WorldCAD Access

Auction Rate Securities: Small Effect on CAD

In an earlier posting, I wondered if the credit crunch would affect CAD vendors. As annual reports are now being filed, search for the phrase "auction rate securities" in American vendors' 10-K forms filed online with Edgar.

Here, for example, is part of the statement filed by Autodesk:

At January 31, 2008, we had auction rate securities with an estimated fair value of $8.4 million ($9.0 million cost basis) included in non-current "Marketable securities" due to their lack of liquidity. These AAA-rated auction rate securities, which met our investment guidelines at the time the investments were made, have failed to settle at monthly auctions since August 2007.

From this, we learn that Autodesk has about $9 million in affected funds, a small amount for a large company.

Synchronous Technology -- Explained by Al

Great article by Al Dean explaining the new Synchronous Technology from Siemens PLM Solutions: www.x3dmedia.com/2008/05/synchronous-technology-part-ii.html

(If you use the Opera Web browser, click the Author Mode button to make the Web page easier to read.)

Free: CoCreate PE 2.0

PTC has updated its free CoCreate Modeling Personal Edition to 2.0 with these improved features:

-- Select and move faces and parts by windowed selection.
-- Mirror complete assemblies, and create symmetric parts.
-- Blend with new options.
-- New Annotation default settings browser.
-- Works with Vista, XP, and Windows 2000.

Available in English, German, Italian, and Japanese. Register here to download.

PTC reports that version 1.0 of this software has been downloaded 80,000 times.

Pretty Viewpoints: Saudi Arabia

An island off the coast of Saudi Arabia:

TIP: Use Memory Cleaner with AutoCAD 2009

Working with AutoCAD 2009 the other day, it suddenly complained of a lack of memory. The Vista computer upon which I am running it has 2GB RAM and 92GB free disk space.

Earlier, I found a memory cleaner that frees up memory that's being hogged by applications. When I ran it, it reduced the amount of used RAM from around 1500MB down to the normal 1000MB. After that, AutoCAD was happy again.

I now run Memory Cleaner just about every day after using AutoCAD 2009. You can get a copy of the utility from www.vasileios.gr/freesoft. (Strictly speaking, it is a graphical frontend for Vista's own FreeMem command. Mr Vasileios also has a version for XP.)

HDI - Longest Acronym Ever!

Autodesk's HDI is short for Hierarchical Object-Oriented Picture System Extended Immediate-mode Drawing Interface Device Interface.

It turns out that HDI is composed of two other acronyms:

-- HDI is short for HEIDI Device Interface.
-- HEIDI is short for HOOPS Extended Immediate-mode Drawing Interface.
-- and HOOPS is short for Hierarchical Object-Oriented Picture System.

So that's how the three-letter acronym HDI becomes an abbreviation for 12 words.

An LCD Monitor for Road Designers

Engaget has pictures of a 30-monitor display, 3 tall by 10 wide. Ideal for civil engineers who design roads -- which tends to involve very long and narrow drawings. Each screen can be up to 32" in size.

Link: 9XMedia shoots for multi-monitor crown with 30 LCD monster

SolidWorks Replaces Pro/E

It is typical for a CAD vendor to announce that their software has replaced that of a competitor's. It is atypical to name the competitor. Dassault didn't mind doing that during their most recent conference call with finanacial analysts:

Here you can see a win for SolidWorks, which is called Leviton -- one of the leaders in electrical and electronic components. They are producing 25,000 different components and have decided to standardize on SolidWorks and replace both the combination of PTC and CoCreate.

Is it significant that Dassault's home page now lists SolidWorks first the lineup of its software?

DASSAULT SYSTEMES is the worldwide PLM leader and software innovator. Our SolidWorks, CATIA, SIMULIA, DELMIA, ENOVIA & 3DVIA solutions empower users to create, share and experience in 3D.

Missing from the list: Cosmic Blobs.

PTC's Reaction to Dassault's V6

During PTC's quarterly conference call with financial analaysts, Jay Vleeschhouwer of Merrill Lynch asks:

Are you seeing any customer piloting activity at all of Dassault’s V6 architecture?

PTC's chief product officer James E. Heppelmann responds:

I think most customers I've talked to are highly skeptical about that. A lot of them think that it's an out-there idea based on some questionable architectural approaches. For example storing CAD data in the database rather than a file system, which has been proven by several vendors not to work that well.

I'd say I see a huge amount of skepticism from customers and I think customers by and large prefer that Dassault just finish V5 -- rather than switch horses again and started talking about a new architecture.

I think Dassault potentially is walking the plank here with this V6 story, having not really satisfied customers with V5 and now embarking on a riskier yet strategy.

Link: PTC

Pretty Viewpoints: Canada's North, again

Another view of Canada's north, on the edge of the Arctic Ocean:

MoldFlow: No Changes

Buzz Kross writes:

I heard you were wondering if we intended to continue the link to competitive tools. Absolutely.

We plan no changes. Moldflow is a key aspect of our CIM strategy. We intend to keep the solution open and will continue to work with everyone. Earlier today, I sent a e-mail to virtually all my competitors telling them that this is our plan.

Martyn and Al's New Blog

It's been visible only through the Google cache until now, and it's not supposed to be getting launched until June, but Al Dean and Martyn Day are quietly building their X3 Media Web site for the last several months.

Here's a current article: Autodesk to acquire MoldFlow

What's perhaps interesting and won't become clear is how this will effect MoldFlow's work with other vendors. MoldFlow technology is built into SolidWorks (MoldflowXpress), CoCreate, and many others.

In the past, Autodesk has tended to cut off customers of competing CAD vendors.

How Goes It, PTC? Dassault?

From last week's conference calls with financial analysts:

PTC

Despite the potential impact of a slowing economy in 2008, we are confident in our ability to achieve our fiscal 2008 revenue target. Why? Approximately half of our expected 13% revenue growth for the year is expected to come from the CoCreate acquisition, which is performing very well. The remaining half of the expected growth implies approximately 6% year-over-year organic growth.

Dassault

What you can see here is the deviation between February revenue objective and this new objective, where essentially there is no other trend than this dollar-to-euro conversion rate which has an impact to €42 million...

3D Not For All

After hearing yesterday about Dassault's 3D app running in Facebook, I asked my daughter to hunt down 3D Collage. It's (apparently) a photo integrator: pick a 3D background, provide a photo, and the two are somehow merged.

She quickly found it, and click the big green START button. But the next page was a disappointment, for it read:

The 3D Life Player is not supported under Microsoft Windows Vista and this Web browser. Please use another Web browser.

She was running Facebook in FireFox 3 on Vista. As I have said before, Dassault needs to stop using the tagline, "3D for all."

V6 in May

Dassault Systemes says that its V6 platform -- CATIA, DELMIA, SIMULIA, and ENOVIA -- is scheduled for be available in May 2008.

Link.

Gnome On Mt St Helens Webcam

The Mount St Helens Webcam is sometimes host to monster-size bugs that land on its lens. Or view-destroying snow drifts.

Today, a gnome made it up to the Webcam, and posted a message. (I had to process the image a fair amount to read the message.)

("I will get the show?")

Inventor 2009 Gains Game Status

Inventor 2009 arrived last week. Opening the plastic case, I found four DVDs. Four! See illustration.

I showed off the package to my son. At first, he was not clear as to why he should be impressed. After all, some of his computer games came on six CDs, he told me. I casually remarked that these were DVDs, not CDs. He was impressed.

For all the talk from Autodesk about unified user interfaces, imagine my surprise when I found that the AutoCAD 2009-based Mechanical software doesn't gain the Microsoft-inspired ribbon. The Ribbon command instead brings up the old Dashboard.

Pretty Viewpoints: New Zealand

One of several extinct volcanoes that surround Auckland, New Zealand:

ADSK: We're Gonna Make More $$$

Autodesk is upping the amount it guestimates it'll make in the coming quarters:

This Quarter:
$590 - $595 million revenue, up from the previous guess of $575 - $585 million.

Next Quarter:
$600 - $610 million, up from $590 million.

This Year:
$2.45 - $2.5 billion, up from $2.43 - $2.48 billion.

Hopefully Not Bad News for Employees:
"Autodesk said during the first quarter, it will spend about $8 million on cost reduction initiatives." Oops, I forgot: the company already laid off a bunch.

The share price jumped $2 on the news, but still has a ways to go to attain its 52-week-high price of over $50. Details here.

GDL: Still Around

Graphisoft invented GDL as a way to define intelligent objects and parameterize symbols. Geometric Description Language works with ArchiCAD and even AutoCAD, but never got much further than ArchiCAD.

Yesterday the Hungarian CAD company (now owned by Germany's Nemetschek) made noises about GDL for the first time in a long time.

FormFonts, the leading provider of high quality Google SketchUp models, is partnering with Graphisoft to develop, host and share GDL building content libraries.

Okay, so marketing managed to work "Google SketchUp" into the press release, but neither SKD nor Google Warehouse have anything to do with GDL. Instead, this is about third-party GDL developers maybe making some money by letting FormFonts resell their 3D models.

Customers get access to formfonts.com starting at $16.58 per month when the annual subscription cost is prepaid -- but only if your computer runs a supported Web browser.