WorldCAD Access

Roopinder Tara asks if it's news -- or hype -- when a company ditches XyzCAD for AbcCAD

by Roopinder Tara, Tenlinks.com

Is this news? I call it a conversion.

As news editor of TenLinks, I had included such items as news in our newsletter. To me, a company switching CAD systems was important. It signified that a company had found an advantage of one CAD system over another. The hope was that the company had made a serious comparison of the two systems, and so found their present one lacking. It must have been a gut-wrenching decision, as so much is invested in a CAD system: the training, translating legacy data, office procedures -- not to mention the dreaded conversion that is about to ensue. From such anguish, a lesson learned, maybe for those with similar products, or similar companies.

And as such, a conversion would be worthwhile, interesting, maybe useful... in other words "news."

Not so fast, oh smug news editor, says one CAD insider. He works at a leading CAD company, which NEVER boasts of conversions. I tell him a rival has converted a dozen seats from his company's product to those of his rival.

"Ho hum," he says. "We get this all the time. It's routine for us to take fifty or sixty seats at a time from our competitors. We don't brag."

It actually made sense. A market leader, even one not taking a high road, could only  achieve their position and maintain it by constantly converting users from other CAD systems. They would tire of such claims; they would be common place, even expected. An editor would soon tire of receiving such claims.

For all the conversions that are going on, it just might be possible that most of it is going in the direction favorable to market leaders. And when they do not publicize it, such conversions go unreported.

Whereas the stragglers, also-rans, start-ups, and upstarts report joyously on each and every seat wrested from anyone, as few and infrequent as they might be. Then don't I risk spreading the unsubstantiated and skewed belief that market leaders are losing market share to their competition, though it may be far from the truth.

[Reprinted with permission of CAD Insider.]

Manila photo set

No suprise that Manila is a city of contrasts, with busy, plastic-covered street merchants sitting on the steps that lead up to luxury highrises. Philippines rewards entrepeneurs, for the self-employed pay no income tax -- at least for now.

Here are four photos I snapped on my way "home" through the CBD from work yesterday evening,  around 6pm. The overall impression I get is young, and vibrant. This place has energy!

 

Already the leader in CloudCAD, Autodesk goes just about whole hog

 

In a Live Meeting presentation that was marred by a lack of VoiP (no sound for distant participants like myself), Autodesk laid out the next batch of cloud offerings -- most of which is limited to the roughly one-third of customers who pay an annual fee to Autodesk. Among the new items:

• DesignReview for iOS devices, but limited to 2D/3D DWF files (no DWG support). Strictly speaking, not a cloud product.
• 3GB storage space.
• Cloud-based optimization for models created in Inventor.
• Energy-use analysis for buildings designed in Revit.
• The now-decade-old Buzzsaw (Autodesk's first "cloud" product) gets syncs to some mobile devices. See figure below.
• Autodesk using Amazon and Citrix for its cloud infrastructure.

With Android smartphones now at nearly 60% of new devices, Autodesk needs to concentrate on this larger market.

The Q&A was audio-only, so I cannot report on what would normally be the  most interesting part of any presentation.

www.autodesk.com/cloud

The Wengerd Report: What are friends, today?

by Owen Wengerd

Much has been written about how social networking is shaping the future. I'm totally on board, but I'm not quite ready to sell my soul. I still think before I post, and I scrutinize every privacy setting to make sure I have maximum control over who can see what I post. I also take care about who I "friend". To me, a friend is someone that I know personally - not necessarily "in person", but at least someone I have interacted with one-on-one either professionally or personally. The thing is, modern social networking vernacular, or "text patois" as I like to call it, is changing our language.

What does it mean to be someone's "friend" on Facebook? LinkedIn uses the term "connection", which is more to my liking. On Twitter, we are "followers" like sheep to slaughter, and on Google+ we get added to "circles" like rats. At the least, we all have "contacts" (who could legitimately be our worst enemies, I guess). Is language evolving to fit our needs, or is the tail wagging the dog here? Sometimes I feel a bit trapped, such as when I'm faced with a "friend request" from someone that does not fit my definition of a friend, but who is nevertheless someone I know. I am guilty of sometimes bending my own rules a little to satisfy my innate idea of fairness - or my fear of rejecting someone who I don't want to offend.

I recently posed a friend-request scenario to some friends and asked for their advice. One (very real) friend responded that she tends to accept friend requests from people she knows "as long as they were not bat-s**t crazy, or someone with whom I'd had a messy falling out." I wonder if this is typical, or whether the rules may vary by age and gender. I have received a number of LinkedIn connection requests that are currently in limbo: I don't know the people personally at all, but they obviously know me and they generally work for companies that I have a relationship with, or we belong to the same associations. If I knew these people, I would accept their request without a second thought. Yet, there they are, not accepted and not declined, on the off chance that I eventually relax my criteria for being a friend.

