Monday, March 07, 2022

The Liminality of Forge

Issue #1,125  |  Inside the Business of CAD  |  28 February 2022

 

Liminal: The state of being in-between

Autodesk executives recording presentations for AU 2021 (all images sourced from Autodesk)

At Autodesk University 2021, Autodesk executives put the emphasis on digital transformation: it is inevitable, and it is urgent that it happen now.

“Digital collaboration is now a necessity; cloud workflows are the norm; and time-saving is a must,” said vice president of cross-industry strategy Mimi Hoang. Never mind that Autodesk has been talking about collaboration since Carol Bartz was ceo in the mid-1990s; that the cloud already is the norm for everyday people; and that every CAD vendor promises to save designers’ time.

A survey by consulting firm Accenture found that 90% of 700 construction firms are already digitizing their processes, but that two-thirds of them admitted they weren’t seeing benefits. The survey was presented during AU, and so it comes as little surprise that Accenture recommended that these firms (1) reorient themselves by implementing Forge, Autodesk’s cross-platform programming interface, (2) become data-centric, and then (3) use the data to make decisions earlier.

(Forge first was the name of Autodesk’s now-discontinued 3D printing API.)

 

All is Forge, and Forge is All

Autodesk seeing Forge as the center for all data

Forge is key to understanding Autodesk today, and tomorrow. The software rental firm dreams of the day when all of its programs are rewritten in Forge and intercommunicate data incrementally through Forge APIs [application programming interfaces]. Competitor CAD vendors, like Siemens and Graphisoft, also offer cross-platform programming (Mendix) and incremental data transfer (BIMcloud).

The Forge-ian dream is, however, not fully realized. “We’re investing heavily in connections across Autodesk products, improving interoperability,” said vp of AutoCAD family of products Rob Maguire, speaking in the present-continuous tense. “We’re excited about the potential this has... With Forge, we’re making strides towards fluent workflow capabilities.”

Fusion is crucial, but it is not yet pervasive. Until it is, Autodesk Docs (formerly BIM 360 Docs) is the placeholder. A Web site, it lets users view, markup, and manage files in many formats, but so far is integrated only into AutoCAD and Revit (as of November 2021).

 

What’s New in AutoCAD

Autodesk is scrambling to interconnect AutoCAD with its other incompatible software, because competitors are already there. Graebert (ARES), Hexagon (BricsCAD), and Nanosoft (nanoCAD) took the faster route by unifying general, mechanical, civil, GIS, P&ID, and architectural designs within a single program and storing all models in Autodesk’s DWG format, albeit with proprietary extensions. They do not suffer the internal incompatibility problems Autodesk does.

For AutoCAD, the AU keynote was brief. It described some features added to last year’s release, such as Trace (for marking up drawings collaboratively) and Count, another way to count entities in drawings.

For the future, Autodesk promises AutoCAD will get some automated drafting workflows, such as these ones:

  • Connected Paper recognizes markups that are hand-sketched or added to PDF files, and then converts them to AutoCAD geometry.

  • AutoCAD Automation suggests combining repetitive command sequences into macros.

  • My Insights shows users how they employ AutoCAD, and then suggests alternative commands that might be more efficient.

In the 1980s, Autodesk separated itself from bigger competitors by allowing users to customize the CAD program on their own — unique at a time when other systems like Intergraph and Computervision charged customers big bucks for customization.

Customization of the next generation of AutoCAD, the AutoCAD Web app, is, however, a distant dream. Autodesk says users will “perhaps someday in the future” be allowed to embed their in-house applications in the browser version of AutoCAD.

 

What’s New in Fusion 360 and Inventor

Fusion 360 modifying a model generatively following heat and electrical analysis.

The AU keynote for mechanical CAD treated us to a liturgy of gloom: “The cost of doing nothing is too high,” said vp of design and manufacturing industry strategy Srinath Jonnalagadda. “Continued reliance on home-grown data management systems perpetuates the ongoing struggles in the supply chain... Not dealing with complexity can lead to lost profits and opportunities.”

The solution, of course, is to employ Autodesk to “empower innovators everywhere.” But even so, Mr Jonnalagadda noted that the complete solution — a single cloud platform unifying all tools, from concept to manufacturing — lies in the future: “And that is what we’re working towards with Autodesk Forge Platform.”

Happily, there is a significant exception. Fusion 360 shows off today what Forge is capable of tomorrow. This partly-cloud-based 3D mechanical CAD program handles sketches, direct modeling, sheet metal, PCB designs, generative design, and so on.

Fusion 360, however, isn’t like PTC Onshape or Graebert Kudo. Users access these CAD apps by simply logging in from any browser on any hardware. Fusion 360 instead requires a 1.9GB download and then runs only on Windows or MacOS. That there is a free version for anyone’s personal use suggests to me it might not be selling well.

 

New in Fusion 360 is the ability to add parametrics to imported meshes, and converting them to solids. Sub-division modeling is also parametric now. Other new features include these ones:

  • Variable patterns (non-uniform arrays)

  • Library-based electrical schematic designs inside mechanical models

  • Electromagnetic simulation from ANSYS

  • Plastic simulation from MoldFlow

What I found particularly interesting is a new form of generative design that changes models according to the results of simulations. See figure above. Many CAD vendors also offer generative design, but I don’t see algorithm-based design being particularly popular among designers.

A unified cloud-native PDM/PLM [product data management/product lifecycle management] system was missing from Forge 360, so last year Autodesk acquired Canada’s Upchain cloud-based PDM/PLM software to combine design, manufacturing, data, and process management in Fusion 360.

Autodesk really wants to customers to stop using desktop Inventor, and switch to Fusion 360 for all their design work. Here is a reason: as we use the program, Autodesk runs parts of Fusion 360 on cloud servers, through which Autodesk collects the data we feed to it.

Autodesk has a lot plans for our data. It’s thinking of using A.I. to generate design concepts; to detect repetitive design work; and to report underused production machines. After hearing how Facebook and Google misuse our data, users may become hesitant in being open-books to Autodesk.

These sorts of data-use things are not possible with desktop-only CAD. But, as other CAD vendors have found, desktop MCAD is what customer prefer, and so Inventor managed to get a mention during a keynote speech.

 

New in Inventor is its ability to use multiple CPU cores to open, edit, and update models more quickly. To embed behaviors in assemblies, like hospital flows and supply chain logistics, Autodesk acquired ProModel.

Also new this year is selective import from Revit files, so that machines models are associated with building models. “This is an approach we’ll be developing across the rest of our entire portfolio in the coming months,” explained vp of design and manufacturing Stephen Hooper speaking of the future, “bringing Fusion, Inventor, AutoCAD, and even Revit data to the Forge Platform.”

Autodesk continues to update Inventor for desktop users

What Ralph Grabowski Thinks

Forge is so important that executives at AU called it “the Autodesk platform.” Moving data between Autodesk’s myriad data-incompatible programs is a long-haul project, with the initial effort starting back in about 2008 (getting Inventor and AutoCAD to talk to each other). Autodesk subsequently released the “universal” Navisworks viewer, but that didn’t quite make the grade. A decade later, Autodesk turned to Forge to solve its interoperability problem.

While Autodesk pins its future on Forge, progress in Forge-ifying its software appears to me to be progressing remarkably slowly. Each year, we hear how it’s going to be great, making me wonder in which year of AU the company announces that its programs are islands and isthmuses no longer.

Autodesk is using the meantime to emphasize how Fusion 360 puts data at the center of customer-corporations involved in manufacturing. As the Forge API connects the program with more third-party software, Autodesk aspires to make Fusion 360 the umbrella for all industry.

So far, the brightest point is Fusion 360, and it does well showing what Forge can do. I expect that the long-promised cloud version of AutoCAD is being rewritten in Forge. Or, maybe just maybe, they’ll shift to a new underlying paradigm and start over.

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

 

And in Other News

Cerulean Labs updates its conceptual design software Spaces to v1.3.1 with

  • Cladding tool to assign cladding to building faces for curtain walls and shading systems

  • Design options to hold multiple versions of a project in a single file

Spaces runs on iPads and is a free download from apps.apple.com/app/apple-store/id1530458770.

- - -

CAD vendors who are shutting down their businesses in Russia (so far):

  • Autodesk

  • PTC

  • Siemens

(Source: schnitgercorp.com/2022/03/04/the-plmish-world-steps-up-to-support-ukraine)

As well, these 3D manufacturing firms and publications: 3dprintingindustry.com/news/the-additive-manufacturing-industry-supports-the-security-and-foreign-policy-course-of-the-german-federal-government-european-union-and-nato-205472.

 

Which leads to questions:

Q: Why did these vendors pivot away from Russia but not, say, China?

A: Some estimates I have read suggest that Western firms make only 1%-2% of their revenues from Russia.

Q. Will western CAD software shut down when Russian users cannot renew their subscriptions?

A. Perhaps. It depends on how the subscription confirmation and payment systems are implemented. Permanent licenses are unaffected.

Q. Will these CAD vendors be allowed back into Russia after, um, peace breaks out?

A. Perhaps not. Russia has local versions of many kinds of software, which it has being trying to promote. Lowered foreign competition gives domestic firms greater opportunities for regional growth.

Russian replacements for western CAD software include nanoCAD (for AutoCAD), Renga (Revit), KOMPAS-3D (Inventor/Fusion, Creo, Solid Edge/NX), Neolant (P&ID, plant design), and C3D Labs (Parasolid).

