WorldCAD Access

Most frequent words uttered during ADSK conference call

Seeking Alpha analysis the transcripts of financial for the most frequently used words. They are listed, unfortunately, in alphabetical order. Here is the list for Autodesk's most recent conference call:

bass - business

call - carl - comes

deals

fiscal

going 

hawkins

kind

line - look - lot

manufacturing  - many - mark

now

one - operator

people

products

quarter

question

really

see

things - think - time - two

year

Source.

More photos from Vancouver's cultural olympia

My wife and I spent a second sunny day in downtown Vancouver, taking in the cultural events accompanying the 2010 Winter olympics. (Although the olympics end on Sunday, the cultural events will carry on until the end of March.)

We got off at the Science World Skytrain (overhead rail transit) station to see Russia Dom (house), but the lineups snaked for too long for us to wait. Despite its popularity (and its purpose in promoting the location of the next Winter olympics, Sochi 2014), Russia House is open a mere five hours a day -- as we found out when we came back in the evening for a third try.



Adjacent to Russia House is the athlete's "village," and here is the British portion. Following the olympics, these brand-new condominiums will be sold to the public, or, more accurately, to upper crust and over-extended mortgage types who can afford the outrageous price tags.



Once past the athlete's village, we took the free streetcar demonstration run to Granville Island. By providing free trips, Bombardier hopes to convince the City of Vancouver to bring back streetcars. Not likely on this city's hyper-crowded streets.

Granville Island isn't really an island, and it sits in False Creek, which isn't a creek (it's a tidal inlet of the Pacific Ocean). On the island, we headed over to Switzerland House, but were disappointed that it consisted of being just a Swiss restaurant. We did enter the contest for a "free" trip to Switzerland, which inexplicably departs from Montreal, some 3,694 km away from us.



We took in a bizarre video artistic event (2.4 minutes of a spinning camera recording a mirror breaking as computer animation) and the nearly deserted Francophone House (French-speaking Canadians). No line-ups!

The tiny False Creek ferry took us across the water to Yaletown. Mixing dark clouds with sunshine gave us a spectacular view of downtown Vancouver's highrises and the parked uber-expensive yachts -- and a feeling we were in Dubai. Sucks to own a medium-size yacht around this part of town. Nestled inbetween is the pillowy air-supported dome of BC Place Stadium, the location for the opening, daily medal, and closing ceremonies.



Giant black rubber bladders and black RCMP speedboats protect the end of Flase Creek (and the athlete's village, Russia House, and other pavilions) from terrorist attack.




Yaletown is a former warehouse district that's now become a pedestrian mall with trendy shops, brewery-restaurants, and concerts. Yahoo hosted a major hang-out place with free access to Apple iMacs, photos of simulated winter sports, and giant tvs for watching the Canadian women's hockey team blank out the Americans. After all, it's all about YOU.



All around the town, the Salvation Army offers free hot chocolate drinks to ward off the cold -- whipped cream topping optional.

We took in Italy House in the Roundhouse (the former CPR locomotive roundhouse, now cultural center) which featured a mini-museum/tradeshow of Italian design. Even though its shop offered 40% off Italian teamware, we still couldn't afford the Freddy-designed $500 parkas or $120 sweaters. We did get free neck straps promoting Italian cheese: "Never buy cheese sold in a plastic bag!" we were admonished.



This was the last place we entered, for the lineups were just too long everywhere else for these free events -- lineups so long that street vendors have taken to advertising their wares by calling out, "No lineups!"

We moved north with the crowds towards Granville Street. For decades, this used to be the entertainment center for Vancouver (and one of my favorite places as a university student), but then in later years it unhappily became just plain seedy. In recent years, the city has worked to revitalize it, and for the olympics it was closed off for street performers and pin traders.



Another closed off street is Robson, which used to be known as Robsonstrasse for its many German restaurants and European shops. Now money has taken over, and it is the most expensive shopping street in Vancouver -- a kind of Rodeo Drive North. This street too is closed off during the olympics.



The official Canadian olympic broadcaster is CTV, and their studio is located smack dab in the middle of Robson street. They did an excellent job broadcasting the sporting events live, as well as streaming all events live at ctvolympics.ca (Canadian IP addresses only).



We ended the day with a muffin in my wife's favorite coffee shop, Caffe Artigiano, across from the Vancouver Art Museum...



...and then got home just in time to watch Joannie Rochette win olympic bronze in figure skating, the first Canadian win for women's singles since the last time the olympics were in Canada, 1988.

Rolling in dough: ANSYS revenues up 6% on the year

ANSYS is pretty chuffed to announce that their annual revenues in 2009 were $524.9 million, up 6.1% over a year ago. That makes this "add-on" software maker as big as Bentley Systems.

For 2010, the company expects to grow revenues by as much as 9.5% higher. Ceo Jim Cashman explains his company's success:

Looking ahead, all of the factors driving simulation remain in full force as companies strive to compete with next generation products, and with smarter products that are increasingly energy efficient and productive.

The big CAD vendors can only look on in envy.

Source.

This May's ODA conference is in Orlando FL USA

The Open Design Alliance holds its second annual ODA World Conference this May 4-5 at the Doubletree Resort in Orlando, Florida. Attendees will learn about:

• The new ODA Technology Exchange
• The ODA's advancement into SaaS (software as a service).
• The new SIGs (special interest groups).

