WorldCAD Access

Customers Flee to Quality - Cashman

Ansys ceo Jim Cashman explains why his company's revenues are up, when everyone else's are down:

Anecdotally, customers are still telling us that even in the tougher economic times there's a heightened need on their part for product innovation. So while this is far from bulletproof, they generally feel that they can not achieve this mission with lower end or less-capable solutions.

Discounting in these recessionary times? Nope:

The ASP's [average selling price] of all our mainline products stayed basically the same. In fact, I think they were even slightly up from last Q4.

Grouchy shareholders didn't like the good news, sending the ANSS share price down by $2.46 (10%).

Source.

Happy: ANSYS Up 29%

Ansys today reported Q4 revenues of $143.3 million, up 29% from a year ago. Net income was $46.6 million, also up from a year ago. However, for this quarter, the company expects revenue to fall to $122.0 - $130.0 million

Revenue for fiscal year 2008 was $493.0 million, up 27% from the previous year. For this year, Ansys expect revenues to keep climbing, in the range of $530.0 - $590.0 million.

Source.

Unhappy: ADSK Down 18%

Autodesk Q4 revenues were $489.8 million, down 18% from a year ago, while net income was a loss of $105.3 million.

• 3D modeling software (Inventor, Revit, etc) seats are down 1%.
• 6,100 seats of 3D manufacturing software licensed in Q4.
• 24,000 seats of 3D AEC software.  

• Europe, Middle East, and Asia revenues down 16%.
• Asia Pacific revenues down 25%.
• Americas down 17%.
• Emerging economies down 31%.

But not all is gloomy. FY09 revenues hit an all-time high at $2.315 billion, up 7% from the previous fiscal year.  

The company expects Q1 revenues to continue the downward trend, ranging between $400-$440 million. Indeed, Autodesk thinks it might suffer another loss.

This negative trend makes it tough for ceo Carl Bass to make good his promise to grow the company 15% a year.

Source.

Saved: CADalyst

Current CADalyst magazine owner Questex Media Group is licensing the 26-year-old CAD publication to Longitude Media. The entire CADalyst staff gets to keep their jobs, apparently.

Longitude Media appears to be recycling itself. Its president Seth Nichols is described as the previous "CEO and President of the CMP Media Internet Group and founded Longitude Media, an online media distribution company." The new publisher is not to be confused by the non-profit of the same name.

Foam Table to Replace Glass

Multi-touch tables covered by glass are so last year. This year, it's foam covered tables. 

Impress shines a laser on a sheet of foam; the laser draws the images, while the foam allows 3D touching: x, y, and now depth. For example:

Draw a new object with different radius and pitch depending on the intensity of pressure.

Or...

Model a 3D object by lower or higher intensity of pressure at any desired position. 

You can see pictures and videos here.

New 3D Gestureized Display Tech

Fraunhofer Institute, the people who brought you MP3 files, plan to show off a gesture-activated 3D display next month.

No 3D glasses. No data gloves. Instead, a ceiling mounted-scanner uses two cameras to determine your hand movements. The usefulness?

In addition to its obvious appeal to video gamers, iPoint 3D can also be useful in a living room or office, or even in a hospital operating room, or as part of an interactive information system.

Heh. The image shows a 3D CAD drawing, which I think is a SolidWorks demo file.

Source.

Top 5 Postings on this Blog

The five most popular postings on this blog have been (links now work correctly):

1. Complex [AutoCAD] Linetypes

2. PTC Drops Out of Billion Dollar Club

3. Google Updates SketchUp v7  

4. PTC: We Heart Pirates 

5. Free! CAD Parts Library 

The top 5 referring sites are:

1. My own upfrontezine.com

2. www.jtbworld.com

3. www.bricsys.com

4. www.deelip.com

5. www.cadtutor.net 

(Souce: Feedburner)

Dell No Friend of Autodesk

The "netbook" term was revived by Asus for its then-new line of small-screened DVD-less notebook computers. The Psion came out of the woodwork, with lawyer-written letters threatening blogs and others over use of the term.

Now Dell is fighting back through the US Patent & Trademark Office, accusing Psion of abandonment, genericness, and fraud.

One's thoughts spring immediately to Autodesk's attempt to use the USPTO (and civil courts) to monopolize use of DWG. Abandonment and fraud don't apply to Autodesk, but genericness does, as Dell's lawyers point out:

The term "netbook" has been widely used by the computer media and consumers to refer to a subset of "notebook" computers that are small and inexpensive.

Rewritten for DWG...

The term "DWG" has been widely used by the computer media and consumers to refer to a subset of "CAD" files.

Source.

Nemetschek Up 3%

Nemetschek managed to increase revenues by 2.9% in fiscal 2008, earning e150.4 million (roughly US$200 million), up from e146.2 million euros a year earlier. 

The killer was Q4, usually the strongest sales quarter for Nemetschek and most other CAD vendors. Q4 revenues fell to e41.4 million, down by 4.6% from e43.4 million of a year earlier.

Europe's largest CAD software company credits Germany for keeping sales stable. Nemetschek ceo Ernst Homolka is pretty pleased the company exceeded e150 million in annual revenues for the first time during a recession year, "as well as the fact that the company achieved almost 40% of its revenues from long-term maintenance contracts."

The company has 270,000 customers in 142 countries.

Source.

Acad 2010 on Netbooks

I can now report that the version of AutoCAD I got running on my LG X110 netbook was a beta of AutoCAD 2010. With the Release Candidate now available, (RC = version being sent to the CD pressing companies for distribution to customers in late March), I uninstalled Beta 3 to put on the RC.

Of course, I ran into the same problem as before: the install/uninstall dialog boxes are too big for netbook screens, which are typically limited to a maximum vertical resolution of 600 lines. As you can see in the figure below, there is plenty of white space Autodesk can remove to make the Next button visible on the screen.

(Workaround is to attach an external monitor with a  higher resolution; even an aging 1024x768 one will do.)

Windows 2000

Does AutoCAD work with Windows 2000? No. I tried it, but the installer won't even run. So, it's just XP, Vista, and 7 now.