- - -

Minimalist BIM format Dotbim handles geometry and data exchange in a way to reduce the problem of translators missing parts of the now-complex IFC format.

By design, the spec is limited to one page, and so .bim does not cover everything. Links to github and other resources at osarch.org/2022/02/26/dotbim-minimalist-file-format-for-bim.

- - -

With the Open Design Alliance’s release of .Net software development kit for BimRV, the following kinds of Revit data can be handled by any dot.net application:

  • All Revit elements and properties read

  • Model viewing

  • Revit data to IFC format conversion

The SDK [software development kit] so far is limited in creating Revit elements and is available only to ODA member companies. More info at opendesign.com/products/bimrv.

- - -

Nemetschek Allplan becomes exclusive supplier of BIM software to the newly formed Autobahn GmbH that now builds and maintains Germany’s 13,000km freeways and trunk roads: 2,850 licenses for 52 offices. allplan.com/us_en

In other Nemetschek news, the company appoints Yves Padrines as ceo. He is the former ceo of video software company Synamedia.

- - -

Sometimes manufacturers release CAD files for their products, and here are two sets that came out in the last few weeks:

Steam Deck case on GitLab: gitlab.steamos.cloud/SteamDeck/hardware in 2D PDF, 3D STL, and 3D STP formats.

A set of 3D-printable attachments to Ford’s Maverick pickup: ford.com/support/how-tos/owner-resources/vehicle-documents/how-do-i-use-3d-printing-to-customize-my-ford-maverick-pickup in CADPart, IGES [really?], and STP formats.

 

Letters to the Editor

Re: Qonic Kicks Off

So that’s why there was sudden silence from Steve Johnson, Don Strimbu, and other “old timers.” Problem is, as a CAD customer, I switched to BricsCAD based on that group of people’s advice and the clear vision of Mr. de Keyser. I feel doomed now.
            -Fa3ien (via Twitter)

The editor replies: I see no negative trends with BricsCAD under Hexagon. Future versions seem to be tracking in the same direction as previous ones. BricsCAD has, so far, not been Visio’ed.

Steve Johnson wrote extensively about BricsCAD, but was never an employee; Don Strimbu is still with Hexagon Bricsys.

Steve Johnson replies (thru Twitter): My silence is hardly sudden, and has nothing to do with this new enterprise. I’ll check it out, though. Meanwhile, BricsCAD is still a great product that is improving at a rate that outstrips the competition.

- - -

I hope Qonic reads the cover story in the new issue of Martyn Day’s AEC Magazine, “BIM is dead” at aecmag.com/collaboration/bim-is-bust-how-should-aec-data-work-hok.
            - Randall Newton

The editor replies: Well, not so much dead as unable to present complexity in a way that humans and computers can handle, so that the dream of ‘one BIM to rule them all’ is becoming tarnished.

- - -

Wow! Dimitry Ushakov gone? Presumably, LEDAS is still helping Hexagon develop BricsCAD?
- Dominic Seah

The editor replies: It is normal for executives of an acquired company to leave after a year or so. LEDAS stopped working on BricsCAD in 2011, after it sold part of its company to Bricsys.

 

Re: Old Timers on New Technology

Holy cow! Half-way into reading Leo’s letter, I was thinking “Did I write this and forgot that I did?” Very true! I’m not as close to the design industry world as I used to be, but from what I gather (talking with old friends still in the business) the biggest challenge has been QA [quality assurance]. Mostly due to pressure to reduce costs.
            - David Stein

The editor replies: When I see new and astounding freeway interchanges in our area, which were presumably designed with CAD — astounding, as in “astoundingly bad” — it makes me think that the designs were made with CAD-command experience, not road-design experience.

Mr Stein responds: I also worry about the jump to A.I. in design and engineering. The methods and preferences A.I. will use will be entirely dependent on the humans after which they are patterned.

I don’t have a lot of faith in shareholders and suits choosing the best minds over the most affordable minds.

- - -

Notable Quotable in upFront.eZine #1,121 quotes Elsergio Volador, but when I Google this name he doesn’t seem to exist. There are a lot of close matches, but not an exact one.
            - Bill Fane

The editor replies: When, however, I entered the quote into Bing, it found my source for you. Elsergio Volador appears to be the screen name for a commenter on The Register: forums.theregister.com/forum/all/2021/10/15/clientside_side_scanning/

When I entered the quote into Bing, Microsoft expressed its concern for my mental well-being:

Notable Quotable

“Sometimes I think $GOOG purposefully does slightly illegal things in its ad tech unit, which is worth like $14, in order to distract everyone from its core business, which makes all the money.”
      - Willis Cap

 

Thank You, Readers

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

Should Paypal.me not operate in your country, then use www.paypal.com to send funds to the account of [email protected].

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Or mail a cheque (US$ or CDN$ only, please) to upFront.eZine Publishing, Ltd., 34486 Donlyn Avenue, Abbotsford BC, V2S 4W7, Canada.

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Posted at 06:54 AM in Software | | Comments (0)

Monday, February 21, 2022

Qonic Kicks Off

Issue # 1,123  |  Inside the Business of CAD  |  21 February 2022

 

From the Editor

Not much of a newsletter this week, as my dad (98 next month) moved (willingly!) from his condo to a very fine old folks home. This meant that family and friends spent the last week clearing the condo of 30 years of memories. Regular newsletter next week.

There was, however, one bit of new news I want to share with you.

 

And in Other News

With the sale of Bricsys to Hexagon, and much of the old Bricsys crew leaving Hexagon, we wondered what was up next for Erik de Keyser and his team of serial entrepreneurs.

It turns out to be Qonic, “the next generation building design modeling tools.” The old team has gotten back together, with people like Erik de Keyser, Mark Van Den Bergh, Sander Scheiris, and Dmitry Ushakov.

Reflecting, the new endeavor should comes as no surprise to us. Mr de Keyser’s aim always has been to create easy-to-use architectural design software. This, by my reckoning, is phase V in his journey.

The Web site, for now, is largely a placeholder. qonic.com

 

*4685

Posted at 07:08 AM in Software | | Comments (2)

Monday, February 07, 2022

500 New Things in Solid Edge 2022

Issue # 1,121  |  Inside the Business of CAD  |  7 February 2022

 

 

CAD Direct integrating parts and assemblies from NX and Solidworks

The Siemens CAD universe centers around NX, with Solid Edge the oft-overlooked stepchild. It’s just as powerful as any mid-level MCAD rival, such as Solidworks or Inventor from Dassault Systemes and Autodesk, yet lacks the mindshare of these rivals.

Part of the problem stems from a history of bouncing between homes. Born at Intergraph, it was adopted by Unigraphics, passed along to EDS, sent back to UGS, and now calls Siemens its home.

Another issue affecting Solid Edge, as I see it, is that its powerful hybrid Synchronous Technology (ST) is saddled by a perplexing (and initially over-hyped) combination of smart direct and parametric modeling. The typical machine shop designer hasn’t shown much in the way of enthusiasm for ST, its biggest differentiator from competitors.

Yet, if it’s stability you want, then Solid Edge is the one for you. Autodesk and Dassault are bedazzled and distracted (and so far failing) in moving their mid-range MCAD offerings fully to the cloud.

By contrast, Siemens repeatedly makes clear that MCAD belongs on the desktop, full stop. Sure, ancillary functions, like co-designing and PLM, are suitable for running on the cloud. So, Siemens offers Solid Edge users cloud-based products like Xcelerator Share for collaboration and Teamcenter X for product lifecycle management.

 

What’s New in Solid Edge 2022

When I saw what is new in Solid Edge 2022, I felt like I was back in the glory days of CAD. Here was a release claiming over 500 enhancements, a far cry from other CAD systems that these days might be satisfied by offering customers a third way to view symbols and such.

Let me walk you through some of the new and improved functions that I found most interesting.

CAD Direct places parts and assemblies from NX, JT, and Solidworks files into Solid Edge models. Copies of the foreign b-reps are stored in an intermediary format, called “internal components,” in Solid Edge’s assembly file. There are no external files, solving that particular data management problem.

To the user, the imported part/assembly looks and acts like a Solid Edge one. In the figure at the top of the article, an imported part is highlighted in green. Mates, constraints, and so on work with it.

You are, for instance, designing a locomotive but are sourcing the electrical generator from another supplier. You don’t need to edit the generator; it’s done. You just need to place it so that you can connect bolts and electrical connections to the locomotive. Should the supplier update the generator, the copy in your locomotive design changes, should you wish it to.

In Pathfinder’s model tree, foreign models are tagged as “external.” Nevertheless, a link is maintained if possible, so that when changes are made to the model in the originating CAD system, they are reflected in Solid Edge.

Dan Staples, Siemens vp of mainstream engineering, told me that in the future additional MCAD systems will be supported by CAD Direct, but that it works most reliably with Parasolid-based CAD programs, as they use the same geometric kernel as Solid Edge.

Point clouds are new to Solid Edge 2022, catching up with competitors. In the past, points were displayed as triangles or b-reps; now they remain points.

Each point of the millions or billions point generated by laser scanners carries color and x-y-z data. An assembly in Solid Edge can have multiple point clouds, components can be placed among them, and measurements take between solids and point clouds. “Rendering them, as they are being rotated at high speed, is secret sauce stuff,” explained Mr Staples to me, with a straight face.

