Issue #1,109 | Inside the Business of CAD | 18 October 2021
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The Open Design Alliance may well be one of the most important organizations in the world, for what the ODA develops is then implemented by many of its CAD member companies. And we use CAD to design the world.
Producing the ODA Summit
Some of the 1,200 members are well-known CAD vendors, but most are corporations who develop CAD viewing and editing tools for internal use. Members save time in not needing to develop code themselves.
At last month’s ODA Summit 2021 (sadly online, not in Munich as first planned — darn you, coronavirus!), we got a deep dive into what the ODA is working on. The ODA works on a lot of new stuff. I found myself on the drench end of a fire hose of information.
With the ODA’s founding in 1998, it first offered individual SDKs [software development kits] for DWG and DXF, and then DGN, general formats used by the CAD industry. During his keynote address, ODA president Neil Peterson described how much has changed in the last five years. (See figure below.) The first shift was for the ODA added SDKs that read and wrote PDF and 3D PDF files.
From there, it went to offering complete sets of interoperable technology packages for members working with CAD or BIM on any platform, including the Web. We see this in the recent explosion of CAD programs reading IFC [industry foundation classes] and/or Revit files; this is not the result of Autodesk being open, this is the Open Design Alliance opening things up.
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With so much information at the conference, I decided for this article to focus on just a few areas, and then present info about STEP support in a later issue. The conference is available as a four-part video at youtube.com/opendesignalliance:
Complete CAD Interoperability
Complete BIM Interoperability
Beyond Data Interoperability
Scan-to-BIM Panel Discussion
ODA president Neil Peterson during his keynote address
How Autodesk Helps Make the ODA Popular
Mr Peterson stated that 3Q 21 was the strongest quarter in the organization’s history for membership growth. Part of the reason for this is Autodesk’s changes and lack of changes.
Autodesk has had a tumultuous history with the ODA, from initially insisting there was no need for open access to the DWG file format (DXF was good enough, it declared), to a FUD campaign over the un/trustworthiness of DWG, to blocking use of “DWG” through the registered trademark process (it failed), to suing the ODA, to mimicking it with RealDWG, and then partially capitulating by become an ODA member, albeit on the IFC side of things.
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MicroCAD Software produces kitchen design software, where the quality of renderings and walkthroughs is crucial. The company had been an AutoCAD OEM customer for 23 years, but felt constrained by its limitations. To see where to go, MicroCAD made a list of pros and cons.
The advantages to using AutoCAD OEM is that it “transmits trust and is instantly recognized by designers”; it has a powerful and reliable ACIS-based modeler. MicroCAD told us that the disadvantages to AutoCAD OEM include
Limited rendering that has not changed since 2016
A walkthrough module that is the same as in AutoCAD 12; the technology is 30 years old
A form of GDI that prevents AutoCAD from showing rendered print previews as they will be printed
Shadows in fast-shade mode that cannot be updated with the kinds of normal computers used by MicroCAD’s clients
Response time for technical service that is long
Cost of royalties that has risen more than 50% in the last three years
With little development by Autodesk in recent releases of AutoCAD, MicroCAD had no ability to improve renderings of kitchens and other interior designs.
So, three years ago they began the switch to the ODA’s platform, which afforded them access to high quality renderings, speedy fixes, higher quality technical support, and an affordable fixed fee not based on sales. Improvements and fixes to ODA offerings are based on what programmers need, and not the wants of AutoCAD end users.
AutoKitchen running on the ODA-based DWG engine
Switching to the ODA, however, had its drawbacks:
Programming took MicroCAD longer, as tools available in AutoCAD had to be developed for use with ODA; DLLs (dynamic link libraries) could, however, be re-used with minor changes
Rendering isn’t great, but this drawback allowed MicroCAD to use a third-party renderer better suited to its needs
Solid modeling kernel is not as powerful as AutoCAD’s ShapeModeler
Most blocks worked correctly in ODA, but some had to be redrawn to work correctly
Most of MicroCAD’s time was spent on making the new UI look like the old UI (see figure above)
It took about two years for MicroCAD to make the ODA-based AutoKitchen run like the AutoCAD OEM-based one.
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Graebert GmbH is working with a special interest group inside the ODA to overcome the problem customers face when Autodesk stops supporting some software. (For instance, I have a side service in which I covert Actrix drawings abandoned by Autodesk to DWG.) For instance, this year the ODA added new internal classes to its MDT-compatible Mechanical SDK for converting mechanical objects to older versions.
“New product design has migrated away from DWG-based solutions,” said Graebert cto Robert Graebert. (See figure below.) Mostly, product design is now accomplished on proprietary systems from PTC, Dassault Systemes, and Siemens. “But drawings continue to be a key workflow in the industry.”
So, at the conference, Mr Graebert announced that his company was taking on the challenge to maintain Mechanical part information, “maintaining legacy drawings in the product design market.”
Customers tell him that there still a need to maintain part information in drawings. “In our estimation, there are billions of DWG part drawings that need to be updated for products still being manufactured or in active maintenance.”
Graebert GmbH cto Robert Graebert introducing ARES Mechanical
This led Graebert GmbH to write ARES Mechanical to handle custom objects originally created with AutoCAD Mechanical, such as part information, bills of materials, standards-compliant parts and annotations. “These objects are all inter-related and contain a lot of hidden complexity,” Mr Graebert said.
The ODA’s DWG support is insufficient, as it cannot update part information. “The part information in these drawings is not static. It is not sufficient to visualize balloons and bills of material; it is also important to access and edit all properties of referenced parts.”
So, the Mechanical SIG [special interest group] has import, export, and rendering (display) of mechanical objects working well. But not all versions of AutoCAD Mechanical are supported yet; more will be added. DXF export/import is missing; public APIs are being extended.
Q&A
Q: Is ODA planning to develop a DWG server engine to allow several users read and write the same DWG file? It seems like multiple editors could use merging similar to what software developers do with Git, by adding a visualization layer to help with conflict resolution.
A: At the moment we have no plans to develop such a fully functional server engine. But we have developed DWG Revisions technology that supports collaborative editing and can be used on servers.
Q: With ODA software, can you change the camera type to orthogonal? Do you have an example?
A: Yes, it is possible. Here is a code snippet (GS API):
From the DWG database side, it is also possible to use command PERSPECTIVE = 0.
Q: In which version will these new improvements and features mentioned today come out?
A: Most of new features presented are available in the latest release 22.8. Some feature may be in beta state, but in any case they are going to be ready this year. We have a release every month, and the last one this year will be 22.12.
Q: Were can I find documentation about all the features supported by the newest IFC format?
Al Dean, co-founder and former editor of Develop3D magazine in England, is now Global Communications Content Manager at Siemens Digital Industries Software.
Cyrena Respini, former editor-in-chief at CADalyst magazine, is now in marketing for Graebert GmbH.
You’re right, in that Intergraph patented OLE4DM [object linking and embedding for design and modeling], but you’re incorrect (by my recollection) on why the technology never went far. The OLE4DM Consortium was really starting to gain broad adoption and people were beginning to realize the potential of the technology.
It was then that Intergraph announced their submarine patent with a licensing agreement that was unacceptable to the consortium. It was this licensing deal that really killed OLE4DM, not the validity of the technology.
At the time that it all went dormant, multi-system demonstrations were being held involving multiple CAD vendors demonstrating the effectiveness of the approach. To this day, I still maintain that providing encapsulated data with associated evaluators is really the preferred way of exchanging data between systems.
This approach avoids translation and the even bigger issue of mis-evaluation of geometric data between systems. Boeing advanced this in their procedural surfaces where they “black-boxed” their representation and associated evaluators of their surfaces so that they could be seamlessly incorporated into other modeling systems.
Parasolid also introduced this notion of user-defined, procedural surfaces, though it’s unclear who all makes use of this function. Most people look at ACIS- or Parasolid-based systems as examples of how to avoid translation, but even more importantly, using a common kernel supports identical evaluation of the geometry.
Based on what is being said about CAD Direct, there aren’t corresponding evaluators being carried with the foreign geometry, but there is a B-rep “equivalent” created and maintained.
It sure is unfortunate that the OLE4DM approach never had a chance to really address multi-system interoperability. It would have made a considerable impact on the industry. - John Callen
The editor replies: I vaguely remember something about a consortium, so thanks for reminding me of it. In my experience, I never found OLE to work well, including my tries with OLE for D&M. Maybe the problem is that CAD vendors seemed to implement OLE only half-heartedly.
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I would say that Solid Edge is playing catch-up with CAD Direct. Solidworks (3D Interconnect) and Autodesk Inventor (AnyCAD) have had the ability to reference other native CAD models without conversion for years. - Mike DeKoning
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Dan Staples spotted the Solid Edge article that went out on the upFront.eZine and the caption for the first slide with him pictured, where it reads, “Dan Staples announcing that CAM Pro (for 2.5-axis milling) and Simcenter Flomaster (for fluid and thermal analysis) is available to any Solid Edge 2022 customer with a subscription.”
Solid Edge 2022 does not actually include Flomaster; it is in fact an extra-charge product.
Convergent modeling is proprietary Siemens technology, tightly integrated into Parasolid. It is available to third parties to license at extra cost, above a standard Parasolid license. This is unlike Synchronous Technology, which Siemens has chosen not to license. - Alice Bonasio, global public relations Siemens Digital Industries Software
Notable Quotable
“It’s not creative destruction, like the car taking over the horse and buggy: Google and Facebook have not replaced news; they don't make news.” - Rod Sims
Thank You, Readers
Thank you to readers who donate towards the operation of upFront.eZine:
KCL (small company donation): “Keep up the good work!”
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Issue #1,108 | Inside the Business of CAD | 11 October 2021
This issue is sponsored by CCE:
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Solid Edge 2022 began shipping last week, boasting of 500 new functions and improvements. I spoke with Siemens vp of mainstream engineering Dan Staples about the new features I found the most interesting.
Dan Staples announcing that CAM Pro (for 2.5-axis milling) and Simcenter Flomaster (for fluid and thermal analysis) is available to any Solid Edge 2022 customer with a subscription
New: CAD Direct
CAD Direct inserts CAD parts into Solid Edge assemblies from certain other systems, without translation. Changes made to the model in the originating CAD system are reflected in the copy stored in the Solid Edge assembly.
Ralph Grabowski: I’ll start right away with CAD Direct. It reminds me of the ’90s when Intergraph championed the use of OLE for D&M to place CAD models in other documents without translation. So I’m interested in the mechanism CAD Direct uses today.
[Intergraph patented OLE for Design and Modeling in 1993; the technology never went far, because Microsoft did not implement OLE well. At around the same time, in 1995, Intergraph first released Solid Edge. — Editor]
Dan Staples: OK, yeah, so, funny Ralph, that you should go back so far as the whole OLE [object linking and embedding] craze back in the ’90s. It is an interesting analogy to that.
The CAD Direct technology is not really a Windows technology, per se. I think the key piece of it is our ability to keep an intermediary file inside the assembly, so that you never have any external files.
I think that’s one of the biggest problems with data management. It’s kind of been this untold secret that when you translate a file you end up with a new extra file. When it comes to making an update, you’ve got this new extra file to deal with, right?
With CAD Direct, you don’t have that anymore and it does updates live. It’s all just done using internal technology.
A CAD Direct component inserted in a Solid Edge assembly being copied (shown in green)
Grabowski: It’s not translated, so is it some sort of visual or facet format where you grabbed the info out of the other CAD system?
Staples: No, it doesn’t use facets, because you actually treat them like b-reps. I think the easiest thing to think of is that the b-rep from the other CAD system is embedded inside our assembly, in a way that’s not visible to the user.
