions, such as 64-bit multi-core processing, additional design rules, and collision detection useful for folded board designs. It’s always good to see a software company giving its customers value through three-digit feature upgrades. pulsonix.com/latestversion

 

---

Notable Quotable

“I’m confused why @elonmusk bought Twitter for like billions of dollars when i downloaded it for free.”
      - Carter Andrews (on Twitter)

 

---

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.

 

*4677

---

 

 

Update on Tech Soft 3D: Interview with CEO Ron Fritz and CTE Jonathan Girroir of Tech Soft 3D

Issue # 1,127  |  Inside the Business of CAD  |  21 March 2022

 

HOOPS 2022 exports 3D models with PBR rendering in glTF and GLB formats

Tech Soft 3D is a “plumbing” company for the CAD world. They are one of the companies providing underlying SDKs [software development kits] that make CAD work.

The secret behind the CAD software you are using is that the CAD vendor probably didn’t write most of it; instead, it bundled together a bunch of modules like reading/writing files, displaying models, the user interface, solids and mesh modeling, translating files, and printing.

In Tech Soft 3D’s case, the HOOPS Visualize [hierarchical object-oriented picture system] platform provides components for doing tasks like displaying 3D models, generating PDFs, and translating between disparate systems. As well, the company bundles software components from other suppliers, such the geometric kernel from Siemens, and then offer a complete package.

I spoke with ceo Ron Fritz and chief tech evangelist Jonathan Girroir about trends in our industry, and about how their company works.

- - -

Tech Soft 3D is seeing the market for SDKs expand by many new types of firms. More are seeing the value of 3D data in their workflows, such as in manufacturing and building construction.

Tech Soft 3D sees an increase in BIM [building information modeling], which is due in part to the IFC [industry foundation classes] having caught on as the standard, through which vendors know that they will be compatible down the road. The company also has an SDK to read Revit files, and in some areas is cooperating with the Open Design Alliance, besides doing work on their own.

There is a critical interest in building and construction firms taking data from IFC and Revit files. A large building can have regions, such as kitchens in apartments, and users want to be able to navigate it in different ways. Tech Soft 3D’s software allows that.

Outside of AEC, there is metadata in mechanical CAD that tells users how parts are connected in assemblies. This is useful for employing higher level concepts, such as what happens when a constraint is removed or a part is swapped out.

For many years, AR/VR [augmented/virtual reality] didn’t care about CAD, but now firms involved in these areas see the value of CAD models and want to visualize scenes with them. Between visualization and translation, Tech Soft 3D feels it can help populate the metaverse [digital worlds] with CAD data, such as through Unity.

Hardware companies are becoming software companies. For instance, companies that make milling machines are acquiring software, or else are building their own systems. The benefit to them is that the software distinguishes them from their competition in that they own the entire stack. As well, owning the software allows faster iterations and optimizations. (In this area, 3D printer manufacturers were ahead of the game, as they had to include software from day-one.)

Last year, Battery Ventures invested funds in Tech Soft 3D, allowing it to acquire Ceetron AS (3D visualization of CFD [computational fluid dynamics] and FEA [finite element analysis]) and Visual Kinematics for its CAE [computer-aided engineering] software components. The investment amount was not announced. The reason for the acquisitions is that Tech Soft 3D saw the trends of simulation analyses moving closer to the design stage. Before 3D printing a design, you need to know that it is printable. Before you finalize a design, you need to know that it will stand up to stresses in the field.

Another area of growth is in cloud apps, which these days need to accompany desktop software.

Visual fidelity is more important these days. So the company is seeing PBR [physics-based rendering] with multiple layers of materials, without the GPU-hit from photo-realistic rendering. So the company created an animation engine SDK for animating, for example, a construction site over time — assembly of construction parts, disassembly, making sure piles of dirt are not in the wrong place, and so on.

 

Q&A

HOOPS Visualize 2022 platform supporting spatial relationships in IFC model definitions

Ralph Grabowski: How big is your company in terms of employees and revenues?

Ron Fritz: We have 120 employees, and are seeing 10-15% growth a year. We don’t report revenues. We have 700 companies using at least one of our components, and we support specific features asked for by customers.

Jonathan Girroir: Back in 2010 we bought translation company, TTF, from Adobe. Our data exchange platform now supports 30 CAD file formats. Last year, we updated 13 of the formats.

 

Grabowski: Who do you see as competitors?

Girroir: We have a broad portfolio of software products, so it is hard to name competitors. Depending on the vertical market, it could be Autodesk Forge, Open Design Alliance, Datakit; Spatial might be considered the broadest competitor because they have a full portfolio of components, but in fact we have a reseller relationship with Spatial, as well as with the Parasolid group at Siemens.

New from us last year was a collection of integrated SDKs through our Integration Partner Program where we package our products with those from others. An example is that we can include high-end rendering or a solids modeler, which we do not provide ourselves. As we have already integrated them, there is no further development for customers to get rendering or solids modeling in their software.

Our Integration Partner Program makes it easier to get cool stuff faster. Customers can start at a low level with just one SDK, or at a high level with several SDKs working together.

 

Grabowski: What do you do with software you sell that isn’t yours?

Fritz: We integrate them with ours to provide a single-vendor advantage, such as bundling our tools with Parasolid. A CAD program has to bring together a number of building blocks, and connecting them is labor-intensive, so we provide those bridges between them, and then customers just customize them for their industry.

Customers want universality for this data: to be able to read, edit, visualize, and publish data. This is what a platform means.

Our ultimate goal is to make it as easy as possible for our customers to be able to build the applications they need using the highest quality tools.

techsoft3d.com/products

 

---

And in Other News

Matrox sold its imaging division to Zebra Technologies, while keeping its video division. At one time, Matrox concentrated on graphics boards for CAD displays, but left when the field got too crowded.

Anyone still remember Artist Graphics/Control Systems (threw the best parties at A/E/C Systems), Renaissance Graphics, Nth Engine (introduced display-list processing), Vectrix, Hercules (first to combine text and monochrome graphics), Sigma Graphics, or 3Dfx (first with a GPU)?

- - -

PTC appoints former Autodesk co-ceo Amar Hanspal to its board of directors.

- - -

Monica Schnitger reports that Swedish holding company Addnode acquired Microdesk to create the world’s largest Autodesk dealer network under the brand name of Symetri. Addnode also acquired DESYS Gmbh, a German Dassault Systemes dealer. Earlier CAD-related acquisitions include ProCAD (Irish Autodesk dealer) and Budsoft (Polish Dassault Systemes simulation dealers).

CAD vendors normally don’t tolerate software from competitors being sold by the same reseller; perhaps in this case the conflict of interest is tolerated as a holding company is doing business at an arm’s length.

Many more details at schnitgercorp.com/2022/03/16/the-var-economy-reseller-consolidation-continues.

- - -

Here is one of the posts that appeared recently on my WorldCAD Access blog:

• Updated: The Impact of CAD Vendors Leaving Russia

You can subscribe to the WorldCAD Access blog’s RSS feed through Feed Burner at feeds.feedburner.com/WorldcadAccess.

 

---

Notable Quotable

“I am not saying that we have restarted the strategy or that a green light has been authorised, but we have unpaused the situation.”
     - Management Speak

 

---

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.