Convergent modeling is the technology through which Solid Edge lets you work with b-reps (solids) and meshes (facets) at the same time. Meshes are typically imported from scans and non-CAD sources like 3D gaming development software. In Solid Edge 2022, you can, say, scan a handle in 3D, bring it into Solid Edge, and then cut a hole into it using Boolean subtraction of solids, as shown in below.

Performing solid modeling operations on a mesh part

“The big nut to crack was Boolean operations between b-reps and facet meshes, but the result [in the past] was facets; now, everything stays in their form,” Mr Staples said. Meshes stay meshes, solids stay solids. (Dassault Systemes has something similar that it calls Polyhedra.)

Some mesh elements can be converted outright to equivalent solids. When it comes to exporting hybrid models, however, solids still are converted to meshes. “You’re never complete, but I’d say we’re very close to completion,” said Mr Staples.

Related to this, Solid Edge Simulation gains hydrostatic pressure simulation. It now performs analyses on mesh models, and is better at remeshing frames prior to stress analysis.

Dynamic visualization creates visual reports by colorizing models according to rules. For example, you can color all components that are from a specific supplier in blue, designed by a specific employee in green, or made from a specific material, such as copper, as shown below.

Dynamically visualizing parts in an assembly

Parts are filtered, colored, and hidden according to rules that you write; rules can be shared with others. This lets you see if the assembly is made from the correct materials, or search more easily for suppliers already being tapped for components in the model.

Free computer-aided manufacturing is now available to all Solid Edge 2022 users on subscription. The CAM Pro 2.5-axis milling software runs as an external program, but is associative with Solid Edge models. It automates tool path creation and generates machining visualizations. New in 2022 is adaptive tool paths, as shown below.

Running CAM Pro on a part designed in Solid Edge

Not free, but also new to Solid Edge 2022, is Simcenter Flomaster from Siemens. It extracts geometry from your model, and then simulates 1D fluid flows through full and partial networks of pipes. In the demo that I saw, it handled pressure pulses from compressors.

Other improvements include Solid Edge opening very large assemblies ten times faster than before. It does this by first showing just a 3D image of the assembly, which you can rotate and turn the visibility of parts off and on. To edit parts, you select just the ones you want loaded.

Synchronous Technology gains the radiate function. With it, you make changes to diameters of shafts, with holes and slots changing automatically to accommodate the new size.

Rules-based configurators are used to design variations of products, based on a single model. Solid Edge 2022 embeds a new Design Configurator (not based on RuleStream or Driveworks) that stores configuration rules with the CAD model.

Xcelerator Share is much like using a CAD-oriented Dropbox for sharing files and commenting on them. It is similar to collaboration offerings from other CAD vendors, and it runs on any computer or tablet, including Chromebooks. Like PTC’s Vuforia, it includes augmented reality for placing Solid Edge models visually in the real world.

 

What Ralph Grabowski Thinks

Never mind the cloud.

Solid Edge benefits from a company with deep pockets making advances in NX, and then spinning them off to Solid Edge. On top of that, Siemens uses its CAD in its own engineering projects. No other CAD vendor can make the claim.

So, Solid Edge offers functions that are otherwise tough to program and that many of its direct rivals dream of offering some day.

Solid Edge 2022 shipped last October. A free trial is available, following registration, through solidedge.siemens.com/en/solutions/products/complete-product-development-portfolio/whats-new-in-solid-edge-2022/.

[This article is reprinted with permission from Design Engineering magazine with some edits.]

 

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  • Advanced character forms for readability & clarity

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

 

And in Other News

Tech Soft 3D updated its HOOPS 2022 SDK [software development kit] for 2022 with support for Apple’s M1 CPUs, an updated animation manager, new physics-based rendering, and IFC spatial relationships. Register for a 60-day evaluation from techsoft3d.com/products/hoops/native-platform.

- - -

Cloud not popular among PTC customers: “PTC continues to pin a lot of its hopes on Onshape [MCAD] and Arena [PLM], which currently account for just 4% of total software revenue.” Read more at schnitgercorp.com/2022/01/31/ptcs-f22-is-off-to-a-solid-start-with-momentum-expected-to-accelerate.

In related news, multiple reports suggest Microsoft is dropping its Hololens XR hardware. As well, Mozilla is shutting down its VR Web browser, and Meta during the last fiscal year lost $10 billion on its meta operations.

- - -

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

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

 

Letters to the Editor

Re: Launching toasters

Regarding the slanted toaster in your January 10th newsletter. Perhaps a designer at T-Fal had seen this strip from Dilbert: dilbert.com/strip/1989-04-19.
            - Jeremy TePaske, mechanical designer
            Smithco

 

Notable Quotable

“If expert advice does not align with the government/corporate desires, then experts are changed until the advice meets the government/corporate goal.”
     - Elsergio Volador

 

Thank You, Readers

Thank you to readers who donate towards the operation of upFront.eZine. To support upFront.eZine through PayPal.me, then I suggest the following amounts:

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*4680

 

Posted at 01:20 AM in Software | | Comments (0)

Monday, January 31, 2022

Which is Better, Plug-ins or Applications?

Issue #1,120  |  Inside the Business of CAD  |  31 January 2022

 

Guest editorial by Ivan Rykov

Plug-in adding a toolbar and a panel to Rhino

Many projects developed by LEDAS are plug-ins for CAD software programs, ranging from powerful systems like CATIA, to lighter weight solutions like Rhino. Oftimes, we help our customers decide on the direction in which their ideas are best developed: in the form of a plug-in or as a standalone program.

 

Pros and Cons of Plug-ins

Plug-ins either solve specific problems, or else add functions missing from CAD systems. A good example is CAMWorks from HCL, an advanced plug-in that adds computer-aided manufacturing functions to the Solidworks MCAD system.

Comparing plug-ins with independent applications, we found that plug-ins are better suited to software used in-house by design engineers, with the aim of assisting their day-to-day work. In certain cases, the plug-in approach significantly reduces the cost of development. Ready-made CAD systems work with plug-ins through their APIs [application programming interface].

The drawback to plug-ins that you have to run them on a host application. Before the plug-in can be used, you have to pay a license fee and then install the host software. Plug-ins intended for wider distribution have their demand limited by the number of seats found of the target CAD system.

The APIs provided by CAD systems are often thought of as a way to extend and tailor functions of the CAD system itself, rather than for creating customized processes to solve particular problems. Also, it’s not always an easy task to make a focused plug-in which overrides the user interface of the host application to substitute its own workflow.

We have found that, in general, end-user plug-ins are not usually at the top of our customers’ wish lists.

 

Pros and Cons of Standalone Applications

More commonly, our customers want software made as standalone programs for the desktop and, more often in recent years, a client-server Web application.

When considering the development of an independent application, either for desktop or the Web, keep in mind that it will require a geometric kernel with which it constructs, represents, and tessellates 3D objects. (We talk more about kernels on our 3D Modeling page.) The annual cost of a subscription license for a kernel is usually significantly higher than a one-time payment for a single license of a lightweight or middle-class CAD system on which plug-ins can run.

Another source of cost is the effort to implement 3D scenes: visualization, camera manipulation (zoom, pan, rotate), object manipulation (selection, movements), and so on. With a plug-in, the host application provides all these features via its API. In case of standalone applications, these have to be programmed at a low level, or else with the help of licensed visualization components.

 

Types of Plug-in Solutions

From our experience, Rhino is an excellent example of a customizable system. It allows us to hide most of its default panels and toolbars, and then we can easily create our own panels using WPF [Windows Presentation Foundation]. This gives us almost the level of same control over the Rhino’s user interface as do independent WPF applications. (See figure at the top of this article.)

In other CAD systems, this could become problematic as they might use outdated GUI frameworks (do you recall WxWidgets?) or are limited to UI controls predefined by their APIs.

If, however, the application has an external API that can be called from another process, such as through COM or WCF, then we can build a plug-in UI as an external application that interacts with the host CAD system through the API. (Technically, this is then not strictly considered a plug-in.)

This allows us to build the UI using modern technologies exactly matching the required processes, yet still using the geometric kernel and 3D scene capabilities of the host CAD application. This approach is quite popular with our customers, although a somewhat more complicated approach.

 

How to Decide

So, we have trade-offs that can be resolved by knowing the number of simultaneous software users:

  • When the cost of copies of the host CAD system does not exceed the cost of a custom application (with licenses for geometric kernel, visualization components, and 3D scene implementation), a plug-in is the cheaper option.

It’s worth noting that the cost of licensing the host application can at times be considered to be zero when company engineers are already using the software in their daily work. In this case, a plug-in based on such a system possesses the additional benefit of fitting a familiar environment.

Thus, in our experience, plug-in solutions are quite popular for semi-automation of certain CAD-related processes performed by a small group of engineers, or else by a large group already using a suitable CAD system. Many of our digital medicine projects, for example, are in the form of plug-ins.

 

[Ivan Rykov is chief technology officer at LEDAS since 2004. Dr Rykov graduated from the mechanics and mathematics department of Novosibirsk State University, and in 2009 received his PhD in physics and mathematics specializing in discrete mathematics and mathematical cybernetics. More at ledas.com/en.]

This article is reprinted with permission from ledas.com/post/886-deciding-which-is-better-plug-ins-or-applications.