There is some intermediary geometry inside the assembly that’s managing that. When the originating system changes the model, then the internal b-rep changes.
Grabowski: Is this a function of Parasolid?
Staples: No, not particularly.
Grabowski: Where you say that it works with NX and SolidWorks, they both have Parasolid in common.
Staples: That is going to be your most reliable path, because they’re using the same format. But I would say that broadly it doesn’t matter what format you’re importing.
Grabowski: From the software launch video, it looks like Solid Edge interacts quite a bit with the imported object -- through handles, mates, constraints, and so on.
Staples: From the end users’ standpoint, they won’t be able to tell the difference between this or if they are using a Solid Edge file. It’s like you’re assembling a part file. Users won’t really be able to tell the difference other than it’s flagged in Pathfinder slightly differently. You hit the update links button to update the CAD Direct-linked file.
Grabowski: Then this leads me to the question of how the associative links are created and maintained?
Staples: We treat it very much like native solid geometry, which I think is probably the easiest way to think of it. This isn’t exactly technically correct, but it’s close enough. Solid Edge has a thing called “internal components,” which are part files embedded in the assembly. They’re treated just like an external component, but they never appear on disk.
You were talking about OLE before, where you used to have the notion of embedded or linked Excel files. Solid Edge has the ability to embed part files. This is largely the same. The body is available to us, the facets are available to us. We just don’t need a file on disk to deal with it.
Grabowski: I’m trying to understand how the link works for updates. If the external part is updated in the other CAD system, then there is some notification that this is happening. Where can that other CAD system be -- on the same network?
Staples: It will be like a link. That link in Windows can be anywhere, as long as it’s a fully resolvable, qualified path name. It wouldn’t necessarily have to be on your local drive as long as it’s a file system link that we can understand and run through, it would know the information.
Grabowski: So the source CAD system does not have to be available. Because Visio translators need to have Visio, they actually launch Visio in the background to do the translation.
Staples: The source CAD system does not have to be available now with CAD Direct.
Let’s take it even further with a diesel engine in a locomotive. You get the engine from Cummings or somebody, and you do not want to create 2,000 part files on your disk for that engine, because honestly you don’t care about the 2000 part files. You just care about the engine.
And yet you also don’t necessarily want to treat it like a part per say, because it’s not. It has moving parts. It’s a real thing.
And so our internal components let you take either a part or subassembly and put it in your assembly, and it acts just like the same thing. There aren’t any external files made, and so that actuator or that engine fully exists within the assembly in what’s called an internal component. It has structure in Pathfinder [model tree], you can see how it’s composed. You can articulate the parts, but you don’t have all that gloop on disk or in your PDM [product data management] system to manage. It’s treated like a part that came along for the ride.
Grabowski: So ‘gloop’ is a technical term then?
Staples: It is. I’m glad you recognize that. I’ve been using that since the ’90s as well.
Improved: Convergence Modeling
Convergent modeling from Siemens lets you mix and match solids and meshes in a single model. (Dassault has in its ACIS kernel something similar.) Convergent modeling lets you interact with meshes imported from scans (and other non-CAD sources) with solids (b-reps).
During the launch video, we saw a solids cutout added to a mesh handle, followed by an array of solids in the mesh and a Boolean operation to cut a hole. See figure below.
Hole with solid fillets cut in a part made of meshes
Grabowski: You’ve been working on hybrid modeling for a number of years now, as an offshoot of Parasolid. With this new release of Solid Edge, have you arrived at doing all that hybrid modeling needs to do? Or is there is there more to develop?
Staples: Let me answer that in two parts. Typically, we have been using the term ‘Convergent Modeling’, which is the Siemens term for the merger between facets and b-reps.
And yes, it’s enabled by Parasolid technology, but it’s not a part of our Parasolid modeling kernel. So it is something unique to Siemens and not necessarily available when you license Parasolid. [Updated:}Convergent modeling is proprietary Siemens technology, tightly integrated into Parasolid. It is available to third parties to license at extra cost, above a standard Parasolid license. This is unlike Synchronous Technology, which Siemens has chosen not to license.
Grabowski: That’s like synchronous technology then.
Staples: Yes, it’s exactly like synchronous technology [in that ST cannot be licensed even when you license the Parasolid kernel].
You’re never complete, but I’d say we’re very close to completion. The big nut to crack was Booleans. In the past, when you did a Boolean between a b-rep and a facet mesh, the result would be that everything became facets, whereas now everything stays in its native form.
So when you do a Boolean between a b-rep and a facet, you end up with all the b-reps staying b-reps, and all the facets staying facets. It’s super efficient in terms of the way it’s done and stored. I do feel like it’s closure to the story we’ve been building over the last couple years.
Grabowski: I’m not super familiar with what else you’ve done in Convergence Modeling. Do you also convert facet meshes to b-reps?
Staples: We do have some facet mesh to b-rep conversion as part of our reverse engineering. In terms of functionality, it’ll find planes and cylinders, and cones, and so on.
The other thing we do that’s really cool and unique is that we can do almost all operations on faceted models with Synchronous Technology: move facets, we can round edges, we can do shells or thin walls -- so we don’t care whether they are facets or b-reps or a combination of the two.
I do think it’s a final frontier here, because meshes for a long time were the domain of the film industry and character modeling.
Grabowski: What happens when a hybrid part is exported to another CAD system?
Staples: It is all converted to meshes before being exported.
New: Point Clouds
Grabowski: Point clouds, are they new to 2022?
Staples: They are. We had done a prototype of this a year or two ago.
What we mean by point clouds? So it’s been possible to have lots of points in Solid Edge for a very long time, but they had to be displayed as triangles or b-reps. Now they stay points.
When you scan a plant, each point carries the color and spatial [x,y,z] location, and so you literally have at a minimum millions of points and sometimes billions of points. During rotation, Solid Edge renders them in real time at high speed.
That’s the thing that’s so interesting and is still amazing to me: that the points are so dense that you can even zoom in and it still looks good. It’s just amazing, the density of these point clouds. This is kind of ‘secret sauce science’ stuff. And that’s also the technical term, by the way.
Point cloud inserted surrounding an assembly (lower middle of the image)
Grabowski: The part I found interesting was you taking a measurement between a solids component and part of the point cloud. So I was curious: where on the point cloud is that measurement taken from?
Staples: So it’ll be taken from the point itself.
Grabowski: But which point? is it a rough measurement or? I’m curious about the accuracy.
Staples: Well, it’s only as accurate as the laser scan is accurate. But they are extraordinarily accurate. If you were to measure to a rusty water tank, you would be able to tell the difference between the rusty part and the not rusty part. I mean the lasers are super amazing these days.
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I’ll close what’s-new in Solid Edge 2022 by describing one more feature that I found interesting: component colorization. See figure below.
Coloring parts according to designers’ names.
To color parts, you assign colors to properties. This lets you visually identify which supplier or designer made the part, or the materials from which they were made. Siemens calls this “dynamic visualization.”
What Ralph Grabowski Thinks
Solid Edge 2022 is a remarkable upgrade, with some catch-up features (I’m looking at you, point clouds and Xcelerator Share) but also some really important new technologies, like the solids-mesh editing and CAD Direct.
Blogger Matt Lombard feels Siemens is aiming Solid Edge at big engineering: “There’s a lot of stuff aimed at plant design, large assemblies, fluid flow processing, framing, and piping. See the theme?”
Windows 11 became available for download last week. There was one prime reason for Microsoft to invent a Windows 11: to force corporations to replace 11-“incompatible” hardware with new gear, boosting the profits of the HPs and Dells of the world. Today's hardware pretty much lasts forever (well, a decade or two anyhow), which is a problem for hardware makers, so we can think of 11 as hardware on subscription.
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Here are some of the posts that appeared recently on my WorldCAD Access blog:
I’ve said for a long time that the only difference between human intelligence and machine intelligence is that humans make random mistakes. That is only partly tongue-in-cheek. - Owen Wengerd, ManuSoft
The editor replies: It is random mistakes (chaos) that makes progress possible. Think penicillin and sticky notes.
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It should be mentioned that any article on A.I. instantly becomes hilarious when you replace the capital “I” with a lowercase “L.” E.g.:
How dangerous is Al? Can Al ever be stopped?
Can Al turn my savings into millions?
Our extensive use of Al to make our product better failed miserably.
Etc. - Matt Stachoni
The editor replies: Eliza should’ve been named Al!
Some of my judgments and feelings are due to my many years of active work in an academic A.I. lab where we dealt with expert systems, machine understanding of natural language, sub-definite calculations (something more general than today’s generative design), and more.
On the one hand, I do not like widely spread today’s hype and vulgar simplification of problems. On the other, I do believe that much more fundamental R&D can implement much more in the area of A.I. advances.
From what I have heard, BricsCAD applies machine learning for classification of BIM elements based on geometry to understand what is a wall and what is a window, as well as analyzing whether parts can be produced as sheet metal.
The title on isicad’s September cover is “A.I. Engineer.” In Russian at least, “И. И. Инженер” is definitely interpreted as “initials + last name.” - David Levin
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Concerning the 4th statement, systems with natural intelligence have a standard set of basic goals of functioning, survival and procreation. They develop behavioral goals by analyzing the state of their own body and the environment. In the process of achieving various goals of behavior, they solve many different problems.
It would be strange if an artificial system, which does not have the basic goals of functioning at all and receives goals of behavior from the outside, would be a complete analogue. We can only talk about a way to solve specific problems. - Sergey Perovskiy (on isiscad)
Notable Quotable
“The rule of the tech economy is that everything must eventually get bought by one of the monopolies.” - Paris Marx
Thank You, Readers
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Issue #1,107 | Inside the Business of CAD | 4 October 2021
You’ve probably seen CAD demos that start with a square box covered with grid lines, which are then prodded and pulled to arrive at a curvaceous shape. This is sub-d (sub-division) modeling.
XShape modeler from Dassault Systems interactively editing the body of a remote control with sub-d modeling (image source SolidApps).
In the figure above, the vertical and horizontal lines on the body lay out the subdivisions. The lines in blue are being interactively pushed (by 5.24mm), much like in clay making. The body is a surface model, which can be converted to a solid, if not too complex.
We are so used to working with the precision afforded by profiles and solids (b-rep modeling) that the slapdash nature of subdivisions seems like an unhelpful distraction. Nevertheless, it has its place in the designer’s toolbox.
Here Jonas Kunze looks at the pros and cons of using sub-d modeling for our design work.
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Brilliant concepts need brilliant tools. Otherwise, creative and innovative ideas can fizzle out soon after they emerge. This raises an important question: do designers today have tools that match the creative flair inherent in design as a discipline? I examine the question with reference to sub-division (sub-d) modeling.
What Is Sub-D Modeling?
Subdivision surface modeling is a concept with which designers may well be familiar, since this technology represents the state-of-the-art in digital modeling. The technique comes from character design, and was originally introduced by animation studio Pixar as a faster way to model animated characters and CGI [computer-generated imagery].
With sub-d modeling, shapes are achieved by manipulating control points through several kinds of push and pull actions. The technology is incorporated into a number of software tools used in design, such as freeware Blender (see figure below) and Dassault X-Shape (see figure above).
Sub-d modeling in Blender (image source Konstantinos Karvouniaris)
Advantages to Sub-D Modeling
Sub-d quickly gained popularity due to the time-saving it offers. Its use then expanded beyond character animation (such as in computer-animated cartoons and games) to other industries, such as industrial and automotive design.
The technique includes the following advantages:
Time efficiency. Subdivision modeling is a quick approach to sketching. Once users are familiar with the software, results can be achieved with substantial time savings, especially when compared to other tools like NURBS [non-uniform rational B-splines].
