WorldCAD Access

SolidWorks Knows About Me

Tuesday I got this email blast from SolidWorks Corporation:

"ralph, you're the reason we keep raising the bar on CAD.

"We know about your challenges and value your time. Let us show you how to make the most of every minute you spend on product design."

Oh, shoot, they KNOW about my challenges... the sliding doors on my Honda Odyssey that keep get getting stuck... the lack of sleep I had last night because of the wind storm... the angst of my son being in the dying months of Grade 12 and pondering his future... the zero minutes I spend on product design.

The email goes on to urge me to take the Online Tour that shows me the unmatched power, etc, etc of the company's namesake software. I guess Honda didn't use SolidWorks to design their minivan's sliding doors.

Reverse-Engineering PDFs

Any file format can be reverse engineered, and PDF is no exception. Still, the whole point behind "publish" formats -- like PDF, DWF, and eDrawings -- is that the recipient can't muck about with the drawings you send to them. It is supposed to be like sending paper drawings that can be marked up but not edited (aka changed).

James Faliveno of General CADD Products alerted me to a $50 PDF converter, called... "PDF Converter." It describes itself as:

ScanSoft PDF Converter instantly converts PDF files into Microsoft Word
documents that look just like the original - complete with all formatting
and graphics! Information is set free - free to be edited and free to be
integrated into your documents.

Says Jim, "I have no experience with this and CAD drawings but it looks like the 'security' aspect of PDF is being challenged!"

The company's Web site says, "PDF Converter will not override any protection placed on a PDF file, including encryption and passwords." I suppose someone, somewhere else will override that protection.

Matrox Gets Multi-screen Competition

Graphics board maker Matrox is famous for its graphics boards that handle 1, 2, or 3 LCD screens. Now Nvidia and Intel are joining in, although Matrox will still have the edge.

Nvidia's Quadro NVS 280 PCI card outputs to 2 displays, but can handle up to 16 with additional cards. This won't be one for CAD users, because it doesn't offer 3D graphics acceleration. You'll see the card from Nvidia and remarketed by its OEMers.

Intel is working on a new i915G chipset called "Grantsdale" that supports multiple monitors -- at least 2, and perhaps 4. accordinging to Xbit Labs.

In the case of Nvidia, it is marketing its multi-monitor board to 2D graphics users, like financial instutions, leaving the CAD and high-end graphics market to Matrox.

Opera v7.5

Next release of Opera is v7.5, and includes:

* RSS
* IRC
* Spell Checker
* Email Filtering

Complete feature list is here.

Update:
I just downloaded the beta. Ouch! User interface is way different. I quickly when back to v7.3. Maybe one day when I am not so stressed, I'll again try v7.5.

Opera Web Browser

Top Ten Reasons I Use Opera as My Web browser:

1. Multiple Pages. Instead of displaying one Web page at a time, Opera employs MDI to display multiple pages; switch between then using tabs. Or, you can open multiple copies of Opera, if you prefer. I typically have a dozen pages open at a time.

2. Open Page in Background. This is the feature I appreciate the most: as I am reading a Web page, I come accross links that interest me. Instead of clicking on them, I right-click and select Open Page in Background. I can keep on reading the original page, while "bookmarking" additional pages of interest, which I read later.

3. Toggles. Find flashing ads annoying? Click Show Images on the toolbar to turn off images; to further eliminate flashing Flash ads, click on Print Preview on the toolbar. Viewing a page with hard to read text? Click Author Mode to force a white background, normal size text, etc.

4. Zoom. Not just making text a bit larger or a bit smaller, but a true zoom that enlarges pictures and text up to 1000% larger or down to 20% as large. As in some other Windows apps, hold down the Ctrl key and roll the mouse's roller wheel. I tend to view Web sites at 160%, which says something either about the size of my monitor or the state of my eyes.

5. Wand. Remembers usernames and passwords for a single Web page, or the entire server, or not at all. For family use, remembers multiple usernames for a single site, like the six different usernames for our family's various bank accounts. Useful feature in a day and age when we are supposed to be using many different, diifficult to guess (and remember) passwords that are supposed to be changed frequently. But, a dangerous feature if unauthorized persons access the browser.

6. Selectable Panels. In addition to the "Hotlist," Opera's name for favorites, I have that part of the screen display Transfers (record of downloaded files), History (list of sites I've been to) and Notes, text saved from Web pages. Other available panels I don't use are: Contacts, Mail, Links (shows all URLs in the current Web page), Windows, and Info (data about the current page). Plus you can download additional panels for newsfeeds, Hotmail, and so on.

7. Double-click Research. Double-click a word, and a shortcut menu appears: copy the text to Clipboard, copy text to Notes panel, find the dictionary meaning, search using Goggle, and so on. That's how I found out today what "suffragan" means.

8. Always-on Google. Much is being made of Web toolbars, but Opera has had a sereach toolbar search for years. The default is Google, of course, but options include domain names, Amazon.com, news, domain names, and so on.

9. Opera Costs Money. Opera is priced at US$39, but that's cheap for the most-used software on my computer, and for free tech support. (You don't have to pay if you prefer seeing ads flashing in the upper right corner.) Paying for software is important: it ensures that development continues, unlike the free IE.

10. Lots of Other Features. There's lot of other features in Opera that I don't use often, but you might find useful: integrated mail and news groups, of course, but also gestures (move the mouse in a certain way to execute commands), lots of tweaks to the user interface, and hundreds of skins (I've applied Orbit Modif.) And because it is not a Microsoft product, it is less susceptable to security problems.

Some biased Web sites refuse entry to Web browsers other than Netscape and IE. Here's a tip: change Opera's identity: from the File menu, select Quick Preferences, and then select Identify As. There is even a shortcut keystroke to toggle to IE 6 (Ctrl+Alt+I).

The only reason to not use Opera is that it is still not 100% compatible with Microsoft's proprietary extnesions to HTML. Once in a while I have to haul out IE to properly view a page. But it keeps getting better; even Hotmail works 100% with Opera now.

Some wonder at how I turn out so much writing. I'm fast. One reason for that is Opera: it helps me work fast on the Internet.

Download Opera here.

Mac at 20

1984: I recall the first time I saw a Macintosh at a ComputerLand outlet at The Bay department store in downtown Vancouver, BC Canada. My friend Don B enthusiastically showed the homely beige box to me and another (nameless) friend.

The friend had zero computer experience; I explained that the way to control the Mac was by moving the mouse. The friend picked up the mouse, and waved it in the air. "Nothing's happening," she complained.

Through an academic program that saved some money, Don later purchased the (horrifically expensive) original Mac with its mesely 128KB RAM (all Steve Jobs thought anyone would ever need). It was fun, because it was so different; it was also slow, upgradeable, and soon become a doorstop.

XML Has Become the CGM of this Decade

Someone asked me yesterday, "Does XML have any effect on your daily (working) life at this time?"

My immediate answer was, "No."

After all the hyper over XML (the HTML-based eXtensible Markup Language), I wondered why it had no impact. I quickly realized that XML has become the CGM for this decade. It's there, it's useful to some, it's breaking up into vendor-specific dialects (recall WPG, WMF, EMF, ActiveCGM), and it's not at all earth-shattering.

(Indeed, Autodesk had added the import and export of DesignXML to AutoCAD 2002 -- hidden, albeit, in the Insert and WBlockcommands -- but pulled it out of AutoCAD 2004.)

It's just another file format.

Visio 2003 View Available

If you don't use Visio, or chose to not upgrade to 2003, you can still view Visio files using the Viewer that Microsoft provides free. Download from the
Microsoft Web site.

Speaking of which, what's with "2003" as the name for the new release of Visio? That makes it sound so last year.

PLM Sales No Longer Dead Last

CADCAMNet reports that PLM (product-lifecycle-management software) "moves up from the cellar -- moved up from dead last to 13th place out of 17 categories in a survey of CIO (chief information officer) spending priorities."

A one-month trial subscription is available from CADCAMnet.

300,000 for SolidWorks

This week is the annual user group meeting for SolidWorks, in Boston. To celebrate, the company issued a press release trumpeting 300,000 total seats worldwide. Typically, that number includes a majority of education seats. The company began shipping product in 1995.

In the on-going war by press release, it's now up to Autodesk to meet or beat the 300 thousand figure.

In other large numbers released by SolidWorks today:

- 100,000 licenses in the last 16 months, some 33% faster than the previous 100,000.
- 35,000 companies and 5,000 educational institutions purchased SolidWorks.
- 1.6 million models download using 3D PartStream.NET in 2003.
- 50,000 users registered on 3D ContentCentral (3,000 a month).
- 10,000 companies have purchased COSMO.