WorldCAD Access

Twenty years on, Autodesk rediscovers that Apple thing (Updated)

Miguel Helft of The New York Times is reporting this evening what was pretty much an open secret. It was just the timing we weren't sure about.

Tuesday Autodesk has all kinds of media events planned for announcing AutoCAD's return to the Macintosh, this time on the OS X operating system.

(Image from Autodesk; click for full-size version.)

Mr Helft quotes Amar Hanspal, senior vp of platform solutions at Autodesk:

This is an endorsement from our side that design and engineering customers are taking the Macintosh seriously again.

Heh. Try telling that to companies like Nemetschek Vectorworks, Graphisoft, and Siemens PLM Systems, whose CAD software has been running on the Mac for years, in some cases originally developed on the Mac back when Autodesk gave up on it.

Source.

Product Details

The New York Times says the OS X version will cost as much as the Windows version, $3,995 (subscription is $450/year). Shipping date for North America and Europe is October, my guess being closer to the end than the beginning of the month. www.autodesk.com/autocadformac

• Employs a native Mac OS X interface
• Uses same DWG format as Windows
• "Makes available many" (not all?) AutoCAD features
• API and customization
• Multi-touch gestures
• Took 18 months to port
• 5,000 beta testers

AutoCAD for Mac will be free to students and educators through the Autodesk Education Community site.

A free viewer-markup version -- named AutoCAD WS (short for "WorkSpace") -- will run on iPads, iPhones, and iPod Touches; available "soon" through the Apple App Store. butterfly.autodesk.com/mobile

Mr. Hanspal said AutoDesk was considering making mobile versions of the design software for other tablets on the market.

MacWorld adds:

Users can pre-order the app starting Wednesday, September 1. AutoCAD 2011 for Mac works on Intel machines running OS X 10.5 or OS X 10.6.

Venture Beat adds:

The version for mobile devices was built with the help of Visual Tao, an Israeli firm that Autodesk bought in December.

Love it when non-CAD writers get confused. AppleInsider writes:

13 releases have followed since [Acad was last available on the Mac], including the current Windows-only Release 25, which was released in March

Best line from the Autodesk press release:

User experience design patterns, such as the visual approach to drawing and layout management, have also been incorporated into AutoCAD for Mac.

upFront.eZine Publishing adds:

Our "What's Inside? AutoCAD for Macintosh" ebook will ship once we get the go-ahead.

Just checked The Drudge Report... no coverage yet. But it's on Tech-meme.

NYT Scoops Us All

In a sign of the times, it is significant that The New York Times broke the story first, instead of industry writers and bloggers. I suspect Autodesk wants corporate America to know about the OS X version, more so than its own user base. After all, Windows AutoCAD users are not customers for the Mac version.

(Images of the beta version leaked earlier this year by an Italian Mac blogger were accurate, after all.)

CAD journalists and bloggers were under a verbal embargo to learn about "the announcement" Tuesday morning -- for public release Tuesday afternoon.

(H.T.: Matt)

John Walker writes about the original port of AutoCAD to the Macintosh II in 1987: www.fourmilab.ch/autofile/www/subsectionstar2_68_0_2.html

First add-ons for ARES, Windows now, Linux and Mac "soon"

SYCODE is releasing its translators for Graebert's new ARES CAD program -- the first add-ons for ARES, as far as I know. The xlators handle the following formats:

• Export, import VTK (Visualization Toolkit)
• Export, import SKP (SketchUp)
• Export, import OBJ (Alias Wavefront)
• Export, import 3DS (3D Studio)
• Export, import 3DM (Rhino)
• Import STL (stereolithography)

Each one is $95, and works with the Windows version for now. As for the other OSes that ARES runs on, SYCODE founder Deelip Menezes says:

...we have already started the enormous task of making all our code cross platform so that we are able to support ARES on the Mac and Linux as soon as possible.

And other CAD systems, as well, no dobut. More info at www.sycode.com/products/ares

foto of the sunday: sf in bw

 

On one of my trips to San Francisco, I set my camera's mode to black-white. Taking photos in this mode certainly forced me to look at images in a different manner, for the emphasis is on the contrast between light and shadow. (Photo taken February, 2006.)