Uniformity. Sub-d performs well when designing organic shapes (such as cartoon dinosaurs) and where little variation is required; this is why it was created originally for animated cartoons. This makes it a fitting tool where overarching symmetry and uniform design results must be created fast.
However, results may be less than ideal when wanting to imprint a unique identity on a product.
Convenience and familiarity. The intuitive nature of sketching in sub-d makes it a convenient choice for designers who are familiar with NURBS tools in CAD. Sub-d is similar to polygonal modeling, making the familiarity factor a plus. For many designers, sub-d is the go-to solution whenever objects cannot be easily modeled with NURBS in CAD, for example in the case of styling surfaces (see figure below).
Overall, we can say that subdivision modeling is suited to tasks where quick visualization results are more important than precision.
Automotive styling with sub-d modeling (image source Adobe)
Disadvantages of Sub-D
We cannot forget that this modeling system was originally developed to recreate organic shapes (a.k.a. human and other non-prismatic shapes). This is very different from the kinds of inanimate objects common to mechanical design, explaining sub-d’s short-comings:
Fast to Slow. Speed is not a constant in subdivision modeling. While getting an initial model takes little time, there is often a speed mismatch between the subsequent stages of the design process; progress in later stages slows down. Sub-d eventually falls short in automotive design, where renditions of concepts become increasingly detailed as ideas are discussed, worked on, and reworked.
Lack of Precision. Speed is important in commercially-oriented processes, but there is a price to pay for sub-d’s time savings: lack of precision. Control and precision are paramount in automotive and other designs as they play a crucial role in defining value and impact the product’s final price. When it comes to using sub-d, there is an implicit assumption that designers will have to accommodate a certain degree of inaccuracy.
Non-iterative. Subdivision modeling does not lend itself well to the iteration loops needed in the automotive design process, because every change requires starting from scratch. As others have stated, one of the shortcomings of this technique is the lack of continuity. So, to add details or make changes in later stages, designers resort to other tools. In this sense, sub-d inserts disconnection and fragmentation into the process.
Many designers agree that modeling tools currently available have important limitations. In the case of sub-d, we cannot deny its usefulness, especially for first-stage visualization purposes. But given its shortcomings, can this technology be enriched, complemented, or replaced? One area where sub-d works well is in interactive virtual reality modeling.
In the absence of a better option, sub-d is the fastest way to generate the impression of an idea. It is certainly handy for visualizing concepts to assess their feasibility. But since this technology is admittedly lacking in dimensional accuracy, is it possible that it has outlived its usefulness?
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Models from 3DfindIT.com are inserted into VidiPlus via drag’n drop, which then appear on the screen for everyone to see. CAD models can be sliced, rotated, zoomed, and made transparent. More at www.cadenas.de and vidiplus.com.
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Siemens last week expanded its Xcelerator offering by launching “Xcelerator as a Service” or XaaS, software based on MindSphere, Mendix, Supplyframe, and TeamCenter X. It offers collaboration, mechanical design, electronics, and software development on the cloud. sw.siemens.com/en-US/digital-transformation/cloud
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QuadriSpace releases Document3D Suite 2022 consisting of Pages3D for technical documentation and Publisher3D for technical illustrations. The new Detail View Markup creates illustrations with zoomed views of 3D models.
A new part filter sorts and identifies parts meeting user-defined criteria. Part metadata can be imported from and exported to Excel for access to ERP and PLM data. Thirty-day demo (after registration) and more info from quadrispace.com/products/whats_new_2022.
Letters to the Editor
I’ve been watching the consolidation of the CAM [computer-aided manufacturing] industry with great interest.
Companies have acquired an extensive portfolio of CAM products, but for the most part have been unable to consolidate them, due to their inherent proprietary nature. The proprietary approach ensures that manufacturing knowledge encoded into each resides solely in each.
Much like CAD systems of the past were faced with a similar proprietary representation which locked users into their platform, which encouraged [intermediary] data exchange formats, this CAM consolidation could also be the motivation for a CAM interoperability standard. Such a standard does exist in STEP-NC, an ISO standard which would provide a neutral file format to exchange process data between CAM systems.
Maybe the time is right for STEP-NC -- depending on whether the acquirers are looking for ways to consolidate their CAM assets. - John Callen
The editor replies: Software companies that are acquiring CAM software would want something like STEP-NC, but I am finding that data integration between acquired companies (under the larger entity) is an inexplicably slow process. (Nemetschek Group might be the poster child for this.) Perhaps this is why Autodesk rips its acquired software apart!
Investment companies that acquire CAM software would not care about integration.
Mr Callen responds: You're right. Investment companies that just want to milk the cash cow, and would not care about interoperability within their portfolio.
Though STEP-NC could provide interoperability across a vendor’s CAM portfolio, it would also potentially allow migration to a CAM product outside the portfolio. MCAD went through a similar cannibalization scare, which really didn't materialize. Users still like to use what they like to use.
Re: A.I.’s Fatal Flaw
In upFront.eZine issue 1,105, you wrote “The blackbox crutch executives can say decisions were made by AI, and so deny culpability.” This is the Sergeant Schultz Defense (“I know nussink”) and it usually fails. See en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idiot_defense - Don Beaton
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For all my techie friends: a great article by CAD’s equivalent of Gandalf the Grey. What is AI, and what has *really* been accomplished so far? - MattyKUSA via Twitter
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You wrote: “We see obsessiveness over AI because it is the ultimate computing problem.” This is truly a factor, but so are economics. Investments in technology are made in hopes of strong returns on capital. Technology has profitably replaced a large chunk of the muscular tasks that were once the province of humans.
The big economic opportunities now lie in replacing intellectual labor, which is generally expensive labor. Computers replaced plenty of intellectual work already. I once worked in an insurance company; by 1980, the sea of clerks of the earlier era had largely been replaced by mainframes and a lake of programmers. Now the less repetitive, more complex intellectual labor is where the opportunities are.
As for CAD, while I am sure that AI will power certain tasks, AI is far from being able to do the core work, which is design. Certainly in AEC, we are far from organizing all the disparate knowledge that underlies a design in a manner such that AI can use it.
We already see this problem in BIM, where BIM evangelists and salespeople want to credit BIM for benefits that substantially arise from Integrated Project Delivery (IPD). IPD is the only current way we have to get all the needed knowledge into the design, which is not to ignore things like automated checks for building code compliance.
Lastly, as a species, we are going through plenty of changes of what it means to be human. A few years ago I was astonished to read that significant numbers of teens were more comfortable texting their friends than speaking with them face-to-face.
Back in 1976, Joseph Weizenbaum published Computer Power and Human Reason. In the mid 1960s he had invented (designed) what we today call a chatbot. ELIZA was a very early piece of AI (See en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ELIZA for details.)
At that time it operated using a teletype machine interface. In one version ELIZA acted like a psychotherapist. Weizenbaum was struck, and alarmed, when his secretary developed a strong emotional attachment to the program. Thus his book, which raises the now-old and still unresolved question of how we will be changed by what we have created. - Leo Schlosberg
The editor replies: I remember running Eliza on the university mainframe computer at in the late 1970s. It very quickly became repetitive in its answers.
I don’t think that humans change in reaction to new technology; we adapt. For instance, our fingers gained muscle memory for touch typing, and then for typing on small glass screens.
Mr Schlosberg responds: What got Weizenbaum going was the secretary’s (and other people as well) reaction and attachment.
The specific version was one that mimicked Rogerian therapy (pioneered by Carl Rogers, also known as “nondirective therapy” or “client-centered therapy,” and based on pretty much rephrasing what the person said in an affirming way or asking modest questions, like “How did that make you feel?”). That may be the ELIZA you met but possibly it was a different version.
I almost wrote you today after seeing a few articles on AI. One was in an archaeology magazine about an application in which the AI was better than archaeologists at matching pottery shards. That, plus your article got me to checking in on radiologists, who surely are ripe for substantial displacement/replacement by AI.It was in a professional publication and not very incisive.
The editor replies: Humans yearn for non-human attachments, because they are faithful and cause no problems, the way that other humans do — like a dog, but without the problems dogs create.
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Nobody is better than Ralph Grabowski at telling the emperor of software he has no clothes. Worried your job will be replaced by a computer? Take 5 minutes and read Ralph Grabowski’s "AI's Fatal Flaw" and you’ll feel a lot smarter. - Roopinder Tara via Twitter
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With Minsky, perhaps we just misinterpreted his “Within a generation.” Assuming the human race survives, it will happen within a generation. We just have no idea which one! :) - Robin Capper
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I've been relying on Ralph Grabowski's commentary on the CAD industry for nearly three decades just myself. He never fails to provide something new. Here, I learned two new terms that describe the AI crutch:
The Black Box Crutch
The Boombox Crutch - Darren Young via Linked-In
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Is today’s AI just a collection of rules and parameters, that the computer uses as boundaries and never forgets? If so, should we not call it artificial ‘intelligence’, but just ‘artificial rote memorization’, or “ARM” ? - Peter Lawton
The editor replies: True AI would make inferences from data presented. Problem is, if it were to do that, we would have no idea how it arrived at its conclusion, and so would be unable to confirm if it was correct.
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Another eloquent and insightful piece of writing. Common sense in this industry is getting to be uncommon. - Jess Davis
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I agree with most of what you say about AI. I do believe that advances are being made. I saw this on a blog and thought it was pretty amazing: “OpenAI Codex Live Demo.”
- Conan Witzel
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A friend of mine said around 1990 the ultimate sentence about AI, which has been true since then, and always will be, more so than Moor´e’s Law: “Artificial Intelligence is everything computers still cannot do.” - Fernando Valderrama
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I have enjoyed reading your upFront.eZine for most of its 21 years. Having corresponded with you previously, I feel you will find the discussion linked below to be interesting and informative: Online Conversation: Understanding Transhumanism.
Best line in your article: “What is AI’s fatal flaw? It cannot replicate human metaphysics; the rational cannot conceive of the irrational.” Many thanks for your excellent journalistic efforts. - Harold Chaney
The editor replies: The video notes that an alternative name proposed for AI had been “complex information processing,” which would be more accurate, but that “artificial intelligence” was considered more aspirational. “There is something about a term about something that we can’t achieve that inspires people to think beyond existing constraints.”
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Your writing about AI in your latest issue is excellent. Thank you for your voice of human rationality (or is it human irrationality, or both?). A much needed dose of whatever it is (intelligence). - Rob Snyder
Notable Quotable
“If people yelling on Twitter can cause policy change at Apple, imagine what will happen when nation states exert pressure to increase the scope of on-device searches.” - Diogo Mónica
Thank You, Readers
Thank you to readers who donate towards the operation of upFront.eZine:
Michael Kuzmik
Jeremy Powell at Vectorworks (large company donation): “Keep up the great work on upFront.eZine, Ralph!”
To support upFront.eZine through PayPal.me, then I suggest the following amounts:
Issue #1,106 | Inside the CAD Business | 27 September 2021
Guest editorial by Dave Edwards
Back in the day, most CAD output was done on pen plotters driven by DOS-based software. Yes, there really was work done before the advent of Windows and the Mac, done with real pens and real ink. This was long before PostScript printers and standardized font formats.
The font format developed by Autodesk for AutoCAD, for instance, is named SHX [short for “compiled shape”]. This is a vector-based font format, which uses only lines and arcs in character (or “glyph”) definitions; no fills. See the figure below.
To get different font weights on the output, specific pen numbers were assigned. To draw a thicker line, you specified a thicker pen, and then the CAD program literally instructed the plotter to pick the specific pen from the pen carousel. See figure below.