 

PROJECT NEWPLEX v2.0

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

Features

  • Advanced character forms for readability & clarity

  • Designed for drafting

  • Includes the most-requested technical characters

  • Extensive international character set

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

 

And in Other News

Autodesk launches Flex, its token-based pay-as-you-go system for renting software by the day. AutoCAD, for instance, costs 7 tokens (US$21) for 24 hours, which can be paused by closing the application. Netfab Ultimate, at 55 tokens daily, is the most expensive.

For the very intermittent user, like me, this would be a useful duration, but, alas, I cannot buy a day’s worth, because the minimum purchase is 500 tokens that last just one year, and costs just C$365 less than an annual subscription. Maybe that’s the point. Autodesk warns that “daily rates are subject to change,” meaning the cost/token could rise at any time. autodesk.com/benefits/flex/estimator-tool

- - -

OpenDesign Alliance initiates development of a scan-to-BIM software development kit. Or more accurately: laser scans > polygonal surfaces > AEC objects (b-reps) > parametric parts classified in IFC, Revit, and other formats.

To join the dozen other firms working on it, you first have to become a SIG member at $20,000/year; details at https://opendesign.com/scan-to-bim.

- - -

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

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

 

Letters to the Editor

Re: When the cursor gets erratic, it's the mouse's nano-receiver at fault

While experiencing the same problem with my Logitech M185 and reading through suggestions [on WorldCAD Access], I took a hint from a very old post that referenced the jumpy problem on an old mouse with a rubber ball. It suggested cleaning the ball and inside the mouse.

My newer M185 did not have a ball, but rather a movement sensor window. I took a Q-tip and cleaned the little window on the underside of the mouse, [see figure above] and the problem disappeared.
            - Roger Carlsen (via WorldCAD Access)

 

Re: Which Comes First: Models or Drawings?

The usefulness of either a model or a drawing depends, in part, on what you are using it for. If you are a developer, a rough hand sketch might do fine. If you are an estimator you may be able to get by with fewer details (and less accuracy, whatever that means) than if you are trying to build a building.

Two issues run throughout a real-life examination of models and drawings:

1. Knowledge. Does the creator have the knowledge necessary to create the desired level of detail? In construction it is ridiculously impossible for an architect to have the requisite knowledge for the final design of every component in a building. The less knowledge implicitly contained in a drawing or model, the less useful it is. Each type of use requires a different amount of knowledge to implicitly dwell within the model.

2. Responsibility. Who is legally required to get it right? In USA, architects, who most typically create a model, have a low bar for liability for the design; that is pushed contractually to general contractors and from there to subcontractors.

Subs cannot stay viable in the business without serious knowledge; the others can shrug off any liability for not getting a design quite right.
            - Leo Schlosberg

The editor replies: Back in the day when I designed traffic signal installations, we used symbols like the ones shown below, which contractors interpreted.

Image source Maryland DOT

Notable Quotable

“The experts predicted the future, but nature had other ideas.”
     - Richard Fernandez (@wretchardthecat)

 

Thank You, Readers

Thank you to readers who donate towards the operation of upFront.eZine. To support upFront.eZine through PayPal.me, then I suggest the following amounts:

Should Paypal.me not operate in your country, then use www.paypal.com to send funds to the account of [email protected].

Or ask [email protected] about making a direct bank transfer through Wise (Transferwise).

Or mail a cheque (US$ or CDN$ only, please) to upFront.eZine Publishing, Ltd., 34486 Donlyn Avenue, Abbotsford BC, V2S 4W7, Canada

*4680

 

 

 

Posted at 07:00 AM in Guest Editorials, Software | | Comments (0)

Monday, January 17, 2022

Which Comes First: Models or Drawings?

Issue #1,118  |  Inside the Business of CAD   |  17 January 2022

 

Guest editorial by Alexander Yampolsky

This is the fifth in the series of thought-provoking pieces written by Alexander Yampolsky on the importance of 2D drawings for 3D construction:

 

There is a way to determine people’s ability to structure designs. Ask them to arrange virtual furniture in a room:

  • When they draw rectangles and they annotate them with words like “wardrobe,” “bed,” and “table,” then place dimensions and distances, you are looking at a designer. The designer is a planner solving the “What can and should be done” problem.

  • When they create  perspective views with details like armrests and cushions, it seems that they are “constructors” who would be better trying their hand at mechanical engineering. (See figure below.) Constructors solve the “How to make” problem using original, non-standard solutions. This is welcome in mechanical engineering, which has a pre-production testing stage, which does not exist in the design of buildings where non-standard solutions are risky.

Perspective drawing made by a constructor

“What is a model for, if you already have drawings?” This is the question I am asked during discussions on automatically generating 3D models from 2D drawings. People have no idea that it’s possible to make drawings without first constructing 3D models. For instance, this is the weighty opinion of a developer of one 3D modeling program: “The model is the only source of information for drawings. Drawings are nothing more than views of the model.”

And what do standards and textbooks say? When we consult them, we read terms like “projections,” “sections,” and “cross-sections,” such as illustrated by the figure below.

Orthogonal and other projections of a 3D model

When we read further, we learn that a floor plan is a horizontal section at the level of the window openings, or 1/3 of the story’s height. We might think that this confirms the priority of models over drawings. An example from a real project, however, casts doubt on this conclusion.

Depicted in the figure below is a shop. This is practical, clear, but how can it be called a “horizontal section” when it shows a variety of elevations? Some are at -2.500; there is a rail track at floor level; some platforms at +1.000 and +4.000; many columns and vertical bracings (above the floor, and below the crane rails); walls at level of  windows; bridge cranes and a crane landing platform (just under the roof).

Production building plan at a variety of elevations

This exactly is a plan, a schematic representation of what should be built. It is an extremely simplified representation, with all plan objects refined and detailed elsewhere. By the way, sections are the same as plans, except that they describe builds from different aspects.

 

PROJECT NEWPLEX v2.0

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

Features

  • Advanced character forms for readability & clarity

  • Designed for drafting

  • Includes the most-requested technical characters

  • Extensive international character set

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


Parametric Modeling as Linguistic Description

The synthesis of spatial objects from their projections is called “the inverse problem of descriptive geometry,” and is an unsolved technical problem. Nevertheless, for hundreds of years, designers and builders have been synthesizing mental versions of 3D building models from 2D drawings. Then, builders transform the mental objects into real ones — how do they do it?

It is impossible to build models using projections, but it is possible using conditional images that have parameters tied to them. When we draw a circle (even if it is not perfect), and then write just two words, such as “Sphere d1800,” we create the parametric description of a sphere as a spatial object.

A parametric description consists entirely of conventional signs, and as a result is a linguistic description. Parametric modeling is essentially linguistic modeling. As a rule, parametric descriptions include the following elements:

  • Object type designations, formatted as text (e.g., “sphere”)

  • Conditional graphical representations of objects (e.g., drawing of a circle)

  • Parametric designations as text (e.g., “d1800”)

  • Conditional auxiliary images (e.g., dimensions and extension lines)

There are cases where the object type designator is not explicitly presented. In such cases, it can be reconstructed from the drawing context. For instance, the context may be provided by the drawing’s name, such as “column layout scheme.”

Any parametric description assumes the existence of an associated execution procedure, such as a mathematical formula, a computer program, or a detailing algorithm linked to detail drawings. From a programming point of view, a parametric description is a function call with parameters passing to it. When executed, the function transforms conventional signs and images into mental or digital models.

We can come to the conclusion that the primary method for analyzing drawings is to establish parametric descriptions for each building element. In drawings, the same building elements are usually described in several different contexts, such as being present in different views, on different drawings, in different drawing sets, and so on.

As an example, let’s try to restore the parametric description of the column located at A-17 in the figure below. The type of object (column) is easily determined from the context: column sections in this drawing are rectangles. There is, however, no other information tied to the object.

Identifying parameters of column A-17 from the equivalent column A-4

So we apply this well-known rule:

  • If, in a group of objects that are identical in appearance and purpose, there is only one object provided with parameters (dimensions, marking, designations), then all other objects in the group inherit these parameters.

In the group of columns along the A-axis, we see column A-7 is associated with detail #4. (See figure below.) If we were to refer to detail 4, we would see a refined column section with its dimensions, and snaps of the section to the co-ordination axes on the plan.

Detail 4 describing column A-7 and referencing Section 1-1

Using the details of section 1-1, we can determine the column’s top and bottom elevations. We apply the parametric description we obtained from A-7 to all columns (except for the corner ones) of row A, including the column at A-17.

Step-by-step Detailing of Objects

So. We managed to determine the definition of a simplified architectural column. A short parametric description cannot completely define complex structures, as real columns are. Nevermind: during the early stages of planning, our knowledge of objects is very approximate and vague.

During the planning process, structural drawings appear following the architectural ones, from which the columns obtain designations (that will be marked). A separate drawing of an abstract column representative of the columns of this type will appear. The structural elements of this abstract column — the formwork, rebars, embedded items — will, in turn, be detailed.

The essence of step-by-step detailing can be described this way:

  1. Any project detail is itself a project

  2. Any project is itself a project detail

During step-by-step detailing, a hierarchical structure is built by which the types and parameters of the upper-level objects are the context for lower-level objects.

Knowledge and Data

Parametric descriptions and their associated execution procedures are knowledge of what and how the work should be done. As a result of the execution of the parametric description, we get an object’s 3D model, which is the object’s database. Let’s take a closer look at the process.