*4677

About Actify: Interview with CEO David Opsahl

Issue #1,126  |  Inside the Business of CAD  |  14 March 2022

SpinFire displaying models from CAD files

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

Centro, foundation of Actify Automotive Program Management, managing automotive components

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.

 

https://actify.com

---

== 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].

http://www.okino.com

---

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:

1. In the Print dialog, select Send to = Postscript

2. Port = File / EPS

3. Page size = 7.5 long and 10 wide

4. Then use Page setup to scale, and fit origin appropriately (zoom out helps).

5. 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

2 CAD Guys Talk About the Cloud

Issue #1,119  |   Inside the Business of CAD   |   24 January 2022

 

Stan Przybylinski: In your WorldCAD Access blog post of 2019 [worldcadaccess.com/blog/2019/10/heppelmann-and-hirschtick-on-ptcs-acquisition-of-onshape.html], you cited McKinsey’s estimates used by PTC: “SaaS-based CAD market would grow more than 35% year-over-year and represent nearly 20% of the total CAD market in five years.”

[McKinsey is consulting firm to large corporations. SaaS is “software as a service” via subscriptions.]

That was in 2019, and now it is 2+ years later. What do you think about this estimate today?

 

Ralph Grabowski: I didn’t believe it at the time, and I don’t believe it now.

The CEOs of PTC have been known for making extravagant claims. In this case, I wonder if the CEO was justifying the purchase of Onshape, while (I think) hoping secretly it would not prove to be a costly mistake.

Getting full CAD on the cloud has proved elusive, even for a hardcore cloud promoter like Autodesk, which has been plugging away at the problem for a decade now, as has Dassault with its 14-year (and counting) failure to put Solidworks on the cloud. PTC will find the same,

Indeed, PTC admitted as much when it spent (perhaps) around $700 million (purchase price + assumption of debt, my estimate) on Onshape, saying paying for an acquisition was quicker and cheaper than writing the code on its own. So think how much it might have cost to write cloudCAD from scratch. But now it faces the problem of delivering on its promise of Onshape-ifying Creo with 100% of functions of the desktop version. It ain't gonna happen.

Siemens, Hexagon, and mid-tier CAD vendors (Bentley, Bricsys, Graebert, et al) know better. Their solution is hybrid: hard-core CAD on the desktop with ancillary activities on the cloud where it make sense, such as collaboration and remote drawing access.

 

Mr Przybylinski: I second all of those emotions. I think that McKinsey does not know enough about CAD authoring tools to understand how they are different.

This next article illustrated their feelings about enterprise software more broadly: “The next software disruption: How vendors must adapt to a new era. Over the turbulent past decade, many legacy software players proved to be remarkably resilient. Now they must adopt a new strategic playbook to weather the different challenges ahead.” [Source.]

 

Mr Grabowski: I feel that McKinsey suffers from a conflict of interest: it needs change to occur so that it can charge firms to advise them in how to navigate and implement the upcoming changes predicted by McKinsey. By proactively announcing that inevitable change is coming for pretty much darn sure, they prime the pump for lucrative contacts.

 

Mr Przybylinski: I agree. While we at CIMdata are known for doing market research in this space, we often don't get asked to do things like this, because we are normally more conservative. Plus, we do not have the cachet of “McKinsey” in a press release.

 

[Stan Przybylinski is the vice president of PLM market research firm CIMdata. He is the former manager of market and competitive intelligence at Dassault Systèmes.]

 

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== 3D Conversion of Ultra-Massive 3D Models via DWF-3D & Okino's PolyTrans|CAD ==

One of the most refined aspects of Okino's PolyTrans|CAD software is in transforming ultra-massive MCAD models of oil and gas rigs, LNG processing plants, 3D factories, and other unwieldy datasets into Cinema-4D, 3ds Max, Maya, and Unity (among others).

What often takes days using blindly incorrect methods takes minutes or an hour with Okino's well-defined optimization and compression methods using its DWF-3D conversion system.

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].

www.okino.com

---

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PROJECT NEWPLEX v2.0

Project Newplex 2.0 is the advanced SHX font designed for technical documents; compatible with every DWG-based CAD program that supports Unicode SHX files.

Features

• Advanced character forms for readability & clarity

• Designed for drafting

• Includes the most-requested technical characters

• Extensive international character set

For more info or to purchase, go to tcfonts.com/projectnewplex.html.

---

 

And in Other News

Siemens Digital Industries Software updates Simcenter 3D 2022.1:

• Increased support for turbomachinery modeling

• Dedicated drop test for handheld devices

• Tighter integration with NX Design

• New acoustic method that is up to 10x faster than standard methods

The free trial is available from plm.automation.siemens.com/global/en/products/simcenter/simcenter-3d.html.

- - -

Dassault Systemes lost the prize for holding the first post-covid in-person CAD user conference, after abruptly cancelling the in-person part for health reasons. You can still watch 3DExperience World (nee Solidworks World) on your computer-connected big screen tv from the comfort of your comfy armchair February 6 - 9 after registering at 3dexperienceworld.com/overview.

- - -

Open Design Alliance shipped the initial release of its open STEP software development kit in January. The SDK handles CIS/2 schemas, accesses EXPRESS metadata, and supports the following application protocols:

• AP203 (configuration-controlled design)

• AP214 (automotive design)

• AP238 (STEP-NC integrated CNC)

• AP242 (managed model-based 3D engineering)

To come later this year: advanced creation, visualization, and .NET support. upFront.eZine wrote about the ODA’s plans in issue #111.

The SDK is free to ODA members. opendesign.com/products/step

- - -

BETA CAE Systems updates its suite of analysis software to v22.1.0:

• KOMVOS upgraded as a direct DM-process executor

• Boosted graphics performance of ANSA and META

• Extended VR/AR capabilities

• Faster solution times in EPILYSIS

• New toolbars in META

Details here: beta-cae.com/news/20211227_announcement_suite_22.1.0.htm

- - -

LEDAS reports that for the third year in a row its revenues increased by 15%. The software consulting company specializes in solving tough problems in CAD, BIM, and CAM. ledas.com

- - -

IntelliCAD Technology Consortium updates IntelliCAD Mobile Platform:

• Opens and regenerates drawings using multiple threads

• Previews files before opening them

• Names views and visual styles

Mobile Platform is not a retail product but meant for ITC Mobile SIG members to distribute. As a CAD file viewer, it handles .dwg, .dxf, .dgn, .dwf, .dae, and image files; architecture and civil objects; and underlays, and runs on Windows, Android, macOS, and iOS. www.intellicad.org

 

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Letters to the Editor

Re: What Remains to Be Solved in Mechanical CAD

Matt Lombard's article on the above topic is riveting, I read it in one swoop. What are your thoughts about how future developments will work out? Still via China?
            - Name withheld by request
            Canada

The editor replies: The amount being produced for us in China is so overwhelming that we cannot properly comprehend it. It is expensive to move production back to the West, and would take years to build the factories.

The related problem is that the West moved it factory pollution to China, so bringing factories back would shift the pollution back to our skies and waters.

- - -

Matt Lombard wrote, “And when is A.I. going to show up, or do we not have the piles of unsorted data required to make A.I. successful?”