Carousel holding pens of various weights (image source softsolder.com)
A typical carousel held up to eight pens of different sizes placed in numbered locations. The sizes were based on standard drafting pen sizes: 0.25mm, 0.35mm, and so on. In the CAD software, you placed all entities that needed to be drawn by a specific pen width on their own layer. It was very restrictive, and pens running dry were a royal pain. This changed so much for the better when inkjet plotters came on the market.
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As font technology developed, the need for WYSIWYG — What You See is What You Get — displaying of fonts became standard. But it was still a while before you could see the effect of adding a pen weight to a font on the screen. VersaCAD was an early exception, as it had a system by which the user could select the output scale and it would display the desired pen weights on the screen.
Special Character Standards
When the first CAD systems came out, there was only the ASCII standard for character codes. This was carried over from teletype machines: when a letter was pressed on one machine, the same letter would be printed out at the receiving end.
But ASCII had specifications for only 128 characters, of which the first 30 were for controlling the teletype machine. In CAD, the immediate need was for special characters, such as degree, plus/minus, and diameter. What Autodesk did was add these characters to specific locations in their font definitions.
Later, when the ANSI code was developed for handling 255 characters, it added mostly foreign characters and still there was no location for diameter. (Don’t get me started on using “O-slash” for diameter!)
The advent of modern font formats, such as Postscript and Truetype, permitted large sets of international standards and so Unicode was developed by an international committee. The committee determines character locations for foreign, technical, and graphic characters. Using this system, a font developer can create a font with special characters in these defined locations; applications that want to display those characters know which codes to use when calling a font.
How Many Characters? Where’s the One I Want?
Unicode originally had about 62,000 characters; the latest version has specifications for over 143,000. But this doesn’t mean that all fonts have all characters. The Unicode version of the “universal” Arial font, for instance, has only the original 62,000.
Having been a member of the Unicode Consortium in the past, I’m familiar with the process of adding characters to the standard. Applications are submitted each year and then they are voted on. If you ever have the chance to go through the Unicode standard, you’ll see enormous character sets for language systems, such as Japanese Kanji, and even more for “artist” systems like Klingon. (It was never approved.)
The current version of Unicode covers most of the characters needed for architectural projects, but not all of them. This is where it gets hard for users and for CAD/BIM applications. What happens when the font I need to use doesn’t have the character I want?
Most of the “big name” fonts should have most of them. When they don’t, the CAD application handles things in a couple of ways:
First, fall back on characters that look similar. For years AutoCAD had the error of using the “null character” location for the diameter symbol. Many fonts had diameter, but not the null character; in this case, AutoCAD punts on one character location and uses another. Often, this has to be done for several characters and rolling back to several other lookalikes.
Next, fall back to characters in a different font known to have the characters needed. AutoCAD does this with ISO fonts, but this can look terribly strange.
There’s a major problem when the character you need has no Unicode specification and so is not found in any major font. This is the case with the 1/16 and finer fractions. Unicode specifies fractions up to 1/8 and related fractions, but not 1/16. What most CAD systems do is fake fractions by drawing them using individual characters — but that can look weird too.
The Real Issue is Height
The real problem with fonts in CAD and BIM software is scaling. This is especially important when going from one CAD system to another. SHX fonts are still used frequently in DWG programs, such AutoCAD; these fonts use a different scaling method than Truetype fonts.
As SHX characters are composed of just lines, the height of characters are set to the exact height of uppercase letters. See figure below.
CAD defines the size of text by the height of capital letters
This is, however, not the case the desktop publishing fonts. To understand why not, let’s look at how typography works.
A Bit About Typography
There’s an ancient history that sets standards for typography, which poses problems for the CAD world. When it comes to sizing characters, what is important is the distance from line to line, and not the size of the uppercase letters. In laying out text for printing, the lengths of columns need to be maintained, no matter which typeface is used. In fact, font designers can make the size of uppercase letters any height they wish.
When the size of a font is specified for printing, point size is used (72.72... points to an inch). But this determines the spacing between lines and not necessarily the size of the characters. Huh??? As a CAD font designer myself, it took me years to wrap my head around why it is done this way.
Go into any word processor and pick a handful of typefaces and insert a few capital letters. I created the text seen in the figure below in Microsoft Word, setting the size of the large letters to 72 points. Notice that each one has a different height.
Microsoft Word drawing the capital letters of different fonts at 72 points
So how do you create Truetype text at the correct size in CAD when a contract requires all text be 1/8" tall? This is the trick most CAD and BIM application use that causes the problems:
They inspect the curves that make up one of the characters to determine its actual size. AutoCAD uses the character “A” but the letter “M” should be used, as has been historically done in typesetting.
The application then scales the text slightly up or down so that the size of the characters are at the right size. The figure below shows how the same text appears in AutoCAD:
Autodesk AutoCAD drawing the capital letters of different fonts at 72 points
This poses the next problem when drawings with text are imported into other CAD systems that use different scaling mechanisms. You most likely see this when you use SHX in one application and an equivalent Truetype font in the receiving application. Because Truetype fonts are created using boundaries, CAD often scales them down the text to account for the height of uppercase characters.
The good news is that it has gotten better over the years. For instance, the developers of Revit first used a different scaling system than did AutoCAD. A few years ago, Autodesk changed the font scaling in Revit, which made for loads of fun fixing all the files.
(Years ago I created a system for converting SHX fonts to Truetype format. It’s a very long progress with many steps. The biggest issue is getting the math correct when a boundary is added to characters to correctly compensate line lengths as heights of uppercase characters are reduced. I created a Truetype set to substitute for standard SHX fonts RomanS and Simplex. If you’re interested in them, contact me.)
So, What’s the Point?
I just wanted to get this information down so that whenever a question about fonts arises, users will have the information at the ready.
BIM is supposed to collaborative, yet text fidelity is a stumbling block. The round trip of CAD to BIM to CAD can be a nightmare.
This is why most users landed on using something like Arial for all their work. (It is a modern clone of Helvetica, and it’s a boring-looking font.) Arial has some disadvantages when used for technical documents, but it’s become a standard.
Just know that in most applications, you no longer have to be worried about how the fonts are created to get the correct size.
Industry Musings
Having fought the good fight and lost over much of this, I naturally have opinions about all this.
In all these years, too much has been just a patchwork-kludge. We have Unicode characters for much of what we need. Why are they not being used? Feet and inches marks used in dimensions should use the prime (') and double prime (") characters, not curley quotes (’ or ”). AutoCAD’s SHX fonts don’t have copyright, registered, or trademark character — just to name a few.
There needs to be an industry committee that specifies font standards for CAD and BIM. Its role would be to brand fonts approved for having specific sets of characters and sets of internal heights, so that scaling no longer is an issue.
There’s a section in Unicode called a “Private Dictionary,” which AutoCAD uses for locations of needed characters not found in Unicode. There needs to be an effort to get more of these characters to have set locations and then get them published, so that font designers can create their fonts with these characters. This is already being done for fonts needed in music publishing.
The Bottom Line
For BIM really to be a collaborative venture, it needs to put into place several standards, and fonts is one of the basic ones that has been overlooked. CAD firms felt that by simply adopting Truetype (and not even OpenType) they covered the issue — not so!
I did what I could while I was still more active, but it fell mostly on deaf years. Vendors have had more important functions to get into BIM, such as handling big projects and multi-user collaboration. Some of the nuts and bolts have, as a result, been left in the dust.
END RANT
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Dave Edwards develops Project Newplex, an advanced SHX font for technical documents. He is an application feature consultant and technical documentation writer. You can contact him through pragarchdesigntech@substack.com.
[This article was reproduced with permission from PADT, the Prag Arch Design Tech newsletter in which Mr Edwards explains how to make BIM work. I find it very useful. View his articles at pragarchdesigntech.substack.com.]
GT-SUITE from Gamma Technologies performs 0D/1D/3D multi-physics CAE simulations of the physics of fluid flow, thermal, mechanical, electrical, magnetic, chemistry, and controls. It includes 3D modeling with built-in structural and thermal 3D FEA (with in-situ meshers), 3-D multi-body dynamics with flexible bodies and 3D CFD. gtisoft.com
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Vectorworks launches the 2022 editions of its software:
Architect
Landmark
Spotlight
Fundamentals
Braceworks
ConnectCAD
Vision
Vectorworks Designer has been renamed “Vectorworks Design Suite.” Vectorworks is the first major BIM application to run natively on Apple silicon processors, running some processes 4x faster. vectorworks.net/en-CA/2022
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Here are some of the posts that appeared recently on my WorldCAD Access blog:
I thought you might find this interesting, if only to illustrate how some in the academic corner of the computing world view CAD: “A New Era for Mechanical CAD” at queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=3469844 by Jessie Frazelle
A few eyebrow raisers, such as “instances” vice “blocks” and missing things like the Blockify command in BricsCAD or any mention of LISP, etc. The author is evidently not a CAD-slinger. - Richard Webb
The editor replies: Her primary concern appears to be that because CAD is so old, it is not capable of modern computing, such as multi-core. The problem with her argument is not the age of the code (which has been refreshed over the decades) but CAD’s inability to predict user operations, and as a result cannot run on multiple CPU cores.
I have a similar problem with my M720 Logitech Triathlon mouse. Initially I connected with Logitech’s Unifying USB receiver, when it started doing awkward things in clicking and dragging. Sometimes it didn’t respond with click, but after a while it jumped like I was rapidly clicking.
After I read this thread, and found the comments by H. R. Puffenstuff, I tried switching the connection to Bluetooth and discarding the wireless Unifying USB plug. Then it worked right. It works well, like my first use of wireless USB.
Hence I conclude this is the USB receiver’s problem. Thanks for the inspiration. - Adi Dewanto (via WorldCAD Access)
Congratulations Ralph, this is a VERY impressive body of work which helped (hundreds of ?) thousands of people become proficient in CAD! - Malcolm Davies
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I wish that Bricsys would team up with you again. Not a fan of the current documentation. Web pages are a pain to navigate and, of course, impossible to highlight and add notes to. The auto-generated (apparently) off-line help files are... not good. - Richard Webb
Notable Quotable
“So when big corporations accuse you of copyright infringement, you can get fined, lose your Internet access, lose all income from your videos, be blocked from the platforms where you make your living.
“But when big corps infringe on our copyright, the war on piracy is forgotten.” - Nytt år, samme Børge
Thank You, Readers
Thank you to readers who donate towards the operation of upFront.eZine:
R L Capper
Stanley Przybylinski
To support upFront.eZine through PayPal.me, then I suggest the following amounts:
Issue #1,105 | Celebrating 36 years writing about CAD | 20 September 2021
Another in the upFront.eZine series on problems posed by complexity
In the 2020s, artificial intelligence’s (AI) changed from a technology to a crutch:
The blackbox crutch — executives can say decisions were made by AI, and so deny culpability
The boombox crutch — marketing departments can claim their products employ AI, unlike competitors, and so you ought to buy the AI-enabled ones
How did AI sink so low?
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Earlier this year, Boston Robotics released a promotional video of three robots “flawlessly and soulfully dancing in rhythm.” An awestruck digital evangelist exclaimed, “Imagine what AI-powered machines will be able to do in the next 5-10 years. 1 ”
We can’t know if the digital evangelist believes his prophecy as he is, after all, an evangelist mandated to spread good digital news.
Predictive vision modeler Filip Piekniewski2 pointed to the reality behind the staged dance: “A machine is performing a set of pre-programmed moves assisted with a bunch of PID [proportional integral derivative] controllers, just like any better CNC [computer numerical control] machine 20 years ago. In this case the machine is made in a form of a humanoid to fool naive people into believing it has a shred of intelligence in it.”
