WorldCAD Access

upFront.eZine's wall-to-wall coverage of SolidWorks World 2010

[Disclosure: Airfare, hotel accommodation, and meals provided by SolidWorks.]

Starting Sunday and going through Wednesday, look for upFront.eZine's wall-to-wall coverage of SolidWorks World 2010 on all our channels:

• Hourly blog updates right here on WorldCAD Access.

• Flash updates on Twitter stream @ralphg.

• Comprehensive wrap-up in next week's upFront.eZine.

SWWX: On the "road" to Anaheim

Press people are blogging and tweeting their way to Anaheim. There's Al Dean tweeting, "Hello jet lag, my old friend" and Deelip blogging about his end-to-end booze fests.

I'm starting my flight from Vancouver International Airport, which is getting ready for next week's hoards arriving for the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olypmics. Already speed skaters are practicing in my home town's rinks, and tomorrow the Russian figure skaters arrive to being their practices in our local rinks. On the way to the airport this foggy morning, I counted four bald eagles.

What with the eunuchbommber and the Olympics, security is much tighter here at YVR. I had to chuckle at the new concrete barriers in front of the airport doors, because they are painted in Vancouver olympic colors -- blue and green to make them look less like... concrete barriers. I won't go into all the details of the added security, except to say that my boarding pass was checked five times and that I got to go through the full body scanner -- rather that than get a paddown from a swarthy looking individual wearing rubber gloves.
 
Arriving in LAX this afternoon, I am looking forward to being picked up by my good friend Don (we were best men at each other's weddings) -- no endless circling of LAX (as some shuttle bus driver looks for more rides) for me!

Full SWWX coverage starts here Monday

For SolidWorks World 2010, I have set up wall-to-wall coverage right here on WorldCAD Access, plus supplemental udpates through my Twitter feed @ralphg.

Look for hourly reports on interesting vendors exhibiting their wares in the partner pavillion, "On the SWWX Show Floor."

Looking over my Google Calendar, I see I have 16 meetings and events scheduled in 2.5 days, including a couple with surprising vendors -- ones who I figure are using the SWWX to coattail their marketing in adjacent hotel rooms. I'll be interested to see what they have to tell me.

It all starts Monday...

This week in upFront.eZine: the dilemma of third-party developers, and PTC mocks its competitors

This week's upFront.eZine is a few days early since I will be at I will be at SolidWorks World 2010 in Anaheim Sunday-Wednesday. I will be blogging the event live right here on WorldCad Access and tweeting about it on @ralphg

In this issue: 

Sorting Through the Third-party Developer Dilemma

PTC Execs Back in Fine Form
     - Beating Dassault and Siemens
     - Windchill PLM 2x the Size of Dassault's PM
     - On the Mood of Dassault Customers
     - Selling PLM to Autodesk and SolidWorks Customers
     - And the Fun Stuff

You can read it all at www.upfrontezine.com/2010/upf-631.htm

Archway Systems' second annual Bentley Bash

by Don Beaton

The 2nd annual Bentley Bash was sponsored by Bentley and Archway Systems at Rio Hondo college. The price was right -- free, free, free! -- and it was a pleasant way to spend a Saturday, pick up a bit more CAD knowledge, eat some tasty sandwiches, and take home some nice door prizes. Archway estimates that 240 people attended the day's 12 presentations and seminars.

An IT rep from the Los Angeles Community College system gave a talk on an impressive high-tech energy-conservation construction program. www.laccdbuildsgreen.org

The morning seminar on Project Wise hit a speed bump when the presenter had computer problems and didn't have access to a server to do a real demo. However, I did get a much better understanding of what Project Wise is -- a Windows-Explorer-type CAD file manager that offers real benefits in keeping projects organized. It handles check-in/out for drawings, including files edited by outside agencies and contractors. It also ensures that all links to reference files are updated when files are renamed.

The second half of the morning seminar was on Windows 7. It seemed like a good choice when I signed up for it a couple of months ago, but in the meantime I already learned about 80% of the info just by installing and using 7. One cool trick I learned was the Windows+Tab shortcut, which is a space-age alternative to Alt+Tab.

In the afternoon, I chose the mini-class on the 3D aspects of MicroStation. I learned a bit more about Accudraw, which makes it easy to draw in 3D while viewing objects in an isometric view.

