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The Berlin Conference: Q&A with Graebert Executives

transcribed by Ralph Grabowski   Executives from Graebert GmbH took questions for nearly two hours from the CAD media during the company's Annual Meeting. The focus of the questions was on the company's surprise announcement that it was getting into the BIM business. But, CEO Wilfried Graebert emphasized, "The objective is not to produce a BIM modeler, but to produce 2D documentation" from BIM models.  Königliche Porzellan-Manufaktur, location of this year's Berlin conference   Here is my transcription of the event, which may not be not word-for-word. - - - Q: Why would someone use ARES [for creating 2D drawings that document a BIM project], as opposed to the documentation built into Revit? A: An electrical designer gets Revit files, and says, "What do I do with that?" He can use ARES for this. The BIM users we interviewed complained about the quality of Revit drawings. A: Some AutoCAD developers are stuck; they might die; Autodesk might buy one developer and that's it for the others. I am looking for AutoCAD developers looking to interact with Revit, but not inside Revit. Part of the function is converting Revit objects into DWG objects.  Q: So when they stay in AutoCAD, the associativity is lost? You need the associative mode; this is what architects would love. A: We are just adding annotation on top, as we do not change the Revit model. When the BIM model is updated, the drawings will be updated -- this is in the roadmap for ARES. In the first version, you would have to re-import the BIM model after it is updated.  Q: Associativity works on the mechanical side for Autodesk: AutoCAD is associative with Inventor, but that took years to implement. A: On the mechanical side, instead of creating an alternative to Solidworks or Inventor, we work in partnership with industry leaders to partner with them. [The reference is to PTC/Onshape and Dassault Systemes.]  CEO of Graebert GmbH, Wilfried Graebert, giving the keynote address Q: You showed at the conference yesterday developers using your BIM as an engine. You are three-quarters of the way to a stand-alone BIM product. A: It is 20 years too late to create a Revit clone. It is not that we didn't think about it. We thought of an easier-to-use version of Revit that runs in the cloud -- this was our initial idea. But when we spoke to Revit users, they told us that they already have Revit, that they already have Revit-trained users, but that they don't like the drawing output from Revit. So we concentrated on that. A: From the history of our company, you can see we are big in Japan, India, and here [in Germany]. We definitely are not worldwide. But our partners -- Dassault, PTC/Onshape, and Corel -- have worldwide distribution. When we partner with OEMs, like ones with more than 10 thousand licenses -- they have worldwide distribution. We do piggyback marketing! The big construction firms we work with in Japan have 20,000 AutoCAD licenses. They want to cut expense on 2D CAD. The subscription model is something they do not like. They are early adopters of mobile and cloud. They have departments whose sole job is to look for new technology; there is no pressure, such as "maybe next fiscal year."  Q: How much do they save buying ARES instead of AutoCAD? A: The cost savings of ARES over AutoCAD is 5:1 [ARES being five times cheaper to license than AutoCAD]. Japan is the worst part of the world for Autodesk. When you reach the top five in Japan, you reach all the rest in Japan due to the pyramid structure.  Q: But Bricsys has done well in Japan, as well. A: That is on the mechanical side.  The more you get local, the easier it gets. The developer we showcased  at the conference yesterday from India has the monopoly on software for approving building permits [in a dozen cities]. If you don't have him, you can forget it. He uses Graebert software. Q: If the cloud reigns supreme over desktop by 2032, as you suggested yesterday, will this affect the DWG file format? A: Onshape got rid of the file format, and that works well for them [as did Dassault Systemes in V6]. But it is very convenient for us to work with DWG objects, because we are familiar with them, and because it is better for third-party developers to access data. A: One of my fears was that when Autodesk was successful on the cloud, they would do away with DWG. When you compare the number of ODA users with AutoCAD users, however, the ODA number wins by far. If Autodesk gets rid of DWG, then the ODA could turn it into an ISO standard. Q: Every one [of the CAD vendors] was looking at CAD on the cloud, but didn't think it would turn out. Now that Onshape was bought by PTC, the attitude has changed. Now everyone is worried. A: The early adopters of the cloud are not the smallest [design] companies, but the largest ones. The cloud maximizes the value for you, the bigger you are. This is why we are landing large customers for Kudo [browser-based CAD]. Q: And yet [PTC ceo] Jim Hepplemann in his victory speech said Onshape would finally allow PTC to reach the  small customer. The pricing of Onshape and Fusion at $100 a month is attractive to small business.  A: Mechanical drawings are not as large or complex as in the architectural arena. We have guys who put everything into a single drawing with no xrefs -- an entire city down to the toilet. We found we are a perfect fit for facilities management. When a Lufthansa has buildings worldwide, it is a perfect fit for the cloud; these guys were waiting for us.  Q: Is Graebert an OEM business or a retail business? A: We need both. We use our [ARES] retail brand to attract OEM [software firms that relabel ARES software] customers. If we were to work only with OEMs, we would not get customer feedback. Being able to view and annotate very large drawings in view-only mode with a large variety of [markup] stamps comes from customers in Japan. Our plan was never to have a reseller in every country. We concentrate on markets where we can be #1 and #2. We are very strong in the USA, #1, with a very strong OEM [Dassault]. Japan is #2, and Germany is #3 for us; India is the fastest growing. We pay commissions; if they don't sell anything, it doesn't cost us anything. [On the other hand] Our OEM contracts have a minimum payment, and the contract lasts for ten years. This means we know we can spend on R&D for at least seven years to further develop the our software. Japan is very strict on security and does everything in-house. The first time we showed them view-only links, they asked, "Why would we want to do that?" A year later, they realized the value of it. Adding an expiry date on view-only links comes from customers in Japan. Our kitchen design mobile app is one of the very few mobile design apps in the world that makes a profit, because without it, 30% of kitchen installations in Germany historically fail. Q: What about AI? A: There is some machine learning from AWS [Amazon Web services] that is applied to Kudo for image detection, such as pictures that contain trees or buildings -- transcriptions are added about the content of pictures. This is the first step. Translating voice notes into [text] comments is another example. Q: What is the next step in AI for you? A: Well, pictures is the first step. We are researching repetitive tasks that we can simplify. A: For instance, taking pictures of fences surrounding construction sites; you can manually tag it a few times before it gets boring. This is something AI can do. Customers will generate the volume of photos that will  learn what fences look like.  Q: Design firms get sued over drawings, not designs. There is information missing from drawings. I saw some AI that reads contracts and then checks if drawings are missing. Autodesk has research showing 40% of all errors come from drawings; this is where errors are made in accuracy, such as dimensioning. This seems to be an area for AI: to check that nothing is missing, that drawings conform to standards.  A: What is a 'good' drawing? This is a personal question. We now have much more information about the objects we are dimensioning. The old way [to dimension automatically] was to look for every break in a line, overall length, and segments. That was just looking at geometry; now we can look at a door and know the kinds of dimensions it needs, and where it is in the wall -- and even the wall's materials might determine the dimensions. Q: How about me asking my tablet to dimension all doors it can see on the site? A: It would have to be a BIM drawing. If it is DWG, then it is just entities. At this point, ARES still works only with DWG files.  Q: Could we have links in view-only and printed drawings to access the latest version of the drawing? A: We have started to think about it. How do we work with comments and markups, go into a meeting, and then come back with changes. We can do a QR [quick response] code to a link that shows the drawing as it currently is. Q: When will we be able to edit dynamic blocks in ARES? A: We have lots of ideas of how to go beyond dynamic blocks, as dynamic block development [by Autodesk] stopped many years ago. We will show more next year. Now we can convert dynamic blocks to our custom blocks; custom blocks that go back to AutoCAD become simple blocks. ARES can work with AutoCAD's dynamic blocks. www.graebert.com [Disclosure: Graebert provided me with airfare, accommodation, some meals, and a corporate gift.]   Sponsor: Okino Graphics == Converting 3D CAD & DCC to Virtual/ Augmented Reality ==   With the explosive growth of VR/AR, the ultra-massive 3D datasets produced by CAD and DCC programs need efficient conversion to the popular Unity and Unreal development platforms. Okino of Toronto is the long-time provider of the PolyTrans|CAD translator, which easily handles the interactive datasets required by VR and AR for Microsoft HoloLens, HTC VIVE, Oculus Rift, Meta, and other VR headsets.   PolyTrans provides you with Massive dataset handling Node compression Adaptive CAD tessellation Intelligent polygon reduction  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]  http://www.okino.com On Our Blog Here are some of the most recent posts made to the WorldCAD Access blog: Acer Flip 13: ChromeOS Grows Up Guest Editorial: A Look at CAD Software R&D'ed in Russia: Letters to the Editor I just started a new job in interior design. I am an old hand at AutoCAD drafting, but here I hit upon something that shocked me: Layer 0 turned off in print layouts. I would never do that. I create my blocks on Layer 0, so that my blocks can pick up on the layer color of the layer that they are placed in. Can you think of a reason why anyone would turn off Layer 0?     - MM The editor replies: My guess is that it was done by someone who doesn't understand the significance of layer 0 in DWG programs.   Re: Q&A With Bricsys Execs How does Bricsys hope to succeed against Revit when many contracts, engineers, and clients require Revit-format deliverables? They are specified even in government contracts. When it comes to SketchUp vs. Shape, the big difference is an active content and extension developer market for SketchUp.     - Dave Edwards     Dave Edwards Consulting The editor replies: BIM programs are strong in specific regions, and Revit is strong in places like USA and England, and weak in other areas of the world. The Open Design Alliance is reverse engineering the Revit file formats. Some BIM packages already have the ability to read RVT and RFA files, and perhaps next year will be able write them. These phases I and II are being implemented by the ODA. I believe. Phase III is to replicate the Revit API, which is well underway; I am unsure if any CAD vendor is implementing it, as "no one" wants to recreate Revit, although perhaps some upstart will try. The idea, instead, is to be able to access data stored in Revit files, without requiring a Revit licence. One tactic will be to nibble around the edges and replace inefficient Revit functions.  The road to well-functioning AutoCAD workalikes took more than two decades. But they showed a path to how to accomplish a workalike CAD system. As a result, the BIM workalike market may develop faster.   Thank You, Readers Thank you to readers who donate towards the operation of upFront.eZine: Zsolt Engli  Michael D Rubin: "Thanks for great work, Ralph." To support upFront.eZine through PayPal, then the suggested amounts are these: $25 for individuals > paypal.me/upfrontezine/25 $150 for small companies > paypal.me/upfrontezine/150 $750 for for large companies > paypal.me/upfrontezine/750 Should Paypal.me not operate in your country, then please use www.paypal.com and the account of [email protected]. Or mail a cheque (US$ or CDN$ only, please) to upFront.eZine Publishing, Ltd., 34486 Donlyn Avenue, Abbotsford BC, V2S 4W7, Canada. Notable Quotable "However convenient for models of the economy, the weather, and perhaps even the human body, determinism is inimical to a universe governed by information, which is defined as surprise."     -  George Gilder in 'Knowledge and Power'

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The Stockholm Conference: Q&A with Bricsys Executives

Issue #1,032

 