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Join C3D Labs at its software developers’ conference, October 14 at 10:00am CEST. See the latest developments in the C3D Toolkit SDK, designed for engineering software developers.
‘Imagine what AI could do in the next x years’ has been a rallying cry of AI [artificial intelligence] proponents since the 1960s. In 1967, cognitive computer scientist Marvin Minsky asserted that “Within a generation... the problems of creating artificial intelligence will be substantially solved. 3 ”
The birth of AI in the late 1950s is now closer to the start of World War One than it is to today, to misquote a meme. Rather than having solved the problems of AI, we are arriving at a better understanding of why AI doesn’t work well.
Melanie Mitchell in her paper “Why AI is Harder Than We Think” 4 proposes that the thinking of AI researchers are infected with fallacies.
Fallacy: Narrow Intelligence Is On a Continuum With General Intelligence
After we saw DeepMind’s AlphaGo win a game of Go5 (apparently the hardest game of all for humans to win), AI enthusiasts used the event as proof general AI is plausible. Then Watson went on to do poorly at predicting cancer diagnoses 6, while GPT-3 wrote lots of nonsensical articles 7.
Small advances are no proof of eventually arriving at an ultimate destination. The engineering brother of philosopher Hubert Dreyfus, Stuart Dreyfus, wrote in 2012, “It was like claiming that the first monkey that climbed a tree was making progress towards landing on the moon.8 ”
Elon Musk had promised Level 5 (unattended) self-driving by 2020 to purchasers of Tesla electric cars. Then in 2021 he lamented, “Generalized self-driving is a hard problem, as it requires solving a large part of real-world AI. I didn’t expect it to be so hard, but the difficulty is obvious in retrospect. Nothing has more degrees of freedom than reality. 9 ”
I’ll rewrite the fallacy as reality: AI completing one task does not lead to AI completing all tasks.
Fallacy: Easy Things Are Easy, Hard Things Are Hard
When proponents boast of how AI is better at playing Go or at diagnosing health problems than we humans, they are stating of the obvious. Computers are supposed to be better than us at carrying out boring and complex tasks. I expect software FEA to be faster than me using long division.
AI is, however, terrible at tasks we humans find trivial, like walking through a crowded subway station or playing Charades. Psychologist Gary Marcus notes that Charades “requires acting skills, linguistic skills, and theory of mind — abilities that are far beyond anything AI... 10 ”
What blocks AI from arriving at its ultimate destination is its lack of common sense. Mitchell urges AI researchers to target the abilities of one-year-old children, instead of members of Mensa.
I’ll rewrite the fallacy as reality: Simple tasks performed by AI do not lead to AI completing complex tasks.
Fallacy: The Lure of Wishful Mnemonics
“Work on AI is replete with such wishful mnemonics, terms associated with human intelligence that are used to describe the behavior and evaluation of AI programs,” writes Mitchell. She gives examples:
“Neural networks are loosely inspired by the brain, but with vast differences.
“Machine learning or deep learning methods do not really resemble learning in humans (or in non-human animals).”
IBM boasted in 2011 that “Watson can read all of the health-care texts in the world in seconds” and “...understands context and nuance in seven languages” (emphases added). 11 This fooled us into believing Watson thinks better than humans do and shaped the way AI researchers thought about their field.
If machines learned the way humans learn, then they could apply it to a wide variety of experiences — called “transfer learning.” But machines cannot. What AI software does learn are “shortcuts, statistical correlations to achieve high performance without learning the skill,” kind of like when we memorized facts just to pass a test in school.
I’ll rewrite the fallacy as reality: Calling AI “human-like” does not make AI human-like.
Fallacy: Intelligence Is All In the Brain
Whether influenced by the story of Frankenstein or prodded by philosophical materialists of the Enlightenment, AI proponents assume that rational thinking occurs exclusively in the brain.
The goal is the Brain In the Vat: reproduce the brain as AI, and then replace our brains with hardware/software in our human bodies, or else place them in lifelike robots, as fictionalized by television series like Picard and Battlestar Galactica.
The flaw to the brain-in-a-vat approach, Mitchell points out, is that there is nothing physical to the brain that is unique to the brain. The rational part has one job: processing inputs from all of the rest of the body. Isolated in a vat, the brain fails to operate as it was designed to do.
Deep-learning pioneer Geoffrey Hinton flippantly predicted in 2017, “We have trillions of connections [in our brains], but the biggest networks we have built so far only have billions of connections. So we’re a few orders of magnitude off, but I’m sure the hardware people will fix that.” 12 Declaring AI solved after throwing more hardware at the problem is myopic.
This may explain why enthusiasts have been pushing the date of the Singularity out into the future. (The Singularity is the date when technology exceeds human ability.) First proclaimed to arrive by 2029, then around 2039, and now by 2045 or later. 13
I’ll rewrite the fallacy as reality: AI replicating the functions of living brains does not bring AI to life.
What Ralph Grabowski Thinks
We see obsessiveness over AI because it is the ultimate computing problem. Once AI is solved, there is nothing left for us to solve; AI will then go on to solve all other problems for us.
As humans, we benefit from a litany of perceptual twists that help us cope with what we don’t know, irrationalities like linear predictions, rationalizations, cognitive dissonances, confirmation biases, intuitions, group thinking, free will, common sense, bigotry, and analogies.
So AI researchers face this question: do they incorporate our irrationality into their computer code, or do they leave it out? Judging by the outrage expressed when AI results show race and other biases 14, the current sentiment is to edit out human irrationality.
For Singularity-level AI to work, it needs to incorporate the irrationality of human metaphysics; but it can’t. Yet, if it could, the Singularity would find itself becoming like the fictional Cylons, who launched a war to destroy humans just because we were too war-like 15 .
In the 1960s, we were promised better brains. Instead, in the 2020s we are getting better emoji-picking: “Your Chromebook is getting a new emoji picker this month and 992 new emoji later this year” (Chrome Unboxed 16).
What is AI’s fatal flaw? It cannot replicate human metaphysics; the rational cannot conceive of the irrational.
Can CAD Do AI?
Some CAD vendors state that their software employs AI. In my opinion, I don’t think it does. Here are some of the claims.
MRU. One CAD program says it uses AI to predict the next command(s) users will want to choose. Let’s take a example in which the user has just drawn a circle. What would AI suggest as the next command? It doesn’t take a computer to guess:
Draw another circle, or draw a different entity.
Edit the circle, or erase it (undo).
Print the circle.
This is not AI, in my view; this is a variation of MRU [most recently used], which keeps records of commands commonly employed by users.
S&R. Another CAD system says it uses AI for mundane tasks, such as replacing junctions with details, like bolts and cuts to connecting beams. You choose one junction containing the detail, and as the software finds similar junctions, it adjusts them.
This is not AI, in my view; this is search and replace.
MRU and S&R reduce tedium and so are useful to CAD users. Just don’t call it AI.
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There appears to be a match between AI and parallel processing. Neither works well in CAD, and for the same reason.
Parallel processing cannot be used in most areas of CAD, because user actions cannot be predicted. Prediction is required before the software can split the command being processed among multiple CPUs, then merge the results together afterwards. It is the nature of CAD that the software cannot predict the outcome of our actions. The same holds for AI: the actions of users cannot be predicted sufficiently for AI to assist.
(Parallel processing is indeed used in areas of CAD outside the control of users. Examples include loading files, performing renderings, and calculating finite element analyses.)
Creativity is chaos, as George Guilder brilliantly exposits in “Knowledge and Power.” AI can only take over the design process after human creativity is exhausted.
PS: 1950s AI’s Link to 2020 CAD
The inventor of AI, John McCarthy, wrote in 1958 the specifications for LISP as a programming language that could operate on its own source code as a data structure. LISt Processor was an early attempt at AI. 17
LISP subsequently appeared in many DWG-based CAD programs, after Autodesk embedded and extended XLISP — the free version written by David Betz 18 — into AutoCAD in 1985. It still runs today 19.
[You can download the 12-page paper “Why AI is Harder Than We Think” by Melanie Mitchell as a PDF from arxiv.org/pdf/2104.12871.]
And in Other News
Sadly, most conferences are still online. Here are six I plan to watch in the next six weeks:
Issue #1,104 | Inside the Business of CAD | 13 September 2021
Press Releases Of the Summer
FORAN ship design and construction software
Acquisitions that were (and weren’t) made while we were off vacationing:
Autodesk gave up on its attempt to acquire Altium, after the EDM firm purportedly wanted too much. Altium makes software for designing printed circuit boards. “While we did verbally improve our initial proposal, we were unable to agree on the basis to advance discussions,” Autodesk said.
In July, Sanvik acquired GibbsCAM milling and turning software, Cimatron molds and die design software, and SigmaNEST nesting software from Battery Ventures. Then in August, Sandvik, which has 100,000 users, purchased MasterCAD and its 270,000 users.
Epic Games acquired SketchFab, which will keep its name but drop its store fee to 12%. SketchFab’s Web site offers four million 3D models.
Siemens bought FORAN from Spain’s SENER for its ship design and construction software. FORAN is used by 150 shipyard and design offices in 40 countries.
Vectorworks established its Australia office by acquiring 20-year-long distributor OzCAD Pty. OzCAD manager Annabel Carr stays on to run operations for the new Vectorworks Australia office.
- - -
In financial news, we have…
Ansys, the simulation people, reported Q2 revenues of $447 million, up 16% from a year earlier. The company plans unspecified acquisitions with its “growing cash horde.” Details from Monica Schnitger at schnitgercorp.com/?p=18783. If Ansys were a CAD vendor, it would be the 4th biggest.
PTC had Q3 revenues of $436 million, up 23% year over year, of which over half came from its oldest lines of software, Creo and PLM. “Sales of ThingWorx [Internet of things] are still growing more slowly than expected,” reports Monica Schnitger at schnitgercorp.com/?p=18730.
The toolkit also gains a Web Vision module for client-server viewing of CAD models in Web browsers. A no-charge evaluation version of the entire toolkit’s SDK is available by making your request at c3dlabs.com/en/evaluation/.
- - -
Graphisoft shipped ArchiCAD 25 at the start of the summer. At 37 years old, the company has the longest-running BIM program in the world. This year’s release has these features:
Custom-shaped openings and custom stairs designed according to regional standards
Import and export of 40+ file formats, including Revit MEP 2021
Surface textures on section and elevation views
BIMx viewer and BIMcloud collaboration integrated, with BIMx handling 100K files and now working with Android
Open Design Alliance is holding its annual ODA Summit 2021 this year on September 21. It is, sadly, virtual again, but I hear in-person next year might be in Munich, if possible. Details of the two-hour event and free registration are here -> conference.opendesign.com
As well, the ODA is working on a STEP [STandard for the Exchange of Product data] SDK so that ODA members can incorporate the translation standard in their software. The software development kit is due to ship by year’s end. opendesign.com/blog/2021/july/oda-starts-development-step-support
- - -
Lots of companies that employ visualization are jumping on the DLSS [deep learning super sampling] system from nVidia.
Enscape is using it for improving performance of its virtual reality walk-throughs for architects, such as going from 20 frames per second to 60fps. They call it “visualize as you design.” enscape3d.com
- - -
Hexagon updated MSC Apex Generative Design to v2021.2 with these new functions:
Simulation with 3D transversely isotropic and 3D orthotropic materials
CAD Exchanger from CADEX now supports 30 CAD formats with the addition of 3D XML and Solid Edge import, mesh colors for Solidworks, asynchronous model loading in Unity, and more. Try the desktop program 30 days free (after registration) from cadexchanger.com/products/gui/try.
