WorldCAD Access

Adobe Employees Get 3 Xtra Weeks Vacation

The factory lines at Adobe are quiet this week, as employees are forced ["forced"? In the summer time? -Ed.] to take three weeks of unpaid vacation to help the company's leaders cut expenses. 

The latest monster release of Creative Suite has been a sales dud, coming as it did last fall. Customers were faced with the dual dilemma of (a) buying upgrades at the start of what looked to be a very scary recession; and (b) upgrading to questionably-useful features.

Source.

McEleney Cloudy CEO

Former SolidWorks ceo John McEleney is appointed ceo and president of CloudSwitch. The year-old company is raising money and writing software to let companies use cloud computing without worrying about lock-in.

Source.

Future of CAD Journalism in Good Hands

Next year I'll have been working on the editorial side of computer-aided design for 25 years. (Sept 1985 was my first month at CADalyst magazine.) In those two-and-a-half decades, the CAD publishing industry exploded, particularly in the area of AutoCAD. Magazines, books, independent and user group newsletters, online forums...

And then the Internet shifted us away from paper-based products, and we now have digital magazines, email and Web-based newsletters, ebooks, blogs, online forums...

The original editors and writers are retiring or (sadder to say) dying. The current group of core editors have one-to-two decades of experience, and are still working hard even as thoughts of retirement flicker through.

I sometimes wonder, "Who will take over?" Which is why I am thrilled to see strong voices emerging from the blog scene, names like Matt Lombard, Deelip Menezes, Steve Johnson, and numerous others. While some of them have been in the CAD biz for a decade or more, it is blogging that lets them speak up in a way never before possible. 

None of these guys are parrots, as are too many casual bloggers; their experience lets them think deeply about issues, become outraged at injustices, and pontificate on how CAD software could become better. Over the last couple of years, I've watched with pleasure as their writing improved and became more sure-footed. 

What's not for freedom-of-the-press lovers to like about headlines like these?

• 3D Connexion Space Pilot review and abuse of superlatives
• Inventor Fusion Is Finally Out, But...
• A touch of Tehran taints the AUGI Special Election

"Users come first" was the mantra Lionel Johnston had when he launched his fledgling CADalyst magazine in the Kootneys, and it's terrific to see decades later his vision carry on through today's writers.

For some, there is no kneeling at the feet of CAD vendors*.

---

*) What's that supposed to mean? Here's an example: the media kit of a competitor to CADalyst magazine offered vendors four pages of editorial for $10,000. Similar practices continue today.

The Essential Reader: It's Not News

It's Not News, It's Fark:
How Mass Media Tries to Pass Off C*** as News

by Drew Curtis

My first experience with botched reporting came when the apartment complex we were living in had a toaster-induced fire in one of its units. There was a dramatic rescue of the third-floor unit's handicapped renter by another tenant suffering from back problems.

The fire made it onto page 3 of The Vancouver Sun, and we were amazed at the many incorrect details the reporter managed to fit into a simple story. Names misspelled; details incorrectly related. This incident of 1987 made me wonder how many incorrect details we are fed each day by the news on radio, tv, newspaper, and today on the Internet.

The primary problems are that (1) 24-hour news operations need material to fill each hour; and (2) advertising-based operations need material to fit around the ads. News is always secondary; the primary needs are filling the 24-hour day and landing the advertising.

Drew Curtis pulls back the curtain on some of the news industries's mischievous ways. These include running press releases as news items, overcovering a single story, and obsessing over blond white women with lost children or spectacular diseases.

If you have ever heard/read a news item about vacation travel ("AAA or CAA says this summer lots of cars will be on the roads"), then you are hearing a regurgitated press release. This is not news, and not worthy of being broadcast as news, because (1) people go on vacation in their cars every summer; and (2) the item is free marketing for the automobile club. Applies to PETA especially. Male reporters are always happy to "cover" near-naked chicks, and PETA knows that.

Worse are press releases that announce made-up statistics. For example, UNESCO announced earlier this year that 1.5 million refugees were in danger in some country or another. After intensive questioning by a BBC interviewer, I heard the UNESCO representative admit to making up the number. Last year's invented number had been one million; this year's had to be larger, and so they picked 1.5 million. Out of the air. Because large numbers make the news.

Mr Curtis highlights other numbers picked out of the air. (Well, he doesn't use the word "air.") There's the one about American companies losing $780 million in productivity because of the Super Bowl. Complete fabrication, but a great way to get free publicity for publicity-seeking firms. 