transcribed by Ralph Grabowski Stockholm skyline, as seen from the Brewery At last month's Stockholm conference of BricsCAD users, the CAD media had the opportunity to quiz Bricsys executives on the topics of the CAD replacement market and scan-to-BIM. The following text is transcribed from a recording and so consists of paraphrased conversations. Questions were asked by several journalists and answered by one or more executives. Bricsys user conference being held at the Brewery in Stockholm   The CAD Replacement Market Q: How do you go to market without having Autodesk stomping down on resellers who want to sell both [AutoCAD and BricsCAD]? A: We are developing a new dealer network, some with old dealers and some new ones. Q: I guess [Autodesk European super dealer] Mann & Machine are talking tomorrow, as they didn't talk today at this conference? A: They are only exhibiting. Q: Autodesk requires a complete separation of companies if a reseller wants to sell both. No sharing of marketing, customers; even the managing director [CEO] has to be different. A: We think we can offer resellers explosive growth, instead of good growth. Executives from Bricsys answering questions from the media Q: You have multiple markets: The replacement market (Revit, Bentley) is sticky, and takes a long time and a lot of effort. And then there is the adjacent market, where it works with Revit, it works with Bentley, it works in the DWG sphere. A: Only 17-18% of the market uses BIM (as of last year), and only a portion of that uses Revit. This means there is a lot of growth, and so there is not much of a replacement market. In some areas, it [Revit? BIM?] is just 6%. Q: We are 20 years into BIM. You still have the problem of convincing AutoCAD users to move to 3D. A: Look at the difference in the workflow. Look at the complexity of what is out there. This is why we are only at 18% [ with BIM].  The market will go with the one that solves the problem of complexity. There is a huge difference between solving the problems (such as with our Propagate technology) and what is out there. Q: [Design firm] HOK has tried the others, like ArchiCAD, and so is now looking at BricsCAD. The problem with ArchiCAD was you had to change your workflow from an Autodesk workflow to an ArchiCAD workflow. When I ask ArchiCAD how it's going, they say, "They want us to put Revit's problems into our workflow, because that's their workflow."  A: It’s not Revit all the way, or AutoCAD all the way. There is Revit with Rhino, and so on. We don't think it is a winner-take-all market. There is the tendering process, and then actually doing the [design] work. One large contractor is considering BricsCAD for tendering, for its speed.  A very large firm, like HOK, is not going to wake up tomorrow and throw out all of their software, all of the infrastructure they have built, and then implement BricsCAD BIM. We want to solve the problems workflow-by-workflow and deliver enough differentiation. We are not trying to play the replacement game; we are trying to play the differentiator game.   Bricsys CEO Erik de Keyser introducing BricsCAD V20 Q: You are playing a replacement game. You are replacing AutoCAD for starters, and then potentially replacing Revit.  A: We are talking about BIM [with regards to differentiation]. Of course, we will continue to try to replace AutoCAD. AutoCAD is, in our estimation, a billion-dollar market. It allows us to fund all this creativity that you see, to deliver a better BricsCAD. Q: AutoCAD is a billion-dollar market to Autodesk. If you combine [BricsCAD's] Bimify with SketchUp, it is a good way to begin. SketchUp, no matter how much you hate it, is one of the key conceptual tools on the market. The IT guys hate it, want to get rid of it, because it doesn't give you anything for the documentation phase.  You have created your own SketchUp clone [BricsCAD Shape]. How do you play with Trimble? Are you foes? Do they see you as Hexagon-vs-Trimble, as both have laser scanning and all that kind of construction stuff? [Trimble owns SketchUp; Hexagon owns Bricsys. SketchUp outputs dumb surfaces; Shape outputs BIM solids. - Ed.] A: We are mindful of SketchUp, but once you do a model you are done. The reason we wrote Shape and spread it to the market is to make it part of the BIM story. We give it away free. Trimble is a friend. SketchUp is a friend. I will say something slightly controversial: Autodesk is a friend. There is room for multiple winners. We think we have good technology, and we will work alongside multiple players.  Q: When you see what they did to that one particular reseller, where they nearly cut his n-ts off-- A: They might not consider us friends, but we consider them as a friend. Those are two very different views. We respect them as a company. We just think we make better software. Q: Can you tell us: how many downloads of Shape? A: One-fifth as many as BricsCAD. When V20 ships, it will include Shape. When the trial license of BricsCAD ends, Shape will continue working. [BricsCAD V20 began shipping last week. -Ed.] Q: How many seats of BricsCAD? A: We sold over 300,000 in the last five years. Over 100,000 active users, growing at high double digits; probably Q3 will be low triple digits [100% or more]. Q: Last year you were talking about selling the Intergraph product [CADWorx] on top of BricsCAD, and then sell to people like Bechtal, saying, 'Get rid of your AutoCAD, because you don't need it anymore.' How is that going? A: It is going a bit slower than everyone thought. In those large companies, doing a change is change. We have some large companies that have already done it, and if you look at the pipeline [future sales] then [unintelligible].  We saw some pushback at BricsCAD, because it didn't have a black background [theme]. If they are pushing back at that level, then what about ripping out AutoCAD and replacing with BricsCAD? That is a huge leap. We have been able to show them in 90 minutes or less that it is a very seamless transition. Parametric working model of am escalator running in BricsCAD Q: The only thing missing is structural. You are doing site, civil, architectural, manufacturing... A: We will not do structural on our own. The Collective [new name for the Bricsys developer network] is a key element here. Autodesk has over 3,000 third-party apps; we have 1,500 already on BricsCAD. The Collective is only for those whose software integrates deeply into BricsCAD. We expect 30, 40, 50 Collective solutions that integrate deeply, along with regional ones. BricsCAD will be like iOS: installing an app takes 1-2 minutes. Because BricsCAD is based on DWG, everyone can share drawings with any sub-vertical. The model is there; the analysis might be in a separate file. The other guys still have not cracked the manufacturing-building nut, without export and re-import. We have the ability to do all this inside BricsCAD. Scan to BIM At the conference, Bricsys announced a scan-to-BIM initiative with Leica laser scanning and HOK design firm. The plan is to 3D scan buildings, and then eventually create IFC-compatible 3D solid models. --- Q: Scan-to-BIM doesn't exist. It is a complete ass. It's scan to sh-tloads of work and then you get BIM at the end. Scan-to-skin [surfaces] is doable. A: You scan every room, then you scan the outside of the building: the void that is created is the model.  Q: It's negative CAD. A: That's right. We are going to derive geometry, using intelligence, then derive solids, and then use Bimify to get BIM. Scan-to-BIM is not one step, but several steps, and most of them are automated. [Bimify identifies solids in a 3D model and classifies their IFC status, such a slab, wall, opening, or door. - Ed.] Q: Bimify works only with solids? A: Yes. Q: So you can take geometry from anywhere, like a nasty mesh with holes and all, and then things are separated, then you make solids from it, and Bimify it?  A: Yes, that is the flow that we have in mind. It's not that you scan and automatically have a BIM model -- of course not! But the steps will be 95% automated. What we see in that area is too many man-hours. Q: Scan-to-skin is a reference point: do the inside and the outside. We have some voids where we have no idea what is in the inside.  A: We will have to get rid of some rubbish. If there are sculpted walls-- it depends what you want to do with them. If you want to [unintelligible], then you better be sure you have all the details. But if you want to re-purpose them for structural reasons, I want those walls clean to do my design work. A firm doing renovations and replacing portions of substructures is talking about material accuracy of 0.25% [using BricsCAD]. They've never been able to get anywhere near that, because now they are modeling in solids, so everything is accurate. We are talking about 6mm accuracy in the space. That's more than enough for AI to look at rooms and make intelligent decisions about how this room is laid out, and then flag areas where there are discrepancies. Conference attendees during coffee break Q: How many people do you have working on AI? A: Ten. That's the advantage of the [small] size of company we have: the communications lines are really short. An AI guy talks to a BIM guy, and they literally sit next to each other to have a philosophical conversation. http://www.bricsys.com   Letters to the Editor Re: Readers Respond -- Why Does CAD Hate CAM? I enjoyed reading the comments from Bob McGill. Bob and I go way back to our days at Point Control (SmartCAM) and CAMAX (Camand) where we had many conversations on this topic.  As Bob observed with the advent of additive manufacturing (AM) it seems we have lost interest in the whole topic of CAM from a traditional subtractive perspective.   A number of years ago, I wrote a series of articles for Desktop Engineering explaining CAM to a CAD audience so that CAD folks might understand the fundamental differences between the two.  With the introduction of AM, some may think that the Design to Manufacturing chasm has been resolved.  AM may have shifted the emphasis of some of manufacturing’s challenges, but it is not a panacea.  We still have issues of fit, finish, and fixturing with AM though it has nuanced how these come into play. When PMI [product manufacturing information] was added to Autodesk Inventor it was with the intention to ultimately facilitate automating machining for mechanical parts.  The vision of driving manufacturing from non-nominal data (i.e. GD&T [geometric data and tolerancing]) has still not been realized, even with Autodesk’s acquisition of CAM companies. Other MCAE [mechanical computer-aided engineering] companies have made progress in this area, but it is still ripe for significant advances, particularly in terms of AI or knowledge-based systems. And thankfully technology continues to advance. One area that offers considerable potential is graphics (GPU) hardware which is being harnessed to perform computationally intensive operations. Machine simulation has relied upon voxel/dexel technology to simulate material removal. With today’s hardware, not only can this simulation be directly supported, but it could become the basis for an entirely new generation of machining algorithms based on material removal volumes. Time will tell! BTW, CAD also works with tolerances, but these are notions of numeric precision -- concepts like coincident points and co-incident angles are fundamental in CAD algorithms. At one point, I had toyed with the idea of expanding these constructs to encode geometric (machining) tolerances (since the numeric tolerances could be way more precise than geometric tolerances), making geometric tolerances a fundamental aspect of the product representation and associated algorithms.  Maybe a future area of development.      - John Callen, director of eTools marketing        Lutron   Thank You, Readers Thank you to readers who donate towards the operation of upFront.eZine: Victor Ferreira  R L Capper  To support upFront.eZine through PayPal, then the suggested amounts are these: $25 for individuals > paypal.me/upfrontezine/25 $150 for small companies > paypal.me/upfrontezine/150 $750 for for large companies > paypal.me/upfrontezine/750 Should Paypal.me not operate in your country, then please use www.paypal.com and the account of [email protected]. Or mail a cheque (US$ or CDN$ only, please) to upFront.eZine Publishing, Ltd., 34486 Donlyn Avenue, Abbotsford BC, V2S 4W7, Canada. Notable Quotable "I don't think anyone in the mid-20th century would have predicted China and India would beat all Europe to the moon."     - Richard Fernandez (@wretchardthecat on Twitter)

Open Design Alliance Q&A with ODA CEO Peterson

Issue #1,026 

 

by Ralph Grabowski Following the Open Design Alliance's 2019 DevCon conference, the media peppered ODA CEO Neil Peterson with questions for 1.25 hours.   Duomo cathedral in the center of Milan (all photography by Ralph Grabowski) - - - Q: Is there a demand for XR/AR/VR in Visualize? A: We are not getting a lot of demand for virtual and augmented reality. Our Visualize API is usable for that, and we demo’ed it last year. Q: What about getting Visualize to do ray-tracing renderings? A: We are not doing that; there already is lots of software for that. Q: Both Unity and Unreal/ Epic Games have industry-specific divisions [aimed at CAD]. Do you have any gaming folks as members?  A: Epic Games is an ODA member. Q: What does Epic Games do with your stuff? A: I don’t really know. Perhaps they use it to pull DWG into their software. Q: CAD vendors are aligning with either Unity or Unreal to produce high-fidelity gaming walkthroughs and interactivity. Gaming companies are looking for a whole new turf, and took it to areas like WebXR with real-time rendering. It is magic to put on a VR headset, open a Web page, and then walk through a model.  - - - Q: Autodesk came up with proxy objects to represent custom entities in DWG files, but CAD packages don’t necessarily display them well. Does ODA have a solution to the proxy problem? A: We are intending to put together proxy objects that work nicely across all systems. It is a long-term issue for the industry with people going off in different directions. Bricsys has one approach where it stores all its objects as regular geometry, so that when you see the model in a different CAD system, you can see it, even if the BIM or constraint information is missing.  Q: Printing from Web apps is really weak. It involves exporting the drawing to PDF, and then doing your own thing. Is ODA doing anything about that? A: No.  Q: There are so many detailed features in outputting from AutoCAD, like lineweights and color tables, that are complicated for end users.  A: You can set that up in the CAD software the way you want. Q: Would you say DWG is not being changed that much [by Autodesk]? Do you feel you have to change it? A: We are adding on to it, not changing it. For example, our git-like version control uses a single repository to allow branching, merging, and versioning. But there seems to be inertia in adopting it as people are comfortable with making multiple copies of the same drawing. Bricsys is using our version control on their 24/7 online service to save space. Another addition in DWG is working with DWG data in a browser, along with other formats. Programmers can write scripts to do batch processing of DWG and other files on the server side. Q: Is there interest in your ReCap work? A: We are seeing interest from some areas, again from actual users of ReCap and not CAD vendors.  Q: What is VSF? A: Visualize Stream Format is our custom format for storing optimized graphics, created by our visualizer. It has LOD [levels of detail] built in: you can pull out just the part of the model from the VSF files that is visible on the screen [to speed up loading].  [LOD is a way of showing fewer details than are in the drawing file to speed up loading and display times.] Q: I only ever hear about LOD with architecture or plant design. I see it rarely used in manufacturing. A: AEC and GIS is where it is used the most, but it can be used across the board. Q: When importing a VSF file, the memory size is greatly reduced, but why does the loading time take longer? A: The VSF format allows partial loading, visualizing it, and then sending it to the screen -- so the entire model does not need to be in memory at the same time. That was the point of Robert Graebert’s demo, when he put the 40MB drawing on a tablet. It takes a longer time because of the extra processing time of loading and unloading from memory -- that’s the trade-off in viewing a huge Revit model.  ARES Touch from Graebert Gmbh loading a 40MB drawing   [When viewing a 3D model, most of it is hidden from your view, such as the insides and the back. In a 2D model, you don’t see any parts beyond the viewport or hidden by layers turned off. VSF loads only those parts visible to the user.]  In Web browsers, the problem is bigger than with tablets: the data sits on the server, and you don’t want to send the whole model, just the chunks that are necessary to see what is visible on the screen. With client-server computing, the amount of RAM is meaningless; it’s about the time it takes to send data over the Internet.  The conversion to VSF format happens behind the scenes; the user thinks he sees a Revit file. Q: What is the relationship between facet and solid modelers? A: Facet modelers deal with solids that are represented by meshes (polygons); solid modelers deal with solids shown as b-reps [boundary representation]. Facets are inherently not smooth; b-reps are. We can use either one to display the geometry visually, but you get better [smoother] results from a solid modeler.  Q: That LOD thing was really cool. What does Hugues Hoppe come from? A: The tech allows us to take a mesh and refine it down to a very simple form. When the object is not close to the viewpoint, you just need to see an outline. This cuts down the number of faces by a factor of ten, and so speeds up the rendering significantly. How the Hugues Hoppe algorithm reduces polygon complexity   What Ralph Grabowski Thinks Open Design Alliance ODA is not giving up on DWG the way a “large, well-known CAD vendor” is. It is expanding its role rapidly, and as it learns how to create a complete solution in one area, it finds it easier to do it in other areas. In just the last year, it added the Open Cloud and ReCap APIs, and so it will be interesting to see where it expands to next.  ODA now has 90 programmers working for its 1,000+ members. The conference had 150 attendees. http://www.opendesign.com [Disclosure: ODA provided me with airfare, accommodation, and some meals.] And In Other News Nanosoft releases nanoCAD Plus 11 with digital signatures, standards checking, OLE objects, DWF/DWFx output, and more. For the full list, see nanocad.com/products/plus/updates/. Download 30-day trial from nanocad.com/products/plus/download/. - - - Ansys paid 12.5x multiple for Livermore Software Technology Corporation and its LS-DYNA crash test software. Get the details from Monica Schnitger at https://schnitgercorp.com/2019/09/11/quickie-ansys-to-acquire-ls-dyna/ - - - Graphisoft's BIMx Web Viewer is now available from https://bimx.com. The built-in Hyper-model viewer has been updated and is now available on the BIMx Model Transfer site https://bimx.graphisoft.com - - - Exit returns from USA investments by venture capitalists: 51% lost money Average return is 2-2.5% after ten years 4% produced a 10x or greater return  medium.com/correlation-ventures/venture-capital-no-were-not-normal-32a26edea7c7 - - - Here is a good read on why it's better to have less to work with than more. "For me to develop resourcefulness, I needed to spend a significant time in an environment of scarcity, not abundance." Resourcefulness: a trait developed only when resources are on empty. techcrunch.com/2019/09/12/how-to-stop-vanity-marketing-from-killing-your-startup/ - - - How to tell if you have any of the 235 apps Apple already knows won't work with 64-bit Catalina: 1. In current MacOS, click Apple icon. 2. Select About This Mac |  System Report | Applications 3. In column 64-Bit (Intel) look for ones marked No. Those won't work.   - - - 10-year-old enterprise AR maker Daqri "told its customers that it was pursuing an asset sale and was shutting down its cloud and smart-glasses hardware platforms by the end of September." Daqri had raised $275 million in funding.   Letters to the Editor Re: This is how much more you'll pay for Autodesk software Autodesk just shut off my permanent license, and I'm in the middle of a deadline. Yes, my copy is ancient -- 3ds max 2010 -- but it always worked fine for the type of animation content I create. I already paid for my license. Why can't I just use this old software, warts and all, as is?  I don't want to convert my license to a lease. My business cannot support that kind of expense. But if -- IF -- I went ahead with the month-to-month software lease, could I then use it for a 3D job, and then cancel my monthly lease, just pay for that month. Then resume the lease again when another 3D job comes in?  If that strategy works, then I may be able to do the lease after all. But I refuse to pay for all the months when I don't use the software. I already did that when I bought the original software.      - Peder Rudling  The editor replies: Yes, that does work: Autodesk allows you to rent by the month. Just remember to go into your account and turn off auto- renew. - - - Switching to other CAD systems is easier to do with AutoCAD or manufacturing workflows.  In AEC where Revit is king, I don’t see things changing for a while. I think players like Unity offer a lot of possibilities at displacing Autodesk provided they don’t sell out. I’m also hearing rumors that Autodesk is close to starting to increase the cost to users of their Forge partners even more.      - Darren Young     Hermanson Company - - - When you mentioned Eudora, it brought back some memories. I used to LOVE Eudora on my Mac. It was by far the best email client available at the time. Reading some of the history of Eudora today was really interesting and I thought I’d share this link: computerhistory.org/atchm/the-eudora-email-client-source-code/     - Sam Scholes     Solidworks Solutions The editor replies: The Eudora code's been placed in the public domain, and so I am hopeful some of its advances will be employed by eM Client and others.   Re: CAD Can't Use Cores Here is another tech discussion about single-threaded CAD / design software: boxx.com/Files/Images/2017/How_To_Configure_Revit_Workstation.pdf However, with Revit I notice that I spend a LOT of time awaiting screen refreshes (NOT content creation), which should be the purview of the video system, so why the delay? I also find opening and saving Revit files to be the most time-consuming.     - Peter Lawton     Affiliated Engineers   The editor replies: I believe the slow speed is due to the computer reading the RVT files, and then the time it takes to convert the data to raster format for the screen. I am unfamiliar with Revit, bur I wonder if it is single-threaded. Mr Lawton responds: Yes, Revit is largely single-threaded, except for rendering and wall-joins and some other stuff. It is the software of choice for most architects these days, who are working on buildings larger than 10,000 sf.   I am just thinking about the days before and after Autodesk created their screen/video refresh revolution back in the early days; the name of that escapes me, but it made a huge difference in performance. The editor replies: I recall an Autodesk marketing person back then in 1986 describing it as, "It's so fast, it'll slice your nose off if you are too close to the screen." - - - "Reverse virtualization" [as proposed by Peter Lawton] is a fantastic idea! I wonder why the industry hasn’t made a move to implement it over the years? Thanx for these 2 links!  blog.bricsys.com/cpus-for-cad cpubenchmark.net/singleThread.html     - Chris Cadman   Re: SHX vs TTF Do you have any idea the percentage of Asian (Japanese, Chinese, Korean) files that use TrueType vs SHX fonts these days? I had assumed that it has largely switched from SHX to TTF, but most of the sample files we are getting are still SHX-based (or nominally SHX-based but override the font in the text string with TTF). I don’t know if it is just our customers or if that is still the case?     - S.T. The editor replies: I suspect people still use SHX because (a) it is traditional; (b) simplex.shx is still the default on some CAD systems; and (c) users don't know the difference between TTF and SHX. SHX is also useful for placing text around a curve, where the text string has to be broken into characters.  - - - I checked in with out Japanese team and it seems SHX is still more used than TTF in that market but unfortunately we have no hard data on this.     - Robert Graebert, CTO     Graebert Gmbh, Germany   Re: Open Design Alliance DevCon 2019 Good work Ralph, can't believe you got it done so quickly.     - K. M. The editor replies: I was fortunate to get it all written on the plane ride home.   Thank You, Readers Thank you to readers who donate towards the operation of upFront.eZine: Richard Webb Chris Needham: "I have been reading the newsletter since March 1999. Have a copy of every one since #145!" To support upFront.eZine through PayPal, then the suggested amounts are these: $25 for individuals > paypal.me/upfrontezine/25 $150 for small companies > paypal.me/upfrontezine/150 $750 for for large companies > paypal.me/upfrontezine/750 Should Paypal.me not operate in your country, then please use www.paypal.com and the account of [email protected]. Or mail a cheque (US$ or CDN$ only, please) to upFront.eZine Publishing, Ltd., 34486 Donlyn Avenue, Abbotsford BC, V2S 4W7, Canada. Notable Quotable "The more they spoke of their virtue, the tighter we clung to our plastic straws."     - Richard Fernandez (@wretchardthecat) on Twitter

*5184

The Milan Conference: Open Design Alliance DevCon 2019

Issue #1,025 

 

by Ralph Grabowski There are a few conferences that deal with the future of CAD, and there is just one that describes the immediate future. The Open Design Alliance’s annual event tells us -- and its thousand member companies -- what is likely to be coming to dozens of CAD packages over the next year. These companies use APIs and SDKs from ODA in their software. For instance, if you find your CAD software suddenly supporting Revit or IFC files, thank the ODA. The theme for this year’s Milan conference was BIM and the cloud, but I rather fancy the theme instead was “technology suites.” Twenty-year-old ODA is known for being the guys who license a reverse-engineered version of Autodesk’s DWG format, for which there is tremendous, tremendous demand. Under former-CTO and now CEO Neil Peterson, it has, however, for the last half-decade been broadening its range to offer entire technology stacks in a half-dozen formats. “DWG is a well-architected technology that will carry itself into the future,” said Mr Peterson. So ODA is extending it with things like Web API BIM (as already proven by Bricsys) Version control The problems ODA is working to solve are multiple formats, various types of data, large data sets, and complex data. Customers want software that is high-performance, format-agnostic, cross-platform, and Web-enabled. The ODA’s framework meets these with interoperability SDKs[software development kits], technology stacks, and unified workflows. “We have manufacturing companies who pay us every year, who have been members for 20 years, and we don’t know what they are doing with it,” said Mr Peterson. [In this article, I intersperse conference reporting with some the questions the media asked of  Mr Peterson. Next week, we have the rest of the Q&A.]   Open Cloud The newest offering from ODA is Open Cloud. The need, said Mr Peterson, is the incompatibility of cloud-based CAD at several levels: cloud providers themselves are incompatible with one another, and CAD vendors use the cloud to lock in customers. The ODA’s own offerings until now worked only on Amazon AWS, but can now also run on Microsoft Azure. (Microsoft made a presentation on Azure at the conference.)  Vendors create complex proprietary systems, and so ODA is proposing Open Cloud API.  Q: Why would CAD vendors want an open cloud API? They want to lock customers in. A: The interest comes from users [not CAD vendors], like architectural firms, who don’t want to be locked into vendor cloud services, and so set up their own cloud server. Or else they want to move software from a CAD vendor to ODA-based software, such as a Web-based Revit viewer with markup and properties. These are firms that have the know-how to implement their own Web-based software (using REST to make it easier). ODA provides the tech support. - - -   The technology is not yet finished, but ODA hopes to have some customer stories for next year.   buildingSMART and IFC Out of what began as one of Autodesk’s patches to solve the compatibility problems created by the addition of custom objects to Release 13 DWG, IFC [industry foundation classes] has become the formal translation format for the architectural industry, much like IGES and STEP did for mechanical design. ODA Development Director Sergey Vishnevetsky reported that more than 60% of members surveyed are interested in an IFC solution from the ODA, a number that shocked me by its large size -- even though there are already three kinds of solutions on the market: open IFC (poorly supported), commercial IFC (expensive), private IFC (unavailable externally).  CAD vendors, who support IFC, support only a subset of IFC functions. At this point, ODA is no different, but they plan to support all of them with time. ODA offers its IFC SDK free to ODA members, because CAD vendors won’t pay for it as they already have their own. ODA is supporting geometry for all schema. It is current with v4.2 and is designed to be compatible with the future IFC 5, whatever it might be. Jeffrey Ouellette of buildingSmart International told us that his organization is using ODA to test its IFC in real software before it is welded shut as an ISO standard. Sometimes, it takes years for vendors to implement a standard, and then they find that the standard does not work well, but it can no longer be revised. So the ODA is letting its members to try it in production before it beomes ISO-certified. They are allowing one to two years to test it.  Q: How is this arrangement with buildingSmart any better than what has gone on before? A: We provide the toolkit with which to implement IFC, along with the tested version. Q: I can see vendors being hesitant to implement a new IFC version, because of the headaches it might incur. Q: I’ve always thought IFC to be like the BASIC programming language: it worked but was not very elegant and could be come very big. Is there a sense that we should have done something about IFC ten years ago? A: We don’t look at it like that. Since they have a spec, for us it is really nice to work with a specification. Even though the spec is large, it is not difficult to implement, because we know what it is, unlike a blackbox format. What was missing in IFC is a standard toolkit with higher-level access that everyone can use; now, everyone creates their own flavors of IFC. The higher-level API means you no longer need to worry about the lower-level details. - - - ODA is working on conversion between IFC to other formats. IFC to DWG is available now, with DWG -> IFC under development. For the future, ODA will offer... ifcXML more documentation mvdXML [model view definition] model validation High-level API (next year) to make it easier to make valid IFC files Runtime EXP [express schema] to support IFC file parsing No one is actually sure where IFC is headed, realistically, because the future is unknowable. It does not help that the building industry tends to be 10, 15, 20 years behind the rest of the CAD industry.    BIM Suite BIM Suite is an example of ODA providing a full technology stack, everything a programmer needs to implement functions that read, edit, and write BIM data -- or Revit, more specifically. The suite supports these data formats: Revit Navisworks DWG DGN ReCap (new this year, RCS format) IFC Custom data There is clash detection, sectioning, BIM model verification, and unified markup editing for the different kinds of data. It is compatible with ODA’s Open Cloud. During the conference, Graebert showed how their ARES software could load more than one IFC file at a time, for release in next version of the software. Q: Tell me more about BIM Suite. A: We are trying to get away from it being just a bag of SDKs. The other part is the tech built on top, like common data access through a common API. You can write a single viewer that can visualize all those formats in one application. Ours are being designed to work together, and are not just thrown into a bag -- visualization, markup, and so on. - - -   Mr Peterson said that the requirements of BIM have stretched ODA’s development priorities, but by stretching it is now better equipped to handle others aspects of CAD. There is more demand on the architectural side, with the big demand for IFC and Revit. On the mechanical side, there already are interoperability solutions out there, even if they are expensive; for Revit there was nothing. Mechanical has so many more formats, whereas on AEC there are a small number of key formats. STEP is in high demand on the mechanical side and has a structure similar to IFC.  Q: Why are you supporting STEP?  A: Lots of people have converters, but they are too expensive.  - - - New from the ODA this year is interoperability with Autodesk 3D point cloud reCap files through the new Point Cloud SDK. It reads and writes RCP files, visualizes point clouds, and incorporates performance enhancements, such as levels of detail. Point clouds can be embedded in DWG or else stored as separate files.  www.opendesign.com [Disclosure: ODA provided airfare, accommodation, and some meals.]   Sponsor: Okino Graphics == 3D Data Translation Software Tailored to Solve Your Problems ==   Education and awareness make for flawless, error-free, and numerically-correct MCAD conversions! Okino's PolyTrans|CAD software solves complex, demanding 3D conversion problems by transforming CAD and DCC datasets into highly optimized and efficient files for all common downstream 3D programs and authoring packages. Our staff ensures that each Okino solution fits your conversion problems 'like a glove', including useful discussions on how to source the best 3D datasets.  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]  http://www.okino.com And In Other News Siemens PLM Software, which used to be called Siemens PLM Systems, and before that UGS and Unigraphics, now calls itself Siemens Digital Industries Software, and says it has revenues of just over $4 billion a year. That puts its revenue on par with Desault Systemes and Hexagon. The new URL is www.sw.siemens.com - - - Bentley Systems is 35 years old. - - - Cadline announced the LT (light) version of Archline XT software for BIM modelling at $600 instead of $2,650 for the full version. The price is reduced until end of September; it comes with a permanent license. The difference between the two versions are shown here -> archlinexp.com/products/archline-xp-lt-features. - - - Bricsys will be announcing the Bricsys BIM Alliance at its annual user conference in Stockholm next month. The alliance is made of Bricsys, the measurement and survey division of Hexagon Leica Geosystems, and design firm HOK. bricsys.com/en-intl/conference   Letters to the Editor This quote is from Ivan Sutherland, the father of computer graphics. He said it 44 years ago: "As soon as the process of Computer-Aided Design is considered as building a computerized description of the object being designed, rather than as the process of drawing the object being designed, horizons become tremendously expanded.  "In the architectural world, for example, one should think of Computer-Aided Design as producing not only graphical outputs but also material lists; labor estimates; floor area computations; heating, lighting, and ventilation simulations (to demonstrate the adequacy of the design); as well as many other auxiliary outputs.  "Only when the computerized version of the design is the master document from which all auxiliary information is derived, preferably with computer assistance, will a complete Computer-Aided Design system have been created." We've still got a ways to go.      - Evan Yares Citation: Sutherland, Ivan. "Structure in drawings and the hidden-surface problem." Reflections on computer aids to design and architecture (1975): 73-77. - - - Hanging on to perpetual licenses may be more problematic, unless you don’t mind software going stale. Some of my industry connections tell me Autodesk is considering eliminating the ability to upgrade perpetual licenses. Even if they don’t, there’s nothing stopping them from raising the maintenance subscription price equal or higher than annual subscription prices.  Even for those letting subscriptions expire and attempting to maintain their perpetual license may prove difficult. Starting in March 2021 they’ll no longer activate software that doesn’t meet their lifecycle policy. See knowledge.autodesk.com/support/autocad/learn-explore/caas/simplecontent/content/previous-version-support-change.html. In the end, there’s really two choices. Pay up, or find another vendor. I am curious as to why Autodesk would run promotional discounts on subscriptions. If there’s a need, you’d buy it anyway. But unlike the perpetual days (where there was an incentive to purchase in advance of an anticipated need to secure a discount), in a subscription model there’s zero benefit to buying before you need. The subscriptions will prorate to your contract date. A 25% discount is now only financially beneficial if you use it within the next 3 months. If you don’t need it for 4 months, simply wait and your prorated cost will be lower than the discounted price.     - Darren Young, director of operating technology     Hermanson Company   Re: CAD Can't Use Cores Regarding Mr. Cadman's comment ("Too bad CAD doesn't calculate..."), I know you addressed it in this issue, but it might be worth informing readers of this blog post, which also speaks about this topic: blog.bricsys.com/cpus-for-cad      - R.K. McSwain The editor replies: The link (starting halfway down) gives a better technical explanation than what I have been saying. As one tech person put it, when you start the Line command, the CPU has no clue what you will do next. Mr McSwain responds: Right, and the ‘STR rating’ to which he refers may be Passmark, which seems legit: cpubenchmark.net/singleThread.html   - - - Servers use virtualization technology to spawn multiple virtual CPUs (typically 2 to 6, max of 32) running on each physical core, which would mean that the new 56-core CPU could spawn over 300 vCPUs. I asked a question over at VM Ware some years ago: Does anyone make ‘reverse virtualization’ software? That is, the typical CPU has four or more physical cores, could they all be used to create a single virtual super CPU, to work on all the software that is still single-threaded? Instead of an actual, physical E3 Xeon quad-core using a virtual abstraction layer to create many more virtual CPUs, is there a product that goes in the opposite direction? That is, I want my physical quad-core Xeon to virtualize a SINGLE-core super CPU, so that all 2.2 billion transistors can run a single-threaded program. Currently, any single-threaded program can only use one core, or 1/4 of the transistors on a quad-core CPU. I want to find an abstraction layer that will focus all transistors, from all cores, onto a single program. This would actually be a ‘unifying’ virtualization, combining multiple physical cores to virtualize a single-core CPU: If such an abstraction layer were developed, it could also possibly virtualize a CPU that does not yet exist physically.  Intel could virtualize a future CPU that relies on manufacturing processes that haven’t yet been developed.  It could virtualize a CPU that is too expensive to build, with, for example, 2 GB of L1 cache.  Could a light-based photonic CPU be virtualized? It seems like something that Intel would have to initiate and allow, like hyperthreading, but I am not sure about that. I just wonder if someone has developed such a program. There are many single-threaded apps still in use, and it is frustrating to see all this Xeon horsepower unused. A ‘reverse virtualization’ abstraction layer could be invoked just for a selected single-threaded program. Once the program iss closed, the cores on the CPU would be again available individually. A relatively low-end Xeon could become much more powerful, depending on the CPU that is virtually created. Such ‘reverse virtualization’, or ‘unifying virtualization’, would be a win for Intel, it would be a win for users, and it would reduce the pressure on software vendors to re-write their programs for multi-threading.     - Peter Lawton   Re: Apex Unifies the Future of MSC Software You wrote "Today, MacNeal-Schwendler is called MSC Software and is owned by Hexagon." Do you think we can expect some kind of FEA [finite element analysis] in BricsCAD? The free version of Fusion 360 gives you stress analysis and natural frequencies. BricsCAD really needs something similar.     - Ragnar Thor Mikkelsen     Design Data, Norway The editor replies: I agree with you. Perhaps we will hear something at the Bricsys conference in October. - - -   Not sure about the NASTRAN reference. This from Wikipedia:  "A contract was awarded to Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC) to develop the software. The first name used for the program during its development in the 1960s was GPSA, an acronym for General Purpose Structural Analysis. The eventual formal name approved by NASA for the program, NASTRAN, is an acronym formed from NASA STRucture ANalysis. The NASTRAN system was released to NASA in 1968. In the late 1960s, the MacNeal-Schwendler Corporation (MSC) started to market and support its own version of NASTRAN, called MSC/NASTRAN (which eventually became MSC.Nastran). The original software architecture was developed by Joe Mule (NASA) and Gerald Sandler (NASA), and Stephen Burns (University of Rochester)."     - Stan Przybylinski     CIMdata The editor replies: My article was based on an presentation given by MSC; however, here is more info from a bio in Engineering.com: "During their time at NASA working on NASTRAN (NASA Structural Analysis), MacNeal and Schwendler began to develop MSC Nastran, a commercially available version of NASTRAN that became MSC Corporation’s flagship product."  See www.engineering.com/DesignSoftware/DesignSoftwareArticles/ArticleID/16413/Simulation-Pioneer-Richard-MacNeal-Passes-Leaving-Behind-Huge-CAE-Legacy.aspx - - - I see you quoted me ‘at length’ 2X! Does that make me famous? You’re always a pleasure to read!     - Chris Cadman   Thank You, Readers Thank you to readers who donate towards the operation of upFront.eZine: Frank Neumann  Stanley Przybylinski To support upFront.eZine through PayPal, the suggested amounts are these: $25 for individuals > paypal.me/upfrontezine/25 $150 for small companies > paypal.me/upfrontezine/150 $750 for for large companies > paypal.me/upfrontezine/750 Should Paypal.me not operate in your country, then please use www.paypal.com and the account of [email protected]. Or mail a cheque (US$ or CDN$ only, please) to upFront.eZine Publishing, Ltd., 34486 Donlyn Avenue, Abbotsford BC, V2S 4W7, Canada. Notable Quotable "Everyone who is a writer should get into running, because it's important to have at least one hobby you hate even more than writing."     - Delia Cai (@delia_cai on Twitter)

*5187

SuperD Modeling from Boulder Graphics

Issue #1,023 

 

by Ralph Grabowski with Alyn Rockwood   Alyn Rockwood is the founder of Boulder Graphics and is its chief scientist. He told me about the unique modeling system that he calls SuperD -- a take-off from sub-d (short for sub-division modeling). He sees it as a replacement for the now defunct T-Splines technology owned by Autodesk. - - - Ralph Grabowski: What is your background, and what led you to start Boulder Graphics? Alyn Rockwood: I received my PhD degree in applied mathematics from Cambridge in 1986, and then worked on Romulus at Shape Data, which became Parasolids [since acquired by Siemens PLM]. At SGI, I was part of the OpenGL team, where I wrote the code for doing real-time rendering of trimmed surfaces. I was at MERL [Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories ], I taught as a professor at ASU School of Mines in Colorado and KAUST [King Abdullah University of Science and Technology] in Saudi Arabia, and I've been a variety of chairs with SIGGRAPH. I retired from academics in 2013 with several good ideas with which I wanted to continue, and so co-founded Boulder Graphics with business partner and technologist Kun Gao.  Grabowski: What did Boulder Graphics do before you came out with SuperD? Rockwood: We produced a multi-sided patch modeler for Boeing's internal GeoDuck research modeler that was used in the development of the 767 and other aircraft. [GeoDuck is short for "general environment for optimization and development using a common kernel," and is also a seashell creature common on the Pacific coast near Boeing headquarters.] It can call up other modelers, like ANSYS and Boeing's own parametric modelers, in a Python structure for the surfaces that they need to end up with.  I also worked on beautifying QR code technology, and faired surfaces for Geomagic (now part of 3D Systems).  Grabowski: What is SuperD? Rockwood: SuperD creates 3D surfaces that don't suffer the shortcoming of sub-d surfaces [sub divisions, commonly found in 3D CAD programs today]. The name SuperD is a wordplay on that. We use a proprietary surface type that converts to b-splines/NURBSs.  [B-splines is short for "basis splines," which are the most general type of spline. Most CAD systems use Bezier splines, which are b-splines with a weight of 1.]  Grabowski: But sub-d surfacing is so very popular these days. Rockwood: It's because the interface is so easy to use. But the results are not necessarily pretty. Grabowski: How does your modeler work with sharp edges? Rockwood: Very well: we can go from round to sharp surfaces, and even go along a single edge from rounded to sharp. In sub-d, you would have to deal with patches to solve that problem. They have problems handling something as simple as the end of a cylinder; SuperD handles this case effortlessly. (See figure 1.) Figure 1: Cup made from SuperD surfaces My challenge to sub-d is for sub-d modelers to make spheres that look as good as ones we produce. (See figure 2.) They can't do it. (See figure 3.)   Figure 2: Spheres created by SuperD From left to right: contour slicing, isophote, sun shading, and 3-sided patches (red boundaries) that constitute the sphere. Figure 3: Imperfect spheres made by sub-d modeling Grabowski: I notice that your Web site makes a reference to T-Splines, which was revolutionary in its time, yet does not seem to have much impact on the market today. Rockwood: There were a lot of faithful T-Splines users in Rhino and Solidworks as a plug-in. When Autodesk bought T-Splines, they removed it from the plug-in marketplaces, hoping to make it the basis for their new automotive styling product. That did not pan out, a shame in my opinion.[Autodesk shut down T-splines in January, 2017.] Grabowski: Does SuperD have functions similar to T-Splines, such as non-quadrilateral patches? Rockwood: Yes, it has genuine multi-sided patches. T-Splines used recursion and t-junctions to handle non-quad geometry, which created a plethora of patches and extraordinary points called "star points" that looked like dimples, which needed to be hidden manually by the user. SuperD does not have those issues, as we create one n-sided infinitely-smooth patch.  T-splines are easier to convert to NURBS. I'll give them that, but otherwise SuperD patches are superior. Our surfaces are infinitely smooth, with no dimples.  Grabowski: Why does SuperD work only as a Rhino plug-in? Rockwood: Good question! So much to do, so little time to do it, and SuperD has only been out a couple of months. Grabowski: Is there a link to CAD software, such as AutoCAD or Solidworks?  Rockwood: SuperD converts to exportable b-splines with exact boundaries, so no trimming is needed. It will export to any modeler that handles b-splines like the two you named. It can output to IGES files, so that any other modeler can import the b-splines, as well as to polygon files, such as for Maya.  With Rhino, you can plug it into Grasshopper and others, and actually edit the surfaces in Rhino. That result then would be output to Solidworks -- a common workflow. Grabowski: What happens when your surfaces come into a CAD program; does it convert to a solid?  Rockwood: Whether that converts to a solid depends on the modeler creating a closed, manifold surface. Grabowski: We've talked about aircraft models. Are there other kinds of 3D models that are the best use for SuperD? Rockwood: Creative organic shapes, ones with lots of curves surfaces, like automobile models, perfume bottles, and aesthetic shapes -- even vacuum cleaners!  Grabowski: How does licensing work? Rockwood: You need to have Rhino, and buy it outright for $550. I don't go for those subscription licenses. You can use it 30 days free. The iOS version is $16. Grabowski: How does the iOS version of SuperD differ from the Windows version? Rockwood: The geometric core is the same as in Windows. I see it as a geometry shaper that uses the touch interface, so it is good for those who model on the go. It works best on an iPad with a stylus. It lacks b-spline conversion, but your models can be exported to Rhino. https://www.superdmodeling.com/   And In Other News It looks like Orange Juice Studios is dead. Their CADO software for iPads was one of the most advanced for its time, but orangejuicestudios.com domain is gone, its Twitter account is untouched in three years,  and their Kickstarter campaign failed spectacularly.  - - - Autodesk: "Work in AutoCAD anytime, anywhere." Also Autodesk: "The browser you are using is not fully supported. The AutoCAD web app is currently only supported by 64-bit Google Chrome or 64-bit Mozilla Firefox on Windows or Mac. AutoCAD isn't currently supported if you are using Firefox with private browsing, or Chrome Version 73 with an incognito window." - - - Reading over comments following Samsung's big smartphone and smartwatch reveals, and there it was: Google and Android did not get a single mention in the hour-long show. Microsoft, however, was the special guest star. The new Note 10+ includes a 3D scanner, whose objects subsequently mimic the movements of people. - - - Intel will pack 56 cores onto its next-gen Cooper Lake Xeon CPUs, of which CAD software will still use 1 core, for the most part -- other than for tasks like loading files, doing renderings, and performing FEA. - - - Fascinating description of low-fi tactics deployed by pro-freedom Hong Kong protesters against the might of the pro-Communist government: https://www.newstatesman.com/world/2019/08/be-water-seven-tactics-are-winning-hong-kongs-democracy-revolution / Letters to the Editor I like to thank you very much for your information on all the different developments in the CAD market. It is a very professional view and very neutral, which is important to all of us who are active in the market to sell their products. Your point of view and analyses helps to understand the developments. Thank you very much for your engagement.      - Uwe Redmer        MERViSOFT GmbH, Germany - - - In the section of upfront.eZine #1022 concerning “a reason to not hold subscriptions,” you wrote that you have a permanent license of one of the afflicted AutoCADs.   Autodesk has redefined the meaning of a perpetual (permanent) license to something quite different from the dictionary definition of perpetual.  Holders of perpetual licenses, including NFR [not for resale] and PED, will only be able to use the software on the computer it is currently installed on. Depending on the phase-in date of this change, you may not reinstall the software on said computer.   This is because Autodesk will stop providing activation codes. Product activations for version 2010 and older will be affected starting August 31, 2019, while product activation for versions 2011 and later is available until March 2021, when product activation aligns with the Lifecycle policy (3 releases back). See knowledge.autodesk.com/support/autocad/learn-explore/caas/simplecontent/content/previous-version-support-change.html If I read this correctly, the last time the 2019 release can receive an activation code is March, 2023. Version 2019 would still work but you will not be able to reinstall on the same computer or move it to a newer computer after that date. We always knew they would find a way to force us all on subscription or move to a competitor; lucky for me I will be out of the business in a year so I won’t have to worry about it and learn new software.     - K. E.  The editor replies: Technology is taking a discouraging turn, and I too am glad that I can coast to the end using software from the 2000-era running on Windows 7, with which I make my livelihood. - - - Here are two glimpses into a bygone era: The Original Hacker's Dictionary, c.1988: www.dourish.com/goodies/jargon.html Hacker's Dictionary, c.2001: hackersdictionary.com/html/index.html     - Don Beaton   Re: On Who Would Buy OnShape It's really pretty simple: CAD on the cloud is for marketing types, not engineers/designers doing the real work. Ask the credit card company Capitol One how their 110 million customers data was stolen. See "Who's in your Cloud?"  Anyone doing non-important stuff can afford to loose meaningless CAD data and IP to hackers. Anyone who is serious about their work keeps it out of harms way.      - Bob Mileti (via WorldCAD Access)   Re: About NBS In your last newsletter you mentioned the NBS software. Like many architects in the UK, I have used some of their products and they do a great job of helping to make the specification process simpler. However, they currently appear to be in a transition phase between NBS Building and NBS Create. I can see what they are aiming for, but to move from one to another involves a massive leap in background knowledge. NBS Building uses the Common Arrangement of Work Sections (CAWS) as it's underlying ordering method, and over time people have become familiar with this system where categories of building elements (e.g. Masonry or Landscaping) are represented by letters and then split into sub-sections. NBS Create switches to using the Uniclass 2015 system, which bears little relation to the CAWS (or for that matter the previous of Uniclass). For anyone involved in the Construction process, it involves a lot of new learning. For anyone writing specifications it means not just learning new software, but understanding an entirely new structure to the output from the software. The end result is arguably a big improvement, but it will take a long time and a lot of hard work before everyone involved in the process understands it.     - Matthew Taylor     UK The editor replies: Thank you for your insights. They are valuable. Mr Taylor responds: I think it's something that is becoming more of an issue as time goes by and more and more manufacturer specific components are used rather than generic ones. NBS has pretty much cornered the market (in the UK at least) with the NBS plus website where manufacturers can add their data. It does however mean that manufacturers who do not see the value in doing this may well end up overlooked - particularly for the parts of a building that are less defining of its characteristics (e.g. you start out knowing which products you want for the cladding and glazing), but not things like vapour control membranes or fire protection around riser penetrations etc, so tend to pick the first products that shows up on the list from a company who's name you have heard of. This is partly also a problem of the NBS building product that tends to lead towards detailed specification. The supposed advantage of NBS Create is that you can add the level of detail you need at that project stage - so items can start off as wall, then end up as a performance specification and then as an actual product at different gateway points in the procurement process. This tends to not benefit the designers though so much as the project managers who want to re-tender the project at the end of each work stage. - - - Two things:  NBS sold-out to a bank for crying out loud! Too big of a discussion to get into here. Totally integrated “5D BIM” is ‘pie in the sky by and by.’     - Chris Cadman The editor replies: There is a huge gap in the design-construct-build process that leads to problems in the finished building, and so software firms are trying to fix that. The problem is that construction is so fragmented that I don't think 3D, 4D, or even more Ds can ever fix it. - - -  The biggest issue I encounter with specifications would be item 3 (inaccurate technical data), if this includes references to documents that are out of date or withdrawn. I don't often use 3 Part Specs, and rely on Project Notes. Often the first several sheets in a set of documents consist of Project Notes. They're very comprehensive and complete, having been compiled from nearly 50 years of oversights. Current *.txt file size is over 400 KB. They are edited for each project. As written, they don't stipulate a specific standard or code, but refer to the current edition and documents referenced therein, or if a specific edition is referenced in the code. I just have to check for withdrawn issues. With specifications taking precedence over drawings, it's difficult to contradict. It could, however, be an error. The two items should be coordinated.     - Dik Coates, P.Eng. (Man) The editor replies: When I worked as an engineer, it was in the traffic and transportation side of things, and tech specs were surprisingly irrelevant. - - - It was nice to see the reference to Construction Canada by Leo Schlosberg. Construction Canada is one of the few trade publications that I generally read from cover to cover. It is not often that there's an article, I'm not interested in. Highly recommended, and Canadian.     - Dik Coates Thank You, Readers Thank you to readers who donate towards the operation of upFront.eZine: iCADsales.com Dave Edwards Consulting: Very welcome. Us old CAD Jocks need to stick together. Should you wish to support upFront.eZine through PayPal, then the suggested amounts are like these: $25 for individuals > paypal.me/upfrontezine/25 $150 for small companies > paypal.me/upfrontezine/150 $750 for for large companies > paypal.me/upfrontezine/750 Should Paypal.me not operate in your country, then please use www.paypal.com and the account of [email protected]. Or mail a cheque (US$ or CDN$ only, please) to upFront.eZine Publishing, Ltd., 34486 Donlyn Avenue, Abbotsford BC, V2S 4W7, Canada.   Notable Quotable "So the question 'How shall I behave?' is only to be answered by asking the more basic question, 'What kind of community do I want to live in?'"      - Leslie Newbegin

*5264

About NBS - National Building Service

Issue #1,022 

 

by Ralph Grabowski

National Building Service was established by RIBA (Ryal Institute of British Architects), and last year it was partially sold to Lloyds Bank. It has 220 employees in England, Canada, and Australia, with 260,000 users. Its symbol libraries represent products from 1,100 manufacturers. CEO of NBS Richard Waterhouse told me how his organization works. NBS is trying to increase productivity in construction, as are other organizations and software companies. According to one study, construction is only 5% digitized and suffers from a -1.5% productivity growth. NBS targets the specifications side of the problem. When it conducted a survey about problems with specifications, the top three problems in 2018 were... Materials substituted for those specified Drawings and specifications contradicting each other Inaccurate technical data These and other problems create one or more disputes in about 1/3 of construction projects. The British government has been working on reducing its spending on construction, finding that it was able to cut costs 13% in 2011 and 24% in 2015. This is, of course, at odds with construction companies; they prefer that costs go up.  The solution from NBS is automating the specifying of specifications. The ultimate aim is to implement 5D processes (3D design, cost, and scheduling) that result in 3D output. Data that can be included in the 5D process include Geometry Geographic data Specifications Thermal and acoustic properties Aesthetics NBS' solution is to connect construction information to all processes, starting with the drawings through to the building site. It has a library of building parts from 1,100 participating manufacturers, whose data are input directly into ArchiCAD, ASite, BIM 360, Newforma, Revit Vectorworks, and Viewpoint. CDE (common data environment) is available for BIM360, Newforma, and Viewporint, so far.   NBS offers these services:  NBS BIM Toolkit - free-to-use BIM project management tool NBS Building - building libraries for Standard, Intermediate, or Minor projects NBS Chorus - online specification platform for construction; includes Create and Building NBS Create - create specifications with architecture, structural, building services and landscape content NBS Domestic Specification - online specifications for small domestic building projects NBS Landscape - specifications for landscape projects NBS National BIM Library - library of BIM objects certified to the NBS BIM Object Standard NBS Scheduler - scheduling arranged by trades or space for renovations and small projects, without bills of quantities Uniclass 2015 - unified classification system for the construction industry   http://thenbs.com

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And In Other News

Here are some of the most recent posts made to the WorldCAD Access blog: On Who Would Buy OnShape The Determinism Future of A.I. (part 1) To Our Detriment, A.I. Locks Up Knowledge (part 2) I Bought a $275 Lossless Music Player, then Returned It - - - Bricsys has its Web page up for the annual international user conference at www.bricsys.com/en-intl/conference/, being held Oct 9-10 in Stockholm Sweden. - - - The Open Design Alliance will talk about its port of Web SDK technology to Microsoft Azure for building cloud-based applications in the areas of CAD and BIM visualization, data access, automation, and markup editing at its Milan conference in September. conference.opendesign.com/ In other ODA news, the new Facet Modeler SDK is released. It performs Boolean operations, slicing, scaling, rotation, mirroring, and area and volume calculations on 3D facet models, often used in architecture. It's included free with ODA membership. www.opendesign.com - - - TechSoft 3D holds their Krakow HOOPS Summit 2019 in Poland Oct 15 at the Hotel Unicus Palace. Free registration at pages.techsoft3d.com/2019-krakow-hoops-summit-registration-0-0. (BTW, HOOPS is short for "hierarchical object-oriented picture system," and used to be owned by Autodesk.) - - - HxGN LIVE Global switches to bi-annual, so Hexagon’s formerly annual user conference takes place next during June 2021, again in Las Vegas. During the two-year break, the company plans regional events. hxgnlive.com/ - - - From Jon Peddie Research, we learned that CAD/CAM is the biggest user of computer graphics. Explains the huge booths from nVidia et al at CAD vendor trade shows. www.jonpeddie.com - - - Nemetschek Group reports Q2 revenues up 21% to $150 million. - - - PTC continued faltering this quarter with Q3 revenue of $295 million and a net loss of $15 million, using generally accepted accounting principles. Contrast this with Dassault, where a single product (Catia) makes more than all of PTC. - - - Dassault Systemes reports Solidworks Q2 revenues grew 4% to $223 million. Monica Schnitge reports that CEO Charlès "believes customers remain excited about Solidworks, cloud, and the ability to use DS PowerBy to connect Solidworks to the 3Dexperience platform." The $223 million figure is important, because it means Dassault is well on its way to making Soldiworks a billion-dollar brand. Big step-brother CATIA already is a billion-dollar brand. All of Dassault Systemes made $1.01 billion in the quarter, up 16%. - - - Now we know why Google is to quick to reassure us that it uses only annonymized data: "Researchers ... published a method they say is able to correctly re-identify 99.98% of individuals in anonymized datasets with just 15 demographic attributes." - - - The Khronos Group announced the OpenXR 1.0 royalty-free open specification for cross-platform access to VR and AR devices. So far, Collabora, Microsoft, Oculus, Epic Games, and Varjo have said that they support it. https://www.khronos.org - - - Cedreo a 3D home design software for drawing floor plans and generating 3D renderings, with 2,500 users in France. Earlier this year, the company launched the software in the USA. cedreo.com/en/ - - - A Siemens contractor pled guilty to planting logic bomb in company spreadsheets. zdnet.com/article/siemens-contractor-pleads-guilty-to-planting-logic-bomb-in-company-spreadsheets/ - - - Autodesk gives us the next reason to not hold subscriptions (which is software whose license they check over an internet connection every 30 days): In brief, many not-so-old releases of Autodesk software need their Internet connection security updated to continue working (ie, continue phoning home) but for about half there is no update available (those marked with an ominous star), so you can't keep using them, irregardless. For Autodesk it's win-win: Win: Internet connection is made secure. Win: Customers are forced to upgrade, otherwise "their" software stops working. For customers with permanent licenses, it is also win-win: Win: No need to worry about insecure Internet connections. Win: No forced upgrades! (I have a permanent license of one the the afflicted AutoCADs, so I'm cool.) knowledge.autodesk.com/search-result/caas/sfdcarticles/sfdcarticles/Transport-Layer-Security-TLS-Updates-Required-to-Maintain-Software-Access.html - - - The modern version of 'And the truth shall set you free': "Google Places Whistleblowing Engineer On Administrative Leave."

Letters to the Editor

I was reading an article discussing design responsibility in construction -- constructioncanada.net/assignment-of-design-to-constructors-a-discussion-and-direction/ -- and came across a paragraph that is almost a repeat of the points I raised long ago in the editorial "Does CAD Degrade Drawing Quality?"  The association concluded that the quality of construction documents has declined, and cited many reasons. The technology that they saw as assisting the decline is the newer BIM rather than good old CAD. Here is what they had to say:  CCA [Canadian Construction Association] indicated the subsequent decrease in quality of documents is not directly related to the quantity or effort to create extensive drawings and specifications from design professionals, rather it is a problem of the quality of communication within the whole of the construction documents. The association also indicated the use of computers and processes such as building information modelling (BIM) are implicated in the decrease in quality of documentation as users rely on imported information rather than creating project-specific content.      - Leo Schlosberg - - -   I'm looking into ArchiCAD for its month-by-month subscription. Apparently, one can use the program for some number of months, stop, and then resume later - without hassle. I'm still busy finishing something via Revit; then I'll get into ArchiCAD's free trial, then see what makes sense. I mention this in case any of your architect-readers may want something fully featured for design and working drawings, at less cost and flexible cost at that. Thanks for covering the industry so well, with essential information.     - Michael David Rubin The editor replies: I recall when they first came out with it, but they never did emphasize it. I see that they also have a hourly license. helpcenter.graphisoft.com/knowledgebase/25697/ - - - The Russian translation of your "Graphisoft's plan to be #1" became our hit of July. CAD/AEC people in Russia are crazy about competition in BIM.  Please see isicad.ru/ru/articles.php?article_num=20650, re-titled "How ARCHICAD will outrun Revit".     - David Levin     isicad Re: The AutoCAD Workalike Market I had lost track of the number of AutoCAD lookalikes. Amazing that there are 30 something. One little typo, you mention Carson in the heading. The company is Carlson. They are a serious contender in the civil/surveying world. Anyway, great research as always.      - Tom Lazear     Archway Systems - - -   I read with interest your upFront.eZine Issue #1,021 regarding the The AutoCAD Workalike Market. One clarification for your readers, you incorrectly identified Carlson (more commonly known as "Carlson Software") as Carson. As one of the last independently held CAD software developers who got their start during the early days of the AutoCAD add-on market, Carlson [Software] is still an active Autodesk ADN member, board member of the ITC, board member of the ODA, developer on Bentley BDN platform and developer on ESRI EDN. Thank you for your consideration as point of clarification in a future edition of upFront.eZine.     - David Carlson, CAD development director     Carlson Software - - -   Nice article. Excellent, well-organized practical information.     - Don Beaton - - -   Thanks for the post about IntelliCAD membership. Minor correction at CMS IntelliCAD geographic region, it's actually USA, not Korea.     - Vitor Neves, chairman of the board     IntelliCAD Technology Consortium - - -   Thanks for the mentions in your article. ‘TwinCAD’ though is actually ‘DoubleCAD’ -- we never had a product called ‘TwinCAD’.     - Bob Mayer     IMSI/Design - - -   I was disappointed to not see Datacad listed! 30+ years and still offering a proven platform for a very loyal AEC user base and by far the best customer service in the industry!     - D. S. The editor replies: There were three criteria for being included in the list of AutoCAD workalikes: read and write DWG natively; AutoCAD-like user interface; and AutoCAD-like command structure. As far as I know, DataCAD is unique in these requirements. D. S. responds: Shoot, after re-reading your article I stand corrected. Sorry. Datacad IS (thankfully) unique in this regard. Thank you for all you do for us and the timely response to my note. - - -   Excellent summary review. Thanx!     - Cadman - - -   Thanks for your hard work bringing us the news we like to know. Just wanted you to know that GstarCAD does dynamic blocks as well. We are an independent distributor for GstarCAD in The Netherlands and Belgium since 2009, so we know what we're talking about. It works fine.     - Siem Eikelenboom      IDEOMA intelligent systems, The Netherlands - - -   Great overview, Ralph. Thank you. Small correction. DraftSight starts at $99/year for DraftSight Standard.     - Sam Scholes, senior account manager     GoEngineer

Thank You, Readers

Thank you to readers who donate towards the operation of upFront.eZine: KCL (small corporate donation) Dairobi Paul (two subscriptions) Should you wish to support upFront.eZine through PayPal, then the suggested amounts are like these: $25 for individuals > paypal.me/upfrontezine/25 $150 for small companies > paypal.me/upfrontezine/150 $750 for for large companies > paypal.me/upfrontezine/750 Should Paypal.me not operate in your country, then please use www.paypal.com and the account of [email protected]. Or mail a cheque (US$ or CDN$ only, please) to upFront.eZine Publishing, Ltd., 34486 Donlyn Avenue, Abbotsford BC, V2S 4W7, Canada.

Notable Quotable

"Economists have correctly predicted nine out of the previous four recessions, and two others they never saw coming."     - Stephen Green *5285

Graphisoft Q&A on Project Everest

Issue #1,020

 