- - -
Siemens updates Parasolid 33.1 with more commands for working with integrated models that mix B-rep designs with facet-based shapes: blending, tapering, offsetting, hollowing, and thickening mixed models. The company notes that its geometric kernel is in software used by four million people. plm.automation.siemens.com/global/en/products/plm-components/parasolid.html
- - -
IntelliCAD Technical Consortium in mid-summer released a beta of IntelliCAD 10.1 to the general public, and then in mid-August did the full release.
Some of the new features include the following:
Supports 3Dconnexion devices, like 3D Space Mouse and CAD Mouse
Inserts geographic maps from Esri shapefiles, Autodesk .sdf, and Spatial .sqlite
Clones existing entities to activate their command and draw new entities
Adds sheet sets, tables, enhanced grips, real-time spell checking, dimension breaks, layer filters in ribbon and toolbar droplists, and layer states.
Member company progeCAD plans to release an IntelliCAD 10.1-based progeCAD 2022 Professional software in the second half of October, 2021. www.progecad.us
- - -
Nemetschek Groups owns about 14 companies that run largely independently of each other, and refers to them as “brands.” Now the company has merged two of its brands: Graphisoft (BIM design software) with Data Design Systems and its MEP design software.
The reason given for the merger is this: “The merger of Graphisoft and DDS in the Planning & Design Division is another strategic step in harmonizing the Nemetschek portfolio.”
- - -
IFC.js is a JavaScript library for reading and writing IFC [industry foundation classes] files, with its parsing engine based on WebAssembly and C++. The library is designed to allow compatible Web browsers into BIM viewers. Developers are looking for coders:
If you know C++, WebAssembly, or the technical part of IFC — work on the parsing engine
Three.js coders — work on the geometry side of the library
PROSTEP’s OpenCLM [configuration lifecyle management] is a Web application for generating digital threads. The software creates a web of relationships between objects in their domains, throughout a product’s life. openclm.prostep.com/?L=1
- - -
Voxelmaps has the modest goal of creating a digital twin of the entire planet to 10cm-position accuracy with its MRVOGs — multi-resolution voxel-occupancy grids. voxelmaps.com
- - -
An ABI Research headline made my eyebrows bounce: “Manufacturers to Spend US$2.6 Billion on Simulation Software by 2030.” The number seemed low, given that ANSYS alone generates nearly $2 billion/year in revenues selling its line of simulation software.
So I asked them if their headline perhaps had the decimal in the wrong place. They replied, “We are only considering simulation software supporting industrial and manufacturing firms designing their products and looking to optimize their production lines. We are not considering construction or firms in the defense sector nor automotive firms using simulation in the work on autonomous vehicles.
“In addition, the forecasts covers software license revenues and not any maintenance or service revenues. I see in the latest annual report for Anysys that the firm’s $1.7bn 2020 revenue is split between software license ($780mn) and service & maintenance ($900mn). Ansys is certainly a leading player in this market.” abiresearch.com/market-research/product/7779549-simulation-software-in-a-manufacturing-set
- - -
In other bad news from Autodesk, it found that one of its servers was part of the supply chain attack on SolarWinds’ Orion software. The good news is that no customer operations or Autodesk products were disrupted. The bad news is that this shows that making customers dependent on servers isn’t safe over the long run.
Shown below is Autodesk’s new logo looking like sheet metal.
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I was thinking about how different the coalescence of CAD vendors/products was from the ’80s and ’90s, into maybe 2010, compared to cloud vendors. Rather than a pool of many cloud vendors, it started as basically three, maybe even two, from a shareholder aspect. What happened? I’d say it was the incredible initial investment costs that immediately cut out all but the biggest players.
Cloud never really started with the same organic base that most every other software category has been through: word processing, spreadsheets, databases, graphic editors, publishing, Web platforms, CAD/CAM, even operating systems. Most of them grew to six competitors or more before narrowing down through mergers or strategic annihilation.
I like competition. It benefits the masses, usually. But, as you mentioned, the CAD playing field has reached maturity, maybe even saturation. What will happen when cloud competition reaches that point? I find it weird how most assume the big players will remain forever, when tech history has shown otherwise. - David Stein
The editor replies: I think the difference is due to the nature of the two types of technology.
One person can write a CAD program; only a regular computer is needed. Here the focus is on the software, which is cheap, and so anyone can write it.
The cloud needs thousands of computers right off the bat. Here the focus is on the hardware, which is expensive, so only a very few can afford it.
The cloud came about when Amazon, which already had server farms handling its online shopping network, realized it could rent out its machines during off-peak periods. Things grew from there.
What is interesting is that Google didn’t clue in until too late, and so it, of all people, is running a distant 4th:
This is absolutely spot on. Your point about design intent resonated with me especially, as does the point about getting BIM data into the right hands. Interoperability is what will make or break BIM ultimately.
I also wonder whether reality capture data might help designers to create more construction-friendly plans. - Mark Senior (via WorldCAD Access)
Notable Quotable
@merbroussard: How would you define “AI ethics” in 1 sentence?
@MadamePratolung: Marketing device for some, pressing social and technical challenge for others.
@kbish: Balancing between cool & creepy all the time.
@neilturkewitz: An unfortunate anthropomorphic expression that suggests that questions of ethics may be addressed in a silo, divorced from the world in which they operate, & that AI is capable of possessing intent, whether good or bad.
@MLeiser: A waste of time. The only thing corporations will respond to is a law backed up by the threat of sanctions for non-compliance.
@AndrewOrlowski: Job Creation Scheme
Thank You, Readers
Thank you to readers who donate towards the operation of upFront.eZine:
Ross Goulter
Steve Hunter
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Issue #1,103 | Inside the Business of CAD | 5 July 2021
OSArch [open source in architecture] provides access to free and open source software for the AEC and BIM markets, as well as an umbrella for developing the software.
I interviewed Duncan Lithgow, who is one of several active community coordinators of OSArch. His passion for open source and libre software comes from the conviction that sharing is good, and that grassroots collaboration gives better results than boardroom talking points.
BlenderBIM in architectural design
Ralph Grabowski: What position do you see OSArch having in the architectural design world — supporting role, minor player, major actor?
Duncan Lithgow: OSArch is about bringing a more ethical approach to the software we use in architecture, engineering, construction, and operations (AECO). We support moving the industry toward more openness and more collaboration.
At our core we support and encourage projects bringing professionals together to develop the software tools we need to do our job well. This means developing and supporting software developed as free/libre and open source (a.k.a. FLOSS) [see en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_and_open-source_software] and the use of open standards, such as those developed by buildingSMART, the W3C, and others.
Grabowski: How much open source software is available to the CAD world?
Lithgow: Our Free Software Directory at wiki.osarch.org/index.php?title=AEC_Free_Software_directory lists over a hundred projects, covering everything from computational fluid dynamics (such as OpenFOAM), structural analysis (Code_Aster), to presentation and document editing (Scribus and Inkscape).
My knowledge is what happens in architectural offices. There you see growing use and support for FLOSS solutions like Speckle to fix the industry’s interoperability problem.
In building physics, FLOSS projects, such as Radiance, EnergyPlus, and OpenFOAM, are tried and battle-tested as the reference standard.
Ladybug Tools and its Pollination platform sees increasing support, pulling many tools together. Those are just some of the superstars of the movement in AECO.
Grabowski: At what point are major software pieces, such as LibreCAD, Code_Aster, and LibreDWG?
Lithgow: Some projects are very mature and stable, and some projects are in rapid bleeding edge development.
Grabowski: Tell our readers about some of them.
Lithgow: QCAD Community Edition is libre software and is a quite capable 2D CAD package. They sell a commercial version, which adds some non-core functionality, such as DWG support, and help fund the development of the community edition.
Code_Aster is one of the few FOSS tools that is being developed and completely backed by a multinational company, Électricité de France, a French electric utility company largely owned by the French state. It has been developing Code_Aster over the last 30 years and then released it as a FOSS tool in 2001. At Électricité de France it is used to analyze, design, and verify new and existing infrastructure assets along their whole lifecycle.
The first part of this workflow is the definition of the OpenBIM Structural Model (OSM). The project is being developed within the BlenderBIM add-on, and is 30-40% complete.
The second part of the workflow relates to the conversion of the OpenBIM Structural Model to a Code_Aster structural model, and then performing structural load analysis. This part was developed as IFC-to-Code_Aster (ifc2ca, presented at community.osarch.org/discussion/99/) and is currently 20-30% complete.
Other parts of the structural analysis pipeline are not developed yet, such as
Visualization of structural results in Blender and other OpenBIM-enabled tools. I should note that there are FLOSS tools such as Salome_Meca that are designed for visualizing Code_Aster results.
Verification of structural members according to specific structural codes. This last task is quite broad and challenging to address holistically.
A special mention should be made for Adapy, a FLOSS python library, released a few months ago. It has the potential to work with Code_Aster but also other FLOSS structural solvers to be considered in the structural workflow. Adapy is still in early phases of development, yet features complete “proof of concept” examples and specific development for a user-friendly procedure to install all needed packages for performing the structural analysis on a desktop computer.
LibreDWG supports DWG, DXF, and SVG. It is just starting to be integrated into projects, so I’m not sure how much testing it has seen in real-world scenarios. It works for me inside FreeCAD. It looks like 3D DWG is really going to be a challenge. LibreDWG is not the only FLOSS-oriented DWG project, but it is the most advanced. Some solid testing and support for LibreDWG could make a huge shift in the industry opening up a whole world of legacy files to FLOSS projects.
It might sound like lots of little tools. That’s how things work outside the monoliths with their walled gardens of proprietary solutions and poor interoperability. The “little tools” approach means that as projects mature and as your needs change, you switch out parts of the workflow with something else.
Grabowski: How much of open software is being used by corporations and universities?
Lithgow: Examples of software in very rapid development are FreeCAD and the BlenderBIM add-on. We have some great examples of how companies like OpeningDesign and Open Source Ecology use free software on commercial projects. Larger companies also use both FreeCAD and the BlenderBIM add-on in aspects of their workflows. Universities are starting to introduce the software in their courses and in BIM academic research.
In their current state, they are not yet drop-in replacements for average users who want to replace an entire suite of tools offered by Autodesk, Bentley, or Dassault. However, depending on the scale of the project, the use-case the user has, and the technical abilities of the team, certain features are more mature than others and are already creating commercial value.
In other aspects, both FreeCAD and the BlenderBIM add-on have far surpassed proprietary solutions and are pioneering in areas such as native support for international BIM standards, semantic drawing generation, and cross-disciplinary support.
These technical feats, contributions to the cross-platform OpenCAD ecosystem, and forays into uncharted territory were recognized by
At this point it is very difficult to be specific on exactly what’s ready and what isn’t, as it is so context-sensitive, but development in both projects are accelerating, and we are excited to see where they go.
Grabowski: What about IFCs?
Lithgow:We have several IFC based projects: lossless round-tripping IFC files between software packages, implementing energy analysis, structural analysis, implementing cost planning, construction sequencing, and projects drawings.
All of this is working directly inside the IFC schema, deeper than any other project that I know of. We are working with buildingSMART to make it all work smoothly.
Grabowski: How is OSARCH funded?
Lithgow: At the moment we cover our costs for digital infrastructure via donations to the Liberapay platform. We plan to join a fiscal host so we can start fundraising and accelerate our work with corporate sponsors.
We do have a list of financial sponsors ready to support us, but we don't yet have a legal structure to make this possible. We’d love to hear from anyone who wants to support our efforts. We’re also happy to help anyone find projects that they’d like to support directly.