In the figure below, there is a drawing fragment explaining the principle of reinforcing the floor slab.

Drawing of slab reinforcement as a representation of knowledge

The recipient of the drawing extracts a parametric description from it, applies the execution procedure, and, as a result, gets a mental model of the slab reinforcement. When the recipient is a builder, he will transform his mental model into real reinforcement in the field.

The process of creating a model in a 3D modeling program is, in principle, no different from a traditional drawing. By some means or other, the reinforcement contour is defined; the diameter, steel class, spacing, and possible overlap of rebars are specified.

The end result is, however, different. The execution procedure creates a computer model of a set of rebars with attributes attached to every bar. This model is saved. The figure below represents a top view of the reinforced slab as displayed by a computer model.

Top view of the reinforced slab model as a form of data representation

As mental models are built solely on the basis of visual perception, let's compare the two figures:

Drawing — shows a single abstract bar, with information attached. The bar defines the size, location, and attributes of all other bars in the planned reinforcement slab. We do not see individual bars, but we get a very good idea of the slab reinforcement.

Model — shows lots of bars. Annotations need to be added to all bars, and many dimensions need to be placed. When the slab is large and contains a lot of rebar, we get a messy, poorly readable picture. The result is a poor-quality mental model and, accordingly, a poor understanding.

- - -

Collaboration begins with understanding. Like it or not, we have to do what BIM calls "automatic" extraction of drawings from models.

A comparison begs. We cook borscht according to a recipe, throw away the recipe, and then, using complex algorithms, try to extract the recipe (the drawings) from the finished borscht (the models). This is the wrong way around of doing things.

The parametric drawing style is based on the assumption that recipients of the drawings have a professional set of algorithms for drawing analyses and for building mental models based on the analyses’ results.

In practice, this means that drawings should be made so that for each structural element, its parametric description can be restored. The mental object is modeled by calling the appropriate execution procedure associated with the parametric description.

 

Parametrics Determine Drawing Precision

In many cases, deviations from the image’s scale and accuracy contribute to the readability of drawings and the ease with which they can be adjusted. Consistent adherence to accuracy prevents this, surprisingly enough. The use of parametrics makes the meticulous precision of graphic images meaningless, and so it makes no sense to measure things on drawings. Indeed, the Russian standard prohibits such measurements.

The geometric accuracy of parametric drawings is determined by the accuracy of the values of  dimensional parameters. In most cases, editing is limited to adjusting parameters, without affecting the graphic images. (It should be noted that parametric drawings are difficult to read when the proportions of objects are grossly distorted.)

As we see, this contradicts the autocad-style of drawing with its associative dimensions. The autocad style is based on drawing graphic images with tools that ensure great accuracy; the primary method for adjusting drawings is by editing the graphic images as required.

 

Machine Interpretation of Drawings

When professional algorithms are transferred to a computer, we get the ability to carry out automatic drawing analyses and building a computer model based on the results of the analyses.

A set of drawings can be considered a program written in a professional language — the equivalent of a high-level programming language. The program is compiled as a whole; a machine interpreter of drawings is in fact a compiler. As a result of the compilation, an overall execution procedure is formed, such as an IFC text file. In the end, a computer model is created. Note that the primary method of programming drawings is the step-by-step detailing of objects, better known as top-down design.

How is this different from the traditional way of creating models with 3D modeling software? All of them use a command interpreter as the input interface for 3D modeling. Complex objects are created by assembling pre-prepared components, whether primitives or parts. This technique implements the bottom-up principle; it simulates the construction process and so has nothing to do with planning.

It is clear that for many, assembling a building from cubes is easier and clearer than creating a linguistic description of a building with help of drawings. Unfortunately, except for the model in the computer’s memory, what’s actually needed are models in our heads. A set of drawings is an algorithm of understanding. It is impossible to replace the reading of this algorithm with something else, such as wandering across a computer model.

Crucially, the delineation of legal responsibility within the framework of this algorithm is also not a problem.

 

Machine Interpretation of Sketches

The parametric style of drawing allowed engineers with blunt pencils on broken-down Kuhlmann drafting machines to create absolutely accurate (not in the autocad sense) drawings. The independence instrumental to parametrics creates the principled opportunity of interpreting freehand sketches and drawings.

The figure below illustrates an example of such an interpretation. The problem is to turn a freehand line (possibly the sketch of a beam) into an accurate two-dimensional model.

Steps in interpreting the freehand line as a beam

Here are the steps involved:

Step 1. Bridge the gap, created by careless sketching. The extent of the gap is insignificant and is not numerically specified.

Step 2. Straighten the curve. The bend radii and the curve deviations from the straight line passing through the curve endpoints are insignificant and not numerically indicated. From this, we deduce that the curve is a straight line segment.

Step 3. Refine the x coordinates of the line’s endpoints. Horizontal deviations of the line’s endpoints from the A-axis and the 6000-dimension extension line are insignificant and so are not numerically specified. The x-coordinate at the line’s left endpoint is equal to xA (xA is the x-coordinate of axis "A"); the x-coordinate of the right endpoint is xA + 6000.

Step 4. Refine the z coordinates of the line’s endpoints. Vertical deviations of the line’s endpoints from the 3.000 elevation’s extension line are insignificant and not numerically specified, as is the inclination angle of the line. The z coordinates of the line’s endpoints are the same, and both are equal to 3000.

We completely restored the parametric description of the object.

 

Standards for Preparing Drawings

Current rulemaking in the area of preparing drawings stopped trying to combine the Gaspard Monge legacy with the drafting practice of the 1980s. [Mr Monge invented descriptive geometry, which became the basis for technical drawings.] In my opinion, construction drawings in Russia reached their peak in the eighties. From this, progress regressed, as drawings were made with 3D models and autocad styles of drawing.

Arrested development results in degradation, as shown by the figure below comparing Russian state standards from 1980 (top) and 2018 (below).

Drawing styles from 1980 (top) and 2018 (above)

The Grammar of Drawings

Due to the appearance of 3D modeling programs, a question has arisen about teaching descriptive geometry in technical colleges: Is it still relevant? The crisis in descriptive geometry is a consequence of the same misconceptions about drawings as in engineering practice.

Back in the 19th century, drawings were called “the language of technique,” and descriptive geometry was the grammar of this language. In my opinion, the reasons for misunderstanding were these:

  • Incomplete awareness that drawings have all the properties of the language in a direct, literal sense

  • The consequences of not fully thinking this through. For instance, if we speak of drawings as text, then it is not clear what accurate projections have to do with the text

Descriptive geometry can and should develop in the direction of machine analysis of drawings: from classical descriptive geometry to parametric (linguistic) descriptive geometry, a kind of analytic geometry.

[Alexander Yampolsky has designed residential, public and industrial buildings, mainly as a structural analyst. He was an early participant (1982) in BIM at the Minuralsibstroy construction ministry of the Russian government, and developed technology for machine interpretation of drawings. Mr Yampolsky is a graduate of Tula State University.]

 

Notable Quotable

“The CDC said we can leave the Christmas lights up til January.”
     - Aubrey Strobel

 

*4690

 

 

 

 

Posted at 07:00 AM in Guest Editorials, Software | | Comments (0)

Monday, January 10, 2022

What Remains to Be Solved in Mechanical CAD?

Issue #1,117  |  Happy New Year!  |  10 January 2022

 

Guest Editorial by Matt Lombard

Appliance Designer software from 3Shape

I keep mourning the passing of CAD as a topic interesting enough to keep producing interesting articles about it. It used to be that you didn’t have to look far to find a great technical topic, or a new way to apply CAD tools. On the Solidworks (desktop — do I really have to specify what the name implies?) side of things, for instance, development has been largely uninteresting.

Developments in design technology seem currently focused on 3D printing: improvements in materials, methods, support structures, finer structures, finishes, and machines to go bigger and smaller. The surge in robotics is related to the hardware side of 3D printing, and also is going gangbusters.

Let’s take a look at what general 3D CAD development has achieved in the last decade or so, and then look forward to what we can hope for in the next decade. The big topics CAD developers have tackled include these ones:

Universal file management

  • Some CAD systems added file management, but others made it less accessible

  • Is it possible that Solidworks killed off PDM [product data management] as certain individuals were going out the door to create a new venture with built-in data management?

Alternatives to History-based Modeling

  • T-splines and related technology

  • Direct/synchronous modeling

  • Convergent CAD that combines sub-division meshes + NURBS in the same model

           i.  Sub-d push-pull
           ii.  3D scan data
           iii.  FEA meshing
           iv.  3D print meshes
           v.   Generative techniques for shape optimization
           vi.  Medical, dental meshes

Application Delivery and Data Storage Options

  • First, decentralizing CAD from mainframes to personal computers

  • Then, centralizing CAD back to cloud servers

4.   CAD in a database

  • Much data these days is kept in a database format; it makes sense, as it provides built-in data management and turns the idea of file management on its head

5.   Various 3D Print Integrations (although most 3D printing advances have been in materials and robotics)

  • Support structures

  • Moving specialized functions from specialized software into CAD


Not all of these have been ubiquitous, and not all have impacted all CAD users, but most CAD users have access to these solutions when they need them.

Mechanical CAD with 3D scan-and-print has been a great success in specialty areas like medical and dental. If recent wars have an upside, it in the development of next-generation prosthetics, some strictly mechanical, some with newly developed neural interfaces. Scanning and printing have allowed us to customize attachments to individual injuries, quickly replacing and repairing limbs, and even joints.