Amen to the second clause! That said, I find BricsCAD's Bimify and Blockify commands pretty awesome examples for A.I. in CAD/BIM.
            - Michael Hasse
            France

The editor replies: As impressive as commands like Bimify are, I don’t consider them A.I. but advanced forms of search and replace.

 

Re: The Complexity of Simplicity

I like this chapter/discussion. Let’s call this  “smart stupidities”!
            - Jure Spiler
            Slovinia

 

Re: The reality of homelessness in cold weather

One of my brothers is one of those who will not live inside. He's been offered a brand new suite in condo towers for the “homeless” a number of times over the years, but prefers the mental and emotional peace he finds sleeping outside a church in the upper-middle class area we grew up in as kids.

I visit him every couple of days at a predetermined time and place to give him his allowance of funds to keep him fed and with smokes. With the recent very cold weather in Vancouver, there were a couple of times my fear of not seeing him alive arose, thinking he might have not made it through the frigid night, but he showed up with no mention of the cold.

He's 74 years old, so he’s done well to live this way for decades. He’s labeled as being homeless, but, in reality, his home is what we call the outside.
            - Name withheld by request (via WorldCAD Access)

The editor replies: The inability to live inside four walls is a common among the homeless, which, I agree, would better be named “the houseless,” as they have a place they call home.

Volunteering at a cold weather shelter, I’ve seen people leave in the middle of a frigid night due to their anxiety of being inside. As they leave, we remind them to shelter from the wind in a doorway and to huddle with someone else.

 

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Notable Quotable

"Metaverse: it’s the tech bro version of New Coke."
     - David Burge (@iowahawkblog)

 

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Thank You, Readers

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The State of STEP with With Martin Hardwick (STEP Tools), Neil Peterson (Open Design Alliance)

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.

• AP203 for solid models (1995)

• AP214 for assemblies (2003)

• AP242 for annotations (2015)

• AP242e2 for tolerances (last year)

A portion of the STEP standard illustrated at steptools.com/stds/stp_expg/arm.html

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:

1. CAD operator makes drawings with no regard for the manufacturing process

2. CAM operator designs the manufacturing process

3. Postprocessor in CAM software generates the G-code that instructs the machine

4. 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.

1. CAD operator makes the 3D model suitable for manufacturing

2. Postprocessor in CAD makes the STEP-NC file

3. 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:

1. 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).

2. 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.

3. 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.

[This article first appeared in Design Engineering magazine and is reprinted with permission.]

 

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And in Other News

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.

The engineering firms lay out an ultimatum: “The industry’s preferred software suppliers in the future will therefore be those who are able to communicate early and well about future pricing policies.” The press release can be downloaded from here: rif.no/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Open-letter-to-software-developers-for-the-consultant-engineering-industry.pdf.

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:

• Online Conference Burnout

You can subscribe to the WorldCAD Access blog’s RSS feed through Feed Burner at feeds.feedburner.com/WorldcadAccess.

 

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Letters to the Editor

Re: Online Conference Burnout

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.

 

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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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What's New in Solid Edge 2022: Q&A with Dan Staples

Issue #1,108  |  Inside the Business of CAD  |  11 October 2021

 

This issue is sponsored by CCE:

EnSuite-Cloud ReVue: Secure Conferencing for Your Online Engineering Meetings

Discuss 2D/3D CAD engineering designs in real-time with your team and suppliers, no matter where they are. No software to install, no proprietary design data left on servers.

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Start your online meeting for free at cadcam-e.com/EnSuite-Cloud-ReVue.

 

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Solid Edge 2022 began shipping last week, boasting of 500 new functions and improvements. I spoke with Siemens vp of mainstream engineering Dan Staples about the new features I found the most interesting.

Dan Staples announcing that CAM Pro (for 2.5-axis milling) and Simcenter Flomaster (for fluid and thermal analysis) is available to any Solid Edge 2022 customer with a subscription

New: CAD Direct

CAD Direct inserts CAD parts into Solid Edge assemblies from certain other systems, without translation. Changes made to the model in the originating CAD system are reflected in the copy stored in the Solid Edge assembly.

Ralph Grabowski: I’ll start right away with CAD Direct. It reminds me of the ’90s when Intergraph championed the use of OLE for D&M to place CAD models in other documents without translation. So I’m interested in the mechanism CAD Direct uses today.

[Intergraph patented OLE for Design and Modeling in 1993; the technology never went far, because Microsoft did not implement OLE well. At around the same time, in 1995, Intergraph first released Solid Edge. — Editor]

Dan Staples: OK, yeah, so, funny Ralph, that you should go back so far as the whole OLE [object linking and embedding] craze back in the ’90s. It is an interesting analogy to that.

The CAD Direct technology is not really a Windows technology, per se. I think the key piece of it is our ability to keep an intermediary file inside the assembly, so that you never have any external files.

I think that’s one of the biggest problems with data management. It’s kind of been this untold secret that when you translate a file you end up with a new extra file. When it comes to making an update, you’ve got this new extra file to deal with, right?

With CAD Direct, you don’t have that anymore and it does updates live. It’s all just done using internal technology.

A CAD Direct component inserted in a Solid Edge assembly being copied (shown in green)

Grabowski: It’s not translated, so is it some sort of visual or facet format where you grabbed the info out of the other CAD system?

Staples: No, it doesn’t use facets, because you actually treat them like b-reps. I think the easiest thing to think of is that the b-rep from the other CAD system is embedded inside our assembly, in a way that’s not visible to the user.

There is some intermediary geometry inside the assembly that’s managing that. When the originating system changes the model, then the internal b-rep changes.

 

Grabowski: Is this a function of Parasolid?

Staples: No, not particularly.

 

Grabowski: Where you say that it works with NX and SolidWorks, they both have Parasolid in common.

Staples: That is going to be your most reliable path, because they’re using the same format. But I would say that broadly it doesn’t matter what format you’re importing.

 

Grabowski: From the software launch video, it looks like Solid Edge interacts quite a bit with the imported object -- through handles, mates, constraints, and so on.

Staples: From the end users’ standpoint, they won’t be able to tell the difference between this or if they are using a Solid Edge file. It’s like you’re assembling a part file. Users won’t really be able to tell the difference other than it’s flagged in Pathfinder slightly differently. You hit the update links button to update the CAD Direct-linked file.

 

Grabowski: Then this leads me to the question of how the associative links are created and maintained?

Staples: We treat it very much like native solid geometry, which I think is probably the easiest way to think of it. This isn’t exactly technically correct, but it’s close enough. Solid Edge has a thing called “internal components,” which are part files embedded in the assembly. They’re treated just like an external component, but they never appear on disk.

You were talking about OLE before, where you used to have the notion of embedded or linked Excel files. Solid Edge has the ability to embed part files. This is largely the same. The body is available to us, the facets are available to us. We just don’t need a file on disk to deal with it.

 

Grabowski: I’m trying to understand how the link works for updates. If the external part is updated in the other CAD system, then there is some notification that this is happening. Where can that other CAD system be -- on the same network?

Staples: It will be like a link. That link in Windows can be anywhere, as long as it’s a fully resolvable, qualified path name. It wouldn’t necessarily have to be on your local drive as long as it’s a file system link that we can understand and run through, it would know the information.