Graphisoft CEO Huw Roberts and vice president of marketing Ákos Pfemeter spent 1.5 hours answering questions from five CAD journalists that had been invited to the company's annual Key Customer Conference, this year in Las Vegas. Here is my paraphrased transcript of the Q&A session.  - - - Q: What is Everest? A: Everest is the code name for a core technology set being built by Graphisoft. Its primary function is to coordinate multiple participants using shared data. It supports multiple data sources and multiple programs among multiple disciplines. We let you have a sneak peek on one use case [between architectural design and structural steel analysis], a taste of the kind of benefit we will offer. It is not just a way to connect multiple pieces of software, but rather a dynamic form of data sharing. It does not use IFC or OpenBIM. An important part is how fast it is: it has a short cycle time. The point is to integrate decision-making between two disciplines; the point is not to import an incompatible file, like Revit. It will take stages [of development] to get it all fully baked.    (All images courtesy Anthony Frausto-Robledo) Q: You showed several new APIs today. Does Nemetschek Group want to work with one API over another? A: We [Graphisoft] have many APIs [application programming interfaces], including C++, GDL [Geometric Description Language], and Grasshopper[from McNeel], and folks using them can continue using them. I credit Robert McNeel with introducing the programmer role to the design firm [through Grasshopper]. He has brought a demand for quick, lighter, more accessible ways to get at the data inside software.  Python is [one of our new APIs and is] the language people are using everywhere for those who don’t go deep into programming languages.  JSON [is the other new API and] has a different audience. It opens [us] to a broader group of technologies.  Grasshopper is an indirect API for us, and [McNeel’s] Rhino has all these other plug-ins, such as solar analysis; we don’t have to write a solar analysis add-on; you just go out there and pick one.  Nemetschek uses OpenBIM and APIs already, but with the new structure of the Nemetschek Group we now interact directly. Programmers from the different divisions now work directly with each other. Programmers don’t want everything; they only want what they need, partly because there are time boundaries and limits to project scope.  Q: Is Everest only for users of ArchiCAD 23, coming out in September? A: Everest is not in 23.    Q: Is Everest a file server, or a database? Is the database more granular? Are you leaving files behind? A: [Not answered as the conversation drifted elsewhere.] Our vision for this is that we recognize that our customers do things differently for different reasons. Tools, methods, and levels of sophistication are all over the map, and we will do all we can to help them. The further they are from us, though, the harder it is for us to make sure it works for them.  Q: Can Everest exist on any server, yours or mine? A: Customers are going to be in both modes. Both are considerations for us. Q: Can you talk about BIMx extensions? A: BIMx is a powerful tool for showing the model, the drawings, the information to any kind of user who is not into the authoring tools. It is a hyper[linked] model that presents data. The BIMx API connects to anything. Some examples include talking to a building control system, as we showed earlier today. We did not build that connection; the Italian firm built it using our API. The BIMx API is in a technology-validation phase, and is being tested by about two dozen firms who are making connections to Web-based databases. There are placeholders in the BIM model that can talk to external data. Q: Is this a 4th API in the overall Everest framework? A: The APIs are separate from Everest; Everest is a core technology set that we introduced today, and will be coming later. [No date was specified, but I think it will arrive in 2020.] The core tech in Everest is not in ArchiCAD.  Everest enables connectivity at a new level and in new ways. Today, we showed just one use-case. We showed that use-case first, because it is one of the most painful ones in the industry today -- structural analysis of designs. The [Everest] technology is in the interactions between the different views, actions, and purposes. It is the same model but iterated in different ways -- appropriate to the architect and appropriate in a different way to the engineer. There were two different models that were not exchanged [translated].  Q: This is good news for users of [Autodesk] Forge who can move to ArchiCAD, because they can use standard programming languages, instead of learning GDL. A: Graphisoft is not only open in its format, but for programmers ArchiCAD is now also open. We are not getting into storing project emails, ERP [enterprise resource planning] systems, and so on. But customers can connect to those systems. We think that is great, and we will always support that. And as Nemetschek adds products and capabilities, we will be there.    Q: Are you looking at buying Robert McNeel & Assoc? I am guessing that he is probably starting to think about retiring, and he is at this conference. A: That’s quite the fishing expedition! Q: Right now BIMx only works with data exported from ArchiCAD. It is so useful. Have you considered expanding BIMx so that it can use other files? A: Yes, we thought about it.  Q: You never delivered it, so that’s a No. What about BIMx for IFC or Rhino? A: [Not answered, as another question came up.] Q: I use whatever is fastest, because that is where the money is made. I don’t understand why you don’t make BIMx available to the wider work flow, so that you reach out to other products, like SketchUp, which is very popular. It seems to me like a logical thing to do. A: What I am answering is what we are doing today. You can bring IFC and SketchUp into ArchiCAD, but you need ArchiCAD to export to BIMx. Q: Can you not think of BIMx as equal to ArchiCAD? It could be a halo product, like iPhone is for Macs. A dedicated tool for collaboration is always faster than an authoring tool. A: Well... [Point remained unanswered.] Q: Unity is interested in going after collaboration in CAD, because their software already works on all platforms. I think there is going to be a big fight between the two gaming engine giants [Unity, and Epic, with its Unreal Engine and recently-acquired TwinMotion]. A: The BIMx Web browser with live sectioning is definitely coming this year, I am just not sure when.  Q: Quite a few presenters were using ArchiCAD for city planning. Are you going to do civil engineering? A: We have no product plans for that, but we see our customers using ArchiCAD for things you would not think are architecture.  We just want to make sure our customers have the tools to extend the capabilities with Grasshopper or by assigning massing. Our focus is architecture; we are not interested in roads and earthworks and sewers. Within the Nemetschek Group, we have Allplan which is fantastic for that. We can use our shared family relationships to offer solutions in that direction. Q: What about Labs? Will it operate like labs from other software companies, like Autodesk Labs? A: We have always done [software] experiments with customers, and so lab activity has existed. We want to make it a more clearly-defined and easy-to-participate-in thing. We are looking at all sorts of stuff. We would benefit from it, and the market would benefit when we invite other people in -- to leverage the brainpower on all these things. Customers who write new code can also share it through our Labs. - - - Mr Roberts asked, “Aren't there any questions about openings?” This is a new feature in ArchiCAD 23. He went on to explain:  "Openings not just Boolean geometry; it is a negative space [and so it has properties]. It goes through multiple items. They can have rules applied, and they are managed items so you can schedule them [in BOMs]. There is data about the negative spaces, such as needing insulation around a fire door opening. As far as I know, nobody else has that." www.graphisoft.com [Disclaimer: Graphisoft provided my airfare, accommodation, and most meals.]   And In Other News Here are some of the most recent posts made to the WorldCAD Access blog: Archive: The Snake in the Garden - - - 4M releases IDEA BIM Architecture v19 for BIM design, rebuilt to work with the Open Design Alliance's Teigha engine. Improvements include... 4D/5D BIM phasing and estimating Quick editing of BIM entities in property panel New BIM modeling tools, such as corner openings Uer-defined walls and free editing of roofs 100% compatible with IFC2x3 input/output  Quicker renderings of higher quality New 3D furniture libraries with rendered previews BIM Suite adds FineMEP building services and FineGREEN energy analysis. Download the free demo version from 4msa.com/downloads/IDEA/19/!SetupIDEA_E_FULL_NHK.exe - - - My prediction that Hexagon would buy a generative design firm is rated "Accurate." That it would be Paramatters is rated "Inaccurate." Monica Schnitge reports on the previously-unheard of AMendate that won the acquisitions sweepstakes at schnitgercorp.com/2019/06/24/hexagon-adds-to-its-additive-bench/. The German company, at amendate.de/, was funded in part by European government agencies, and will be added to Hexagon's MSC Software division. - - -  Private equity firm KKR bought Corel for an alleged $1 billion from Vector Capital, owner of Corel since 2003. Corel has a footprint in CAD with its CorelCAD software licensed from Graebert Gmbh. - - - Software developer VR Concept has some pretty interesting plans for virtual reality using С3D Toolkit from C3D Labs: editing imported CAD models in the VR environment. c3dlabs.com/en/news/items/?news=2926 - - - Autodesk: “The greenest building is the one that is already built.” Me: "The greenest building is the one that is never built." - - - Open Design Alliance last week released Drawings SDK 2020 with an initial CDA framework. Common Data Access is a platform-neutral framework for accessing model structures and property info from dwg, Microstation, Revit, and other files. ODA expects to complete CDA by the end of the year, and I expect to hear more about it at the Milan conference. opendesign.com/blog/2019/july/oda-releases-drawings-sdk-2020 - - - We will know we will have been successful at creating true A.I. when it lies to us for the first time. - - - The Register: "AMD's Ryzen 5 3600 topples Intel's Core i9 9900K in single-thread performance: CPU will cost less than half of Intel's flagship chip." Single-thread speed is important, because most operations of CAD run on a single thread. CAD can be multi-threaded only in a very few areas, such as loading drawings and performing renderings.  - - - My daughter, the professional photographer, working with large-format film. www.artandtheaerialist.com  Letters to the Editor Re: HxGNn Live 2019 Re Ola Rollen's remarks about working up from the bottom, and in particular about paying fishermen for retrieved plastics. This process can be proven to work, because it has been successfully applied in the past. When was the last time you saw a discarded beverage container since the deposit system was brought in? Judging by the activity at commercial refund centres, I suggest that very few were returned by original purchasers, but instead by professional scavengers. The bottom line is that it works.  Further thoughts on the world becoming uninhabitable: I don't think it will suddenly happen, but will affect different groups at different times. The first to go will be the current yuppie generation with their (our) BMWs, cell phone/devices, and high-tech toys. Somewhere in the middle will be the survivalist campers. Last to go will be the third-world poor. They already exist on next-to-nothing. The human race itself won't die out. The survivors will be the primitive remote tribes who don't even know that we exist and vice-versa. "Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth." Suggested reading: "The Machine Stops," a short story by E. M. Forster. The scary part is that it was written in 1909.     - Bill Fane The editor replies: People and animals spend most of their time looking for and eating food. I sometimes wonder how it would be if the trucks stopped arriving at our grocery stores. Mr Fane responds: 150-200 years ago, something like 95% of the population was involved in food production. In the western industrialized world its about 3%. In Cambodia, thanks to Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge regime who murdered pretty much anyone with an education, it's back up to 97%.  We can be skiing on Whistler [ski resort] in the middle of winter, stop for lunch at the Roundhouse restaurant at the top, and of course there is fresh lettuce in our burger. We would only notice it if it wasn't fresh. We don't live in the real world.  I was skiing Whistler one beautiful day and stopped to catch my breath. Someone stopped beside me. I said, "I wonder what the real world is doing?"  He replied, "You don't understand. This IS the real world. The rest of it is an illusion created by the news media. Have you ever actually seen wars, rebellions, and mass starvation in person?"  We were both being somewhat tongue-in-cheek. When I wake up every morning I consider my life so far and I pray "Why me, Lord, what did I do to deserve all this?" - - - More doom-and-gloom from executive types.     - Cadman The editor replies: This was a Scandinavian CEO, and they think differently from North Americans. It was kinda confusing for the audience there in energy-sucking Las Vegas. Mr Cadman responds: I know that morally, they're very liberal and have avant garde ideas about human consciousness. But the corporate paradigm is the same throughout the world. It's always been the game of the monarchs since the days of yore. So how could the end result be any different from any other corporate agenda? - - - Hexagon sounds like "Big Brother" in creation?     - Herbert Grabowski The editor replies: That increasingly is the concern, that the purpose of "smart" cities is to collect even more data on citizens, and not just for improving quality of life tomorrow -- but also for suppression, as China does today. It is astounding to me how many people willing place "smart" speakers in their homes. - - - Every organized factory I've worked at had manufacturing software that seemed to have grown out of accounting software. CAD companies seem to be obsessed with becoming the One True Software Provider for their customers, but are never successful at it. Is it because they don't acknowledge the existence of the accounting aspect of manufacturing? Hexagon seems to think that manufacturing consists of CNC machines. This story "Telecom Giant Ericsson Halts Its PLM Project with Dassault’s 3DEXPERIENCE" gives some details of Dassault's attempt to be the OTSP for a huge company. Big fail.   Why does this never seem to work out? Or are there tons of success stories out there, and I only notice the failures?     - Jess Davis The editor replies: We primarily notice failure, because it jars normalcy. On the other hand, one reason we don't hear a lot about failure is due to NDAs -- non-disclosure agreements. A friend of mine runs a regional chain of stores, got a new inventory control system, after he heard no bad stories about it. It didn't work, and he was nearly bankrupted. The vendor offered to fix it, once my friend signed an NDA so that he couldn't warn away potential customers. There is a mismatch between what software firms offer, and what manufacturing and other companies need, as companies have their unique ways of doing things. One of the more spectacular failures was SAP failing to integrate its system at Visio, costing it around a billion dollars. Here in Canada, IBM implemented a failed government payroll system (based on PeopleSoft) that mis-paid about 50% of the workers and burned through $2 billion over the implementation budget; ironically, it is called Phoenix.  As for accounting-based systems, I think they comes out of the need to track costs. Non-CAD vendors like Oracle and SAP have offerings for CAD, and are even considered PLM suppliers. Mr Davis responds: It's one of those areas in which people, who've grown up in the manufacturing world, take for granted; newcomers are astonished at the complexity. A relative who works for an energy company always has entertaining stories of software transitions in a business that makes mere manufacturing look childishly simple. I talked to a guy who has a truck-parts store trying to transition from an Excel spreadsheet to some retail-sales software he bought. His business coach tried to get him to hire my company to help him just get the data entered into the system, but we never could get together on the price. (It's not what we do, but we had someone who was capable.) So the owner just kept plugging away at it in his spare time. It was needlessly complex, because he refused to have a system of part numbers, and insisted on using supplier part numbers for everything. His software provider just quit trying to help him. If he had ever spent a few years in a manufacturing environment, his life would have been easier. The editor replies: Founders can't be CEOs. Re: Huawei Woes You quoted Jim Heppelmann saying, "I don't really think that preventing Huawei from using PTC software accomplishes anything meaningful for anybody, to be frank." I think the Americans are setting a very dangerous precedent. By denying Huawei access to operating systems, hardware, and applications, they are using government suasion to influence their business model. The rest of the world is watching, wondering when they will use the same tactics on Volkswagen or some other company.     - Dik Coates The editor replies: The issue is the mis-use of technology. I worry about leaders who do not understand the threat from China. - - - For software like PTC, they will just return to using cracked copies.     - Henry Sommer   Thank You, Readers Thank you to readers who donate towards the operation of upFront.eZine: EmersonVinyl  Todd Majeski: "Keep up the great reporting and the valued opinions on the market." Should you wish to support upFront.eZine through PayPal, then the suggested amounts are like these: $25 for individuals > paypal.me/upfrontezine/25 $150 for small companies > paypal.me/upfrontezine/150 $750 for for large companies > paypal.me/upfrontezine/750 Should Paypal.me not operate in your country, then please use www.paypal.com and the account of [email protected]. Or mail a cheque (US$ or CDN$ only, please) to upFront.eZine Publishing, Ltd., 34486 Donlyn Avenue, Abbotsford BC, V2S 4W7, Canada.   Notable Quotable "The biscuits in the meeting room are ONLY for the consultants who are coming in to tell us how to make our people feel valued."     - Management Speak (@managerspeak on Twitter)

*5312

Modeling Scaffolding Systems with Avontus

Issue #1,017

 