I may yet take the $125 MicroStation 3D course offered by Rio Hondo college. At 7 hr/day x 1 day/week x 16 weeks per course, it works out to about $1.11 per hour, and a good way to stay motivated to learn the material.  www.riohondo.edu/tech/cad/index.htm 

Thanks to Tom Lazear and his staff at Archway Systems for putting on the seminar. I find they are a great company that goes out of their way to help users and promote MicroStation and various other CAD products.  www.archwaysystems.com

[Don Beaton is an Intergraph and Unix expert living in Orange Country, California.]

First screen shot: NaviCAD simulated on the iPad

Put these two...

1. Apple third-party developers don't have iPads yet, but they can run their software on the software iPad simulator.

2. NaviCAD displays 3D models from the Google 3D Warehouse on the iPhone right now.

...together, and you get NaviCAD transitioned to run full-screen (not at 2X of the iPhone version) on the iPad simulator:


Thanks to Chuck Han of NaviCAD for passing this along.

Enovia CTO asks, "When (not how) do we get content onto the iPad?"

As the chief technical officer for Enovia at Dassault Systems, Oleg Shilovistsky asks on his blog, "Who Can Generate 3D/PLM Content For Apple iPad?". I can only presume that "Dassault" is the answer he is thinking of!

Nevertheless, here is what he thinks of this new category of device:

- The 64GB RAM not justifiable "when all my work is on cloud/server/laptop."

- The missing camera limits the iPad for 3DVIA Mobile "and all other applications that want to merge physical and virtual life."

- Price too expensive for "the shop-floor and manufacturing."

Nevertheless, Mr Shilovistsky feels that the need to share content will drive CAD vendors to figure out how to get onto the iPad -- and, I presume, its many imitators, especially those running the Android OS.

In the end, it's about the content, and that will outlive the iPad, its imitators, and successors.

- - -

Me, I think the iPad unfortunately falls into the crack between the sofa cushions. Apple ceo Steven Jobs said it replaces the netbook. But how can it, when it is more expensive, less featured (USB and keyboard cost extra), and incompatible with everything, except the iPhone.

My son figures lightweight netbook convertibles (screen twists atop the keyboard) would be the ideal.

Heppelmann wants 20% earnings growth: what could possibly go wrong?

A few years ago, Autodesk ceo Carl Bass announced his plan to grow the company 15% a year for the next five years. The compounding works out to a doubling (101%) of revenues in a half-decade. But then a little thing called "the recession" got in the way, and ADSK's recent revenues went negative instead.

Now Jim Heppelmann, the president of PTC, ups the ante, when he this week declared:

We want to do 20% earnings growth five years in a row.

Through the magic of compounding, that's 149% of growth in earnings by 2015. He confides in the financial analysts the sparse ingredients of his secret sauce: "...the recipe for how we want to do that is three parts revenue growth, one part margin expansion [by growing revenues faster than expenses]."

Mr Heppelmann will, of course, have an easier job than Mr Bass did, for PTC is starting at the end of recession, when earnings have dipped extra low -- whereas Mr Bass had begun his quest when revenues were near their peak, as it turned out.

You would think financial types would l-o-v-e the huge increase in future earnings, but the PMTC share price settled back to its traditional $16.50 level following a one-day boost due to the preceding quarter's uplifting results.

No mention of CAD for Apple's new iPad

Games, spreadsheets, ebooks, music, and one painter software showed off for the new iPad this morning. I presume Autodesk is porting its Alias Sketch Mobile software to the iPad's larger screen (most iPhone apps apparently work on the iPad).

But what about CAD software...

...who will be the first CAD vendor to have their software running on the iPad and its unique CPU? (Randall Newton thinks maybe VectorWorks or ArchiCAD.)

...with iWorks priced at a mere $9.99 (and iPhone apps typically at $1.99), how cheap will CAD software have to be to fit in with Apple's ultra-low pricing model?

...which CAD vendor will update their software first to take advantage of the iPad's in-your-face touch screen -- or will they have to rewrite from scratch?

Bricsys releases another alpha of Bricscad Linux

Another release of Bricscad for Linux is available for download from www.bricsys.com/open/common/download.jsp?p=B4L&l=en_US&site=1

The software now does things I'd've thought would be possible in the initial release:

• DWG files can be opened, but not saved.

• Menus and toolbars added, though not flyout toolbars.

• Zooming with the scroll button now works.

• System variables now retain their values.

A user reports:

I see the new version grow quickly from the very first one. Speed is much higher than in WINE [old version of Bricscad than ran on Linux using WINdows Emmulator], and CPU load is much more affordable, main commands are efficient.