The advertising-driven 24-hour news operation likes press releases, because they are free; in the industry, we call them "fillers." 

And then there are these other annual non-news items that our ear are subjected to:

- Rolling backouts possible this summer.
- Center for Disease Control warns of possible flu shot shortage.
- Young men injured in Pamplona's annual running of the bulls.
- Fireworks likely to injure people this holiday weekend.
- Celebrities voice support for nonsensical causes.

Overcoverage is where news organizations spend days on one story. My favorite was the impending non-explosion of Mount St Helens of a few years ago, where long lines of network satellite trucks boosted the local economy, but had little else to do. 

Mr Curtis breaks down overcoverage to this handy timeline:

Day 1. Break news.
Day 2. Issue retractions.
Day 3. Talk it to death.
Day 4. Can't... stop... talking.
Day 5. Self-analysis: Has the media gone to far?

Mr Curtis also covers the irritants that grate me the most: headlines that are contradicted by the story; and journalists who can't do math. He quotes a story that claims 60% of Brits use screwdrivers, knives, and other sharp objects instead of floss on their teeth. Missing from the headline was the qualifier "at one time in their lives."

The many anecdotes makes this a fun book to read, and gives you yet another reason to cancel your cable news subscription. As for "fark," it's his word for news that isn't news.

[Warning: This book contains crude language.]

Published in 2007 by Gotham Books
viii+278 pp.
ISBN: 978-1592402915

You can purchase this book through Amazon: It's Not News, It's Fark.

Role Reversal: eBook Becomes Print Book

AutoCAD 2010 Update Guide: What's Inside?
by Ralph Grabowski

Since 2003, I've been producing an annual What's Inside? AutoCAD ebook that details new and changed features in the latest release of AutoCAD. 

Autodesk Press liked what they saw, because their customers (largely technical colleges) wanted a concise update guide. The publisher contracted me to convert the ebook to a format suitable for printing -- basically, converting the full color pages to grayscale. Oh, and they had me also change the wording of the title.

(They're also releasing their own electronic book version, which retains the color, but for which I have no details, yet.)

If you are interested in purchasing this book in paper format and get a 34% discount, it's now available through Amazon: AutoCAD 2010 Update Guide.

Published in 2009 by Autodesk Press (Cengage Delmar)
Paperback; 128pp 
ISBN-13: 978-1435493025
List price: $27.95

Also available from me direct as a downloaded ebook from eBooks.onLine in PDF format for $19.50: What's Inside? AutoCAD 2010.

The True Windows Tax

The Windows tax usually refers to the higher price that computers cost because of the amount we unknowingly pay for the Windows license. With computers being so cheap these days, we tend to not care; the higher Windows-induced price tends to show itself in the realm of netbooks, which offer Linux as the alternative.

The true Windows tax, however, is in how the bulky operating system taxes computer speed. This effect is clearly seen on dual-booting netbooks, such as my 1GB LG netbook. Presto Linux boots in 35 seconds; Windows 7RC boots in three minutes, and even then continues to operate sluggishly -- in contrast to the snappy performance of Linux.

This line of thinking was sharpened by a press release headline that read, "Autodesk Increases Moldflow Performance Two Fold." The increase stems from hardware: multicore CPUs, and GPUs specific to certain nVidia graphics boards.

It certainly takes a lot of hardware to run today's Windows snappily; I inherited a recent model of a dual-core 64-bit computer with 4GB RAM and a very fast hard drive. Vista runs well on it, but poorly on other computers with lower specs.

I wonder what speed increase could be accomplished if MoldFlow relinquished the Windows tax and ran on Linux?

SpaceClaim to Autodesk: Bring It On!

Well, SpaceClaim doesn't directly address Autodesk in its Direct Modeling Challenge -- Bring it on! email blast of today. But the coincidence is uncanny: the same morning Autodesk announces general availability of Inventor Fusion TP1 [tech preview #1], the challenge appears in email boxes:

If you have a modeling challenge, we want you to bring it on -- to us! Yes, thhat's [sic] right.

Then, in a live webinar on July 29, SpaceClaim will demonstrate how their software solves the most compelling design problem submitted.

The spin: that SpaceClaim's software is better at solving complex problems than the fresh-faced Fusion. 

The Fusion UI

The marketing emphasis for Inventor Fusion is "speed." The press release Autodesk Unveils Inventor Fusion Technology to Help Engineers Speed Time to Market uses the following adjectives:

• speed
• power
• accelerate
• rapid
• fast

All speed aside, what I find more interesting about Fusion is its collection of user interface tools that have new names and new looks:

Marking Menu -- an eight-segment icon menu that appears when you hold down the right-click menu.

