Kubotek Pre-announces V9

No doubt Tier-2 MCAD vendors -- like Kubotek, IronCAD, and Ashlar Vellum -- are grinding their teeth at all the free publicity the Tier-1s are getting for their recent "discovery" of direct modeling and editing, a.k.a. "What else can we sell to customers in a mature market?"

So much so that Kubotek USA says it's the leader in this niche:

Kubotek, the leader in history-free direct 3D modeling, announces that KeyCreator Version 9 will be available this fall.

I think they need to drop a couple of words from their descriptor, to be clearer: "the leader in history-free direct 3D modeling." Conversely, they should add "history" to a later sentence in the press release, again to be clearer:

This revolutionary new approach also provides a simple and intuitive alternative to traditional [history-based] solid modeling which constrains models based on how they were constructed.

Top new feature in V9 is the improvement to placing 3D smart dimensions on solids: driven dimensions control direct editing without constraints. The three-minute YouTube video at www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Snhy-EKTl4 provides many examples -- and includes the dig that they've been doing direct editing since 2003.

I'm watching the video and I'm thinking, "Yup, that's how easy CAD should be."

Source.

Comments

[John]

Ralph,

From my perspective 'History-free' Direct Modeling is an important distinction. I've seen a few parametric (history-based) CAD products showing "grab-a-face-and-drag" functionality which some call Direct Modeling. 'Direct' to them evidently means you don't need to use the tree interface. These operations add a face move or offset feature to end of the tree. I think Pro/E has been using the term Direct Modeling in this manner for a while.

Best regards,
John Wright McCullough
Kubotek USA
(the leader in history-free direct modeling)

[Jon Banquer]

The leader is the product others try and copy. So who is everyone trying to copy? Easy question to answer:

SpaceClaim.

All one needs to do to confirm that it is SpaceClaim that is truly the leader and pioneer in this area is to check out the new videos posted on You Tube for the next version of CoCreate or read Siemens Solid Edge website to see that Solid Edge with S/T 2 will get the section mode that SpaceClaim already has.

Jon Banquer
San Diego, CA
http://jonbanquer.wordpress.com/