Grabowski: Where does the programming prowess come from?
Lithgow: In contrast to how I imagine most software companies work, we are not staffed by software experts from outside our field. Most programmers who support our aims are AEC professionals first and programming is either part of their work or a passion on the side.
However, being open source, programming contributions can come from anywhere. Increasingly, it makes business sense for AEC tech startups and power users within larger AEC firms to reuse free software instead of reinventing the wheel, and as a result we see many commercially funded contributions as well.
Being open source, it is easier for us to share resources and coding expertise across projects, so a little programming can go a long way. OSArch helps act as a medium through which these synergies across projects can be formed, so that together we can solve more complex problems, knowing that all our projects are interdependent in the AEC ecosystem.
Grabowski: What do you see for the future of OSArch?
Lithgow: Where this will all go is hard to know, but we’re not a organization reliant on backers or income. Maybe we’ll end up with huge influence and a generous budget to support and coordinate projects that challenge the status quo. Maybe not.
What’s clear is that the ideas we represent are not going away, and are increasingly acknowledged by industry. More and more, the most tech-savvy people in AECO rely on FLOSS to do their jobs and to develop in-house solutions.
[Duncan Lithgow was educated in architecture and construction management in New Zealand and Denmark. Now he works for a Danish architectural and engineering firm, and is learning programming.]
And in Other News
Lantek’s speciality is software for designing, costing, and cutting sheet metal parts. For its Global Release 2021, it has updates to these packages:
Lantek Expert CAD/CAM
Lantek Flex3D
Lantek MES and Integra
Lantek Analytics
iQuoting and Metal Shop
One of the new functions represents the new direction CAD software has been taking. Forget cloud, AI, and other topics that are trendy. Instead, less work for designers is the way to go, like this new function: Assembly to Nesting importer unfolds all the sheet metal parts (taking into account the bending tool being used), making them ready for nesting and cutting.
Other new functions include the following:
Import CAD files by drag’n drop, and then detect duplicate parts
Clean cut avoids lead-ins and micro-joints
Spiral cut destroys material within holes to eliminate the manual removal of scrap material
Canon’s new Arizona 135 GT flatbed plotter plots on rigid media that roll-feed plotters cannot handle — glass, aluminum, wood, MDF, ceramic tiles — and with with an optional roll media attachment it also plots on regular media like paper.
C3D Labs adds Class F (fairing or functional) curves to their geometric modeling kernel. F-curves are like Class A curves, but with added optimization, such as a plough designed to minimize soil adhesion.
As a supporter of open source software for AEC, I was disappointed to read in issue #1,100 your comment about SMath Studio that “Being free, it is not as advanced as MathCAD.”
One of the sad consequences of people thinking “You get what you pay for” is that cheap and free are synonyms for poor quality. That’s simply not true. It’s probably more accurate to say that you can’t know what you’ll get if you don’t do your homework. Researching potential solutions, free or paid, is what’s important. - Duncan Lithgow
Re: 2 CAD Guys Talk about the Cost of CAD
The conversation with David Stein is exactly on-point.
As we’ve discussed before, mechanical CAD is a commodity in that the dominant products function alike, do an adequate job, and have no impact on a manufacture’s profit margin. Development and innovation is nearly non-existent, and there seems to be no huge need for it.
The fact that all competitors in the business are scrambling to develop new business models — instead of new products — is indicative that the products have matured (or stagnated, depending on your outlook), and become a commodity.
Companies that were created and grown on rapid innovation always find it difficult or impossible to convert to a commodity business, and they generally abandon markets that have gone that way. Mechanical CAD is $500 to $1500 software, and I don't see companies like Dassault, Siemens, or PTC having any interest in such trivial stuff.
As always, your newsletters are insightful. - Jess Davis, president Davis Precision Design, Inc.
The editor replies: At user conferences, CAD vendors like to show off how their software was used to develop a special product, like the Square payment module or prosthetics for children, and I think to myself, “Yes, but all of your competitors can do exactly the same design.”
Notable Quotable
“Nigeria has banned Twitter entirely, which is a different way to go on Big Tech.
“Twitter responds that this is a denial of Nigerians’ human rights, which doesn’t apply to those whom Twitter decides to ban.” - Michael Every
Thank You, Readers
Thank you to readers who donate to the operation of upFront.eZine:
OzCAD Pty Limited: “Thanks for your efforts Ralph.”
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Issue #1,102 | Inside the Business of CAD | 28 June 2021
David Stein: I’ve been preoccupied with non-CAD work for too long and only recently checked in with your newsletter to catch up on things.
The more I read about big-name CAD producers, the more it seems they chase bigger spenders, rather than focus on customer needs, especially small and mid-sized customers, who can’t justify selling their homes, kids, and pets to buy super high-end hardware and insanely expensive products.
Catchy names, rehearsed speeches, coached hand gestures, and overblown claims during keynotes are boring. It’s become like CGI [computer generated imagery] in action movies: nobody jumps in their seats anymore, because they know it isn’t real. Keynotes are all aimed at the executives, not the engineers and designers.
I never rooted enough for the underdogs; many have come and gone. But I hope to see a new generation of CAD products priced lower than a new home roof. I’ll gladly try something that can model a house deck, or custom-furniture piece making, if it's inexpensive (or even free).
But right now I’d rather draw my 3D plans on paper than pay thousands of dollars. I don’t need to collaborate with a marketing team, or to print parts in outer space — just basic machine shop stuff, the people they seem to have forgotten about.
Ralph Grabowski: You are seeing this frantic behavior because some publicly-owned CAD vendors are getting financially desperate as they run out of revenue boosters in what is a mature market. We saw prices increasing steadily through a variety of tactics:
Some CAD vendors forced users off one-time permanent licenses and onto all-the-time subscription fees.
They skyrocketed subscription prices for big enterprise customers, who typically renegotiate licence fees every third year.
They increased the effective cost of networking licenses by changing them from floating to per-person.
In the last fiscal year, they received a one-time big bang by being allowed to report deferred subscription revenue differently, in a way that makes it look like they goosed revenues during the pandemic.
One editor, who has his pulse on the industry more than me, thinks the next step is consumption-based use. The more cloud-CPUs your drawing needs, the more you pay — possibly through tokens, which some CAD vendors have already implemented in a limited way (such as for renderings and generative modeling).
In a perverted way, the money grab make sense, as certain CAD vendors have painted themselves into a corner. After convincing themselves that the cloud was to be the Next Big Thing, they forgot that they are the ones footing the bill 24/7 to Amazon AWS. Now they are scrambling to figure out how to cover their sky-high server bills. The answer: squeeze the customer.
CAD vendors who are keeping their software on the desktop are smart. They don’t incur the AWS tax.
David Stein: Oddly enough, I left the world of CAD (add-on developer, actually) for IT infrastructure, and then cloud — mostly Azure and the Microsoft stack. It’s interesting to me that for all the touting of “consumption-based pricing” by Microsoft that they don’t follow their mantra completely. There still are upfront costs like Security Center. Azure Log Analytics features, such as Change Tracking, incur a node fee.
I think that both markets, CAD and cloud, desperately need more competition. It’s shaping up to be like the big three TV networks from the ’50s to the ’70s.
Ralph Grabowski: Big shifts promoted by CAD vendors today inevitably become minor components tomorrow. There was a time around 2000 when we were so bombarded with collaboration-as-the-future marketing that we began referring to it as “the C-word.”
The ceo of a CAD firm one said something along the lines of, “If you’re not giving me money I don’t want you as a customer.” He did not seem to understand that it goes both ways: if CAD vendors aren’t giving value for money, then customers don’t want them a suppliers (cf. the Revit letter).
And in Other News
Open Design Alliance is looking for companies to work on a general purpose scan-to-BIM SDK [software development kit] that would do the following tasks:
Convert point cloud data to segmented meshes
Remove interference objects
Classify meshes into objects like walls, doors, and windows
Convert classified objects to BIM formats like IFC and RVT
Even though some CAD vendors have already implemented scan-to-BIM functions on their own, this collaborative effort is meant to provide it faster and more cheaply than doing it from scratch. Members will write the source code and determine the usage fee. More info about the initiative is at opendesign.com/scan-to-bim.
Epson is launching six new models this year of its SureColor T-Series inkjet printers in 24-, 36- and 44-inch sizes. First up is the T7770D (US$6,945) 44"-wide printer that holds two rolls of paper, a take-up reel, and an optional stacker. It prints monochrome CAD drawings at speeds of up to 1,400 square feet/hour.
Issue #1,101 | Inside the Business of CAD | 21 June 2021
ZwSoft is pivoting from traditional CAD software to an all-in-one CAx platform meant for design work in both manufacturing and buildings. During its annual user conference held last month online (see figure below), the company gave attendees initial details of its long-range plans.
Stage of the ZwWorld 2021 online conference
ZwSoft’s “all-in-one CAx” phrase appeared two years ago. Initially, it involved integrating CAE [computer-aided engineering] applications into the company’s Zw3D MCAD program through a new ZwSIM platform. The first solver was for electromagnetic simulation.
ZwSoft is now expanding the meaning of All-in-One CAx to be “model-defined and data-driven collaboration,” and to be developed over quite a few years. It has been tagged “Project Wukong,” possibly named after the fast, zoomorphic Sun Wukong character in a Chinese novel from 1592, Journey to the West.
More specifically, Project Wukong is ZwSoft’s next-gen 3D CAD platform meant to expand its traditional market of general and mechanical CAD to AEC [engineering, architecture, construction]. ZwSoft plans to reorganize the data, technology, and functions found in their three base programs — ZwCAD, Zw3D, and ZwSIM — to a single platform (see figure below).
Overview of ZwSoft’s future
The company’s three base programs currently are the following:
ZwCAD. The 19-year-old ZwCAD 2D/3D DWG editor is like many other AutoCAD workalikes on the market. It had been based on IntelliCAD and uses the ACIS kernel, and now the company says it is again developing its own kernel.
Zw3D. The solids-surfacing CAD/CAM program began in 1999 as Varimetrix, better known as “VX” and has its own Overdrive kernel. It was acquired by ZwSoft in 2010, and continues to be based in Florida, with co-founder Mark Vorwaller still heading it up under the title of president of ZwSoft America.
ZwSIM. The platform for simulation was launched in 2018 with a geometry engine, pre-processor, solver, and post-processor. ZwSIM so far handles structural and electromagnetic simulation, and is due to receive acoustic, thermal, fluid, and optical solvers in the future.
About Project Wukong
Project Wukong involves big changes in how ZwSoft develops software:
Files become databases
Serial workflows become parallel ones
Offline collaboration becomes real-time
At first, it seemed to me that conference presenters were saying that Project Wukong would become the future of all ZwSoft software. Then the lead developer stated that Project Wukong will be the company’s new cross-disciplinary platform and that its primary purpose is to expand ZwSoft’s market into BIM. ZwCAD-Zw3D-ZwSIM would continue on the desktop, and would gain links to software running on the Wukong platform.
ZwSoft plans that Project Wukong-based programs offer the following functions:
Concurrent execution of cross-disciplinary applications, including BIM, shipbuilding, and aerospace design. (ZwSoft calls all these verticals “AEC.”)
Multiple clients accessing a single data source.
Cloud-native (private and public) databases that “will not rely on local file storage.”
Top-down product lifecycle management.
Large-scale assembly modeling that can handle tens of millions of parts (needed more for BIM than MCAD).
Programming APIs that are more extensible than those from competitor CAD systems.
A hundred programmers have been working on the Wukong platform for a year now, which is scheduled to be “realized” three years from now. (See figure below.) A demo of Wukong was not given during the presentation.