 

Big Ticket Disappointments

When it comes strictly to mechanical CAD, I think we’re in a lull period right now. With all these other interesting things to do, the base technology has been forgotten for a while.

At the same time, some of the big ticket items that CAD developers put on the table haven’t really caught on.

Cloud. I think there was an assumption that cloud computing was going to be embraced in the same way that PC CAD was embraced in the 1990s. But it hasn’t. Clearly, it works for some people, but not for everyone.

Synchronous Technology. The ST push by Siemens from a decade ago also hasn’t really caught on in the way I had hoped. I really believe in this technology and its application to general mechanical design. (It is far simpler and easier to control models with ST than using history-based design.)

This tech will catch on eventually, but too many intransigent engineers have too much invested in overly-complex history-based systems, and so haven’t taken the time to understand the real advantages of synchronous modeling.

 

Where Do We Go Next?

I’ve made predictions about the future of CAD before. I thought engineer-to-order was the next big thing, as would be synchronous modeling. They weren’t. I predicted CAD-in-the-cloud was not going to be the next big thing; so far, this is my closest to a good guess.

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

I really hope the idea of converging different types of data keeps developing, as well as mesh manipulation tools for mechanical CAD. There are so many sub-d tools out there that every big CAD developer should buy one just to understand the data type, the tools involved, their usage, and applications of this kind of modeling. We don’t have to re-develop all of this knowledge.

Another thing I hope gets some play are more specialized tools. We already have tools specific to designing sheet metal parts, frames, piping, and in medical fields. I think more needs to be done with plastic, assemblies, resilience, and local design.

 

Plastics Design. Plastic parts are so hard to design. The outsides are all minute, custom-made details; the insides, that you don’t even see, can be even more difficult to design. We need a series of functional features that can be applied to models. Maybe this requires a special file format just for plastic parts, as with the other specialized techniques.

Plastic designing and manufacturing need to come closer together. The design of the outside shape and mechanical details, and the manufacturing expertise to make individual plastic parts need to be centralized so that a single person can make the decisions about design and manufacturing. Throwing designs over the Great Wall is not going to be a viable solution going forward.

 

Assembly Design. And we have to do something about assembly design. Right now, it’s a custom approach every time. We need a tool that follows a process for assemblies, and can reuse information on how assemblies go together. Is it rules based? A.I.? Can it somehow learn about different types of joints, closures, and mechanisms?

We need tools that know how to work with horizontal modeling, resilience, top down, layouts, master models — all these are methods that design software should be able to replicate, and even guide you through. We’re at a point where forcing dumb tools to do smart things is just inadequate. Best Practice rules already exist to help people use tools in poorly structured workflows.

 

Sustainable Design. Beyond software, I’d like to see product development aim to be more durable and reusable, to get away from single-use products, especially in plastics and packaging. As engineers and designers (and, yes, even marketers), we need to have a conscience. Reject bad ideas.

Throw-away products have always been a bad idea, but someone other than the people for whom this is a religious cause needs to stand up and say so. We need to design stuff that endures, and when it doesn’t endure, it needs to be fixable, and when it can’t be fixed, it need to be recyclable. Not that long ago and certainly in my lifetime, we used to have less stuff, but the stuff we had was more valuable. It lasted longer, because it was built and designed with use in mind, rather than crass consumption.

 

Local Design. Maybe all of this heads back to more employee-owned companies. I don’t think driving the economy with a bunch of disinterested investors is good for anyone, and obviously centrally-managed economies have shown they don’t work. Globalism is a failure.

Certainly we need to learn to do things locally again. The bigger an organization gets (including government), the more corrupt it becomes, the more disconnected it is from the people who make it work, and should be benefiting from it. Stop sending product development and manufacturing to China. Manufacture molds locally again, make microelectronic chips locally again.

These are things I’d like to see in the next decade.

 

[Matt Lombard has been working with CAD and as an independent product development professional for 30 years. He is the author of eight books on Solidworks and Synchronous Technology. He blogs at dezignstuff.com/about.]

Reprinted with permission from dezignstuff.com/what-are-the-remaining-problems-to-solve-in-cad.

 

And in Other News

XVL from Lattice Technologies (part owned by Toyota) is an inbetween format that reads files from most 3D CAD programs, then displays them in an XVL viewer, and used for training and parts lists.

XVL can be exported to 3D PDF, Excel, iPads, and so on. As of 2021, it is native on 3Dexperience; back in 2005, Dassault based its 3DXML on Lattice’s XVL. lattice3d.com/company/xvl-technology

- - -

ARES Commander 2022 from Graebert is now in beta, with an emphasis on the 2D processing of Revit and other BIM models, as well as new features for the Touch tablet and Kudo Web versions of the CAD software.

Desktop beta is downloadable initially for Windows and then later in January for MacOS. graebert.com

- - -

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

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

 

Letters to the Editor

Re: The Complexity of Simplicity

A.I. projects that attempt to replace humans will fail. A.I. projects that attempt to augment humans have a much more likely path to success.
            - Randall S. Newton (@RSN_Global on Twitter)

- - -

I recently spent a week working with my colleagues at RIB Software improving the UX and UI in our iTWO software, trying to get a commitment between functionality and usability.

I recall Xerox Parc’s Larry Tesler with his “NO MODES” license plate. I prefer one that reads “NO OPTIONS”, as every option in software is a question to which we programmers have no answer. So we transfer the problem to the user. 

I have a new car, the most modern German car, chosen on purpose for being the most digitalized model in its size. It is much more similar to my PC than to my previous car. 

You must learn how to use it, as it has lots of options for adapting the car to your convenience. Otherwise, don’t buy this car! Do you really need an acoustic signal when you close the doors? Will you remember that there is a setting for entering car washes? What happens when you forget? 

And, of course, it has many “MODES,” which affect my driving. After a day of driving it, I asked the salesman how to stop the car from obeying speed limits, as many of them are nonsense. His solution was completely wrong: he unchecked the “Adapt to road conditions” option; he should have turned on “Ignore speed limits,” which is found in a different menu.

The “Adapt to road conditions” option adapts the car’s speed not only to road conditions, but also to your speed setting and to the car in front. (The car knows the road conditions because it has a GPS; when I tell the car my destination, it reduces speeds in curves, and so on.) Should you think this option is turned on, but it is not, you could easily drive off the road.

Thank you for your insight, your knowledge, and your information.
            - Fernando Valderrama
            RIB Spain

 

The editor replies: I buy old used cars to avoid the electronics shoveled into new ones, which I experienced when renting cars.

The worst was a Ford Edge, where even the heating and cooling required adjustment through a touch tablet, several menu levels deep -- followed by precise 0.5-degree temperature changes that required repeated taps while keeping an eye on the road.

Subsequently, Ford admitted they had gone too far in the digitalization of the car’s UI.

- - -

Thanks for your excellent updates, professional dialogues, and information. Even for us non-mechanical guys, it’s valuable.
            - Michael David Rubin

- - -

Regarding knowledge: I am a huge fan of Thomas Kuhn's Structure of Scientific Revolutions, from which we got the term “paradigm shift.”

Regarding interfaces: visiting one of my sons I encountered a fancy toaster with a novel (to me) interface. Push the Toast button and the bread is transported down. As I have aged, I have encountered many puzzling interfaces that were once familiar. Ten-15 years ago I could not open the car window to pay the toll.
            -Leo Schlosberg

 

The editor replies: I bought a T-fal toaster, because its designers were featured speakers at a CAD conference. They had slanted the top by 45 degrees, so that we could look into it and see how the toast was coming along. (Turns out I never do that.)

Well, you know the special property of 45 degrees: when the toast is released at 45-degrees, it is launched into the air in an arc to land, most times, on the kitchen floor. Not all design improvements are improvements.

 

Mr Schlosberg responds: Speaking, as we were, of toasters, a cartoon showed up.

 

Notable Quotable

“Thankfully, there are still hardware Morlocks* to clean up after the mess the Eloi have made.”
     - Andrew Orlowski

*) The Time Machine, HG Wells

 

Thank You, Readers

Thank you to readers who donate towards the operation of upFront.eZine. To support upFront.eZine through PayPal.me, then I suggest the following amounts:

Should Paypal.me not operate in your country, then use www.paypal.com to send funds to the account of [email protected].

Or ask [email protected] about making a direct bank transfer through Wise (Transferwise).

Or mail a cheque (US$ or CDN$ only, please) to upFront.eZine Publishing, Ltd., 34486 Donlyn Avenue, Abbotsford BC, V2S 4W7, Canada.

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Posted at 07:00 AM in Guest Editorials, Software | | Comments (0)

Monday, November 29, 2021

Rob Snyder focuses our attention with TNG Rigs

Issue #1,115  |  Inside the Business of CAD  |  29 November 2021

 

The problem with 3D models, especially ones with high LODs [levels of detail] like of skyscrapers or aircraft, is that the detail overwhelms us. Rob Snyder notes that focusing attention is the role of 2D drawings we generate from 3D models. But 2D plans, elevations, and details fail to provide immediate context: where are these elevations and floor plans in the 3D model, other than by cross-referencing them with section callouts (as illustrated below)?

A floorplan referenced through section callout 1-1 (image source Autodesk)

So, Mr Snyder developed a focusing assistant, called TGN rigs. Rigs return the focus back to the 3D model through a UI and an API. Rigs lets you see, for instance, elevations in the context of the 3D model.

The key to his rigs is the viewing arc (in red, in the figure below). Arcs guide you to specific parts of the model.

Viewing arc in red, view cube in green, stops along the way in blue

You can specify different kinds of visual styles and viewpoints along the arc. For instance, the blue square in the figure above specifies an elevation section (as shown below), where the view filter is set to Section Elevation and the display style to Blueprint, with a markup added manually.

This stop along the viewing arc shows the 3D model in elevation

A second, horizontal timeline lets you specify properties of the view, such as changes of style (like “Blueprint”) and filtering, such as “Glass Off”.

A project could have many TGN rigs. They look like display cubes (in green in the figure below). Clipping planes are optional; click on a face of the cube to toggle specific clipping planes.

You drag a handle to rotate the view along the path from p1 to p3, during which elements can explode or implode, or even show assembly animations. (The square at p2 indicates a parallel projection at this point.) So, while a 2D drawing is static, the TNG rig is interactive.

Viewing arc (left) with its settings (right)

Viewing arcs can be shaped just like an arc, or tilted in space, or S-shaped. TGN includes a library of default viewing arcs.

Every rig has a name, such as “Section Elevation,” and hosts settings that specify the GUID [globally unique identifier], a link to the model source, model motions, graphical styles, sound toggles, and so on. Some of these are dependent on the software. Rigs are stored in TRE files and can be shared through social media.

Mr Snyder writes, “Digital 3D modeling, as it is used in the design and construction industry (and similar industries), has obvious and great value. However, decades of evidence show that its value is commonly overstated, and that the farther one travels down the path established so far for BIM (or for digital twins), the farther one gets from utility, and the closer one is drawn into a never-ending slough through the muck, the purpose of which seems to be only some kind of competition to see who is more macho.”

He describes two limitations imposed by today’s massive 3D models:

  • As models are wide and expansive things, they surpass our human ability to wrap our minds around them.

  • Models by themselves provide no means by which we can assert and affirm that at any particular location that what should be shown there is shown there, and that nothing that matters is missing from there.

Mr Snyder hopes that many CAD vendors will take on his API, to make the attention focusing tool broadly available. tangerinefocus.com

 

And in Other News

nTopology, who we’ve talked about before, lands a fourth series of funding ($65 million), bringing the total to $135 million to further develop its generative design software for 3D printing, which TechCrunch generously described as “The company effectively offers CAD software.” ntopology.com

- - -

SolidSpac3 debuts SolidSpac3 QA/QC [quality assurance, quality control] analysis and reporting system for commercial construction sites. It compares 2D and 3D models with construction site laser scans, identifying construction errors and problems within 24 hours. www.solidspac3.com

- - -

Rockwell isn’t selling its billion-dollar share (9%) of PTC, contrary to a report by Berenberg Capital Markets, which had misread a resale registration statement required as a placeholder filing should IoT [Internet of things] hardware maker Rockwell want to sell. The for-sale rumour had been abetted by the PTC ceo stating his IoT software sales were in the last quarter below expectation. investor.ptc.com/resources/news/news-details/2021/PTC-and-Rockwell-Automation-Issue-Statement-in-Response-to-Berenberg-Capital-Markets-Research-Report/default.aspx.

- - -

CADLine is offering 15% off permanent licences to its ARCHline.XP line of software until, um, today (Nov 29). As the company puts it, “Say NO to forced software subscription pricing. We offer perpetual licenses — now with 15% off. Pay once, use forever.” archlinexp.com/buy

- - -

Meanwhile, Allplan reminds us that “Section 179 allows businesses to reduce their tax obligation by deducting software (including Allplan) purchased or financed during the tax year.” The email blast does not, however, tell us in which country. (It’s USA. But similar deductions are available in some other countries, too.) info.allplan.com/us_en/tax-deduction-section-179

- - -

AgaCAD is cutting 50% or 30% off the prices of all their perpetual licenses until Christmas Eve for their Revit solutions, like the Smart Assemblies add-on. Get the deets at agacad.com/blog/thank-you-offer-2021

- - -

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

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

 

Letters to the Editor

Re: The State of Step

It’s interesting that technical challenges/opportunities that I explored back in the ’80s are still relevant today, if not moreso. You know that old saying, “The more things change, the more they seem to stay the same.”
     - John Callen

 

Re: How much does a mouse cost?

On the almost $500 price on that mouse: as I understand it, a vendor may sometimes jack up the price to a “nobody will pay this” level to preserve the product listing, rather than removing it altogether. The in-stock status (in China) may be more aspirational than real.
            -  Rich Webb (via WorldCAD Access)

 

Re: Flooding

So sorry to hear of your flooding troubles. Sadly, no stranger to disastrous flooding here in Houston.
            - Becky Stevens

 

Notable Quotable

“In the end, the term metaverse will be nothing but a bunch of incompatible messy digital constructs from visions of companies who have no idea what exactly it does to improve human life.”
     - Avadiax

 

Thank You, Readers

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

  • Talenting Investments (small business donation)

  • 3DBrains Pte Ltd. (small business donation)

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

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Or ask [email protected] about making a direct bank transfer through Wise (Transferwise).

Or mail a cheque (US$ or CDN$ only, please) to upFront.eZine Publishing, Ltd., 34486 Donlyn Avenue, Abbotsford BC, V2S 4W7, Canada.

 

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Posted at 07:00 AM in Software | | Comments (0)

Monday, October 25, 2021

The Mystery of SolidFace

Issue #1,110  |  Inside the Business of CAD  |  25 October 2021

 

We’re all too familiar with big-spending CAD vendors like Autodesk, Dassault Systemes, and Siemens and their millions of users. We might even have some familiarity with smaller CAD vendors, who are content to serve tens of thousands of customers.

Then there’s a class of CAD vendor that never made it big – or at all. For instance, the years 2012 to 2014 were the start of a fresh era that saw the birth of a brand-new style of design software: collaborative, cloud-based CAD.

Companies had names like Onshape, sunglass.io, TinkerCAD, and To3D. All took advantage of the power granted by then-new WebGL and JavaScript APIs that made interactive 3D CAD graphics possible in Web browsers. None did well.

One that you may not have heard of is SolidFace. (See figure below.)

User interface of SoldFace

I was alerted to this MCAD vendor when a reader told me of the company’s odd condition for getting their free 30-day demo: before downloading, you need to provide a credit card number.

Typically, demo software simply de-activates after 30 days or significantly cripples the available functions. What isn’t immediately apparent is that downloading SolidFace represents acceptance by the potential customer of the software’s terms and conditions, a link to which is alluded to during the download process. Within those terms is a paragraph revealing that using the software past the 30-day demo period incurs a monthly charge.

Searching around, I found others caught off guard by the company’s terms. In online forums like Reddit, SourceForge, TrustPilot, and Better Business Bureau and as recently as in May of this year, users complained of credit cards being charged for amounts ranging from $65 to $89. Said one complainant, “I requested a refund and they said it would take 1-3 months for it to be processed due to the COVID situation.”

 

The Many Pivots of SolidFace

Curious, I spent two weeks digging deeper. The history of SolidFace appears to have begun in 1994 with the launch of a Brazilian 2D CAD program named UniCAD. Over its life, it gained 4,000 customers, primarily in Latin America. According to tech startup community site F6S, SolidFace co-founder Oscar Leite spent more than 20 years at UniCAD before exiting the company in 2008 with $2.8 million. He describes himself as a back-end programmer and UI/UX designer, obtaining his university training in Germany

In 2013, Mr Leite formed SolidFace with Rafael Lima, according to Linked-In. Mr Lima, then 28, had spent his first post-university years dabbling in Bitcoin mining. “During the dark days of BTC [bitcoin] as a younger, savvy tech teenager, I was looking for something different to do with my computers and found BTC in the corners of the Web or dark-Web,” Mr Leite wrote on Linked-In.

The idea developed by Messrs Leite and Lima was to release a collaborative 3D parametric CAD program by combining Mr Lima’s knowledge of bitcoin mining with Mr Leite’s CAD experience. The program would be free of charge, making money through the novel idea of mining bitcoins in the background on the computers of SolidFace customers, with their permission. According to Austin Business Journal, the company could make 4 cents/minute per user through this technique.

At the time, Mr Leite described the new software as “Google Docs for 3D models”, even though SolidFace would run on the desktop, save files to the desktop (for intellectual property protection), and use the cloud to store files and to collaborate. Today, this hybrid approach is common among CAD programs.

According to its Tumblr account, the company spent $2.5 million developing SolidFace, releasing the first beta version in the middle of 2012.

By 2014, the company was working to attract dealers and looking to advertise in publications, such as upFront.eZine. Potential dealers were told, “SolidFace’s growth is in the mid-range CAD market. SolidFace is fully compatible with SolidWorks, Solid-Edge, AutoCad and others through SIEMENS-Parasolid core. The core also allows us to use full 3D modeling power.”

An overseas dealer approached by SolidFace told me, “I tried SolidFace once. For me it wasn’t worth the extra learning curve compared to Rhino and BricsCAD, and also no money in it as far as I could see.”

 

Pivot to Solid Share

Nor was SolidFace itself making enough money: “Bootstrapping both of our CAD companies, UniCAD and SolidFace, has proven to be a significant challenge. During this period we’ve invested over $1.5 million in research and development...” So in 2015, the company pivoted to services by launching a Kickstarter campaign for Solid Share.