Ray Kurland digs up interesting stuff about DraftSight

Ray Kurland interviews Aaron Kelly about DraftSight, and we learn these facts:

• DraftSight division has 24 employees and is expected to generate a profit
  
  
• Annual maintenance fee is $250 per user, for those wishing direct support and access to the APIs
  
  
• By making DraftSight free, SolidWorks hopes to free up the money spent on 2D (could that be AutoCAD at $4,000?) on 3D (might that be SolidWorks?) 
  
  
• 40,000 copies downloaded so far

Let's do the math: 24 employees at about $100,000 (employment cost) a year means SolidWorks has to get about 10,000 users on maintenance.

A most puzzling claim by Mr Kelly: "The primary target customers are existing DS customers who have a need to work with 2D and DWG files. This is a need, up until now, we have not had a solution for." What about DWGEditor?

Unlike the DS ceo, Mr Kelly is careful not to say anything that might make Autodesk sweat.

One other question Mr Kurland might have asked, "Why Graebert, and not Bricsys?"  I am sure we would have heard a non-answer.

You read the entire interview here: raykurland.com/2010/08/26/aaron-kelly-explains-the-business-model-for-draftsight/

Practicing FEA Without a License

by Roopinder Tara, Tenlinks.com

CAD companies are eager to put analysis in the hands of designers. It's scaring me to death.

Yet Another CAD/FEA Demo
A bunch of us editors are sitting through yet another demo of how easy analysis is, being done on an automotive piston. I'm on pins and needles. Will we get it right?

I've done a few analyses of my own. I've made many mistakes doing so. Not just small mistakes, but whoppers. It is so easy to add an extra zero, or leave one out. It's also incredibly tempting to believe what the computer tells you.

Mesh? What Mesh?
A piston is subjected to a pressure load, restraints are applied, material properties checked. A mesh flashes on the screen. Oh, that was an accident. I was not supposed to see the mesh. The computer handles the mesh. 

"But doesn't the quality of the mesh affect the results?" asks one editor.

CAD companies are hiding much more than the mesh. Much of FEA now happens "under the hood." Why get your hands dirty, they seem to ask? In fact, I don't think I've heard any say "finite element analysis" for a few years; they all call it "simulation" -- and it's push-button easy.

We see the results, a stress contour plot. I note it is showing a von Mises stress, as von Mises accurately depicts failure in steel. The demo jock leans back in his chair -- job done!

High Stresses Occur Unexceptionably
But I can't figure out why the highest stresses are occurring in hot spots along the piston ring groove, in what appears to be an area free of stress concentrations. I ask if they might have been where restraints were applied. Incorrectly applied restraints can cause singularities. There is a bit of a scramble to explain, but my questions are not welcome. The demo is over and I'm clearly running the risk of being a serious buzzkill.

I am forgetting my press hat; I'm thinking of how I agreed to protect the public when I got my PE [professional engineer] license. So I persist in my righteous, seemingly futile crusade against practicing FEA without a license, a crusade I have pursed for years -- to the irritation of many a host.

"Have you heard of 'throwing a piston?" I ask, referring to what in my limited knowledge of engine mechanics seems to be a common failure mode. This is where an over revving engine will generate enough forces to shear the pin holding the piston to the arm, causing it to break through the engine block and, in the best case, dent the hood; in the worst case, cause injury and death. Maybe you should be analyzing for that, I feel like shouting!

Yeah, it's just a demo. With a "real" analysis, a real analyst would have had a chance to check the results, right? Call over a grizzled old veteran who has done a million of these analyses, maybe on a calculator, on paper, or even a slide rule. Some who know instinctively know how a part will fail and why. He'd have sent you back to your cubicle with your tail between your legs when you can't defend your analysis and crucified you when you stupidly applied the wrong failure theory. You'd have licked your wounds. Years later, you thank God the old coot was there and that those early analyses never left the room. A plane did not fall out of the sky. 

Those grizzled veterans are still out there, right? Is someone  checking all these fancy stress contour plots?

(Reprinted with permission of CAD Insider.)

foto of the sunday: whooping it up

My daughter and her friends jumping for joy at summer freedom.

CAD Insider: Autodesk Takes Local User Group Off Life Support

by Rooponder Tara, Tenlinks.com

Autodesk's headquarters are in San Rafael, CA, about 20 miles north of the Golden Gate bridge. San Rafael (pronounced san raFELL, not san RAFFYel) is in beautiful Marin County (pronounced maRIN not MARin). Its easy to fall in love with the place.