You can read the initial agenda and register at www.opendesign.com/conference-2010. 

ASDK FY10 revenues down 26%

Autodesk is reporting its Q4 and fiscal year 2010 revenues today, and they are down:

• Q4 revenues of $456 million are down 7% from a year ago. (Bright side: this is up 9% from last quarter. although Q4 is traditionally the quarter with the most driven sales.)

• 2010 revenues of $1.7 billion are down 26% from last year.

For Q1, Autodesk expects revenue in the range of $420-$440 million. 

Source.

BigCAD sales are withering

AutoCAD and LT sales crashed during the recession, as have sales of Pro/E. SolidWorks is down, through not as much. Inventor, we don't know about, since Autodesk keeps those sales a secret, but an analyst tells me he figures Inventor is has suffered more than SolidWorks. 

Small privately-held CAD vendors boast of maintaining or increasing sales, no doubt helped by prices that are 5x to 40x lower.

Tomorrow, we learn about Autodesk's Q4 revenues.

Adobe-kettle calls Apple "pot"

Adobe's been doing a fair amount of squawking over Apple's disinterest in sending Adobe large cheques to license Flash technology. Some commentators have pointed out that Flash may become unnecessary once HTML 5 is pervasive. I myself don't understand the point to Flash, because its content cannot be searched. 

Even as Adobe's official bloggers and execs talk against Apple, Adobe itself ignores an important piece of technology in its own products, OLE. That's right: none of its software packages support object linking and embedding anymore, something that even Windows v3.1 supports.

Here's a practical example of how OLE is useful: In most of the 120 books and ebooks I've written, I annotate images (screen grabs) with Visio, like the image shown below.



I make the screen grab, and then add the text and lines in Visio. The entire image is pasted into the (now obsolete) PageMaker as an OLE object. This provides me with three advantages:

1. Visio's text and lines are vectors, meaning they display and print at top quality.
2. The images are edited quickly easily: I double-click it, and Visio launches and opens the image automatically in about 2 seconds.
3. The images are reusable as templates: when I need to annotate another image, I copy and paste an existing one, and then quickly change the screengrab and annotation.

Adobe's CS line of software does not support OLE. Instead, images from Visio are pasted as bitmaps -- lower resolution, uneditable, and non-template-able.

I am not looking forward to the reduction in efficiency this year as one of my book publishers requires me to switch from the OLE-friendly PageMaker 7 to the OLE-ignorant InDesign CS4. (I'll stay in PageMaker for my ebooks.)

In the meantime, Adobe can stop squawking about what others aren't doing.

Autodesk: James Cameron Likes Us Best

by Roopinder Tara

SolidWorks scored quite a coup having James Cameron, creator of hit movie Avatar, keynote at their annual user conference. This chafed many at Autodesk, as it was Autodesk software that was responsible for the creation of many of the special effects the movie is already famous for. Autodesk had made sure everyone who attended their annual user meeting knew that. In fact, a 20 minute exclusive about the making of the movie was one of Autodesk University's highlights. But they didn't get the man himself.

SolidWorks says they signed up Cameron to speak before Avatar became a hit. They got lucky. A few questioned Cameron's lack to direct connection to SolidWorks software but most who heard him speak, both at the keynote and at the ensuing press conference, came away impressed by his technical knowledge. SolidWorks does that -- get really interesting speakers regardless of their affiliation. I met Steve Wozniak, founder of Apple, at a previous SolidWorks World. Nothing to do with SolidWorks but meeting him sure impressed my kids.

Lest the thunder be stolen in its entirety, Autodesk today put out a press release, Avatar: Autodesk Software Core to Realization of James Cameron’s Creative Vision. James Cameron is apparently loath to endorse software himself, but Autodesk did get a quote from the digital effects supervisor of Lightstorm Entertainment.

Roopinder Tara is editor of TenLinks.com and tweets at @rtara.

Penton magazine publisher reorganizes under bankruptcy protection

Penton files with the brankruptcy court a pre-packaged reorganization plan that includes an agreement for restructuring with its lenders to eliminate $270 million worth of debt.

The magazine publisher has set up a Web page that explains the process here.

(HT: Roopinder Tara. And thx to DK for noticing that I left out the word mllion!)

Photos from Vancouver's cultural olympics

If you can't get tickets (or afford them) for the winter olympics in Vancouver, Canada, then you can still take in the free events of the "cultural" olympics -- concerts, art, a zip line, ice shows, and pavilions operated by provinces, countries, and corporations.

Last night we took in some of them, and here are a few of my photographs.

The olympic flame (five of them, actually) kept safe from tourists by the wire mesh fencing and security cameras:


Giant images adorns the sides of buldings; many of them are created by powerful projectors, but this one of the Canadian flag is made of real material:



The center of the cultural olympics in downtown Vancouver is Robson Square:


Another view of Robson Square, with the Vancouver Art Gallery in the background:


At one time, Granville Street was Vancouver's theatre row, then it became a failed experiement as a pedestrian mall, now it is reilluminated as theatre row/pedestrian mall for the cultural olympics:


Along the waters of False Creek, we have the Quebec pavilion in blue at the left, the round Science World hosting Russia (the next Winter olympics) on the right, and skyscapers inbetween: