CAD Searches

This headline from Larry Digna's Between the Lines...

Microsoft offers to buy FAST for $1.2 billion; Likely to trigger enterprise search consolidation

...got me wondering. Will this trigger search consolidation in the CAD world?

Searching CAD drawings is a tough problem; it's not just about locating text strings or database fields. The problem is trying to identify shapes of objects similar to the one being sought. Never mind similar; it can be tough for an algorithm to find ones that are identical -- given that CAD systems define entities differently from each other.

OTOH, searching CAD drawings is not as difficult as searching raster images, which contain almost no useful content at all -- other than an orderly pattern of numbers that means little until expressed as an image. (I find it interesting that Visio has the same problem: its spreadsheet-like file format means little until displayed as a diagram.)

So, no triggering of search consolidation in the CAD world, for there is little searching to consolidate.

(As for the $1.2-billion price tag Microsoft paid for an enterprise search engine from Norway, consider that eight years ago it paid about the same amount for all of Visio.)

Comments

[sara]

hi i need a basic instruction about auto cad ........

[Chris]

Ralph - there's not much consolidation to be done in CAD search. We (Siemens PLM software) have Geolus and it works quite well IMHO. There are a few other players out there, but despite the obvious simplicity of a geometry based approach to finding geometry (it is one of the few products I have seen in our industry in 5 years that takes 5 minutes or less to explain and understand the value) it is still very early stage. I would guess the total 3D based CAD search market to be less that $20M right now.