Timeline for Project Wukong
ZwSoft plans to have BIM as the first application running on Project Wukong. It is meant to handle design in the areas of massing, structures, HVAC [heating, ventilation, air conditioning], and electro-mechanics. More distant plans include pre-fab design, and construction planning and management. The initial release of “ZwBIM” won’t, however, be ready for five years.
Zwsoft promises to keep updating its file-based desktop software “for as many years as it serves your collective needs.” In any case, file-based software gives ZwSoft a fall-back position, should unforeseen roadblocks change the path it had planned to take towards its future (c.f. Solidworks V6).
Zwsoft Stats
Earlier this year, the company went public with an IPO on the Shanghai STAR exchange, China’s NASDAQ for science and technology firms. From what I can tell, ZwSoft has a market capitalization of approximately US$5 billion at a very high P/E [price to earnings] ratio of 210 (20-25 is considered normal). Bloomberg documents that ZwSoft had 2021Q1 revenues of US$13 million (approx.).
During the online conference the company provided us with no financial picture, other than to report that it spends 30% of revenues on R&D [research and development]. ZwSoft indicated it is interested in looking at acquisitions.
The 1,000 who took in the online conference learned these other statistics:
900,000 users
90 countries with customers
Annual growth rates:
2018 - 39%
2019 - 42%
2020 - 26%
260 business partners and 200 application developers
What Ralph Grabowski Thinks
As with a few MCAD programs like Solidworks and Inventor, the doomsday clock for desktop-based ZwCAD and Zw3D has begun counting down. One presenter stated that the timeframe to continue developing Zw3D in parallel with Wukong is 10-15 years. This discouraging news is tempered by the good news that ZwSoft sells permanent licenses for its desktop software.
The Project Wukong strategy is not uncommon among a few large (c.f. PTC) and new (c.f. Onshape) CAD vendors nowadays. It is, however, a task that’s unusual for a medium-sized (defined by me as around a million users) firm to take on, given the immense scope of work involved. Extrapolating, it could cost ZwSoft 600 person-years to program the first release of “ZwBIM.” Perhaps the IPO [initial public offering] is funding Wukong development.
ZwSoft’s timeline for releasing an initial version of their new BIM software is five years from now, a long time given our industry’s changing priorities during such a period — never mind the additional years that will be required for ZwSoft to add catch-up functions. Here is how I imagine the programming is being scheduled:
By 2026: ZwBIM attains basic BIM functions
By ????: Attains advanced BIM functions
By ????: Adds the BIM functions competitors added since 2021
On the other hand, ZwSoft benefits from learning from competitors the function needed by today’s BIM programs, such as intersections of multi ply walls and slabs, and facades of irregular arrayed shapes. It won’t be wasting time stumbling down dead ends.
BIM in China. The American Revit dominantes in China. From Chinese government-agency documents I perused, there appears to be a desire for China-developed BIM authoring software. There are, however, none in BIM (as best as I could determine), other than support software like project management and add-ons for localized disciplines.
For example, ZwSoft’s closest competitor is Caxa. It has a general/electrical CAD program and an American-developed MCAD system (IronCAD), but no BIM aspiration. Having the field to itself, ZwSoft has plenty of incentive to build BIM.
When the Open Design Alliance first announced it was creating APIs to access, edit, and create data for Revit and IFC files, I wondered if CAD vendors might jump on the chance to develop a Revit of their own. In the years since, we’ve seen lots of CAD systems incorporating RVT/IFC data handling, including ZwCAD. But no one has built a BIM system from scratch, as ZwSoft plans to do. It’s a tough job.
Going beyond Project Wukong, ZwSoft has a vision of becoming the world’s leading CAx software provider. The hitch to this Guangzhou company’s ambition, however, is the lowered-enthusiasm some international markets have for services developed in China.
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CCE updates its EnSuite-Cloud ReVue real-time 3D collaboration software with ReVue LiveLink integrations for Inventor, Solid Edge, Solidworks, and SketchUp. Creo and Revit links are to be added in the near future.
CAD Software Solutions’ SparePartsPlace Toolkit for Autodesk Inventor v2021.4 optimizes calculation times of surface and combined solid/surface models.
I read with interest the article on engineering math by Gustav Näslund. I guess he does not know about our software GrafiCalc that virtually eliminates tedious mathematical calculations from the product design process. GrafiCalc is trusted by thousands of users worldwide. - Shyamal Roy, owner GEOMATE Company, www.graficalc.com
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To me, engineering math software is very much associated with CAD and all the other engineering tools in my box, so I was delighted to see the review.
I did not know about Maple Flow and SMath Studio. Mathcad is great, but I’m still using a copy from 20 years ago. The complexity of my calculations has not changed over the past 20 years, so thousands of dollars of additional fees for unneeded features are not justified. Collaboration with others is not critical to me.
I’ll be experimenting with Maple and SMath. If they work, I’ll encourage others to go that route too. - Chuck Moore
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It’s nice to see SMath referenced in your publication. This is an excellent free program that I’ve been using for over a decade. I written hundreds of programs using it. Programs can be written to incorporate units of measurement. Arrays can be written with the column values containing units.
There are a few minor hiccups, but these can easily be worked around. The only other issue with it is that it is Russian and for political reasons, this may preclude the use of in for some businesses.
I’ve attached a bit of a clip of some of the code. It can get a lot more complicated and the units are taken care of directly.
The units in the answers are provided by SMath, based on the unit values of the variables automatically. I display the answers in both Imperial and metric. I'm a bit of a dinosaur; I work in Imperial and metric (SI), but think in Imperial; the metric values are for those that work in metric. - Dik Coates, P. Eng.
The editor responds: Me, too. Those of us of a certain age.
Most products sold in Canada are still Imperial, even though we have been officially metric since 1970. So, I asked my kids’ high school teachers to include Imperial instruction — no-can-do.
I’ve come to realize that imperial units are human units — inch, foot, yard relate to the human body, and are closer to the kind of e*-scaling that is common in nature. (Metric units and their power-of-10 scaling are inhuman, IMHO.) Even carpentry is easier: half of 3/8" is 3/16"; half of 37mm is who-knows-what.
*) e = Euler’s constant = 2.718281828459045235…
Notable Quotable
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Thank you to readers who donate towards the operation of upFront.eZine:
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Issue #1,100 | Inside the Business of CAD | 14 June 2021
Written by Gustav Näslund
Mathematics software for engineers is not something I am especially familiar with. When I took calculus, we had no calculators, and in my field of study at the time, transportation engineering, we tended to work with simple trigonometry, rather than advanced equations.
So, reader Gustav Näslund suggested running an article about the software available in the engineering math editor space.
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Software for engineering math are not strictly CAD, but I think nonetheless that they are essential and powerful tools for design engineers to perform and document engineering calculations.
I think this class of software is not as well known, nor used, as much as it should be in our industry, which is why I would like raise awareness of them.
If you are not familiar with this kind of software, think of it as a free form digital notepad that does calculations interactively. It supports units of measurement and live links between all variables and equations. The figure below is typical:
Math software doing calculations and units conversion
In general, this kind of software lets you add equations, text, and images in a freeform manner, and you can rearrange them as you like. All equations are live-linked, so that they update their values when something changes.
Because you work in a paper-like format, the format is self-documenting. When you are done, just save it as a PDF file, and you have your calculations documented.
The equations support all units of measurements. This means, for example, that we can mix imperial and metric units in equations without fear. The mandatory reference here is to the NASA Mars Climate Orbiter debacle; see en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Climate_Orbiter.
I find that the programs have a very low threshold for getting started, and run fast, so they are suitable for even the simplest calculations — never mind the most advanced.
Math Software Packages
The figure below is of SMath Studio; MathCAD and Maple Flow look similar.
SMath Studio from Andrey Ivashov
MathCAD has long been a player in engineering math editor field, 35 years in the business. It was taken over by PTC in 2006, and then received a total makeover as MathCAD Prime in 2011.
The latest version of MathCAD is available now by subscription only, in the ballpark of $1,000/year for a commercial licence. Educational licenses are available. www.mathcad.com and en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathcad
Maple Flow is a very recently released (2021) direct competitor to MathCAD from Canadian company MapleSoft. It appears to me to be aimed directly as a competitor to MathCAD, as it has a very similar interface and works in the same way.
Maple Flow seems to be priced at $2,390 for a single perpetual commercial license. Educational licenses are available. maplesoft.com/products/mapleflow
SMath Studio is a free alternative created by Andrey Ivashov, first released in 2006. It has capabilities that are very similar to the original MathCAD, before its remake as MathCAD Prime.
Being free, it is not as advanced as MathCAD, but for 90% of engineers it will be just what they want (and need). It has a thriving community that creates plug-ins and so on, and is funded through donations. www.smath.com
[Gustav Näslund owns GN Tech of Sweden, and specializes in product development and mechanical design. www.gntech.se/en]
And in Other News
The next release of NX is shipping later this week on June 18, while Solid Edge 2022 is scheduled to become available later this year in October.
In other Siemens news, the company acquired Nextflow Software of France for its meshless simulation technology. Smooth-Particle Hydrodynamics does particle-based computational fluid dynamics for gas and liquid flows. www.nextflow-software.com
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Radica Software’s Electra Cloud schematic electrical design software now exports BOMs (bills of material) directly to OpenBOM for report creation, with further links to accounting systems. A future upgrade will export data from OpenBOM back to Electra and its Vecta.io SVG [scalable vector graphics] editor. radicasoftware.com
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3D Systems has divested itself of its on-demand additive manufacturing service, named On Demand Manufacturing, for $82 million to Trilantic, which promptly renamed it Quickparts. Details at schnitgercorp.com/?p=18523
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Jon Peddie Research reports that the GPU market last year grew by 39% to 199 million units. The market share between suppliers remains unchanged:
Though well outside of my profession, I find FEA [finite element analysis] interesting. Does Coreform run on GPUs [graphics processing units]? I searched their forum for the term, but there was only one unrelated result.
How does the speed of their software compare to competitors that do run on GPUs? Many FEA software packages are optimized to run on nVidia GPUs: nvidia.com/en-us/gpu-accelerated-applications.
It would seem that if their core calculations are more efficient on CPUs, writing the code to get their software to run on GPUs would be a further advantage. - Peter Lawton Affiliated Engineers, Inc.
Greg Vernon replies: Currently, we only execute on CPUs, but we’ve architected our algorithms and code to be maximally parallelize-able. GPU-compute is definitely on our roadmap.
A large bulk of our compute time is spent within the linear and nonlinear solvers provided by the open-source PETSc project, which is currently developing GPU support. See mcs.anl.gov/petsc/features/gpus.html.
We’re currently focusing on classes of problems that have [in the past] required incredible amounts of compute resources, but rather than throw more resources (more CPUs and GPUs) at the problem, we’re consistently finding that throwing better math at the problem is giving us orders of magnitude faster solves.
I like to think of it in terms of Exascale* ambitions. If the point of Exascale compute is to solve problems, then there are two ways to achieve this:
Build faster/larger parallel computers
Use better mathematics that make the problem smaller for existing computers
We’re taking the second approach! -Greg Vernon, director of product management Coreform
*) Exascale = computing systems capable of calculating 10¹⁸ floating point operations per second, or more.
Mr Lawton responds: The two approaches are not mutually exclusive, of course, so Corefrom may consider using both — the outcome will be even greater advantage over competitors.
It sounds, too, like the math they are improving requires a different coding team than would be required to get Coreform to run on CUDA, so the two improvements can happen in parallel, once you have the right personnel.
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