Solid Share was to be a 3D printing, scanning, and modeling service that used SolidFace as the CAD engine. Users would design models with the CAD program for free, and I presume Solid Share would collect a fee on the services accessed by customers.

The campaign failed, raising just US$1,823 toward its US$385,000 goal. (See figure below.)

Solid Share’s page on Kickstarter

That same year, the company took a stab at selling SolidFace 2015 through Steam, the online computer games portal. For the first and only time, pricing was on a non-rental basis; the student version went for US$199, while commercial versions seemed to range in price from US$500 to $1,000. This sales channel fell through after the company decided the software was “considered not profitable enough to warrant bringing [version] 2016 to Steam.”

By 2017, SolidFace had sold just 600 licenses. Of these, 100 were paid for by bitcoin mining, making the company $1,400 a month, according to the Austin Business Journal. The non-mining version was $29.99/month.

The same year, the company looked to raise $500,000 as a seed round. According to CrunchBase, it landed $50,000 from four venture capital funds, lead by growth accelerator firm Turn8. (See figure below.) I contacted Turn8 about the investment, but received no reply.

Funding report on SolidFace by CrunchBase

Pivot to Solid Network

In either 2018 or 2019, Messers Leite and Lima formed Solid Network for distributing software packages. “We partner with software companies to distribute their software for free in our marketplace using their user’s hardware (GPU) to monetize it while the device is online,” Solid Networks reported on its Linked-In page. I found a solidnetwork.com domain, which appears to have been set up in early 2020, and today resolves to an empty placeholder site.

I contacted Mr Leite about the software, but received no reply. I wrote to SolidFace company, and also received no reply. The SolidFace Web site still lives today. (See figure below.)

A page on the SolidFace Web site today

The site offers these software packages:

  • SolidFace PTV — 2D CAD at $89 per quarter with “30 days free and cancel anytime.”

  • SolidFace 3D Pro — 3D modeler at US$129 per month and listed as “coming soon.” 

That the 3D version is not available could perhaps be due to this possibility: I speculate that the firm could no longer afford to pay Parasolid’s royalties.

While the company’s software does not seem to have found success in the marketplace, the training materials it provides are very good. There are lots of 2D and 3D tutorial videos on Youtube (some of which which I watched) and the user manual (which I skimmed) is well written. The most recent video was posted in July of this year.

To test SolidFace, I downloaded a 2015 version from C|Net, installed it in Windows 10 Sandbox, but it did not run. So, I cannot attest to its abilities, but in videos it appears to have supported advanced functions like parametrics.

 

What Ralph Grabowski Thinks

The story of SolidFace is a remarkable one, as two founders, flush with cash and full of ideas, launch a CAD program, and then pivot repeatedly in multiple attempts to succeed.

As the founders of Onshape, sunglass.io, TinkerCAD, and To3D discovered, launching a MCAD program as new does not predict success.

Onshape, for example, spent $100 million on development to gain just 5,000 paying customers, and then sold itself to PTC. Sunglass.io was acquired by Wikineering, a engineering knowledge sharing platform. TinkerCAD sold itself to Autodesk just as it was running out of funds. To3D, as best as I can determine, disappeared.

https://solidface.com

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

 

== Okino's PolyTrans|CAD Software for Professional 'Load & Go' 3D Conversions ==

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Popular CAD data sources we support include SolidWorks, ProE/Creo, Inventor, AutoCAD, Revit, Navisworks, DGN, IGES, STEP, Parasolid, and JT. DCC data sources are Cinema-4D, 3ds Max, Maya, FBX/Collada, and many more.

Perfected over three decades, we know 3D data translation intimately, providing you with highly personalized solutions, education, and communication. Contact CTO Robert Lansdale at [email protected].

www.okino.com

 

And in Other News

Virtual reality/augmented reality metaverses are bound for failure with consumers, because VR/AR demands increased inconvenience, the face goggle. Consumers don’t do inconvenience. Smartphones replaced digital cameras slung around the neck not because they were better, but because they were more convenient.

VR/AR does have a niche in environments in which inconvenience is expected, such as with safety gear in workplaces, or spending what it takes to get an edge in gaming.

“One day son, all this will be yours” (cartoon by Matt Percival)

- - -

TestFit is algorithmic configuration software for optimizing the design of “commodity buildings” — like apartments, offices, hotels, industrial buildings, and parking structures — during the feasibility phase, which I wrote about in upfrontezine.com/2020/02/upf-1040.html. The software is now integrated with Enscape for real-time visualizations; TestFit in turn is Enscape’s first SDK partner. More info from testfit.io/lp-enscape-in-testfit/.

- - -

EnSuite-Cloud ReVue from CCE always has been a Web-based viewer of 3D models, and now the software has taken its first step into the realm of 2D.

The first to be supported are CATIA V5 2D Drawing viewables, with 2D drawings from Solidworks and NX coming in the next few months. You can try it out free for 15 days at viewer.cadcam-e.com/EnSuite-Cloud/Login/index.html.

- - -

Matrox celebrates 45 years in the business, having been launched in 1976 with the VideoRAM alphanumeric display controller as its first product. In 1979, the Canadian firm released the first ever video board to handle four monitors. More on the history of the longest-lasting graphics hardware company in the world at matrox.com/en/corporate/history-of-innovation.

- - -

CIMdata reports that “…with free registration to Autodesk University’s virtual live content and streaming sessions, they expected over 100,000 global participants. According to Autodesk, the first three days attendees watched more than 51,000 hours of content.”

 

Notable Quotable

“We need to find an emotion that hasn’t been hijacked by one of the big brands.”
     - Management Speak

 

Thank You, Readers

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

  • Denis Senkinc

  • Rod Levin: “Thanks for your consistent attention to this industry that has seen so much change over the last 30 years.”

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

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Or ask [email protected] about making a direct bank transfer through Wise (Transferwise).

Or mail a cheque (US$ or CDN$ only, please) to upFront.eZine Publishing, Ltd., 34486 Donlyn Avenue, Abbotsford BC, V2S 4W7, Canada.

 

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Posted at 07:00 AM in Software | | Comments (0)

Monday, October 11, 2021

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

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

 

This issue is sponsored by CCE:

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

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

Our online meetings support models made in CATIA, SOLIDWORKS, NX, Inventor, Creo, and more.

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

 

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

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

New: CAD Direct

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

Grabowski: Is this a function of Parasolid?

Staples: No, not particularly.

 

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

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

 

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

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

 

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

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

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

 

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

 

Improved: Convergence Modeling

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

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

Hole with solid fillets cut in a part made of meshes

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

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

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

 

Grabowski: That’s like synchronous technology then.

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

 

New: Point Clouds

Grabowski: Point clouds, are they new to 2022?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

- - -

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

Coloring parts according to designers’ names.

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

What Ralph Grabowski Thinks

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

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

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

 

And in Other News

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

- - -

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

- - -

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

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

- - -

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

- - -

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

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

 

Letters to the Editor

Re: A.I.’s Fatal Flaw

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

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

- - -

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

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

  • Can Al turn my savings into millions?

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

Etc.
- Matt Stachoni

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

- - -

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

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

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

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

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

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

- - -

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

Should Paypal.me not operate in your country, then please use www.paypal.com and use the account of [email protected].

Or ask [email protected] about making a direct bank transfer through Wise (Transferwise).

Or mail a cheque (US$ or CDN$ only, please) to upFront.eZine Publishing, Ltd., 34486 Donlyn Avenue, Abbotsford BC, V2S 4W7, Canada.

*4710

 

Posted at 07:00 AM in Interviews, Q&A, Software | | Comments (0)

Monday, October 04, 2021

Designing with Sub-D

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.

- - -

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].

    (For more on this subject, see “Surface Modeling Techniques For Automotive and Product Design” at peer.asee.org/surface-modeling-techniques-for-automotive-and-product-design.pdf.)

  • 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).

    (For more on this, see rhino3d.co.uk/rhino-for-windows/an-introduction-to-subd-subdivision-surface-modelling-in-rhino3d-v7.)

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.

(For more on sub-d modeling, see Matt Lombard’s article “What Is SubD Anyway?” at dezignstuff.com/what-is-subd-anyway.)

 

Does Sub-D Have a Future in 3D Modeling?

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?

[Jonas Kunze is a co-founder of Flying Shapes. This article was first published on https://www.flyingshapes.com/designing-with-subd and is reprinted by permission, with edits.]

 

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And in Other News

CADENAS’ 3DfindIT.com search engine integrates 3D CAD models directly into video meeting platforms like Zoom and GoToMeeting.

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.

- - -

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

- - -

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

- - -

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

- - -

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.

- - -

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

- - -

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

- - -

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

- - -

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.

- - -

Another eloquent and insightful piece of writing. Common sense in this industry is getting to be uncommon.
            - Jess Davis

- - -

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

- - -

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

- - -

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.”

- - -

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:

Should Paypal.me not operate in your country, then please use www.paypal.com and use the account of [email protected].

Or ask [email protected] about making a direct bank transfer through Wise (Transferwise).

Or mail a cheque (US$ or CDN$ only, please) to upFront.eZine Publishing, Ltd., 34486 Donlyn Avenue, Abbotsford BC, V2S 4W7, Canada.

*4710

Posted at 07:00 AM in Guest Editorials, Software | | Comments (0)

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