Issue #1,138 | Good-bye to Inside the Business of CAD | 12 September 2022
From the editor: This is the retirement issue of upFront.eZine, the last one after I (and guest editorialists) churned out 1,138 issues over 27 years — just over two million words, I estimate.
Frankly, I have become tired, having begun in 1972 with hand drafting. It is important to know when to finish well, and then to look forward to all that can come next.
But all is not finished: from time to time, I’ll write for other publications; on Twitter (at twitter.com/upFronteZine); and on my WorldCAD Access blog at worldcadaccess.com.
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Throughout my life, people said and wrote things that had an impact on me, and so for this last issue of upFront.eZine, I’d like to share some of them with you.
The 1960s
As a boy, I was a voracious reader, among which I devoured the Hardy Boys series from the local library. The one that fascinated me most was “The Hardy Boys Detective Handbook,” from which I learned many useful life lessons, such as these:
Always be aware of what is around you (perhaps the most useful advice I ever received)
Learn to read upside-down (useful in meetings with bosses)
The 1970s
At the end of my first real summer job, the fabrication shop foreman called me into his office for the job evaluation. He called me a good worker generally, but had this complaint: I needed to work faster. His advice turned me into a speed demon in my work, and I taught myself to speed read in university.
In my first year of university, the music group Chicago released Chicago VII with a song titled:
Count on Me
...which gave me the impetus to become someone people could count on. (Paradoxically, the song is about an unaccountable guy.)
In a later university year, a line from the song “My My, Hey Hey (Out Of The Blue)” on Neil Young’s album Rust Never Sleeps struck a chord with me:
It is better to burn out than it is to rust
...and I made that my style for the next many decades, as I worked up to 16 hours a day, 6.5 days a week to pump out hundreds of books, magazine articles, and video tutorials.
The 1980s
While studying at the University of British Columbia, one of my professors said something that stuck with me (h/t Gerry Brown):
The conclusions are usually correct; it’s the assumptions you have to question
...following which I’ve found that when an argument makes an error in logic, it’s often in the first sentences.
The technical editor at Stereo Review magazine, Julian Hirsch, became a hero to me, as he offended advertisers by being hardcore in testing stereo equipment dispassionately, using consistent evaluation techniques. He was my role model when in 1985 I began the job of technical editor at CADalyst magazine, where I sometimes offended advertisers — something which continues to this day, and resulted in three lawsuits threatened by CAD vendors over the last number of years against me (none went further than the threat).
One day at CADalyst magazine, the managing editor came across an article and exclaimed, “This exactly describes you, Ralph!”
Gold-collar worker
...is someone who, because they work with information, can work anywhere in the world for anyone. This was a new concept at the time, and my first inkling that I didn’t need to commute to work at a fixed wage for a single boss. The ever-cheerful Colleen McLaughlin went on to help me launch my book career.
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A few years later, in 1991, I quit my job as senior editor at CADalyst magazine to be self-employed. Shortly after, I devoured Alvin Toffler’s book in which he described the shift in power that was occurring, from big corporations to individuals:
PowerShift
...and I credit him with giving me early on the confidence to know that I could be successful as a one-man technical publishing company.
In the early years of this newsletter, a marketing person told me that he found upFront.eZine boring, because it read like every other newsletter. Then Yoav Etiel told me something life-changing:
Tell me what I don’t know
...and from that day on, I strove to tell you folks stories no one else was telling.
All Along
Along the way, I came up with a series of my own sayings.
Have many fingers in many pies
...which means you should avoid having too much business with a single client, for if they drop you, you are in sudden financial trouble. Instead, run many smaller projects for a larger number of clients.
It’s not who you know, but who knows you
...points to the importance of self-marketing. Because I can know about someone like Jeff Bezos, but that knowledge is not useful for my business, unless he knows me, which is unlikely.
Fire clients who are really annoying
...refers to some clients who are too much trouble to be worth the income they provide your firm. Lower your blood pressure by getting rid of them.
Society consists of those desperately hanging onto to their power by whatever means possible, being battled by those seeking shortcuts to gaining power
...explains the dynamics taking place inside businesses, among political parties, and on the battlefield.
We can’t predict the future, but we can predict human nature
...says we cannot know how future events will unfold (c.f. Ukraine), but humans do act in a number of predictable ways. On top of the list is #MeFirst.
It’s okay to be right when everyone else is wrong
…means that whatever is true is not based on consensus necessarily, but by thinking through the consequences, especially when the thinking is uncomfortable. This saying also guided me in thinking about things in reverse, the other way around, and what is wrong when all say it is right.
And a final one:
To be very good at anything, you need both passion and ability
A *very* limited edition coffee mug (limited to four!) commemorating this retirement issue is available for $25 + postage to your country. See what it looks like atop this newsletter.
To reserve one, write [email protected] and I will let the first four respondents know the cost of postage to their country (it might be prohibitive!), and the ordering information.
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All is not lost, as all back issues of upFront.eZine can be found at upfrontezine.com.
Soli Deo Gloria
Notable Quotable
“This tweet has intentionally been left blank.” - Manager Speak (@managerspeak on Twitter)
Thank You, Readers
Thank you to these readers who donated towards the operation of upFront.eZine:
Julian Miranda
Christopher Huntley: “I have been reading your newsletter, on and off, for around 20 years and it will be a shame to lose your commentary and insights. I wish you a happy retirement.”
CAD Concepts (small company donation)
KCL (small company donation): “Thank you for the great read over all of these years.”
Dairobi Paul: “Individual subscription, plus small contribution to retirement. All the best.”
Novedge (small company donation): “We will really miss you. For so many years you kept us up to date with what was going on in the industry and with thought-provoking articles. We wish you the very best for whatever life will bring to you next.”
Contact!
upFront.eZine is no longer published.
Retiring editor: Ralph Grabowski Retiring copy editor: Heather MacKenzie
Legal. All trademarks belong to their respective holders. “upFront.eZine,” “Inside the Business of CAD,” “WorldCAD Access,” and “eBooks.onLine” are trademarks of upFront.eZine Publishing, Ltd. Translations and opinions expressed are not necessarily shared by upFront.eZine Publishing, Ltd. By accessing this newsletter in any manner, you agree to settle disputes within ten days of publication date by arbitration within the city limits of Abbotsford, British Columbia, Canada with the arbitrator selected by an agent acting on behalf of upFront.eZine Publishing, Ltd.
Issue #1,137 | Inside the Business of CAD | 22 August 2022
Subscriptions are the most popular expense to eliminate
Netflix earlier this year stated that the greatest upcoming danger to its business is inflation, as it lost a million subscribers in the last quarter. In England, 590,000 dropped Amazon Prime subscriptions. A survey by Statista that shows every-day Americans’ #1 area in which to cut back spending is subscriptions.
With inflation happening now, followed by a possible recession next year, CAD-using firms may well be looking where to cut costs. You should be thinking about putting a strategy into place to counter the sometimes assertive sales tactics of CAD vendors, who might be fighting to prevent you from reducing their lovely, lovely subscription income, as occurred during the previous recession.
During the 2009 quarterly conference call with financial analysts for Q1, PTC described what it was doing to prevent customers from reducing maintenance payments, a precursor to today’s subscriptions (ref: upFront.eZine #590):
“A customer can’t cancel maintenance now and start it up again two quarters down the road. We don’t allow that. If you stop maintenance, you’re off the train. The only way to get back on the train is to re-buy the software.
“So then they’re [the customers of PTC] in a situation of having to pay essentially five times the price to re-buy the software, and then get back on maintenance again, so this problem doesn’t re-occur.”
PTC was asked about customers wanting lower maintenance fees to cut costs during the recession. The response by the company back then was, “They’re asking, and we’re resisting.”
Back then, this put CAD-using firms into a bind, where a consideration might have been to cut costs like laying off employees to afford the full maintenance cost, or keep valuable employees and face a 5x software bill later. Today, with subscriptions, the conditions for off- and on-ramping are different, but still merit investigation.
On a Leash
Benefits of paying for software over and over again
The primary point of subscription payments is not to benefit customers, but to benefit shareholder-owned CAD vendors, who desperately need to show Wall Street predictable, smoothly upward trending profits. Privately-owned CAD vendors do not suffer from this flaw.
(The benefit of subscriptions to customers is that fees can be written off corporate income taxes 100% each year, unlike permanent licenses. As well, a level of support and automatic upgrades are typically included in the price. The drawback is that quicker support can cost more, and that upgrades can be lackluster, as CAD vendors no longer need to justify to customers the cost of upgrades, as in prior times.)
Here’s why smoothly-increasing revenues are important: During the recession of 2009, the share price of PTC fell 25% after it warned that revenues would be flat. The company was punished by Wall Street for managing to maintain revenues during the biggest recession since 1945.
Following the recession, some CAD vendors looked at how to lock in customers financially so they could impose price hikes, irregardless of economic conditions. Annual subscription [aka SaaS] payments became the bedrock, and as a bonus included the threat of remotely shutting down CAD programs when customers failed to renew. Autodesk was the first to go hardcore into subs, followed by PTC. As well, new CAD vendors tend to be subscription-only.