by Ralph Grabowski, with Brian Webb

Where there is construction, there is scaffolding.   Figure 1: Scaffolding at a building site (All images sourced from Avontus) Scaffolding is one of the most complicated parts of construction. (See figure 1.) Take, for instance, an LNG [liquefied natural gas] plant. The LNG plant usually comes as individual units that are assembled on-site. For most trades, completing the work (piping and insulation) is not that complex, but scaffolding is needed almost everywhere to access difficult-to-reach areas. Scaffolding is not always recognized as a specific trade, and it is often the last thing a building owner thinks of. Worse, it is a very competitive industry, so some contractors go for the lowest price, and others for the fastest installation. Labor is typically 80-90% of the cost of putting up (and taking down) scaffolding. The design can be complex, because there are so many ways of putting scaffolding together. A tall building could have 10,000 pieces delivered by eight to ten trucks – scaffolding verticals, horizontals, varieties of clamps, and decks -- making the logistics and  coordinating the erection complex. Lifting the material gets harder the higher it goes. It usually is done manually as cranes are expensive and used only for the highest levels.  Different parts of the world tend to have similar systems. Regular scaffolding parts are made of steel, but bamboo is still used in the Far East. The plant grows very quickly and is a strong, stiff material. Aluminum tends to be used in Scandinavian countries, where expensive labor justifies the more expensive systems; being lighter than steel, they install faster. See avontus.com/blog/major-types-of-scaffolding-in-construction/ for all the types of scaffolding in use today. One of the most difficult scaffolding installations is inside of coal-fired power plant boilers: everything must go through the ash hopper, which has a sloped floor. Scaffolding parts are lifted in place by hand, using a tedious manual process of passing equipment up person to person. See scaffmag.com/2015/10/guest-post-scaffolding-in-power-plant-boilers/ for the details of this convoluted work.   Software for Scaffolding Design "Our challenge was to have a software architecture that could handle any system, says Brian Webb. He is the founder and CEO of Avontus. "Our target market is not AutoCAD. Designers who use software such as AutoCAD need to trim entities and specify welds. We don't do that. Our goal is to create an easy enough to use product that the 50 people a designer serves can draw scaffolding themselves." As a result, the company uses Visio diagramming software, along with custom-written code. (See figure 2.) The screen is split in half. On one half, users drag and click scaffolding SmartShapes into the 2D Visio page; the other half shows the 3D view rendered in real-time as the user draws the scaffolding. The core of Scaffold Designer is an object-oriented middle layer that understands scaffolding, knows the bill of materials, and generates the 3D model in many environments. Figure 2: Visio coexisting with custom-written 3D module in Scaffold designer Ralph Grabowski: I guess the problem is that scaffolding is like viewing a wirefame model: too much detail? Brian Webb: We overcame that by using a simplified model, because the details of the connectors are not important; it is the placement of the horizontal and verticals. The problem we are solving is easier; we are only drawing scaffolding. I think it’s the nirvana of the CAD industry to be able to open up any drawing in VR [virtual reality]. Grabowski: Is this why you got into VR? Webb: Our end-users need to show their customer or foreman what is intended to be built. This is hard to do with a 2D drawing of scaffolding, even when it’s complimented with 3D views on the page. So VR was the solution, and now we are generating the same models in AR [augmented reality]. (See figure 3.) Figure 3: Viewing scaffolding on an Android phone Grabowski: Tell me a little bit about how it works. Webb: We push the 3D model from the desktop to the cloud, and then to the VR app to navigate around the design. You can put your phone in a cheap Google Cardboard viewer or our Scaffold Viewer Lens to walk around the design. With AR, you place a target on the ground, as well as in the drawing (as a SmartShape). The phone knows where to display the design in the field. For more on VR and AR, see scaffmag.com/2019/05/the-evolution-of-scaffold-design/. Grabowski: What is the line of software that you offer customers? Webb: We have three: Scaffold Designer designs the scaffolding; it does not matter who the manufacturer of the scaffolding system is, as we support nearly all the systems scaffold types available worldwide.   Scaffold Viewer works on PCs and mobile phones and communicates with a cloud service so that designs can be shared. You can view the 3D designs on PCs using a gamer view (and W-A-S-D keys to navigate) or else with a headset. (See figure 4.) Figure 4: Scaffold Viewer on a PC   Quantify is for inventory (or asset) management and tracks the inventory on big job sites or all the way down to individual scaffolds at an industrial facility. (See figure 5.) This is very important, as scaffolding is commonly rented per piece per day. Some pieces rent for as little as 30 cents/day. It gets tricky as some pieces arrive on different days and don’t leave at the same time, so different deliveries to and returns from sites makes things very complicated. Quantify also has a .NET API [application programming interface]. Figure 5: Quantify showing the scaffolding bill of materials   One example of a unique feature in Quantify is that it allows rental firms to carry a negative balance, such as when deliveries to a site are done in the morning, before arrivals from the night before are processed. The big ERP software packages don't allow that, yet it’s very common in our industry. Our software also manages damaged and re-rented equipment (where one scaffolding rental service rents from a competitor to provide enough parts).  Grabowski: What would your customers build on the API? Webb: Just about anything. Our user interface layer is built upon the same API that our customers use, so it’s really an open platform. It’s common for our industry to write custom estimating programs, or to integrate our software with the big ERP systems. www.avontus.com

And In Other News

Here are some of the most recent posts made to the WorldCAD Access blog: Why Google Music is a disaster and how to hack around it Archive: Q&A from CIMdata's Webinar on PLM Status & Trends - - - Verdi Ogewell in Engineering.com reports that Ericsson has, after three years, halted its Dassault Systemes 3dExperience (V6) PLM installation designed for 25,000 users due to data corruption: "Not once has it been possible to migrate old data." Details at engineering.com/PLMERP/ArticleID/19119/Telecom-Giant-Ericsson-Halts-Its-PLM-Project-with-Dassaults-3DEXPERIENCE.  Jaguar Land Rover suffered the same problem, halting a Dassault PLM implementation after nearly ten years of effort. - - - Anthony Frausto at Archintosh is looking forward to learning more about ArchiCAD 23's new Rhino-Grasshopper technology that pushes algorithmic BIM design further. "But we are not sure there is 'RhinoInside', per se."   architosh.com/2019/05/graphisoft-announces-release-of-archicad-23   - - - Hewlett Packard Enterprise announced that it acquired supercomputing legend Cray for $1.3 billion. Randall Newton comments on it: consiliavektor.com/2019/05/17/hpe-prepares-for-exascale-by-acquiring-cray/ - - - Nvidia's Q1 revenue of $2.22 billion was down 31% from a year ago. The net income of $543M was down from $1.29 billion YoY [year over year]. - - - British chip maker ARM, whose CPU design powers all smartphones, announced that its latest Mali display GPU, the D77, is designed for VR [virtual reality] headsets, with 40% reduced system bandwidth and 12%power savings.

Letters to the Editor

Re: DEX Expo It is not often that I take exception to your articles, but your recent comment, "In Canada specifically, colleges are stuck in providing two- and four-year programs, teaching in a way that doesn't allow the graduate to begin working immediately," merits a strong reply. I have a very strong academic bent and may be a bit of a dinosaur when it comes to universities. A university's function is to provide fundamental tools for students to advance the fields of study; they are not there to provide a "pool" of employees for industry. Technical schools and trade schools are there for that purpose. A university should not be providing "trained monkeys" for industry. The scope of the work undertaken by graduates is so broad that it would not be possible to address all areas. It is best that the tools required to address this be developed. Industry has the financial obligation and burden to provide the training, not universities. Co-op type programs are great and it could be implemented as part of the curriculum. These positions should be paid position, and not intern-type of free employment.     - Dik Coates The editor replies: I quoted the panel members' view of colleges and universities, and I believe that they all were strongly oriented towards the trades.  - - -   Which of the four speakers at the DEX EXPO mentioned the "work ethic system." I have spent some time googling this morning and this system seems to be a new concept, even for the four people on that panel.     - Lee Teschler, executive editor     WTWH Media LLC The editor replies: I did not know any of them, and was tweeting the panel discussion live. From the exhibition Web site, I got the list of names. I believe it was the first two who spoke about the system: Marcus Ewert-Johns, president of the BC Alliance for Manufacturing Brian Haugen, director of education and engagement at the International Union of Operating Engineers  Rich Gibbs, president of Neutron Factory Works   Brian Holmes, vice president and gm of Columbia Plastics.    Re: TwinMotion Free from Unity [From the editor: I had downloaded the free TwinMotion software from Unity, to find that it did not work on my laptop. Unity tech support replied to me through Twitter Direct.] "I see that this pc have a graphic card that not meet the requirements to running twinmotion. Keep in mind that the software is based on the unreal engine and provide a real time environment. At a cost of a gaming card or high end professional card."     - Unity tech support   Re: Computers in Design When I was teaching mechanical engineering, I would tell my students that the Boeing 747 and the moon rocket were designed using paper and pencil. I don't think they believed me. I have heard it claimed that the the British Admiralty couldn't launch a battleship until the weight of paper equaled the weight of the ship. And a further comment on the note about the "spiral designs displayed by galaxies." Nova did an interesting episode that touched on this topic. It seems that the spiral arms of galaxies, the curve of a snail shell, and the pattern of sunflower seeds can all be seen to fit the same basic curve defined by the Fibonacci series.      - Bill Fane The editor replies: Gosh, mister Fane, did they even have paper back then? - - -   Useful and interesting updates; thanks. I still have my drafting tools, even use them occasionally, some from (my) age 13 efforts. Conceptually, we grizzled veterans can draw anything manually, need arising. Needed in 21st century? Notwithstanding digitized 3D modeling, there are still multiple forms that are fussy and time-consuming to crank out of applications... BTW: Blame technology? Cars drive drunks, spoons make one fat, keyboards derive illogical conclusions, produce illogical assertions.      - Michael David Rubin, architect The editor replies: I loved the intimacy of working with manual drafting tools on the vellum -- even the erase dust was real! Mr Rubin responds: Ha! Yes, eraser dust building up on our ears & noses by 11 pm; wife/girlfriend complaining about shaking it out of our clothes later? I always preferred a generous scattering on drawings, to take up worse crud; then, insisted on the print shop to "bring up the background," simply to darken the linework back up to clarity in the prints. Yes, enforced intimacy, of sorts, in hot weather (who had A/C?), when one removes shirt, places old towel on edge of drafting board to to intercept sweat from stomach onto vellum/mylar. Seriously, Ralph, I've always found that the best design professionals have at least basic manual skill. Something about the hand-eye-brain loop. Or, so it has seemed -- taking nothing away from the digital-only design generations. Maybe just an architect's view of the work. Although the design intelligence of mechanical/civil/structural guys I've known often enough has come out in their having hands-on skill w/ tools, repairs, maintenance, diagnostics of equipment & systems, etc. Keep up your fine & informative work.   Re: Scaffolding  Did you mention scaffolding in [last week's] newsletter? I have some customers that uses Pon Cad for  that.  See meccad.net/software-cad-3d-scaffolding     - Ragnar Thor Mikkelsen     www.designdata.no, Norway The editor replies: The newsletter had the incorrect header, unhappily; scaffolding is this week's topic.

Thank You, Readers

Thank you to readers who donate towards the operation of upFront.eZine: Walter Black of AV Symbols Philomene Huminski: "Best wishes for 2019!" Should you wish to support upFront.eZine through PayPal, then the suggested amounts are like these: $25 for individuals > paypal.me/upfrontezine/25 $150 for small companies > paypal.me/upfrontezine/150 $750 for for large companies > paypal.me/upfrontezine/750 Should Paypal.me not operate in your country, then please use www.paypal.com and the account of [email protected]. Or mail a cheque (US$ or CDN$ only, please) to upFront.eZine Publishing, Ltd., 34486 Donlyn Avenue, Abbotsford BC, V2S 4W7, Canada.

Notable Quotable

"Entrepreneurship is devoted to creation of new goods and services. Creativity is always surprising. That is why it cannot be planned or demanded by governments or even by customers."       - 'Knowledge and Power' by George Gilder.   *5340

Q&A with Neil Peterson, Open Design Alliance

Issue #1,012

 

by Ralph Grabowski   Having spent 20 years working on SDKs [software development kits] for desktop software, the Open Design Alliance last year began adding a Web browser-based SDK to its offerings. (The ODA develops software that lets CAD vendors and corporations access data in CAD files -- such as AutoCAD DWG, MicroStation DGN, and Revit RVT.)   Web SDK: The Genesis ODA president Neil Peterson called me to update the readers of upFront.eZine on the new Web SDK for building browser-based CAD and BIM [building information modeling] applications, including collaboration tools. Mr Peterson immediately acknowledged that there are numerous companies already providing APIs [application programming interfaces] that work with servers and browsers. But. The genesis of the ODA’s Web SDK sprang from a range of complaints ODA members made about existing services.  (An API lets programmers access data and perform functions from an established platform, such as Autodesk's Forge. An SDK makes it easier for programmers write their own special-purpose software.) The primary problem is that current services are offered as SaaS [software as a service], where "service" means pay-as-you-go, paying for servers rented by the SaaS company and paying for APIs that might or might not meet the needs of customers. Mr Peterson did not want to name competitors. The complaints from ODA members fall into these categories: Control over data: SaaS providers usually store customer data on third-party servers; this is a barrier when firms need to maintain IP[intellectual property] internally. Cost: SaaS providers often charge per API call; this can become unexpectedly expensive when users aren't aware of the costs they are incurring. Lack of flexibility: In some cases, SaaS is developed on a take-it-or-leave-it basis, meaning it might not meet the specific needs of customers. As a result, the ODA is approaching its service from the opposite direction: Full control: ODA offers its new Web SDK as a technology, not as a service. This means that members build their own services, which can be deployed on a commercial cloud service like Google or Amazon, but more importantly on private networks. No cost: ODA offers Web SDK free to members who are at the Sustaining level and higher, with unlimited use. Flexibility: ODA offers extreme flexibility by providing the full source code to top level members, but all members can input their wishes. The catch: Web SDK is not yet fully developed.    Web SDK: Future Plans ODA's Web SDK consists of three components, one of which is mostly ready now: Viewing (see figure 1) Data access Automation Figure 1: Viewing a 3D DWG file in the Web app The ODA is moving fast, putting out a new release every four weeks. This is in contrast to its desktop APIs, which have two releases a year. The speed is partly due to the need to catch up, and partly due to "this is the way it is now expected." Viewing (available now). The client-server viewing API runs in WebGL-compatible browsers, which nowadays is nearly all Web browsers. Files are stored on the server and then streamed to browsers. The viewer works with all formats supported by the ODA, such as DWG, Microstation, Navisworks, IFC, and PDF. A demo available on the ODA's Web site.  The ODA plans to release markup editing in June. Markups are saved to the ODA's own VSF format -- Visualize Stream Format -- which is optimized for faster performance and smaller file space. The ODA plans to add versioning to the format -- which can be read by anyone else using this technology. Clash detection and all other functions found in the desktop Visualize API will be added later. Common data access (under development). This API accesses the structure of the model by querying properties down to the object level, such as geometry and materials. It is due by the end of the year. Automation (under development). This API is a framework for running server-side commands, such as converting a thousand DWG files to PDF in the background.   Web SDK: Q&A Ralph Grabowski: I seem to recall that some of this was mentioned at last fall's Prague conference?  Neil Peterson: We previously called it Web Visualize, so what you heard about was the viewing component. What is new is that we broadened the scope: it is now a platform for development -- not just a viewer. Ralph Grabowski: Do you plan to be able to edit drawings in the browser? Neil Peterson: It is on the agenda for the future, the real editing of CAD models. We know how to do it, but it takes time to implement. Ralph Grabowski: How is printing handled? Neil Peterson: Printing is done by publishing to PDF and 3D PDF. We also have STL export for 3D printing. Grabowski: There are several vendors who offer the same sort of service. Are you working with any other company on this? Peterson: On this, we are not working with anyone else. We are doing this entirely on our own. As no one is dominant in this area, we see this as an opportunity, particularly with our licensing model. Grabowski:  Are you getting greater interest from CAD vendors or from corporations for this technology? Peterson: Both CAD vendors and corporate members are interested. They are trying it out, giving us suggestions, and keeping an eye on what's happening.  Grabowski: If you don't charge for this SDK, how do you make money from it? Peterson: Our mission is not to make money, as we are a non-profit. Our mission is to develop software for our members, and this is now one of the highest demands from members. We are creating a new Special Interest Group for Web SDK, which will allow members to fast-track development in specific areas. When a company joins the SIG, they provide us with funding, which is applied 100% to hire additional developers focused on priorities set by SIG members. We have done this in other areas, and have found that it’s a way for companies to speed up and guide new development for our technology. Grabowski: Is a demo available to try out the viewer? Peterson: You can view demo 2D drawings and 3D models in a variety of formats at cloud.opendesign.com. (See figure 2.) Once a file is loaded, right-click for the menu to access the explode, isolate, and other options. The object explorer window comes up when you click on the tree icon at the top right.   Figure 2: The initial screen of the file viewer You can upload your own files under Main Menu/MyFiles, but for this you need to register with your email address. www.opendesign.com/products/web-sdk The annual ODA conference this year takes place September 10-11 in Milan, Italy. For information on attending, check out conference.opendesign.com/.   And In Other News From Canada's Sensopia, but for iOS only: "The AR aspect allows MagicPlan to capture a floor’s shape and size, as well as the ceiling height for 3D mapping" with a phone. mobilesyrup.com/2019/04/15/montreal-sensopia-magicplan-ar-ai-3d-room-scanning/ - - - Siemens Digital Industries updates Kineo robotics simulation software: KineoWorks for trajectory simulation Flexible Cables for cable dress-pack simulation  Collision Detector with new point cloud-wireframe tests Interact with new tools community.plm.automation.siemens.com/t5/Knowledge-Base/KineoWorks-Version-7-0-Highlights/ta-p/577458 - - - "Preparing 3D (PRC) Models for Document Creation using ODA Publish." PRC is the format in which 3D PDF files get exported from CAD systems. www.opendesign.com/blog/2019/april/preparing-3d-prc-models-document-creation-using-oda-publish - - - PC shipments in Q1: #1. Lenovo up 6.9% to 13.2 million PCs #2. HP Inc up 0.8% to 12.8 million #3. Dell up 1.5% to 10.0 million #4. Apple down 2.5% to 4.0 million - - - This is a pretty interesting article from C3D Labs in which an astronaut speaks frankly about some of the issues of space travel. c3dlabs.com/en/sources/blog/?id=11 - - - Save-the-date notices going out for the annual Bricsys conference this year taking place in Stockholm, home of new owner Hexagon, Oct 9-10. - - - The Discovery Live real-time simulation technology that PTC licensed from ANSYS for Creo 6 is being ported back to Creo 5 and Creo 4, and will be made available next month. Meanwhile, Creo 6.01 will be getting the additional live simulation functions, such as leverage mechanism load, and simulation bodies. In other news from PTC, every third annual release of Creo will be a major one with long-term support, as illustrated by this road map: Letters to the Editor Re: Q&A With Mark Sawyer of Trimble Could it be Trimble is expecting LayOut to be their "CAD" system?     - Dave Edwards     Dave Edwards Consulting The editor replies: I suspect it is not robust enough to handle input of 3D data from Trimble's survey instruments. Mr Edwards responds: SketchUp certainly isn't.   Re: DraftSight no longer free It’s just my opinion, but considering Autodesk charges $400/year for AutoCAD LT and $1,610/year for AutoCAD, I think that DraftSight for $99/year is a bargain. If you need more advanced capabilities you now have more options available for DraftSight. Even for the more advanced users, DraftSight Premium for $499/year is less than 1/3 the price of AutoCAD.     - Sam Scholes, senior account manager Solidworks solutions     Go Engineer The editor replies: I think the readers were expressing their disappointment at Dassault cutting off the free version. Something that has been free for many years suddenly would feel very expensive at $99 a year.     Notable Quotable "For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled."      - Richard P. Feynman     www.quora.com/What-is-the-context-of-this-Richard-Feynman-quote-For-a-successful-technology-reality-must-take-precedence-over-public-relations-for-Nature-cannot-be-fooled