Gesture -- a way of accessing a Marking Menu item directly: right-click and drag the mouse in the direction that you've memorized the menu segment to be positioned.

Triad -- combines AutoCAD's 3D move, scale, and rotate gizmos into a single gizmo.

Selection Strip -- lets you select overlapping entities through a filmroll-like strip.

With Autodesk's emphasis on making all of its software similar to one another, I would expect to see these UI elements in the next release of AutoCAD. You can read more about these UI items and see color figures of them in the Getting Started PDF.

Converting Windows CAD to OS Independence

To learn what it takes to wean a CAD program away from Windows, I visited two software companies who are nearly finished with the process. Bricsys of Belgium and Graebert of Germany will be releasing their CAD programs for Linux and Macintosh within the next 6-24 months. I found it fascinating that both followed a nearly identical deweaning process, completely independent of each other.

Step 1

Rewrite all portions of the source code that depend on Microsoft APIs. Bricsys used wxWidgets, while Graebert used Qt. This rewrite takes 1.5-4 years, and affects 95-98% of the code.

Step 2

Customize the program for each of the three operating systems. The remaining 2-5% of code is OS-specific, such as the user interface, file operations, and device communications.

At this point, the programming problems that remains differ:

• Linux users are unconcerned with the user interface, so the Windows GUI does not need to change much. Problems specific to Linux include deciding on the installers, and interfacing with printers.

• Mac users are obsessed with the user interface, so the GUI needs an extensive rewrite. The particular problem is in getting the Mac mouse to handle CAD operations. (Installers and printer interfaces present no problem.)

Step 3

Alpha and beta test, and then ship. In this step, the two companies took different approaches:

Bricsys is concentrating on shipping the Linux version first, because it already has customers demanding it; development of the Mac version will begin after Bricscad/Linux ships early next year.

Graebert is developing all three versions of their new Ares CAD software at the same time: the Windows version this summer, with the Linux and Mac versions later in the year.

- - -

I suppress a chuckle watching this seachange in operating system support. In the early 1990s, many CAD programs ran on many operating systems -- DOS (predecessor to Windows), varieties of Unix (father to Linux) and in some cases, Macintosh, Atari, and other minor segments.

Then, CAD vendors poured expensive resources into converting their programs to Windows, which at the time was dead-slow for running programs as compute-intensive as computer-aided design. 

Today, CAD vendors are repouring expensive resources to undo their actions of fifteen years ago. 

Autodesk: We're Kewl With Macheads

Autodesk marketing is ramping up its We-Are-Mac messaging. You may have noticed the initial steps, a few social-media releases, such as the Which-Features-Do-You-Want? survey for a possible Macintosh version of AutoCAD. (From the wording of the survey, Autodesk was hoping users would be fine with a less-than-AutoCAD-LT feature set.)

More recent was the "Official: Mac Users Love Us" press release that rejoices at how much the Mac version of Alias is beloved of users. The headline and body contain "momentum" wording: "Alias 2010 Adds to Autodesk’s Growing Portfolio of Mac Design Tools."

Alias Design joins the increasing number of Autodesk 2D and 3D software tools available for Mac OS X, including SketchBook Pro, Autodesk Maya, Autodesk Mudbox, Autodesk Toxik, Autodesk ImageModeler and Autodesk Stitcher. 

(Notice that the list consists of non-CAD programs only.) The momentum wording is key to understanding that there will be more Mac news from Autodesk. My guestimate is that the Mac version of AutoCAD will be announced at Autodesk University -- announcement meaning something along the lines of "We will ship something at some point [in 2010]."

In addition, I expect Autodesk marketing to mount a similar campaign for Linux next year, building on the few apps they already have running on Linux.

Ares and Bricscad

Graebert and Bricsys will be beta-testing and/or shipping Linux and Mac versions of their (non-IntelliCAD) CAD systems over the next 6-24 months. Will Autodesk be as effective at squashing them as it was of IntelliCAD 11 years ago? At that time, the FTC stomped on Autodesk to prevent possible anti-competitive behavior. 

Without government intervention, the best chance for Graebert and Bricsys is for Autodesk to initially ship AutoCAD/Mac with no API.

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(Details about Ares and Bricscad for Linux and Mac in this and next week's editions of upFront.eZine, available free.)