During my first visit 15 years ago, I looked out from the Autodesk lobby to see deer grazing on the foggy hillside. There may be a housing development there now but for the most part Marin exists as a wonderfully bucolic area. A small amount of development is permitted, mostly along the US101 corridor that connects San Francisco to Sonoma County, but go a mile west and you'll get beautiful rolling hills, redwood valleys, pastures and forests, all the way to the Pacific Ocean, with scarcely a hint of people.

Marin County: find the AutoCAD users in this picture

Autodesk founders loved Marin County, I'm sure. But along with a scarcity of people in Marin (only about 250,000) comes a scarcity of industry. You won't find smokestack industries in Marin. And with development suppressed, very little new building. The few users that are here did band together to create a user group.

The Marin AutoCAD User Group had existed since I can remember, but may have been on life support from Autodesk. But as I read from Elise Moss' newsletter, that even noble efforts -- such as providing class-A office space for meetings, free food refreshments -- were insufficient. Attendance had dwindled to a handful of regulars. 

It makes me wonder of the fate of local user groups. Not far from here, SVAPU [Silicon Valley AutoCAD Power Users], which claimed to be the biggest AutoCAD user group in the world, packed arenas monthly, drawing on (CAD) celebrities, fabulous (CAD) prizes, etc. But that was years ago. There were still print magazines then.

The Chicago area also used to fill the room, as did PAUG [Philadelphia area User Group].

But nowadays, are people mostly happy with googling the answer to their CAD questions? Finding 'friends' on online forums? Is giving up an evening, listening to guys talking about how they remember when AutoCAD used to fit on a floppy disk, worth a slice of pizza?

(Reprinted with permission from CAD Insider.)

ASCON plans on shipping version 12 of KOMPAS endish-September

Whenever I write about ASCON's software, my fingers naturally type KOSMOS. Must be the result of growing up during the space race.

ASCON today announces that it plans to ship KOSMOS KOMPAS-3D V12 in the second half of September. The Russian software company writes:

KOMPAS provides professional framework for 3D solid parametric modelling, 2D drafting, design and release of documentations. Wide range of add-ons and libraries arranges additional features, such as photo rendering, piping, surface modelling, animation, kinematic and dynamic analysis, extended CAD/AEC/PLM integration and others. The first version of KOMPAS - CAD Solution was arranged in 1989. Since that time KOMPAS became popular mid-range CAD and counts over 40 000 seats installations.

www.ascon.net

Autodesk cutting prices early

It's not even Q4 and Autodesk is already cutting the price of its software through mail-in refunds. It's Q4 (Nov-Jan) that's usually the prime discount season, as Autodesk seeks to goose sales one last time before its fiscal year end.

Today, the goosing begins now. Buying a new commercial seat of AutoCAD gets you $300 off the $4,000 price tag; throw in Windows 7, and the savings leap to a stupendous $400. Offer valid until Oct 17 -- two weeks before the end of Q3.

Savings also available on a few other Autodesk software packages.

Source.

Avatech likes reverse mergers

Avatecvh Solutions has taken over Rand Worldwide to create the world's largest AutoCAD dealer.

Avatech originally became a public company by doing a reverse merger of PlanetCAD. Five years ago, WorldCAD Access reported:

PlanetCAD was renamed from Spatial, after the ACIS-half of Spatial was bought by Dassault Systemes. Through a reverse buy-out, PlanetCAD took over Avatech, and then changed its name to Avatach -- along the way avoiding a hostile takeover by PCD Investments -- so that Avatech could go public.

Yesterday, Avatech did a similar thing, explaining it thusly:

Avatech Solutions acquired all issued and outstanding capital securities of Rand Worldwide in a reverse merger transaction. The acquisition was  among Avatech, ASRW Acquisition Sub (a wholly-owned subsidiary of Avatech), Rand Worldwide, and RWWI Holdings (sole stockholder of Rand Worldwide).

At the effective time of the acquisition, Avatech caused ASRW to merge with Rand Worldwide, with Rand Worldwide as the surviving entity [that's the reverse part of the merger]. As a result of the acquisition, Rand Worldwide became Avatech's wholly-owned subsidiary.

Source.