 

Grabowski: So the source CAD system does not have to be available. Because Visio translators need to have Visio, they actually launch Visio in the background to do the translation.

Staples: The source CAD system does not have to be available now with CAD Direct.

Let’s take it even further with a diesel engine in a locomotive. You get the engine from Cummings or somebody, and you do not want to create 2,000 part files on your disk for that engine, because honestly you don’t care about the 2000 part files. You just care about the engine.

And yet you also don’t necessarily want to treat it like a part per say, because it’s not. It has moving parts. It’s a real thing.

And so our internal components let you take either a part or subassembly and put it in your assembly, and it acts just like the same thing. There aren’t any external files made, and so that actuator or that engine fully exists within the assembly in what’s called an internal component. It has structure in Pathfinder [model tree], you can see how it’s composed. You can articulate the parts, but you don’t have all that gloop on disk or in your PDM [product data management] system to manage. It’s treated like a part that came along for the ride.

 

Grabowski: So ‘gloop’ is a technical term then?

Staples: It is. I’m glad you recognize that. I’ve been using that since the ’90s as well.

 

Improved: Convergence Modeling

Convergent modeling from Siemens lets you mix and match solids and meshes in a single model. (Dassault has in its ACIS kernel something similar.) Convergent modeling lets you interact with meshes imported from scans (and other non-CAD sources) with solids (b-reps).

During the launch video, we saw a solids cutout added to a mesh handle, followed by an array of solids in the mesh and a Boolean operation to cut a hole. See figure below.

Hole with solid fillets cut in a part made of meshes

Grabowski: You’ve been working on hybrid modeling for a number of years now, as an offshoot of Parasolid. With this new release of Solid Edge, have you arrived at doing all that hybrid modeling needs to do? Or is there is there more to develop?

Staples: Let me answer that in two parts. Typically, we have been using the term ‘Convergent Modeling’, which is the Siemens term for the merger between facets and b-reps.

And yes, it’s enabled by Parasolid technology, but it’s not a part of our Parasolid modeling kernel. So it is something unique to Siemens and not necessarily available when you license Parasolid.  [Updated:} Convergent modeling is proprietary Siemens technology, tightly integrated into Parasolid. It is available to third parties to license at extra cost, above a standard Parasolid license. This is unlike Synchronous Technology, which Siemens has chosen not to license. 

 

Grabowski: That’s like synchronous technology then.

Staples: Yes, it’s exactly like synchronous technology [in that ST cannot be licensed even when you license the Parasolid kernel].

You’re never complete, but I’d say we’re very close to completion. The big nut to crack was Booleans. In the past, when you did a Boolean between a b-rep and a facet mesh, the result would be that everything became facets, whereas now everything stays in its native form.

So when you do a Boolean between a b-rep and a facet, you end up with all the b-reps staying b-reps, and all the facets staying facets. It’s super efficient in terms of the way it’s done and stored. I do feel like it’s closure to the story we’ve been building over the last couple years.

 

Grabowski: I’m not super familiar with what else you’ve done in Convergence Modeling. Do you also convert facet meshes to b-reps?

Staples: We do have some facet mesh to b-rep conversion as part of our reverse engineering. In terms of functionality, it’ll find planes and cylinders, and cones, and so on.

The other thing we do that’s really cool and unique is that we can do almost all operations on faceted models with Synchronous Technology: move facets, we can round edges, we can do shells or thin walls -- so we don’t care whether they are facets or b-reps or a combination of the two.

I do think it’s a final frontier here, because meshes for a long time were the domain of the film industry and character modeling.

 

Grabowski: What happens when a hybrid part is exported to another CAD system?

Staples: It is all converted to meshes before being exported.

 

New: Point Clouds

Grabowski: Point clouds, are they new to 2022?

Staples: They are. We had done a prototype of this a year or two ago.

What we mean by point clouds? So it’s been possible to have lots of points in Solid Edge for a very long time, but they had to be displayed as triangles or b-reps. Now they stay points.

When you scan a plant, each point carries the color and spatial [x,y,z] location, and so you literally have at a minimum millions of points and sometimes billions of points. During rotation, Solid Edge renders them in real time at high speed.

That’s the thing that’s so interesting and is still amazing to me: that the points are so dense that you can even zoom in and it still looks good. It’s just amazing, the density of these point clouds. This is kind of ‘secret sauce science’ stuff. And that’s also the technical term, by the way.

Point cloud inserted surrounding an assembly (lower middle of the image)

Grabowski: The part I found interesting was you taking a measurement between a solids component and part of the point cloud. So I was curious: where on the point cloud is that measurement taken from?

Staples: So it’ll be taken from the point itself.

 

Grabowski: But which point? is it a rough measurement or? I’m curious about the accuracy.

Staples: Well, it’s only as accurate as the laser scan is accurate. But they are extraordinarily accurate. If you were to measure to a rusty water tank, you would be able to tell the difference between the rusty part and the not rusty part. I mean the lasers are super amazing these days.

- - -

I’ll close what’s-new in Solid Edge 2022 by describing one more feature that I found interesting: component colorization. See figure below.

Coloring parts according to designers’ names.

To color parts, you assign colors to properties. This lets you visually identify which supplier or designer made the part, or the materials from which they were made. Siemens calls this “dynamic visualization.”

What Ralph Grabowski Thinks

Solid Edge 2022 is a remarkable upgrade, with some catch-up features (I’m looking at you, point clouds and Xcelerator Share) but also some really important new technologies, like the solids-mesh editing and CAD Direct.

Blogger Matt Lombard feels Siemens is aiming Solid Edge at big engineering: “There’s a lot of stuff aimed at plant design, large assemblies, fluid flow processing, framing, and piping. See the theme?”

solidedge.siemens.com/en/pages/solid-edge-2022/

 

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And in Other News

LEDAS Group explains its rationale to buying software licenses: ledas.com/post/883-to-grow-rd-ledas-invests-in-many-more-software-licenses/

- - -

C3D Labs describes how it made its C3D Vision module up to 60% faster: c3dlabs.com/en/blog/products/update-to-c3d-vision-renderer-improves-performance-by-60/

- - -

CAD Schroer updates its factory and plant design software M4 PLANT to version 7.1 with access to augmented and virtual reality.

For more information and to download the 30-day free trial, go to cad-schroer.com/news/news-releases/factory-layout-and-plant-design-version-7-1.

- - -

Windows 11 became available for download last week. There was one prime reason for Microsoft to invent a Windows 11: to force corporations to replace 11-“incompatible” hardware with new gear, boosting the profits of the HPs and Dells of the world. Today's hardware pretty much lasts forever (well, a decade or two anyhow), which is a problem for hardware makers, so we can think of 11 as hardware on subscription.

- - -

Here are some of the posts that appeared recently on my WorldCAD Access blog:

• Guest editorial: Using Asynchronous Communication in CAD

• The best reactions: Facebook's new surveillance sunglasses

• In Which I Explain Media’s Confusion Re: Facebook

You can subscribe to the WorldCAD Access blog’s RSS feed through Feed Burner at feeds.feedburner.com/WorldcadAccess.

 

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Letters to the Editor

Re: A.I.’s Fatal Flaw

I’ve said for a long time that the only difference between human intelligence and machine intelligence is that humans make random mistakes. That is only partly tongue-in-cheek.
- Owen Wengerd, ManuSoft

The editor replies: It is random mistakes (chaos) that makes progress possible. Think penicillin and sticky notes.

- - -

It should be mentioned that any article on A.I. instantly becomes hilarious when you replace the capital “I” with a lowercase “L.” E.g.:

• How dangerous is Al? Can Al ever be stopped?

• Can Al turn my savings into millions?

• Our extensive use of Al to make our product better failed miserably.

Etc.
- Matt Stachoni

The editor replies: Eliza should’ve been named Al!

- - -

The reader reaction to my editorial in the August issue of isicad at isicad.ru/ru/articles.php?article_num=22001 motivated me to pay greater attention to other articles related to A.I., some of them which I translated and published at isicad.ru, including your article, “A.I.’s Fatal Flaw”; see http://isicad.ru/ru/articles.php?article_num=22031.

Then, in my most recent editorial in September, “The Artificial Problem of Artificial Intelligence,” I made some more comments on the topic. Two notes:

Some of my judgments and feelings are due to my many years of active work in an academic A.I. lab where we dealt with expert systems, machine understanding of natural language, sub-definite calculations (something more general than today’s generative design), and more.

On the one hand, I do not like widely spread today’s hype and vulgar simplification of problems. On the other, I do believe that much more fundamental R&D can implement much more in the area of A.I. advances.

From what I have heard, BricsCAD applies machine learning for classification of BIM elements based on geometry to understand what is a wall and what is a window, as well as analyzing whether parts can be produced as sheet metal.

The title on isicad’s September cover is “A.I. Engineer.” In Russian at least, “И. И. Инженер” is definitely interpreted as “initials + last name.”
            - David Levin

- - -

Concerning the 4th statement, systems with natural intelligence have a standard set of basic goals of functioning, survival and procreation. They develop behavioral goals by analyzing the state of their own body and the environment. In the process of achieving various goals of behavior, they solve many different problems.

It would be strange if an artificial system, which does not have the basic goals of functioning at all and receives goals of behavior from the outside, would be a complete analogue. We can only talk about a way to solve specific problems.
- Sergey Perovskiy (on isiscad)

 

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Notable Quotable

“The rule of the tech economy is that everything must eventually get bought by one of the monopolies.”
- Paris Marx

 

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Thank You, Readers

Thank you to readers who donate towards the operation of upFront.eZine:

• Warren Cross: “I’ve been a faithful reader for almost 1/3 of my 75 years. While I am no longer an instructor of computer-aided drafting and design, I still enjoy learning of the expansion and of the capabilities of design software. AutoCAD 2. 5, I hardly remember you. Thanks for your many contributions and books to the industry.”

• Cary Concrete Products: “I am getting up to 96% retired, but still like reading some of your stuff, especially the less CAD-technical.”

To support upFront.eZine through PayPal.me, then I suggest the following amounts:

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Should Paypal.me not operate in your country, then please use www.paypal.com and use 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.

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*4710

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Open Source Architecture: Q&A with Duncan Lithgow

Issue #1,103  |  Inside the Business of CAD   |   5 July 2021

 

 

OSArch [open source in architecture] provides access to free and open source software for the AEC and BIM markets, as well as an umbrella for developing the software.

I interviewed Duncan Lithgow, who is one of several active community coordinators of OSArch. His passion for open source and libre software comes from the conviction that sharing is good, and that grassroots collaboration gives better results than boardroom talking points.

BlenderBIM in architectural design

Ralph Grabowski: What position do you see OSArch having in the architectural design world — supporting role, minor player, major actor?

Duncan Lithgow: OSArch is about bringing a more ethical approach to the software we use in architecture, engineering, construction, and operations (AECO). We support moving the industry toward more openness and more collaboration.

At our core we support and encourage projects bringing professionals together to develop the software tools we need to do our job well. This means developing and supporting software developed as free/libre and open source (a.k.a. FLOSS) [see en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_and_open-source_software] and the use of open standards, such as those developed by buildingSMART, the W3C, and others.

 

Grabowski: How much open source software is available to the CAD world?

Lithgow: Our Free Software Directory at wiki.osarch.org/index.php?title=AEC_Free_Software_directory lists over a hundred projects, covering everything from computational fluid dynamics (such as OpenFOAM), structural analysis (Code_Aster), to presentation and document editing (Scribus and Inkscape).

My knowledge is what happens in architectural offices. There you see growing use and support for FLOSS solutions like Speckle to fix the industry’s interoperability problem.

In building physics, FLOSS projects, such as Radiance, EnergyPlus, and OpenFOAM, are tried and battle-tested as the reference standard.

Ladybug Tools and its Pollination platform sees increasing support, pulling many tools together. Those are just some of the superstars of the movement in AECO.

 

Grabowski: At what point are major software pieces, such as LibreCAD, Code_Aster, and LibreDWG?

Lithgow: Some projects are very mature and stable, and some projects are in rapid bleeding edge development.

 

Grabowski: Tell our readers about some of them.

Lithgow: QCAD Community Edition is libre software and is a quite capable 2D CAD package. They sell a commercial version, which adds some non-core functionality, such as DWG support, and help fund the development of the community edition.

Code_Aster is one of the few FOSS tools that is being developed and completely backed by a multinational company, Électricité de France, a French electric utility company largely owned by the French state. It has been developing Code_Aster over the last 30 years and then released it as a FOSS tool in 2001. At Électricité de France it is used to analyze, design, and verify new and existing infrastructure assets along their whole lifecycle.

Within OSArch, Code_Aster is one of the fundamental pieces of a structural analysis workflow that has been under development since the beginning of 2020. (See community.osarch.org/discussion/9/integration-of-code-aster-in-an-ifc-driven-workflow-for-structural-analysis.)

1. The first part of this workflow is the definition of the OpenBIM Structural Model (OSM). The project is being developed within the BlenderBIM add-on, and is 30-40% complete.

2. The second part of the workflow relates to the conversion of the OpenBIM Structural Model to a Code_Aster structural model, and then performing structural load analysis. This part was developed as IFC-to-Code_Aster (ifc2ca, presented at community.osarch.org/discussion/99/) and is currently 20-30% complete.

3. Other parts of the structural analysis pipeline are not developed yet, such as

   • Visualization of structural results in Blender and other OpenBIM-enabled tools. I should note that there are FLOSS tools such as Salome_Meca that are designed for visualizing Code_Aster results.

   • Verification of structural members according to specific structural codes. This last task is quite broad and challenging to address holistically.

A special mention should be made for Adapy, a FLOSS python library, released a few months ago. It has the potential to work with Code_Aster but also other FLOSS structural solvers to be considered in the structural workflow. Adapy is still in early phases of development, yet features complete “proof of concept” examples and specific development for a user-friendly procedure to install all needed packages for performing the structural analysis on a desktop computer.

LibreDWG supports DWG, DXF, and SVG. It is just starting to be integrated into projects, so I’m not sure how much testing it has seen in real-world scenarios. It works for me inside FreeCAD. It looks like 3D DWG is really going to be a challenge. LibreDWG is not the only FLOSS-oriented DWG project, but it is the most advanced. Some solid testing and support for LibreDWG could make a huge shift in the industry opening up a whole world of legacy files to FLOSS projects.

It might sound like lots of little tools. That’s how things work outside the monoliths with their walled gardens of proprietary solutions and poor interoperability. The “little tools” approach means that as projects mature and as your needs change, you switch out parts of the workflow with something else.

 

Grabowski: How much of open software is being used by corporations and universities?

Lithgow: Examples of software in very rapid development are FreeCAD and the BlenderBIM add-on. We have some great examples of how companies like OpeningDesign and Open Source Ecology use free software on commercial projects. Larger companies also use both FreeCAD and the BlenderBIM add-on in aspects of their workflows. Universities are starting to introduce the software in their courses and in BIM academic research.

In their current state, they are not yet drop-in replacements for average users who want to replace an entire suite of tools offered by Autodesk, Bentley, or Dassault. However, depending on the scale of the project, the use-case the user has, and the technical abilities of the team, certain features are more mature than others and are already creating commercial value.

In other aspects, both FreeCAD and the BlenderBIM add-on have far surpassed proprietary solutions and are pioneering in areas such as native support for international BIM standards, semantic drawing generation, and cross-disciplinary support.

These technical feats, contributions to the cross-platform OpenCAD ecosystem, and forays into uncharted territory were recognized by

• buildingSMART technology awards in 2020 , where the video presentation is a great intro to many of these topics

• Google Summer of Code programme 2021

• Epic MegaGrants programme

At this point it is very difficult to be specific on exactly what’s ready and what isn’t, as it is so context-sensitive, but development in both projects are accelerating, and we are excited to see where they go.

 

Grabowski: What about IFCs?

Lithgow:We have several IFC based projects: lossless round-tripping IFC files between software packages, implementing energy analysis, structural analysis, implementing cost planning, construction sequencing, and projects drawings.

All of this is working directly inside the IFC schema, deeper than any other project that I know of. We are working with buildingSMART to make it all work smoothly.

 

Grabowski: How is OSARCH funded?

Lithgow: At the moment we cover our costs for digital infrastructure via donations to the Liberapay platform. We plan to join a fiscal host so we can start fundraising and accelerate our work with corporate sponsors.

We do have a list of financial sponsors ready to support us, but we don't yet have a legal structure to make this possible. We’d love to hear from anyone who wants to support our efforts. We’re also happy to help anyone find projects that they’d like to support directly.

 

Grabowski: Where does the programming prowess come from?

Lithgow: In contrast to how I imagine most software companies work, we are not staffed by software experts from outside our field. Most programmers who support our aims are AEC professionals first and programming is either part of their work or a passion on the side.

However, being open source, programming contributions can come from anywhere. Increasingly, it makes business sense for AEC tech startups and power users within larger AEC firms to reuse free software instead of reinventing the wheel, and as a result we see many commercially funded contributions as well.

Being open source, it is easier for us to share resources and coding expertise across projects, so a little programming can go a long way. OSArch helps act as a medium through which these synergies across projects can be formed, so that together we can solve more complex problems, knowing that all our projects are interdependent in the AEC ecosystem.

 

Grabowski: What do you see for the future of OSArch?

Lithgow: Where this will all go is hard to know, but we’re not a organization reliant on backers or income. Maybe we’ll end up with huge influence and a generous budget to support and coordinate projects that challenge the status quo. Maybe not.

What’s clear is that the ideas we represent are not going away, and are increasingly acknowledged by industry. More and more, the most tech-savvy people in AECO rely on FLOSS to do their jobs and to develop in-house solutions.

https://osarch.org

[Duncan Lithgow was educated in architecture and construction management in New Zealand and Denmark. Now he works for a Danish architectural and engineering firm, and is learning programming.]

 

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And in Other News

Lantek’s speciality is software for designing, costing, and cutting sheet metal parts. For its Global Release 2021, it has updates to these packages:

• Lantek Expert CAD/CAM

• Lantek Flex3D

• Lantek MES and Integra

• Lantek Analytics

• iQuoting and Metal Shop

One of the new functions represents the new direction CAD software has been taking. Forget cloud, AI, and other topics that are trendy. Instead, less work for designers is the way to go, like this new function: Assembly to Nesting importer unfolds all the sheet metal parts (taking into account the bending tool being used), making them ready for nesting and cutting.

Other new functions include the following:

• Import CAD files by drag’n drop, and then detect duplicate parts

• Clean cut avoids lead-ins and micro-joints

• Spiral cut destroys material within holes to eliminate the manual removal of scrap material

More information at www.lantek.com/us/software.

- - -

Canon’s new Arizona 135 GT flatbed plotter plots on rigid media that roll-feed plotters cannot handle — glass, aluminum, wood, MDF, ceramic tiles — and with with an optional roll media attachment it also plots on regular media like paper.

It handles media as big as 49x98" (125x250cm) and two inches (50mm) thick. Print speed is up to 368 ft²/hour (34.2 m²/hr). This Arizona model is so new that there isn’t a Web page for it yet, so I’ll direct you to the press release: usa.canon.com/internet/portal/us/home/about/newsroom/press-releases/press-release-details/2021/20210629-press/20210629-press.

- - -

C3D Labs adds Class F (fairing or functional) curves to their geometric modeling kernel. F-curves are like Class A curves, but with added optimization, such as a plough designed to minimize soil adhesion.

The company describes the development of F-curves in a three-part series starting at https://c3dlabs.com/en/blog/products/class-f-curves-from-c3d-labs-part-1-introduction-to-fairing-curves.

 

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Letters to the Editor

Re: Overview of Engineering Math Software

Your value of Euler's Constant in upFront.eZine #1,101 is just an approximation. Here is a slightly more accurate version:

...to 10,000 characters.
            - Bill Fane

The editor replies: Did ya’ COPY'N PASTE that? [Note from editor: rather than publish all ten thousand characters, I did a screen grab.]

Mr Fane responds: No, I had a moment to spare so I worked it out in my head.

Okay, would you believe math.utah.edu/~pa/math/e.html?

- - -

As a supporter of open source software for AEC, I was disappointed to read in issue #1,100 your comment about SMath Studio that “Being free, it is not as advanced as MathCAD.”

One of the sad consequences of people thinking “You get what you pay for” is that cheap and free are synonyms for poor quality. That’s simply not true. It’s probably more accurate to say that you can’t know what you’ll get if you don’t do your homework. Researching potential solutions, free or paid, is what’s important.
            - Duncan Lithgow

 

Re: 2 CAD Guys Talk about the Cost of CAD

The conversation with David Stein is exactly on-point.

As we’ve discussed before, mechanical CAD is a commodity in that the dominant products function alike, do an adequate job, and have no impact on a manufacture’s profit margin. Development and innovation is nearly non-existent, and there seems to be no huge need for it.

The fact that all competitors in the business are scrambling to develop new business models — instead of new products — is indicative that the products have matured (or stagnated, depending on your outlook), and become a commodity.

Companies that were created and grown on rapid innovation always find it difficult or impossible to convert to a commodity business, and they generally abandon markets that have gone that way. Mechanical CAD is $500 to $1500 software, and I don't see companies like Dassault, Siemens, or PTC having any interest in such trivial stuff.

As always, your newsletters are insightful.
            - Jess Davis, president
            Davis Precision Design, Inc.

The editor replies: At user conferences, CAD vendors like to show off how their software was used to develop a special product, like the Square payment module or prosthetics for children, and I think to myself, “Yes, but all of your competitors can do exactly the same design.”

 

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Notable Quotable

“Nigeria has banned Twitter entirely, which is a different way to go on Big Tech.

“Twitter responds that this is a denial of Nigerians’ human rights, which doesn’t apply to those whom Twitter decides to ban.”
     - Michael Every

 

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Thank You, Readers

Thank you to readers who donate to the operation of upFront.eZine:

• OzCAD Pty Limited: “Thanks for your efforts Ralph.”

• William Doran

To support upFront.eZine through PayPal.me, 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 please use www.paypal.com and use 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.

 

*4720

U-splines for Predicting Failure

Issue #1,099 |  Inside the Business of CAD | 7 June 2021

 

 

Nearly all analysis software works the same way: break up 3D models into many small pieces, and then do an analysis on each small element to find out when the model might fail. The concept goes back Boris Galerkin, who mused that just because something can be proven physically doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be proven mathematically.

And so in 1915 Mr Galerkin developed an approximation method using differential equations, following which Richard Courant developed the finite element method as a special case of Galerkin’s Method. That was 1943; today, FEA [finite element analysis] is overwhelmingly the most common form of model analysis.

IGA [iso-geometric analysis] is a different way of splitting 3D solids into those chunks before performing analyses on models. Mike Scott, Derek Thomas, and Kevin Tew pioneered R&D on IGA under the name of Isogeometrx LLC. IGA is based on U-splines (unstructured splines, patented by Mr Thomas). The company rebranded as Coreform when Matt Sederberg came on board in 2016 to commercialize IGA.

IGA and FEA applied to a part: 1,000 elements vs 1,000,000 elements

Then about a year ago, Coreform developed a new IGA formulation, generalizing the finite cell method. The idea is to adjust simulation speed and accuracy, coarser or finer, according to the needs of each stage of the product development process. By decreasing meshing time and eliminating steps, Coreform speeds up design and analysis. (See figure below.)

Coreform software speeding up design and analysis

Coreform IGA handles both material and geometric nonlinearities, as well as nonlinear constraints, including contacts. For a given degree p, the bandwidth is the same but the fill-in is greater for smooth functions. Most customers define their own subroutines and material models through Julia, an open-source programming language. See julialang.org.

The following figure shows how Coreform fits into the panoply of FEA programs:

The place of Coreform IGS among analysis software

Before U-Splines

Before co-founding Coreform, Mr Sederberg commercialized the T-splines technology developed by his father, Tom Sederberg. T-splines were an improvement over meshing, which usually limits meshes to rectangles; T-splines meant that meshes could come to a stop before covering the entire surface. (See figure below.)

A simple T-spline (image source SourceForge)

One catch is that it takes a lot more computing power, but today’s computer can handle it. Another, more serious catch is that unlike U-splines, T-splines were never invented to be used for analysis.

The stand-alone T-Splines software was bought by Autodesk in 2011, which integrated the technology into its Inventor and Fusion 360 programs – much to the disappointment of customers who had been using the CAD-agnostic version of T-Splines.

 

Cubit and IGA

Coreform offers two software products:

Coreform Cubit is the mesher using hexagonal and square meshes (see figure below). It cleans up poorly-made CAD models, and everything can be automated with Python scripting. With coarse bounding-box analysis, the result from Cubit is nearly instant.

Course bounding box and detailed adaptive quadrature

The free version Coreform Cubit Learn for non-commercial use limits exports to 50,000 elements.

Coreform IGA implements IGA with linear and nonlinear solvers to solve static and dynamic physics made of nonlinear materials and contacts. Input files are in human-readable JSON [JavaScript object notation] format. Subroutines are implemented in Julia.

Visualizing IGA results inside ParaView open-source visualization software at www.paraview.org

Coreform is especially useful for complex assemblies. The company is interested in working with early adopters to understand their needs.

 

Q&A

Q: Traditional FEA is many decades old and is very well known. How would one go about explaining IGA to management that is comfortable with FEA, but has no idea what a spline is?

A: Here’s what I tell them: Every traditional FEA mesh is a spline. However, it has historically been so intractably difficult to build “high-order, smooth splines on unstructured meshes” that it hasn’t been worth encoding traditional FEA meshes as a spline.

Any practical, commercially-viable simulation tool needs to have unstructured meshes; real world parts are unstructured and complex.

Academics have known for years the benefits that smooth splines provide in FEA. See the section titled “The piecewise polynomial spaces” at the bottom of page 8 of doi.org/10.1090/S0002-9904-1973-13351-8. The last sentence in the paper reads, “But the actual construction of the psi^i is genuinely an open problem,” and refers to the problem of creating smooth, high-order splines on unstructured meshes. U-splines are a solution to this problem.

Smoothness is often referred to as “continuity.” We would say that traditional finite elements are “continuous (C^0)” while IGA is “smooth (C^1, C^2, C^3...).”

In fact, for special cases, we already use smooth splines in FEA, we just give the elements different names like “Euler-Bernoulli beam element” or “Hermite shell element.” However, even these haven’t been recognized or implemented as splines.

What IGA does is implement the finite element method upon the recognition that all meshes are splines. This means that certain critical parts of the finite element method are generalized, such as integration and assembly. Critically, IGA is FEA, but with a whole new set of rich mathematical theory and tools that are more effective at solving FEA problems.

 

Q: How much of Coreform is based on T-splines?

A: T-splines are not part of the Coreform IGA solution. Our U-splines are a general form of spline designed to support simulation.

T-splines technology was a stepping stone to U-splines. Coreform’s technical founders learned from the shortcomings and positives of T-splines when they began developing our U-spline technology.

 

Q: Can we use user-defined materials (UMAT) in Coreform?

A: Yes, we have a fully defined user interface that leverages Julia. It can handle user-defined materials and other subroutines for assembly, element definition, and so on.

 

Q: Is there a discontinuous Galerkin function in Coreform?

A: We do leverage some techniques that are closely related to the discontinuous Galerkin method [which converts continuous functions to discrete ones].

 

Q: Solving time?

A: We use the open source PETSc [portable, extensible toolkit for scientific computation] parallel solver library. We have 15x fewer elements and 20x fewer degrees of freedom for a typical part, so it will solve much faster. However, with the same number of elements, we are slower because of the setup time.

 

Q: Why is accuracy per degree-of-freedom [DOF] an important quantity to measure/report? As the stiffness matrix gets denser for spline basis, wouldn’t the solve time also increase, despite the smaller number of DOFs?

A: This is highly problem dependent, but as the complexity increases (such as due to nonlinear materials, geometry, contacts, and dynamics) the disparity between Coreform IGA solve times and traditional FEA increases, in that Coreform IGA is much, much faster.

 

Q: Do you have the ability to report the uncertainty in the calculation of the results?

A: We do not yet support uncertainties in computed quantities.

 

Q: Does Coreform IGA model [analyze] contacts between parts?

A: We are actively developing contact capabilities. New capabilities will be rolled out with every release. We have a fully-defined (self-) contact algorithm that can be deployed over both body-fitted and immersed contact surfaces.

 

Q: Can Coreform simulate any kind of partial differential equations set by the user? Not only stress mechanics or Navier-Stokes fluid dynamics, but also flow fields of electrolyzer systems, for example?

A: You can add additional physics through our user-defined interface. Our code is designed to be highly customizable, as this has been a requirement by all our customers.

 

Q: Is MPI [message passing interface] solver (for parallel computing) supported in Coreform?

A: Yes, it is fully parallelized.

 

Q: Geometry is obviously very important, but I am sure you are aware that materials’ parameters have been calibrated based upon element technology for traditional solvers, so that certainly applies to IGA. Users will have to look carefully at their material properties. Any comment about this?

A: We have quite a bit of experience porting advanced (often proprietary) material models from commercial FEA codes to Coreform IGA. We have never encountered a situation where special techniques were used in addition to what is commonly used in FEA.

 

Q: Is there Bezier extraction in IGA?

A: We use Bezier extraction extensively in Coreform IGA. In fact, the U-spline technology is defined in terms of Bezier extraction.

 

Q: BEM [boundary element method] can have even smaller DOFs for isotropic homogeneous models. However, the resulting stiffness matrix isn’t sparse anymore. How about IGA and sparsity patterns?

A: The sparsity patterns for IGA are exactly the same as p-FEM except there may be more fill-in due to smoothness. This means that the matrices are still sparse, just less sparse than traditional FEA. The matrix is the same size as the number of degrees of freedom in the model. For an IGA solution that has 1000x fewer DOFs it’s okay that this smaller matrix has a higher relative density.

 

Q: Can we directly use CAD files (such as Solidworks) in Coreform?

A: Coreform Cubit includes data importers that support most CAD inputs. Some of these importers are free with a standard Cubit license, while others are licensed separately. See coreform.com/products/translators for details.

 

Q: Is there a way to improve the quality of the display of the results, such as smoothing out the results?

A: Yes. The ability to see the results directly on the underlying CAD model is literally days away.

 

Q: Is the process during decomposition using multiple adjacent subdomains, and using same or different material— Is it a single mesh or multiple meshes?

A: Both scenarios are fully supported.

 

Q: Can we solve fluid-structure interaction problems (FSI) in Coreform?

A: We don’t currently have fluids/FSI capabilities, but it is on our roadmap.

 

Q: Heat transfer?

A: That is the next simulation we plan to implement. We never implement a feature without a customer request.

 

Q: Any plans to support a “Coreform IGA Learn” version?

A: Yes! It will be very similar to Coreform Cubit Learn. Stay tuned.

 

Q: May I know the immersed technology behind Coreform IGA? Is that adaptive quadrature or reparameterization?

A: We accommodate both workflows. One can be preferred over the other depending on the application. The immersed technology is a generalization of the finite cell method.

 

Q: What advantages do you see using Coreform IGA over known open-source IGA solvers considering an academic environment? Sadly, we have to take care of possible fees, etc. at academia.

A: Contact us and we can discuss fees.

We’re committed to supporting the open-source community:

• We added Bezier elements to ParaView/VTK for direct visualization of IGA results. See blog.kitware.com/implementation-of-rational-bezier-cells-into-vtk.

• We’ve been adding IGA capabilities into the open-source MOOSE solver via its libMesh FEM library. See github.com/libMesh/libmesh/issues/2179.

• We added Bezier extraction to the open-source Exodus mesh format so that Cubit can communicate IGA’s spline meshes between open-source solvers, such as MOOSE. See github.com/gsjaardema/seacas/issues/189.

We believe there will always be a space for open-source IGA solvers, and that it is mutually beneficial for Coreform to support open-source solvers.

 

Q: How do you suggest forming an IGA structural model based on point clouds of geometry (based on measurements of parts from something like LIDAR)? What would be the workflow in the context of Cubit?

A: That is of great interest to us. It is not a clean way to build a model. For a point cloud, is a point inside or outside? You still need to build triangulations but it does not need to be clean.

www.coreform.com

 

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And in Other News

A solution for CAD vendors stuck on Amazon’s cloud-rental hamster wheel: “Analysis of 50 public software companies finds that repatriating workloads from public cloud infrastructure could help them reduce their cloud spend by 50%.” (Sarah Wang and Martin Casado)

- - -

After burning through $2+ billion in funding from SoftBank and other venture capital firms, construction startup Katerra last week told its 8,000 employees that after six years in operation it is shutting down. The company wanted to revolutionize building construction through off-site modular-panel factories and lots of technology. katerra.com/vision

- - -

NCG CAM Solutions releases NCG CAM v18.0 with new features like

• Create a patch from two 3D curves

• 3D tool guide

• Horizontal area passes from outside to inside

• Waterline offset passes (see figure below)

Another new function, Trim Surfaces to a Boundary, will be added later. As the company says, “Perpetual Licensing (This will NOT change).” Download the demo version from www.ncgcam.com/demo-download (after registration).

- - -

Precast Software Engineering is now a subsidiary of Allplan, operating under the name Allplan Software Engineering. www.allplan.com/us_en

 

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Letters to the Editor

Re: A 2021 View of the PLM Market

Here are 171 programs that claim to be PLM at capterra.com/product-lifecycle-management-software: “Find the best Product Lifecycle Management Software for your business. Compare product reviews and features to build your list.”

Can you imagine giving an employee this task from this list?

PLM was never to be this. Those that created it, American Motors, started with a drawing archive. Today, they are trying to manage engineering documentation. The major programs are associative and create a nightmare for document control. The Info-techs have devised many unworkable processes to solve this problem.

Boeing’s engineering was taken over by Dassault’s Catia 5 PLM, the result was the failed MBE [model-based engineering]. They eliminated the drafting group and document control without preparing the staff or doing a test run, all cold turkey.

In the past, all documentation was controlled by drawings (part and assembly drawings) The drawing package defined the complete project and stood alone. PLM’s efforts to take over document control has made a mess of engineering. But it was just part of a perfect storm!
     - Joe Brouwer

 

The editor replies: As PLM is meant to do all things, then all things belong to PLM:

• P = product = everything that ever was made, is made, and will be made

• L = lifecyle = the duration of every product, from before it was designed until after it is torn apart by the recycling biz

• M = Management = managing it all with software and, more recently, using IoT for feedback.

- - -

Part of the problem with the PLM market seems to be that it is compelled to make up new names for the same thing. I’m sure that PLM, PDM, MRP, ERP, and MES have some differences, but all appear to do the same thing.

Or maybe they don’t all do the same thing, but they all — no matter what they started as — now claim to be the total solution to running businesses.

My direct experience of all of them is limited to the ways they impact the engineering world, but it’s always interesting to listen to a CAD company explain that their engineering software is now ready to take care of your accounting system, and vice-versa.
      - Jess Davis

 

The editor replies: That is the ulterior motive behind CAD and other software vendors pushing their PLM: one software to rule your whole business, reaping subscription fees until the day your business ends.

 

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Notable Quotable

“Apple is second to none in this field, perpetuating an obscene throwaway culture, candy-coated with neat videos and communication extolling their green posture. (A note in passing: a lack of further investigation into this is a major journalistic failure.)”
     - Frederic Filloux

 

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