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Q&A With Mark Sawyer of Trimble

Issue #1,011

 

by Ralph Grabowski   Trimble (USA) has a certain similarity with Hexagon (Sweden). Both began in the measurement business, Trimble in surveying and Hexagon in post-manufacturing measurements. Both are bigger in revenues than almost any CAD vendor, with Trimble last year earning $3.1 billion and Hexagon $4.4 billion, about the size of Dassault Systemes. Both firms decided a few years ago to branch out by acquiring adjacent software. Trimble's most visible acquisition was SketchUp, but they also landed other BIM firms, such as Stabiplan International, whose add-ons work with Revit; Hexagon's most notable CAD acquisition was industry pioneer Intergraph, founded in 1969. I interviewed Mark Sawyer last month about Trimble's place in our industry. Mr Sawyer originally gained fame as the CEO of @Last Software whose groundbreaking SketchUp software finally solved the pre-design problem like no other had (see figure 1). He sold @Last to Google. and moved on to co-found Vico Software, which developed construction management software.  Figure 1: SketchUp working with add-on software at https://www.sketchup.com/ With the acquisition of Vico by Trimble, he is now director of construction industry strategy at the company. Coming full circle, Trimble bought SketchUp and 3DWarehouse from Google after Google realized they weren’t all that useful to its dream of populating Google Earth with 3D models made gratis by us. (Google now uses airborne photogrammetry to generate dreadful-looking 3D representations of cities.) - - - Ralph Grabowski: What role do you see Trimble playing in the BIM market? Mark Sawyer: Trimble started in measurement, especially geolocation, and has expanded into analysis and complex solutions. But location is our roots and location is a profound piece of data in each of our five franchises: •    Agriculture •    Building and construction •    Geospatial •    Natural resources, utilities, and government •    Transportation   [Within the Building and Construction franchise, Trimble offers the following aspects: •    Alignment planning •    Building design, construction, and operation (SketchUp is located here) •    Civil and site construction, and engineering •    Construction logistics and tools •    Marine construction Many of these tie in with Trimble's surveying instruments.] In construction, we focus on both civil construction -- infrastructure and the classically “horizontal” work -- and buildings, “vertical work.” [Here the public relations person chimed in: "We prefer to use 'constructible' instead of 'bim' to show we are building beyond BIM."] BIM is a combination of 3D geometry and well-managed data. Our solutions range beyond BIM by completing the lifecycle with software for architecture, engineering design, specialty contractors, and building owners. BIM is just one tool in that lifecycle. For example, we also provide field positioning, labour tracking, and capital planning. The three-C’s in our strategy are Connected, Constructable, and Content-enabled: Connected speaks to collaboration aided by information management tools and purpose-built AEC workflows. We have over two million users of our Trimble Connect collaboration application, so that is a large collaborative community.  Constructible means design information that is detailed enough to fabricate from, and not just showing design intent, with information management and embellished data. Content-enabled is our strategy to provide manufacturers' data – geometry and attributes --  through our MEP content businesses and/or via the 3DWarehouse, which is accessed by millions of users.  Grabowski: Is Trimble going after a particular niche in BIM with the products it has acquired? Sawyer: On the acquisitions front, we are always active. We are in a permanent condition of acquiring companies. Recent acquisitions include...  eBuilder project management Viewpoint construction accounting Our focus these days [for our Building and Construction business]  is on smarter, more informed management of resources, labour, and material. Figure 2: 3D Warrhouse offers free 3D models from SketchUp users and manufacturers in SketchUp, KMZ, and/or Collada formats at https://3dwarehouse.sketchup.com/ Grabowski: Who might Trimble be targeting as customers? Sawyer: We have groups focused on specialty trades. We organize ourselves around the customers we target: architects, engineers, capital facility and infrastructure owners, general contractors, and specialty contractors, including MEP [mechanical, engineering, plumbing] and civil. We also recognize their need to be regionalized. The component libraries we provide have pricing, connection restrictions, and so on, for accurate cost estimates.   Grabowski: Who does Trimble work with in the BIM market, such as the RVT efforts by ODA? Sawyer: We work with ArchiCAD, Bentley’s AECOSim, and Revit, exchanging their data and in some cases developing applications running on them.  Grabowski: How good is the data that is exchanged with them? Sawyer: Getting data out of any proprietary system is a journey, not a destination. Progress gets made; it is less of a problem than it used to be. We are working with ODA [Open Design Alliance], as well as working directly with Nemetschek and Autodesk, and we find IFCs [industry foundation classes] useful. Grabowski: Who does Trimble see as competitors? Sawyer: With our specific set of services, there are a large list of companies that are in each category but none that offer all we do. In software, we typically compete against Bentley, Autodesk, and Nemetschek In field positioning hardware, we compete against Topcon Positioning Systems and Hexagon Leica Geosystems  Grabowski: How does Trimble differentiate itself from competitors? Sawyer: Having both the hardware and software gives us a leg up on the industry. It has in the past and will be more so in the future, as sites become more sensorized in the IoT [Internet of things] age. We can close a pretty tight loop between the field and the office. In the past, it took a lot to gather data in the field, but now it can be automated so we can collect more data with less effort. It has to be collected fast, because the real world changes fast. We want to make the information flow from one project member to the next. That's why we are in all areas of construction, from design to operations.    Figure 3: Mark Sawyer, Trimble director of construction industry strategy Grabowski: In which direction does Trimble see itself moving towards? Sawyer: Our tenet is to organize around our customers, not around ourselves. Customers need solutions involving hardware, software, and services, and each customer is different and complex. We choose to be in all three areas because customers frequently require more than one element to successfully implement a solution. We are going to stay the course to invest deeply in the 3 Cs. We see an acceleration in improving resource management on projects with automated data capture, AI [artificial intelligence], IoT, MR [mixed reality], indoor-outdoor positioning, connectivity, video, location-sensitive tagging, a tech-savvy workforce in the field, and software back in the office that quickly updates to deal with changes. www.trimble.com/Our_Products   And In Other News Here is one of the most recent posts made to the WorldCAD Access blog: How to resurrect your old Pebble smartwatch - - - Nanosoft releases nanoCAD Mechanica 9.0 ($300), their newest CAD application for mechanical engineers: 3D solid modeling kernel from C3D Labs Feature-based 3D modeling Extended export/import  Ribbon interface Learn more from nanocad.com/products/mechanica/updates/ - - - New from upFront.eZine Publishing, Ltd: Ralph Grabowski's What's Inside ARES 2019 reference guide. Learn all about what's new and what's updated in the latest DWG system from Graebert. 20 pages. PDF. Full color. Free. I count 56 new and updated commands, and system variables. (By comparison, Autodesk managed to get 6 new commands into last month's AutoCAD release.) Download from dropbox.com/s/m18css87sjvziaf/ares2019-whatsmnew.pdf - - - Augmented Intelligence is probably the better term for A.I., as I find it doubtful that intelligence can be made fully artificial. CIMdata PLM News is holding a Webinar later this month on augmented intelligence and CAD. Register at cimdata.com/en/education/educational-webinars/webinar-augmented-intelligence-is-critical-for-robust-digital-transformation  - - - Maxon, which makes 3D modeling, animation and rendering software, buys Redshift Rendering Technologies for its GPU-accelerated renderer. Price was not announced. Maxon is part of the Nemetschek Group. maxon.net/en-us/news/press-releases/article/maxon-acquires-redshift-rendering-technologies/ - - - Remember when Google boasted of asking job candidates dumb questions like ‘how many golf balls can you fit in a school bus?’ Google now: “Unsurprisingly those questions [aren't] predictive of future performance on the job." I love how they slide in the word 'unsurprisingly'. - - - Spain's CYPE software firm licenses modules from C3D Labs' C3D Toolkit for its line of Open BIM software: C3D Modeler for geometric modeling C3D Converter opening 3D models from other CAD systems CYPE developers integrated the C3D kernel in 2-3 weeks.  /www.cype.com/en/   Letters to the Editor Re: DraftSight News, in Case You Haven't Noticed Dassault Systemes announced a 2019 version of DraftSight, and the free version is no longer available. My free DraftSight 2018 SP31 edition states, "IMPORTANT NOTICE: all free versions of DraftSight will cease to run after 12/31/2019."  They also list a new 3D version offering and plans for cloud.     - Doug Vander Wilt     USA - - - Cloud isn't the answer. If you've ever worked on something sufficiently complex, even server drive latency can be problematic, let alone a network connection. The draw is for the bean counters. The engineers and designers suffer under cloud-based CAD. Cloud is fine for hobbyists.      - Fred Fredrick      Kalisiak Designs - - - Beginning with 2019 DraftSight will no longer have a free option: DraftSight 2019 for Windows is offered in paid versions only Once you download and install DraftSight 2019 (free 30-day trial or purchased version), you will no longer be able to download or access any previous free version of DraftSight (2018 or earlier) All free versions of DraftSight (2018 or earlier) will cease to run after 12/31/2019.  3ds.com/products-services/draftsight-cad-software/download-draftsight/     -Mike DeKoning. senior CAD coordinator     Sealed Air, USA The editor replies: A software company can do whatever it wants, but it would have been less nasty by Dassault to allow existing customers to use the free versions in perpetuity, and allow any better features in 2019 and later to attract payments. - - - Re: What Happens to BricsCAD? upfrontezine.com/2019/04/upf-1010.html Thanks for your attendance and reporting on the ABC2019. I look forward to seeing your talk reproduced as an article. Minor correction, Ralph Green didn’t attend the ABC2019. After reading your article, I bet he wish he had!     - Jason Bourhill     CAD Concepts, New Zealand - - - And a special mention goes out to you Ralph with your presentation (sans Powerpoint slides). This was one of the highlights from the day for myself and those I spoke to during the breaks. Thank you for sharing your time with us.      - Andy Reid (via WorldCAD Access) - - - I noticed your conversation with Scott Shuppert regarding use of social media. If you and Scott would like further data on the point, this slide from our latest Global CAD Trends Survey for 2018/19 may be helpful. It shows the ranking of social media (dead last) amongst all popular sources of information for CAD users and decision makers to keep up to date with the latest developments in the CAD industry. (This is based on survey responses from 626 CAD users and decisions makers around the world.) Amongst those who do use social media, usage was primarily of YouTube, LinkedIn and Facebook -- which had identical usage levels.     - Bill Gordon, vp business development     The Business Advantage Group, England The editor replies: Color me unsurprised. - - - Issue #1,010 (nice number) and an interesting write-up. Even I got hooked to read it, till my brain started humming, felt sorry for the losers, so I stopped.     - Herbert Grabowski   Re: Running Generic CADD in 2013 worldcadaccess.com/blog/2013/01/running-generic-cadd-in-2013.html I bought Generic CADD when I visited the US in the early nineties. I had no contact with CAD before, but with the excellent manuals, it took me only some weeks to get very familiar with nearly all its features.  Later I tried to convert to a more modern CAD program running directly under Linux, but I was very disappointed about the unergonomic behaviour. By chance I found out that GCadd runs excellent under the Dosbox. Printing/plotting  worked very well with GCadd, with following restriction:  From GCadd I generate either a Postspript (extension .DEV) or HPGL (extension .DPF) file, and then I have to copy the files manually to the printing/plotting device. Printing is done with the lpr-command (linux) to an HP-Network-printer, plotting with a cat-command to a tty-device, where the plotter (a CALCOP- design mate pen plotter) is connected directly serial.      - Matthias Foerster (via WorldCAD Access)     Germany Thank You, Readers Thank you to readers who donate towards the operation of upFront.eZine: Should you wish to support upFront.eZine through PayPal, then the suggested amounts are like these: $25 for individuals > paypal.me/upfrontezine/25 $175 for small companies > paypal.me/upfrontezine/175 $950 for for large companies > paypal.me/upfrontezine/950 Should Paypal.me not operate in your country, then please use www.paypal.com and the account of [email protected]. Or mail a cheque (US$ or CDN$ only, please) to upFront.eZine Publishing, Ltd., 34486 Donlyn Avenue, Abbotsford BC, V2S 4W7, Canada.   Notable Quotable "I send notes. I'm not a chambermaid whom you can ring at every moment. Today, most people act like they work at a switchboard in a hotel."       - Karl Lagerfeld

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