Some CAD vendors offer large customers “enterprise subscription plans” of a three-year duration. The benefit to design firms is the predictable cost over the longer timeframe. The drawback is the unwelcome, possibly huge increase that follows in year four, as uncovered by Martyn Day.
Considering the Counter-tactics
Most CAD firms still offer permanent licenses, such as this one for Archline.XP
Software systems are so embedded into corporate practices that ripping them out is nearly infeasible. Pay the money, or lose the soul of your business. There are, however, some counter-tactics that design firms can consider:
Recognize the maneuvers that might be used by CAD vendors to stop you from paying less, and be prepared to counter their arguments
Negotiate a lower subscription fee for the duration of the recession, in exchange for not cutting out licences
Form alliances with other design firms to support each other through ideas, purchasing groups, and social interactions; you are not alone
Examine alternative CAD vendors for permanent-license and no-license options; see below
Determine which seats at your design firm don’t need high-end CAD, and then substitute them with lower-cost, permanently-licenced packages; one of my clients, for instance, changed 40 AutoCAD seats to 10% AutoCAD and 90% BricsCAD
You need to to stay in business, no matter the economic climate.
Sources of Permanently-license CAD Software
Of the many CAD programs that don’t require annual payments, here are a few to consider:
In the field of mechanical CAD, there is Siemens with its mid-range Solid Edge and high-end NX; it also offers several simulation and data management products.
Amongst architectural CAD programs, consider the range of software from Nemetschek — ArchiCAD, Vectorworks, and Allplan, along with supporting simulation and data management programs.
General CAD users could examine BricsCAD (from Hexagon), ARES (Graebert), and a long list of variations of IntelliCAD.
There are many more, such as ArchLine.XP (Cadline) and TurboCAD (IMS/Design); I cannot list them all. In addition, free CAD-related programs are available through https://osarch.org.
What Ralph Grabowski Thinks
If you fail to pay, you fail to play. The only subscription I hold is with Netflix. The entirety of my business runs on software with permanent licenses; even my cloud storage service provider (pCloud) runs on a permanent license. It’s the only way to survive.
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For each variance, you can click between 2D, 3D, or BIM drawings and point clouds, simultaneously comparing plans to reality in 3D, and then sorting variances by severity. Learn more from www.solidspac3.com.
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Lattice Technology offers its XVL format as a lightweight (100x smaller) universal file for viewing all data in major CAD formats for downstream use, such as in bills of materials, servicing instructions, and interactive part catalogs. www.lattice3d.com
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Zoltán Tóth moves from international channel partner at Cadline (ArchLine.XP) to channel development expert at “next-door” Graphisoft.
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Here are some of the posts that appeared recently on my WorldCAD Access blog:
I’ve been wondering when you would explore this topic of peeking behind the iron curtain. Of all the writers covering engineering technology, you are in a class by yourself in your wealth of foreign contacts and breadth of experience working with these companies. It was an excellent analysis. - Randall Newton
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Your column about Russian software developers was interesting, and is the sort of thing one would never find in mainstream media.
The move to focus on the development of totally domestic programs in Russia carries a danger of its own: the current “Tsar” will not be around forever and what happens after he is gone? If Russia then re-embraces international cooperation and trade, does all that domestic software then die on the vine, because the problems you mention about selling to the West?
Although moving to Linux is possible (I’ve used that myself for over 15 years and, as a result, BricsCAD), I wonder what happens to Linux when Torvalds is no longer at the helm? He’s only in his mid-50s, so he probably has a good run left, but can a committee-run Linux succeed the same as Torvalds-run Linux?
As always, thank you for the writing! - Steve Schuller
The editor replies: A headline today reads, “Russia imposes measures against TikTok, Telegram, Zoom, Discord, Pinterest…in response to the companies’ failure to remove content that it had flagged as illegal.” The headline could just as easily read “USA imposes measures against…”.
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Great talk about the weight of Russia in CAD . You have forgotten BricsCAD, a big name in Europe, of whom 50% of its development center is in Russia, too. - Oli
The editor replies: I wrote only of home-grown Russian firms, and made generic reference to the Western firms who have programmers in Russia.
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I make my living using software that is owned by a French company (Dassault). Can you picture a scenario where the US government and the French government might get into a pissing contest? Not necessarily a military conflict — just a squabble over tariffs, or emissions regulations, or using the word ‘Champagne’ for a California wine. Anything that causes the French government to say to a French company, “Stop doing business with the US.”
If that were to happen, and I fell for went with the subscription model for my CAD software, I would be out of business, several of my customers would be severely crippled, and we would be unable to develop new products.
So when the salesmen are frantically pitching SaaS [software as a service], I just keep on saying no, because they can never come up with a scenario where it benefits me.
Keep up the wonderful work of reporting on our very peculiar industry. - Jess Davis
The editor replies: The only SaaS I pay for is Netflix; all other software runs on permanent licenses. A business is foolish to do otherwise.
I got my first introduction to Generic CADD when it was bundled with a three-button Logitech mouse. I first ran it on a Tandy 1000TX with an Intel 286 CPU and added the 80287 coprocessor — no hard drive, just dual 3-1/2" and 5-1/4" floppies with a CGA color monitor and dot matrix printer. At that time I booted straight into it from DOS.
I later ran it up through Windows XP on a Pentium 4 with up to four monitors thanks to Simon Hradecky’s VgaFix, which allowed the use of VESA graphics on nVidia cards.
I recently found a need for Generic 3D for some 3D CAD work, as I found the interface extremely friendly and am now figuring out how to best run it without resorting to firing up one of my old XP computers. Glad to have found this thread at worldcadaccess.com/blog/2013/01/running-generic-cadd-in-2013.html! Will give the DOSBox-SVN-Daum a try, along with saving to DXF, and then printing with AutoCAD. - Art C (via WorldCAD Access)
Takes me back to walking the Vegas strip, outside Caesars, and an older couple in front of me pointed at the ‘Eiffel Tower’ and said unironically ‘Everything is here, you don't need to travel’. - Robin Capper (via WorldCAD Access)
Re: Retirement
I started working as a mechanical draftsman after I graduated from Ryerson Polytechnical Institute in 1978 (now Toronto Metropolitan University). I progressed to machine designer, and now tool and die designer and purchaser at EL-MET-Parts in Ontario.
After the drafting board became obsolete, I learned AutoCAD, then Inventor, and currently back to AutoCAD 2019.
It’s been a wonderful career. I was blessed. I, too, am now looking to retire, maybe at the end of this year. It’s time to do other things. I have really enjoyed your articles about the CAD world. Best of luck!!! - Harold Genz
The editor replies: Those of us who started with manual drafting and watched the transition to computer-assisted drafting lived through fascinating times.
Notable Quotable
“Three stages of career development are: I want to be in the meetings, I want to run the meetings, I want to avoid meetings.” - @Katiohead
Thank You, Readers
Thank you to readers who donate towards the operation of upFront.eZine:
Jure Spiler of BASIC (small business donation)
Barry Dietz
Dan Wiseman
CAD Bloke
G. W. Sloof of Talenting Investments (small business donation)
To support upFront.eZine through PayPal.me, then I suggest the following amounts:
Issue # 1,136 | Inside the Business of CAD | 8 August 2022
Limited number of customer-countries for Russian nuclear plant design software firm Neolant
There is profound irony that programmers in Russia are responsible for much of the CAD software we in the West use every day, yet Russian CAD firms have made little headway exporting their own end products to us.
Software with names like nanoCAD (an AutoCAD workalike), T-Flex (MCAD), and Kompas-3D (also MCAD) have at some point been marketed in the West; doubtless they are obscure to you.
Firms that write foundational code that helps Western firms develop CAD software have, however, found success. Firms like C3D Labs (kernel components) and LEDAS Group (contract programming) receive more than half their income from outside Russia.
When David Levin arranged for me to tour Russia in 2009, the number-one question CAD vendors asked me was how to sell their products in the West. I told them they faced the daunting task in converting their user interface and documentation from Russian cyrillic to English and other languages; from Russian design standards to Western ones; and, toughest of all, thinking in the way that Western marketing thinks.
(I wrote about the firms I visited in The Russian CAD Market, available from ebooksonline/2015/07/rcm.html for $126.)
Thirteen years ago, Russian firms still dominated their home CAD industry. Western software mostly was bootlegged. Autodesk Russia then found success in making AutoCAD users legit by offering an older version (with its lower hardware requirements) for $1,000 initially — a quarter the US price. With time and with the urgency of being compatible with globalization, Western firms like Dassault Systemes, Siemens, Autodesk, and PTC came to dominate CAD in Russia.
We were surprised when Putin made the ill-fated decision to invade the sovereign country of Ukraine, and then he was surprised at the speed of the backlash from Western countries — given that Russia is the world’s largest exporter of oil and wheat.
For Western CAD firms, it turned out that pulling out of Russia was an easy decision: it made them look good, while losing only 0.5%-2% of their global income. They could just about pencil that in as a marketing expense. For instance, last quarter PTC lost $4 million from ending its operations in Russia, a pittance compared to the $81 million PTC says it lost in the same quarter due to the stronger US$.
Coping Strategies
Cover of isicad magazine showing Siemens being substituted by Russian CAD firms in a soccer metaphor
So, what is happening behind the new iron curtain depends on who you are.
Russian Users of Western CAD Software: The “lucky” ones are the ones with permanent licenses; they can keep right on working. Those with subscriptions might be blocked when the next payment is due — depending on where payments are handled. (Not all Western tech firms have cut off existing customers.) Those who depend on cloud-based software are at greatest risk.
Russian CAD Firms Selling Largely in Russia: With Western firms leaving, local firms face a bonanza now that they have a market less encumbered by competition. Here are some of the Russian CAD programs that could be substituted for Western ones:
Western CAD Software Discipline Russian Substitute
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Russian CAD Firms That Found Success In the West: They set up bank accounts and cloud servers in other countries, and continue working with non-Russian customers.
Russian and Ukrainian Programmers Working for Western Firms: From news reports, some have left the country. Nemetschek Group said, “Our brands have taken immediate actions to protect our local people [in Russia or Ukraine?], from organizing visas to providing refugee housing to financial support.”
Russian Government: It launched a program to encourage Russia-developed technology. Here is a list of some of the support mechanisms that the government proposed early on, although I do not know how many came into effect:
Subsidies to develop software
Jobs offered to foreign workers with no need to approve work visas
0% tax rate for critical tech companies
Loans at 3% interest for firms that do not lay off staff
Preferential mortgage rates and exemption from military service for techies
Discounts on insurance
Free TLS certificates for entities whose certs are revoked
More recently, the Russian government allocated 37 billion rubles over two years for “software import substitution” — to develop new, local software that can substitute for non-Russian programs. Thirty-seven billion sounds like a lot, but amounts to only 600 million in US dollars; we recall that it took a hundred million to develop Onshape. On the other hand, software development costs are much, much lower in Russia than in USA.
As David Levin reports in the August, 2022 issue of isicad (Google translation to English), there are restrictions on the use of the funds:
Only the two best proposals in each field will be funded
There must be no conflicts of interest with government departments or existing customers
Existing firms are not eligible for support
The software must be exportable, so that 2/3 of its income comes from outside Russia
Winners decided in September and development to begin in October
Independent software vendors have found success in Russia, but government-funded initiatives have not, historically. A decade ago, for instance, the government funded a made-in-Russia RGK geometric kernel for CAD that nobody uses; its Web page was last updated in 2014.
What Ralph Grabowski Thinks
Photo credit: Dmitry Neymyrok, Reuters
The Russian developers I spoke with want to be at peace with Ukraine, but would not go on record in saying so. They are, unfortunately, affected by the historical delusions of a single man.
It is nevertheless fascinating to see the impact of technology developed by Western countries. PLM, in particular, is a key program that Russian firms have found difficult to write their own and that matches Western capabilities, and so Siemens Teamcenter is deeply entrenched in much of Russian industry.
To end, I’ll leave you with an article in which Russian CAD developers agonize over the next steps to take in developing substitute-local software: “We Can Do Without Siemens.” In it, developers ask themselves, by how much can we untangle ourselves after one-two decades of incorporating technology from Western firms?
For instance, domestic developers all use Windows as their OS platform, and switching to Linux would give them independence — but at what point should they divert resources to rewriting all of their their CAD code for Linux?
Programs of disentanglement and independence (by Russia as well as China) will be successful in neither the short nor the medium term.
PS: If you would like to help the people of Ukraine in a practical manner, Missions without Borders is a charity that was already working in Ukraine before war broke out and so is well-placed to assist, and is one that upFront.eZine has supported for many years: worldcadaccess.com/blog/2022/03/practical-help-for-ukraine.html.
Business Advantage released its annual survey of CAD trends, in which 557 respondents took part, rating their use of 19 aspects of CAD by way of three parameters: awareness; perceived importance; and current and future usage. The result is a 97-page report, from which I reproduce a figure above.
The most important statistic is that 2D drafting is still very, very, very important — while there is little use in CAD of sexy, marketing-driven tools. You can get a copy of the report (after registration) from business-advantage.com/landing_page_CAD_Trends_2022_MFG.php.
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IntelliCAD Technology Consortium releases a robust-looking IntelliCAD 11.0 to its members:
Increased ways of working with Revit and Microstation files
Pre-release of the new IcARX API compatible with ObjectARX
Updated SDKs in ODA 2022.12, Windows 11, and Spatial ACIS 2022
Connect map data to PostgreSQL, MySQL, and WFS servers
New UI elements, like 3D positioner, view cube, visual style controls, model flythroughs, and section planes
Members adapt the core code with their labeling and verticals, and then sell to the public. www.intellicad.org
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Spatial division of Dassault is no longer providing code for older operating systems after release 2023 1.0: 32-bit Windows will supported for two more years, and Red Hat 7 is dropped. On the good news front, Spatial will start to support Linux for ARM with release 2024 1.0. www.spatial.com
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Here are some of the posts that appeared recently on my WorldCAD Access blog:
I started on Generic CADD back in the ’80s. When Autodesk shut it down, I went to Visual CADD at www.TriTools.com. It’s basically the same thing as Generic. You would adapt right away. - Warren (via WorldCAD Access)
The editor replies: Visual CADD development seems to have stopped with v9 beta in 2018, but I am willing to be corrected on that.
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I used Generic CADD for years. I loved it, and could create anything with that software and my Calcomp 8-pen plotter. I resisted the move to AutoCAD so much that I changed my role at the firm I was working for so I would not have to use CAD anymore! LOL
One of my favorite memories is from when I was working late into the night and calling a very responsive tech support team in Bothell, WA [Generic CADD’s head office]. They were awesome, laid back, and really knowledgeable. I actually enjoyed being put on hold: it seemed I would always get to hear the song Wicked Games by Chris Isaak long before that song was a hit in Nebraska. Those were the days! - Jeff Ahl
Re: BIM
The three basic Rules of Plumbing:
Cold on the right
Hot on the left
Stuff flows downhill
It is useless stuff like BIM that is ruining CAD software companies. They are concentrating their resources on useless stuff rather than the basic drafting software.
Name the number of CAD software packages that can produce a proper 3D isometric perspective view from their 3D model. I can count them on one hand, and have five digits left over. - Lewis Balentine
The editor replies: There certainly is a disconnect between what is possible (cloud, VR, BIM, PLM) and what is required, although some CAD firms have been working semi-automating repetitive drafting tasks, which drafter will find useful.
Spin Doctor of the Moment
“We are seeing more usage intensity and higher quality than previous versions of our operating system.” - Satya Nadella, ceo, Microsoft, speaking of Windows 11
Thank You, Readers
Thank you to readers who donated towards the operation of upFront.eZine:
Kevin Kaurin: “Thanks for keeping us informed and entertained! Pax et Bonum 1 in your retirement.”
Neil Peterson, Open Design Alliance (small business donation)
Jeremy Powell, Vectorworks (large business donation)
Philip Erickson
Michael Shook
To support upFront.eZine through PayPal.me, then I suggest the following amounts:
Issue #1,124 | Inside the Business of CAD | 28 February 2022
Families taking refuge at a Ukrainian Catholic church in Kyiv (image source Alexander Laschuk)
Someone once said that software eats the world, but now software is being eaten by war.
Europe and North America ought to be at the front lines helping defend the borders of Ukraine against the Russian invasion, but for Western leaders steeped in a “The End of History” mindset, such a move is inconceivable. Better to lead from behind with sanctions.
Sanctions are, nevertheless, useful as an initial counter-attack against the evil that desires to kill fellow humans to satisfy its greed for moar empire. This is not the way of Christ, even when the Russian Orthodox believe Moscow to be the Third Rome, Kyiv to be the spiritual mother of Rus, and the Ukrainian Orthodox church an illegitimate breakaway sect.
When sanctions, like BDS, are small, we barely notice the impact; in this case, however, they are against the world’s second largest energy exporter, and — significantly for our industry — the source for many contract programmers who create, debug, and update the CAD software we use. As is Ukraine.
(China, also a major outsourcing center, may well one day also be cut off, as its leader continues his reckless pursuit of territorial expansion.)
How might war in Ukraine and sanctions with Russia affect software? I asked some CAD-related firms.
A North American developer:
“As of February 25, there are no sanctions in place that would block our ability to work with programmers based in Russia; the current sanctions affect only specific Russian banks.
“The situation with programmers based in Ukraine is unstable right now, as people are rightfully concerned about their own lives and the lives of their families, and work necessarily takes a back seat.”
A Russian developer:
“The war in Ukraine is a big tragedy for both our nations. The only hope is that this will stop as soon as possible.
“We keep operating as a company on a regular level, but some actions are not a top priority now.”
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As for upFront.eZine Publishing, our policy is that we work with individuals, not politicians. We have clients in Russia, with whom we continue to work.
At one time we had clients in China. By 2015, however, we came to realize that the Chinese Communist Party is embedded in all companies, and cancelled our work there.
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Kyochi Myogo reminds us that the war against Ukraine is not an isolated event, sadly. “People who don’t know or care what’s going on in, for example, Yemen, Myanmar, or Sudan, but who are very worked up about Ukraine, should ask themselves why that’s the case.” The horror is everywhere.
Countering the horror takes courage. David Burge notes that “the most courageous leadership seen in this world in the last 40 years has come from a coal miner, a satirist, and a comedian: Lech Walesa, Vaclav Havel, and Volodmyr Zelensky.”
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With an estimated three billion people asked/ordered to stay at home, many of us in the CAD industry are fortunate to be able to continue working remotely. Someone like myself has been doing this for 29 years, originally launching with CompuServe and faxes for my remote communications. But for most, WHB is a new thing.
While initially enthusiastic, white-collar corporations have long backed away from telecommuting. Not only do they prefer their workers in their offices, the licensing terms of software have become more stringent. This has led to a clash between workers unprepared for working at home and the inability to access their software tools.
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A reader describes the clashes he experienced:
"When you scan the forums for most CAD systems, you find a big rise in questions about home working. There are people with problems they don't quite understand, and lots of people who understand their problems, but their CAD suppliers don't!
"When it comes to working remotely, many may have done it a bit once in a while, but only when you really need to do it for whole days and onward do you really need to iron out the wrinkles.
"My issue was a technical issue with Solidworks'PDM [product data management] software. The licensing server is not IPv6-compatible [Internet protocol version 6] and so they had to issue temporary license keys to users without IPv4 VPN [virtual private network] connections. (I feel like I'm typing random characters on that, really!)
[Note from another reader: do not take out licenses over a VPN, as this can create problems returning the license later.]
"Logging into my PDM, do I log in normally or create a special ID for my remote personality? Using the same ID can lead to really confusing out-of-sync local-file cache problems. So I used a separate ID for my remote access.
"A couple of years ago, the CAD vendor nicely removed our ability to have two installs with one license, really upsetting a lot of users, so that was the first hurdle.
"If your software is using machine-locked licensing, then you need to be at the unused (potentially contaminated?) computer to release the license, before you can activate on the home machine.
"If you have online licensing, then when you activate on the home machine, it grabs the license off the office computer over the Internet. You just have to be in a bit of a sweat about any unsaved data on the one you are kicking off. If the home machine has no Internet, then it's no-go.
"Once up and running, the software polls the Internet regularly, so if your connection is down, you can't work at all -- even when your files are local. It is better to check every few minutes that your paying customers aren't cheating you, than to trust them for a day or a week to use the software for which they are paying thousands of dollars a year. [Some CAD vendors check for valid licensing once a month - Editor]
"I work on my laptop at home by remotely accessing my desktop machine in the office. The performance of my laptop is not quite as good as with the desktop, so with complex assemblies it is better to work with the variable mouse lag/screen update driving the remote machine, but most stuff is better loaded locally. Switching between the two [local and remote computers] is a pain and confusing, especially as the CAD program cannot be open on both.
"My favorite CAD topic is how to access our data in a vendor doomsday scenario. This is something none of them will discuss to any degree, but which should be a requirement by every customer. Here's hoping it doesn't quite get to that this time." - G. R.
How Employers Can Help
Alexey Ershov describes how he set up his employees for working from home:
'LEDAS is, so far, fortunate in experiencing no cases of COVID-19 in our neighborhood. We decided nevertheless to improve our capabilities for working remotely:
We increased our Internet channel to 500MB/sec.
High-speed fiber optics go directly into our DMZ [firewalled] sub-network to provide an additional level of security to our servers.
Using VPN [virtual private networking] from home on their work laptops, LEDAS employees access the powerful servers in our office.
Our intranet Web and desktop services for everyday work –- consisting of Git, Subversion, Jira, Phabricator, TeamCity, and Jenkins –- are working securely and are now fully accessible to our project teams.
'An efficient infrastructure for remote work implies high-speed Internet connections, as well as local networks free of bottlenecks. These physical-level requirements need to be accompanied by secure protocols with a stable and efficient stack of technologies, and on top of them the appropriate administration of access rights." - Alexy Ershov
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Most CAD vendors always have 30-day free trials that might get you over the hump. Some have reduced-function versions that are always free, such as Shape from Bricsys.
When CAD software is intertwined with data, it can be difficult to access the data remotely when the software is installed on a computer home that can't necessarily access the data server back in the office.
One solution is to use remote control software, such as Chrome Remote Desktop or TeamViewer, which displays the screen of the office computer on your home computer's screen. You work as if you were in the office. I used this approach successfully when I needed to work on a book project while in Belgium, running InDesign (and accessing all my document files) on my work computer back home in Western Canada.
(Over the last year, TeamViewer has become more stringent in cracking down on what it suspects is commercial use of free home-use licenses.)
Accessing CAD software on a remote computer with TeamViewer
I surveyed a number of CAD vendors' Web sites to see how they were helping customers. I first looked for information on the home page; if nothing was there, I looked for the site's news section, and then did a site search. If I could find no information, I noted it as "No link, no news."
Some CAD programs allow you to move licenses between computers, without needing special permission from the vendor. Of the ones with which I am familiar, I note this below. If you have difficulties, contact the CAD vendor or a local dealer directly.
Caveats: By no means did I survey all CAD vendors, and so not all are listed below. Some CAD vendors may instead have sent explanatory emails, or had local dealers make contact with customers directly, but have not yet posted the information to their Web site. Some CAD vendors are slow at setting up a WFH policy, and so they might have one in place later. When an expiry date is listed, check back with the vendor to see if it has been extended.
Coronavirus information placed directly on a home page
Here is what I found from 20+ vendors. (Updated Friday afternoon.)
Free licenses for 2D CAD ZWCAD (IntelliCAD-based), 3D CAD/CAM ZW3D (former VX), and 3D CAD viewer CADbro until May 31.
Look for Updated Policies
CAD vendors are updating their policies even as I write this. Hexagon, for example, came in just under the wire for inclusion of their usage-at-home policy in this article; until then, they had been offering only reassuring messaging.
That Onshape would one day be sold was certainty. The only questions were When and By Whom. The 'When' was last week, and the 'Whom' was PTC.
[This article is based on speculation. Do not make any financial and other decisions based on the content.]
Last July, I penned an opinion piece on WorldCAD Access suggesting PTC as the most likely buyer. My reasoning: there are only two CAD vendors with the cash and the need. But Siemens is the most subscription- and cloudCAD-averse big MCAD vendor, leaving PTC as the sole suitor. PTC needed an Onshape, and Onshape needed a buyer.
In the seven years since the company came into being, Onshape earned much mind share but few paying customers. It burned through over $100 million to develop the software and land just over 5,000 customers. Even the industry's earlier golden boy of mind share, SpaceClaim, had 5x as many customers, before selling itself to Ansys.
Onshape CEO Jon Hirschtick earlier this year reporting thousands of users (image source isicad)
Five thousand customers is not a lot. In the case of Onshape, it represents about $10 million in gross annual revenues. This simply is not enough to pay down the $169 million debt (not $150 million, as reported elsewhere) that Onshape's founders borrowed from investors. Now repayment will happen through PTC's $470 million (net of cash) purchase of Onshape, the largest in the 31-year-old company's history.
("Net of cash" means that the net cost to PTC is $470 million. PTC probably paid more, but it gets to have any cash that Onshape might have -- $69 million? -- to bring the net price tag down to $470M. The sale will conclude in the coming weeks, following regulatory approval.)
As a point of comparison, four years after Solidworks launched with $1 million in self-funding, it was acquired by Dassault Systemes for $320 million in 1997 dollars. Some of the founders of Solidworks are founders of Onshape.
PTC's Love of CAD (and lack thereof)
PTC is the hero of our industry for popularizing the power of history-based, parametric MCAD back in the late 1980s. They're also known for harsh sales tactics. I recall a ceo boasting to financial analysts that he wasn't giving breaks to hurting customers during the 2008 recession.
PTC's love for CAD ebbs and flows. When PLM [product lifecycle management] became the in-thing, PTC became the Windchill company, leaving CAD as the afterthought. We saw the love flow to ALM and SLM (acronyms I have no interest in) and then more recently AR [augmented reality]. Then last week, it was back to CAD: "Our CAD business is doing well. It grew 9% last year in a 4% market," CEO James Heppelmann enthused. CAD is the division that makes the most money for the company, 50% more than number-two PLM.
The Onshape purchase signaled the new crush: SaaS CAD, software as a service. "Our studies showed that Onshape pretty much goes toe-to-toe with features and functions against Solidworks, but beats them for anybody who wants SaaS, because Solidworks doesn’t have SaaS. [And] against Fusion it’s a better SaaS model and blows them away on functionality." Onshape doesn't actually beat them in functions, but this is the style of rhetoric PTC watchers have come to expect -- and enjoy hearing the spectacle of bravado.
On the other hand, PTC's Creo MCAD system is a small player in the industry. Mr Heppelmann reported that of 174,000 new MCAD seats last year, Solidworks took 80,000 and Inventor 40,000, leaving 54,000 to be split amongst Creo, Catia, and NX. And so he needs Onshape to open new paths of growth for PTC.
This is the plan he has in mind (all quotations are from real-time transcriptions and may not be wholly accurate):
PTC will target customers in the new category of small business: 'Most of our customers are large- and medium-size businesses, but most new seats are coming from small businesses. We don't have a product for them, because Creo is too expensive and Windchill is too complicated.'
'Nobody will adopt this [cloud] tech faster than SMB [small- and medium-sized businesses]. We intend to disrupt the industry from below, because small customers have more flexibility to change' to SaaS.
PTC will convert its desktop software to SaaS: 'I am looking at how to get PTC's entire footprint onto the cloud. You'll see real-time collaboration and data management [in Creo etc that Onshape has].'
'We needed to grab a clean sheet of paper and start over, [because] there are zero SaaS leaders who refactored on-premise software.'
PTC will add its software to Onshape: Frustum generative design and Vuforia 3D authoring and AR publishing were two that were mentioned specifically.
PTC will drive the rest of the CAD market towards the SaaS tipping point: 'We don't understand why over the long run SaaS for CAD won't happen.' With an assumed CAD SaaS CAGR [compounded annual growth rate] of 35%, PTC expects 'slightly under 20% market penetration by true SaaS in the next five years.'
PTC will keep its customers, and steal customers from competitors: 'When a [PTC] customer wants to move to the cloud, we can say, 'Fine, stay in the family' [with Onshape].'
'When the day comes that any Dassault, Siemens, Autodesk, or PTC customer wants to move to SaaS, we will be there ready to guide them.'
PTC has server-based PLM in place, but I suspect the company was finding it difficult to convert Creo to pure-cloud. Messrs Heppelmann and Hirschtick use salesforce.com as their signature example of a successful, clean-sheet, cloud-based system.
The analogy, however, is wrong in audience and execution. Office tasks like CRM [customer relationship software] and PLM are well suited to running on terminals, and hosting CRM/PLM on remote servers is technically trivial compared to the challenge of vector-based CAD. That's why everybody has cloudPLM but very few have cloudCAD.
PTC saw Dassault and Autodesk having a hard time cloud-izing Solidworks and Inventor-Fusion. 'Our estimate is it would take us at least five years and several $100 million to build what [Onshape] has,' said Mr Heppelmann.
Moreover, PTC has a painful history of having fallen behind once before. 'We were on the wrong side when we were on Unix while the world was going to Windows NT,' explained Mr Heppelmann. 'We were running a Unix program on Windows NT, and we needed a native Windows program [code-named Wildfire]. So we learned our lesson for the next transition,' being from Windows to the cloud.
PTC has a wistful history of hoping acquisitions will renew the company, such as when CoCreate (bought from HP) was fused with Pro/Engineer to create Creo. PTC needed direct editing to catch up with its competition, but it wasn't the "get out of jail" card PTC made it out to be.
And so PTC was happy to pay $90,000 per Onshape customer, who generates $1,500-$2,100 in gross revenues annually -- roughly a 50-year return. PTC anticipates big sales for Onshape, but its sales force won't be keen on a product that sells at just $125 a month. Onshape raised the rental price once already, and PTC will have to do the same.
In the near term, PTC will link its software to Onshape through Connected Desktop Apps, where Onshape exchanges data with programs running on the desktop. Later, some PTC programs will graduate to Connected Cloud App status, where they run on the cloud -- and finally a few, such as Frustum (which already has a version that runs int he cloud), will become Integrated Cloud Apps, where they run as tabs inside Onshape.
All this will take longer than the five years PTC anticipates. A former Autodesk ceo famously said all his company's software would be available only on the cloud in three years; that was seven years ago. Dassault still has no cloud version of Solidworks, after a decade of trying. Graebert wrote the drafting component for Onshape, known as Kudo, yet this company recognizes that CAD operates primarily on the desktop, and that cloudCAD is primarily for viewing, sharing, marking up, and doing some editing.
On the other side of the ledger, we have an Onshape with new people in charge, who will require a change to its hardcore stance against on-premise cloud. Until now, Onshape's sales pitch was, 'If you want on-premise cloud, don't buy from us' -- which limited its growth. The PTC kind of customer expects security by not storing data on the outside.
It is good to see Onshape with a rescuer, because its technology is important to a specific set of users. What we have learned from the decade-long experiment by Dassault, Autodesk, and Onshape, however, is that there is little appetite in our industry for multi-server-based CAD running in Web browsers.
PTC won't change the fact that CAD ain't no salesforce.com.
It's not just renters who are at risk. Users of some perpetual-license programs can be victimized by hostile corporate or government policies. At least one CAD company automatically disables their software if the user hasn't checked in with the corporate "mothership" in the last 30 days. - Don Beaton
The editor replies: I've raised the issue of Autodesk apparently deactivating permanent licenses, because some readers reported to me that this happened to them. Autodesk has now said they are working on a statement about it.
OnShape is the biggest secret to CAD users. Yeah, I tried it, didn't like it.
The tabs at the bottom of the screen don't work for me. The confusing merge feature makes things more complicated for me. The most surprising thing for me is the attitude of the upper management.
I had a crazy run in with an OnShape employee, and their response to the situation was just crazy. A 180-degree turn about from the good old Solidworks days when all was good.
Oh well. Back to work using Fusion 360. - Devon Sowell
A very interesting read. I remember packing up and moving from Toronto to Edmonton, Canada to have access to one of the first M&S systems. We had workstations in Edmonton and Regina connected by a dedicated 1200-baud line, if you can imagine that.
Five years later, we were one of the first AutoCAD resellers in Canada and one of the first third-party developers using DXF to communicate between the desktop software and AutoCAD. Those were the good old days when John Walker would turn around a development request (for DXF) in a couple of days.
And now it is BricsCAD and Civil Site Design. Very nice to be working with developers who care again. It has been a long journey. - Lance Maidlow, president Chasm Tech Civil Survey Solutions
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What about photogrammetry input into BIM-aware entities by the Bricsys BIM Alliance? Last October, a Bricsys representative showed me pre-alpha prototype with BIM model being built right inside a combined point cloud and photogrammetry model. Alliance member Leica only does point clouds; they can’t ignore that all the other players in Reality Capture, Digital Twin, etc treat photogrammetry as integral.
Indeed point cloud looks like yesterday’s cutting edge, requiring expensive equipment, trained staff -- while ‘anyone’ can do photogrammetry, which has infinite development potential, and much closer to drone and VR tech than point clouds are. Bricsys policy has seemed strangely blinkered about this. - Tom Foster Tom Foster Architecture www.TomFosterArchitecture.co.uk
The editor replies: It appears to me that the Bricsys BIM Alliance is still in its very early days. (To date, it consists of Bricsys and Leica from Hexagon, and the design firm HOK.) Here is the official press release: https://www.bricsys.com/common/news.jsp?item=2092
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Nice piece on history of Bricsys/ODA. Martyn Day
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I've been using BricsCAD for years, maybe decades, and find it excellent. I'm running V13 and haven't upgraded. I'm not a professional draftsman and my eyesight is slowly failing, so for those reasons I haven't upgraded. The program has more features than I use.
I've opened 60MBg AutoCAD 3D drawings, edited them in BricsCAD, saved them, and have been able to re-open them in AutoCAD.
BricsCAD has locked up my system maybe a dozen times in all the years I've been using it. My AutoCAD LT would lock up that often in a month. Only a couple of times have I lost work with BricsCAD. I don't know if your readers are aware of it, but BricsCAD creates backups at: C:\Users\'User'\AppData\Local\Temp
in the form of *.bak and *.SY$ files. The files are current within a few keystrokes of the last edit. It's a matter of changing the file extension of either of these files to *.dwg, and then opens it like a regular drawing. These backups have saved me numerous times. - Dik Coates, P.Eng.
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You wrote, "Bricsys… sold its Tri-forma architectural software to Bentley Systems." What Brics (was it actually called Bricsys back then) sold to Bentley was BricsWork 2.0 (see figure) which Bentley rebranded as Triforma 1.
Here is my sorry BIM story which, thanks largely to you, eventually resolved happily into 2D BricsCAD (the earner) and BricsBIM (revived hope/potential):
In a longtime 3D awareness of Reflex etc, I bought Basic BricsWork (without quants) and Bentley Powerdraft in 1995, cheap because the agent Brics UK was left with stock when the sale to Bentley was announced. It was unusable because of glaring bugs -- important commands didn’t work at all.
I was promised Triforma as soon as it was released, but then it would only run on full Microstation. I was eventually given an academic Microstation, but Triforma 1 was unaltered from BricsWork, complete with all the bugs.
I got no support from anyone, shelved it, continued on the manual drawing board, eventually to AutoCAD v13, and then settling with AutocAD 2009 as the 2D optimum. IMHO.
In 2012 I bought Bentley AECOsim, after demos seemed to show that it was massively updated from Triforma, only to find that the geometry-creation bit of it had changed hardly at all, tho now bug-free. It never earned for me, would not do my kind of off-angle architecture, and so in 2015 shelved it (effectively BricsWork) for a second time, while continuing in 2D with AutocAD 2009.
On a whim I bought ‘affordable’ BricsCAD V14 but found that the BIM module had stopped at V13. I soon discovered why: Bricsys was clearing the way for -- at last! -- for the needed BIM revolution that had slowly become clear to me with the all-new BricsCAD BIM V15. Based largely on your account of the Oct 2014 Conference, I wrote forum.bricsys.com/discussion/26662/bricsbim-v15-revolutionary#latest and other posts, which got Erik thinking I was a BIM expert (if only!) and got me an invite to address the 2015 Munich Conference -- which was not the down-to-earth product plug he was expecting, but a freewheeling history through architectural and art, and a plea for Bricsys to evolve to grab the vacant market for radically-easy off-angle (non rectilinear) modeling. This went down a storm, but we’re still waiting forum.bricsys.com/discussion/comment/42062/#Comment_42062.
So thanks to you, Ralph, for first alerting me to the Bricsys revolution, which, though massive, is so subtle as to be still unrealized by the world.
Related: I think there’s room for a story about the evolution of the geometry-creation concepts of BIM. After the Unix pioneers like Reflex (which was the first mature, PC-based BIM), was it ArchiCAD or in fact BricsWork? I am not sure about the pioneers, but seems to me that all(?) the other BIMs have adopted the ‘draw a solid along a base line’ concept – which of course Brics has too – but all the others then fuss greatly about which of that solid’s faces are ends vs sides vs top vs bottom, and so are very limited by assumptions about which of these can be connected to which on another solid – which BricsCAD doesn’t care (or only minimally) about.
It strikes me that Bricsys must be unique in having had not one, not two, but three goes at completely re-thinking and marketing a BIM system:
First BricsWork (which all the others copied?)
Then Brics Architecturals, which became BricsCAD BIM module (up to V13) that no one knew about
Finally today’s BricsCAD BIM
That unique ability to scrap two marketing experiments and start again might explain BricsCAD BIM’s present revolutionary uniqueness. - Tom Foster Tom Foster Architecture www.TomFosterArchitecture.co.uk
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Thanks for the history. Brings back “old times”. I was Chief of Engineering Systems at Fluor when we bought eight workstations from M&S around 1970. I believe we got serial number 3 of IGDS. I think we paid over $1million. In the paragraph on Jupiter, did you mean to say “Matlock” or did you mean Meadlock? -Tom Lazear Achway Systems
The editor replies: Thanks for correcting the name!
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In your opening you state "Black swans are... named after the rare occasion when a black cygnet hatches from white parents."
I had not previously heard that explanation of the origin of the term. I was taught that early Europeans knew that swans were always white, because they never saw any that weren't. Then they discovered black ones in Western Australia, challenging their beliefs.
Thanks for a good history lesson of BricsCAD. Although I've never used BricsCAD, the history was still interesting. - Dale Rebgetz Down Under
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I trust that when giving the paper in Australia you were appraised of the fact that black swans are the norm in Australia. White swans are the rarity.
Somewhere along the way I think I tried IntelliCAD or maybe it was part of the CAD engine behind IrriCAD. Not 100% sure. My earliest dabble with CAD was CadApple. Still have the Apple IIGS I ran it on. - Hugh Campbell
The editor replies: I am disappointed to say no one pipped up after I gave my paper at the conference.
That you still have a Apple IIGS is very cool. I also have my first computer, a Victor 9000 nearly-PC-compatible stored in its original box under the stairs. It was $12,000 in today dollars.
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I really enjoyed your Bricsys histories (I & II). The only thing I felt you missed was that the original M&S Consulting/Intergraph equipment ran on Tektronix 4010 (and later 4014) storage tube displays, that caused a “green flash” and a redraw for anything other than text or cursor updates. Hardly interactive, but they still sold! - Mickey Mantle wanderfulstorybooks.com
The editor replies: I remember seeing vector displays from Tektronix in engineering school, but we never did anything with them, sadly.
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Isn’t there a way for you to get a referral fee when readers click through on your blog to software vendors?
I really enjoyed that article about alternatives to AutoCAD and am in the process of selecting one. - Mark Harris
The editor replies: When I enrolled in referral payment systems in the past, such as with Amazon, they changed the rules often enough -- and made the payments low enough -- that I can no longer be bothered. For instance, Google raised the minimum amount (before they send a cheque) from $50 to $100 and I have been sitting at $95 for a couple of years now.
The best way to support me is through a PayPal donation; see below.
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Notable Quotable
"Please be advised that at this very moment a vast, self-aware, deep neural network of marketing strategybots is reading your replies to these tweets and recalibrating its coupons to grind down your resistance." - David Burge (@iowahawkblog) on Twitter
To celebrate the 900th issue of upFront.eZine and its 21st anniversary, I went back two decades -- back, back into our archives to see what was being reported by a one-year-old upFront.eZine in 1996.
At the end of 1995, I had surveyed 40 CAD vendors about their Internet plans. The results was a collective reaction of “Huh?” And so it was in 1996 that we saw the first stirrings of Internet-awareness among CAD vendors.
January 1996
Autodeskships the c4 service pack ofAutoCADR13, the plagued release that required 11 service packs to repair its problems. The unfortunately-numbered Release 13, on the other hand, set the foundation for the future with objects, ARx, and IFCs -- all still used to this day.
Autodesk andNumeraargue over who has the firstWindows 95logo-compliant CAD software. While AutoCAD was the first to receive the logo from Microsoft,Visual CADDwas the first to ship with the logo.
February 1996
Numera hands over manufacturing and distribution of Visual CADD toCorel, following which Corel reduces the price to $495.Novellcloses down itsQuattro Prospreadsheet (acquired fromBorland) after sellingWordPerfectto Corel. Later, Corel purchases Quattro Pro from Novell.
Amid the deadline for proposals for VRML v2[virtual reality modeling language],Netscapesays it is convinced that "VRML is going to explode in a big way this year."
This is the year that computing celebrated its 50th birthday, as theENIACcomputer was turned on for the first time on Valentine's Day, 1946. Windows 95 is proving to be a resounding success forMicrosoft's GUI running on top ofDigital Research'sDOS. We would have to wait four more years for Microsoft to merge itsVMS-based NT to make Windows 2000.
March 1996
SoftSourceis the first to ship a plug-in for Netscape Navigator so that the popular Web browser can display DWG and DXF files. At the time, nobody cared, what with many CAD vendors questioning the need for such a product. Within four years, however, displaying, editing, and manipulating CAD drawings collaboratively in Web browsers becomes a primary focus of most CAD vendors.
Bentley SystemsbundlesMicroStationwith vertical add-on products to concentrate on three specific markets:
Building/plant engineering
Geoengineering.
Mechanical engineering
Later, it drops MCAD from the list.
Seagateunveils the first 20GB hard drive at a time when 500MB is standard, some ten years after 20MB was considered plenty. By the year 2000, 20GB hard drives become common in most home computers, which will be used to store MP3 music files and JPEG digital photos after Kodak invents the digital camera and Diamond Multimedia popularizes the music player.
April 1996
Five years earlier, CAD vendors had struggled to adapt their software to Windows. Now in 1996, they begin the struggle all over again, except this time it is with the Internet. This month the A-B-C vendors (Autodesk, Bentley, Cadkey) tentatively stick their toes into murky Internet waters. (Murky, because no one at the time really knew which one of many Internet possibilities was the best one to follow.)
Autodesk announcesDWF[drawing Web format], which later becomes the basis of theWhip! plug-in for Web browsers for viewing drawings online; today Whip is called "A360 Viewer."[I think WHIP was short for "Windows HIgh Performance."]
Bentley licenses technology fromSpyglassto add a Web browser to MicroStation; Spyglass is the same company from whom Microsoft licensed itsInternet Explorer.
Cadkeyannounces SiteSculptor, a shareware VRML authoring tool that uses 3D solids modeling and wireframe models; the product fails in the marketplace.
Neither integrated Web browsers nor VRML become particularly popular, and after a near-20-year battle of DWF againstPDF, Autodesk gave in toAdobe.
Applefires ceoMichael Spinder, and then replaces him with Gilbert Amelio. IMSIships TurboCAD3 for Windows 95.
The box for a later release of CorelCAD
May 1996
More Web-related developments occur this month as upFront.eZinecomments that "We see this as a sign that the Internet is moving from being Major Media Hype to Just Another Tool for getting your work done."
Bentley releases a beta of its VRML import-export filter.IntergraphsubsidiaryInterCAPconverts its 2D CGM[computer graphics metafile]to a Navigator plug-in. (Intergraph was part-owner of Bentley Systems.)
Numera muses over releasing Visual CADD as an enormous plug-in to allow users to view, edit, and plot Visual CADD drawings in Web browsers; while the plug-in was released as a beta, it never shipped formally. Nevertheless, the move foreshadows ASP [application service provider]software, in which CAD programs run over the Web, such asAlibrein 2000 andOnshapein 2015.
As CAD vendors begin to adapt their file formats and CAD programs to the Internet, industry observers start to question whether VRML has a future in CAD.
June 1996
In a move that stuns the industry, Cadkey, Inc. sells its Cadkey andCuttingEdgemechanical software toBaystate Technologies, but retains itsDataCADarchitectural software. This event is the first of many mergers and buyouts that occur among CAD vendors over the next decades. Cadkey, Inc. changes back to its original name,Micro Control Systems, saying it wants to focus on developing 3D products for the Internet, such as converting itsCODeCAD development system to JavaCODe; nothing comes of CODe or JavaCODe. Baystate later takes back the Cadkey name, but today is known asKubotek.
Nemetschekannounces a Windows 95 version of theirallPlanFT software for AEC. Until now, the software ran only on Unix and NT systems, creating a market-acceptance problem. The port isn't enough, however, and Nemetschek exits the North American market -- until four years later when it buysVectorworks.
Bentley Systems continues to demonstrate Objective MicroStation 6.0 with gee-whiz features like dragging a symbol from a Web site directly into the CAD drawing; the product never ships. A few years later, this sort of thing became standard in most CAD packages.
TailorMade Softwarereleases a DWF-to-DWG translator; Autodesk never releases such a translator. Corel starts shipping its 3D ACIS-based CorelCAD for $249.
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July 1996
Parametric Technology Corpgets into the AEC market with the purchase of the object-orientedReflex CADfrom England. The product fails, and PTC changes direction towards product collaboration with its successfulWindchillPLM software.
Microsoft announces that Internet Explorer v4’s user interface will become the future interface for all its Windows applications. While the browser interface indeed becomes the interface of File Manager, it does not for any other application, even for those from Microsoft. Microsoft announces that Windows 97 will ship in a year's time. After a year-long delay, the product is renamed Windows 98.
Vincent Joseph Innocentius Everts, the flamboyant Dutch head ofCyco Software, announces that he is marrying an American psychologist he met over the Internet. At 37, he says he thought he never would get married.
August 1996
The VRML v2 specification is released at theSiggraphshow, but after taking so long to be developed, few care anymore. The VRML organization later becomes theWeb 3D Consortium.
IDGlaunchesJavaWorldas an online magazine, which continues to this day atwww.javaworld.com. WhileJavadoesn’t take over the world as intended by its inventors atSun Microsystems, it slowly and steadily makes a place for itself as a crucial component and background engine to Web pages, the Android operating system, and so on.
At one time, the price of CadKey was reduced to $495 to spur sales but failed to bring greater profits. Baystate Technologies this month announces that Cadkey 97's price will increase from $795 to $1,195. Later, the price increases further to $2,195, and today the renamedKeyCreatorstands at $3,295. From the failed experiment in ultra-low pricing, CAD vendors learned that low prices do not equate to higher revenues.
Autodesk subsidiaryKinetix(today the Media and Entertainment division) announces a 3D Studio plugin for Netscape Navigator. Pangaea Computersystems releases a DGN plug-in for Netscape Navigator, something Bentley hadn't done. Eagle Point Software acquiresSolidBuilder. A Swedish group releases bCADfor Windows 95.
September 1996
The USDepartment of Justicebegins to look at how Microsoft conducts its business. After an investigation and lawsuit that lasts years, Microsoft is found guilty of monopoly-like behavior. Meanwhile back in Burma, ownership of modems and fax machines is made a crime punishable by 15 years in prison.
Numera's Web site goes offline and its 800-number is disconnected. Users find out the hard way that the company burned through its investment money in developing a Windows version ofGeneric CADD. TodayGeneral CADD Productssells a Windows version that works like the DOS-based Generic CADD atwww.generalcadd.com
Autodesk announces "its most significant wave of Internet products to date" at Autodesk University in Chicago:
Internet Publishing Kitfor embedding URLs in drawings and saving drawings in DWF format (later integrated into AutoCAD 2000i)
Internet version of theirPartSpeclibrary (later sold off)
WorkCenterdocument management software for the Web (later sold off)
Purchase ofMapGuidefor placing maps on Web sites (later sold off)
Java-enabled Whip plug-in for Web browsers (later made obsolete)
October 1996
The managers of DataCAD Product Group form a new company, DataCAD LLC. They purchase the DataCAD software from Micro Control Systems (a.k.a. Cadkey, Inc.).
To help improve sales of the problem-plagued AutoCAD Release 13, Autodesk dusts off the '176 Reasons' campaign it had utilized to launch AutoCAD R12. The ad copy reads, "For all those who have been asking the question, 'Can AutoCAD Release really make my life easier?', we offer 176 yes's[sic]." When keen CAD users pour over the list, they discover four reasons are duplicates and 30 others were already available in Release 12.
November 1996
Corel acquires the source code for Visual CADD from Numera. Later, the code is sold toIMSI(maker ofTurboCAD), then on toTriTools Partners, who continue to develop Visual CADD to this day atwww.tritools.com.
Baystate launches a lawsuit against Bentley Systems and the third-party developer who reverse-engineered Cadkey’s PRT file format. Baystate states it is concerned about the wording used in certain data structures of the translator. Baystate loses the suit.
Bentley announcesEngineering Back Office(later renamedModelServer Publisher) at an eye-watering $24,500. They call it a "multichannel electronic publisher of engineering data," and it operates alongside their ModelServerContinuum, a $37,500 server for creating "a contiguous database of engineering and enterprise data."
Owen WengerdreleasesCADlock, software that locks AutoCAD drawings to make them read-only. The software becomes popular by allowing clients to view and plot AutoCAD drawings, but not edit them. The software ends its run in early 2016.
User interface of an early version of AutoCAD running on Windows
Autodesk announces that all future versions of AutoCAD will be written only for Windows 95/97 and NT, and changes AutoCAD's numbering system to match that of Microsoft's. Meanwhile, Microsoft CEOBill Gate's new vision is that the computer desktop should be indistinguishable from the Internet; the result of his vision is 20 years of malware-infected misery that affects millions of users and costs the economy billions of dollars in lost data and wasted time. Spynet sues Microsoft over the "Internet Explorer" trade name.
Rumors fly thatIBM..., noHewlett-Packard..., no Microsoft plans to buy Autodesk for $1 billion. None of the rumors come true.
December 1996
The editor ofMicroStation Managermagazine calls on Bentley Systems to "embark on a campaign to convert some of those dissatisfied[AutoCAD R13]users." Bentley instead targets Cadkey users after winning the lawsuit brought against it by Baystate. Bentley markets a "Cadkey Migration Package" that bundles itsPowerDraft,Draft-Pak Mechanical,Cadkey Importer,QuickVision, andEngineering Linkssoftware, along with one year of support for $595.
Autodesk announces that AutoCAD Release 14 will ship in July 1997, and raises the dealer price of AutoCAD by $300. Russian software company Top SystemsreleasesT-FLEX CAD, a 3D modeling system. ZD Labsunveils a new benchmark that uses MicroStation 95 as its CAD component, partly because that version of MicroStation is available on thirteen operating systems.
Following several weeks of rumors, Autodesk andSoftdeskannounce in December a merger agreement valued at $72 million worth of shares. The price had gone up after PTC apparently made a counteroffer. Out of the merger come two entities that irritate Autodesk to this day:IntelliCADand the resulting host of AutoCAD work-alikes, along with theOpen Design Alliance.and its DWG read/write/edit libraries.
Samsung Electronicssays it will ship 1 Gbit DRAM chips in 2005.
(*) A cultural reference. cf. "In the year 2525" by Zager and Evans
And One More Thing...
Reviztosays they're super-excited to invite all to an open beta of Revizto 4. This is one of the rare Web-based startups of the last few years that has actually survived, so that impresses me.
Here's what's new in v4: new markup system; importing 2D sheets directly from Revit, Navisworks and AutoCAD (including PDF sheets), without a model; the elimination of Revizto Editor being required as project sharing and management can be done through Revizto Viewer; improved merging and sync'ing; and automatic daily or weekly exports to Revizto.
There is more at ourWorldCAD Accessblogabout the CAD industry, tips on using hardware and software, and our popular travelogues. You can keep up with the blog through its RSS feed and email alert service. These are some of the articles that appeared onWorldCAD Access recently:
PTCexplains how IoT[Internet of things]needs CAD
Dassaultdescribes its plans forSolidworksand the cloud
Eva Franchkeynote atVectorworksDesign Summit
What we saw at the Vectorworksnight in Chicago
What's new in Vectorworks
Images of new Vectorworks Features
Live blogging: Vectorworks Design Summit Keynote
What's a VectorworksUser Conference?
CAD Vendors Think This Many Customers Want Subscriptions
This is the CAD vendorPTCworries over most
We're onTwitterat@upfrontezine with late-breaking CAD news and wry commentarythroughout the day, such as....
upFront.eZine (@upFronteZine)Mar 20: Why Adobe is so successful at selling subscriptions: $600/yr for ALL their software. Compare: Autodesk wants $360/yr just for AutoCAD LT.
Letters to the Editor
Re: upFront.eZine's 21st Anniversary
PayPal.me didn’t workhere in NZ, just said ‘not available in your region’, so logged in and hopefully sent via normal PayPal! - Robin Caper
The editor replies:Thanks for the tip. To send a donation toupFront.eZinethrough the normal PayPal channel, go topaypal.comand send an amount to [email protected]
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I use Tri-ToolsPartners' Visual Cadd for most of my CAD, have used the product for 15 years and am very proficient. It is a very easy to use 2D drafting package. I also can do some minor drawing using BricsCAD, enjoy your 'Inside BricsCAD' publications. Am working to learn 3D drawing, which is a bit of a struggle, but I am gaining on it.
Have really enjoyed your weeklyupFront.eZine. In reading your weekly post, I feel like I am rowing a one-man dingy and those you are talking to in your weekly post own megayachts. Keep up the great work, as I am working diligently to upgrade my vessel. - Greg Burkhart
The editor replies:In the real world most drafting is still 2D. Problem is, for CAD vendors, the money is in selling 3D, and so 2D gets overlooked by them.
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I appreciate yourwriting. The recent articles about Autodesk and the upcoming board battle could have appeared in the WSJ. Thank you for your efforts and keeping a critical eye open. -Martin van der Roest
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This email addressis going away because I’m moving. Can you switch it? If you’d prefer, I’ll cancel the old subscription and create a new one. Just hate to break the old account, since I’ve been such a long time reader.
Just in case there’s a trophy or something years from now for the longest subscriber. Hate to give up such a huge lead. - Ken Elliott
The editor replies:I looked it up, and you first subscribed 01 Oct 1997 -- 2.5 years too late to be an earliest subscriber. Sorry!
Mr Elliot responds: And just like that.... dreams shattered!
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Notable Quotable
"I Can Only Be Angry Or Giddy About This Piece Of Technology" - Techmeme Heds (@nottechmeme) on Twitter
On 1 May 1995 the very first issue of upFront.eZine was sent out to a small group of readers, and so this issue #857 marks its 20th anniversary.
Back then in the mid-nineties, I worried whether there would be sufficient content for a newsletter that came out each and every week -- 4x more often than other newsletters of the day. But I needn't have worried.
The Three Biggest Stories of the Last 20 Years
To celebrate this issue, I thought I would list the three most important and exciting articles that upFront.eZine carried over the last eight hundred issues, and then dedicate the rest of today's newsletter to letters from our readers.
A Russian contract programmer made of a copy of Alibre Design's source code, and then began giving it away free under the name of RaceCAD Design, albeit only in Russian. Using Google Translate, I tracked him down and then carried my interview with him in upFront.eZine #360 <www.upfrontezine.com/2003/upf-360.htm>. He denied he was doing anything illegal, because his software was "an independent product, developed in Russia since 1994, and we have a lot of customers." Alibre, he countered, was engaging in black marketing, "because they are afraid of competition."
But there were too many similarities in code from Alibre, ACIS, and ODA, none of which was licensed it to him. Subsequent to my series of articles, the FBI contacted me about the case, and then some time later the programmer was arrested crossing the border from Canada into the USA.
Leo Schlosberg wrote a guest editorial for upFront.eZine #256 in which he asked, "Does CAD Degrade Drawing Quality?" His core argument was this:
In the same period of time that CAD came to replace the pencil as the primary drawing tool, the coordination of construction drawings (which I informally measure as the coordination between the architectural drawings and the structural drawings) got worse. This is counter-intuitive. I have, however, never met anyone who argues the fact.
And so this newsletter received more letters on this topic than any other, with the consensus being, "Yes, CAD does degrade drawing quality." The problem was not with the software itself, readers said, but that new users were being trained to enter commands to run software -- instead of learning drafting conventions, as was taught in the days of hand drafting.
"Instead of teaching the language of technical graphics, many technical graphics courses have evolved into nothing more than glorified software-training sessions," wrote Eric Wiebe of North Carolina State University, one of many responses as the debate raged for weeks.
I suppose the most impactful event in the history of CAD might be the launch ofAutoCAD in 1983, but this newsletter was not around to cover that item. So instead I nominate the day Visio announced it would establish theOpenDWG Alliance as the most impactful article in upFront.eZine's history. The ODA's purpose was to further develop the documentation and use of DWG API [application programming interface].
Visio formed the ODA by spinning off its recently-acquiredMarComp AutoDirect2 DWG read/write API library so that any software program could access DWG files. MarComp wasn't the only library offered by independent programmers, but Autodesk did not. Fifteen founding ODA members paid $25,000 each to join, and non-commercial use of the API was free.
Visio's purpose was to help make its IntelliCAD software -- the world's first AutoCAD workalike -- more compatible with AutoCAD by harnessing the combined abilities of many more programmers than Visio itself could muster, or afford. The ODA fortuitously changed its name to Open Design Alliance when Bentley Systems joined to distribute documentation of its DGN ("design") file format.
Autodesk ceo Carl Bass countered by saying, "Our customers own their data -- via DXF." Later, however, Autodesk copied the ODA by releasing its own RealDWG API, and then sued the ODA over the use of the DWG file extension name, even though the US Patent and Trademark Office repeatedly ruled that Autodesk did not own "DWG." Today, ODA boasts 1,200 members.
(The unleashing was not the first time for Visio. Eighteen months later, Visio granted the IntelliCAD Technical Consortium a non-exclusive license for IntelliCAD; the code was never made freeware, as some thought erroneously. The reason for the hand-over: Visio was selling itself to Microsoft, and Microsoft did want to be seen selling a CAD system. Well, that and the fact IntelliCAD only ever sold 30,000 copies. To this day, Microsoft holds the license to code found in IntelliCAD 98 through IntelliCAD 6.)
Between birthing ODA and ITC, Visio became the absent mother to hundreds of programs that today directly read, view, edit, write, translate, and print DWG files. That's impactful!
And One More Thing...
PlanGrid is saying that they host the largest digital blueprint repository in the world: over 17,000,000 sheets are stored in their cloud. The online service has 400,000 users of which 10,000 are paying customers. The electronic blueprint service runs on Android, iOS, and in browsers.
Read me nearly every day on WorldCAD Access as I blog about the CAD industry, and give you tips on using hardware and software. You can also keep up with the blog through RSS feeds and email alerts. These are some of the articles that appeared during the last week:
Here's why 3D Systems sales fell so badly last quarter Video tutorial: Storing BricsCAD customizations with partial CUI files
I am on Twitter at @upfrontezine with late-breaking CAD news and wry commentary, throughout the day.
Letters to the Editor
Re: Yet Another Modeler (or Two) - part 2
John Callen is spot on. I too for years have wondered why. The very reason for the existence of CAD software to begin with was to expedite MAUFACACTURING, and yet this paradigm is not capably incorporated by CAD -- nothing more and nothing less.
Yet these CAD guys think they are the alpha and omega of software for industry. Far from it. They are just at the beginning, and unless there things are being made, there is no purpose for them to even be here.
I remember struggling with this idea, and trying to get Solid Edge's management to see this. Even though Autodesk gets this idea more than others, I still found myself wrestling with Inventor and the bolt-on HSM CAM package.
Suffice it to say, without going into details, I have yet to find any CAD company that recognizes the supremacy of built parts in the real world over fascination with the beauty of what they do in their cubicles. The obstacles to efficient CAM programing with CAD inefficiencies is a barrier yet to be surmounted. - Dave Ault
The editor replies: There are different kinds of real-world production generated from drawings. For instance, I (hand-) produced drawing as an engineer (in the early 1980s) for adding traffic signals to existing intersections. The drawing style is semi-schematic, and contains sufficient information for electricians to do the $50,000 installation.
So, I would say it depends on the purpose that the drawings serve. CAM? Clearly not, because the computers that drive the lathes need precise input; other production being interpreted by humans need not be as exact -- such as traffic signals or home construction..
Mr Ault responds: Well, that is true. I have never been involved in anything other than building parts and assemblies, so I guess I am guilty of tunnel vision too.
The editor replies: I agree with you that the darwing's output should be suitable for the intended manufacturing process. Big CAD systems -- like Catia, NX, and the CoCreate part of Creo -- all got their start at manufacturing companies, such as big aerospace and HP. I have no familiarity with them, so maybe they connect properly with CAM.
Mr Ault responds: I don't know about them, either, having never used them. It is not just the CAD-CAM connection though. For instance, with Solid Edgeit was not until ST7 that the correct hole manufacturing data was incorporated. I just cut gobs of holes this past week, and until now I would have had to fiddle with workarounds to get real data to my CAM program.
All I used for CAM since 2006 has worked off 3D solids. If the right data is not there, neither is the correct way to meld CAD and CAM. For instance, with Inventor Pro HSM, I found it was having trouble recognizing specific features; all I wanted were disconnected profiles, but it was trouble getting there.
While Solid Edge will open Mechanical Desktop (MDT) files, Inventor will not open Solid Edge .prt files or MDT files -- and this is Inventor 2016, by the way. This means I have to open MDT files in Solid Edge, save them as Parasolid files, which I can finally open in Inventor.
This is the kind of garbage that is so time consuming and so revealing where the importance of CAM is concerned. It is CAD first and, oh yeah, put something in there for the other junk. Don't plan for both as integral, coordinated, and part of a complete well-planned manufacturing system.
Don't get me started on feature recognition, unless you have some time. Isn't it kind of funny that Solid Edge -- the best software that you've never heard of -- is not recognized by Inventor. Look at the screen capture I made to see what is. (See Figure 1.) I believe that the lack of Solid Edge import capabilities may well be a deliberate play by Siemens PLM. I figure some degree of co-operation is required for CAD vendors to play together, and I wonder if Siemens PLM has refused to co-operate?
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