[Owen Wengerd writes about AutoCAD programming at his blog, Outside the Box. More about Mr Wengerd at http://otb.manusoft.com/about ] 

We have rain

The lights are flickering in my Manila hotel room as category-3 typhoon Nesat  (a hurricane of the western Pacific Oean) travels past to the north of us -- some 1"-2" rain/hr expected here. WiFi so far managing to stay up.

This morning's view from my hotel room window.

I received an email alert from the Canadian Embassy yesterday evening, warning of the typhoon's effects, and indicating that the embassy will be closed today -- probably because staff might not be able to make it in.

 

This was my weekend

One of the Taal Island villagers (really: dirt floor huts and cows pooping everywhere and giggling teenage girls with MP3 players plugged into their ears) asked where I was from. "Canada," I said. I got a blank stare in exchange.

Welcoming committe at Taal Island.

My horse guide, however, declared that Canada, "It is a beautiful country." He made his declaration shortly after receiving a 500-peso tip form me. Which may make it tough for Blenz Coffee, who has newly opened up north in Manila under the tagline of "The Canadian Coffee Company."

Sunday, my hosts at PTCC took me to Tagaytay and People's Palace in the Sky, some 1.5 hours south of Manila, my first time out of the city of 15 million. The unfinished palace was started by dictator Ferdinand Marcos for his wife Imelda, but then he was booted out of office, and so it was renamed People's Palace. It is situated spectacularly on a mountain top with a 360 view of the plains, green covered rolling hills, lakes, and volcanoes. But very run down, since no money is spent on upkeep. which means the multi-hued molds and mosses growing over everything made it a colorful place, accidently.

 

People Palace in the Sky is popular with Filipinos.

Then it was down 6km of switchback roads to arrive at Taal lake, were an outrigger canoe was waiting for us. It felt like Amazing Race.

 A half-hour across the lake, and then we were led to waiting horses, small ones, looking like scrawny Shetland Ponies. About a 3/4-hour ride on horseback to the top of Taal Volcano with a beautiful lake inside -- with the horse guide running and panting along side of me.

The volcano sports a lake, and is still active; we could see steam raising from vents. It is said it is possible to boil an egg in the water, but you have to arrive early in the morning to hike down there.

Earlier in the day, Trishia took me along to her church, Victory Fort Bonifacio of the Every Nation denomination, a large modern building that I guess holds about 1,500 and runs seven services on Sundays. A ten-piece band provided bouncy pop worship music (mainly Hillsong, for those in the know) for the huge crown of young people, who then heard a message on "Crossing Cultures." The sight no doubt would break the hearts of those fervent atheists who may have convinced themselves religion ought by now to have disappeared from a world where we have science providing for our comfort.

Saturday, April from the PTCC office took me on the 1.5-hour, 27-mile ferry ride to Corregidor Island. Manila Bay was choppy enough that some of the 200 passengers got seasick, and the all the resultant outfall that involves. The island is nicknamed "The Rock" but looks nothing like The Rock in San Francisco Bay.

 Here's how strategic Corregidor is to Manila: when the Americans bought Philippines from Spain, they paid $20 million; subsequently, they spent $150 million fortifying Corregidor island, including a mile-long barrack for enlisted men, and a tunnel large enough to hold 1000 men, supplies, arms, and hospital.

 Like the Maginot Line, it failed to hold, against the Japanese in WWII, and by surrendering the island the Americans also surrendered all of Philippines. It was just before the surrender that General McArthur headed off for Australia, saying, "I shall return." He did.

Today, the most pastoral place on the island is the Japaanese memorial to the dead of both sides.

Thursday evening, the two Brits who run the PTCC office took me out to a pub in the red-light district, somevtwo blocks from my hotel. It is not as bad as it sounds. If you want a "drinking companion" (a woman for whom you buy drinks at 10x the regular price), you have to go inside one of the seedy establishments with garish neon lighting, and doormen offering, "Discount, discount!" But the Brits know where to go, and so we spent the evening in a pleasant English-type pub frequented by mostly male expats, with no "girlfriends."

 

My minders and PTCC tour guides, Emily and April, are doing a terrific job minding me and touring me. 

Some more photos from Manila

The view from my first hotel room window, up on the 26th floor. Below is construction of a new luxury tower; the green space is a huge cemetery.

 

Armed guard at the local Starbucks. Their main purpose seems to be opening doors for customers and guiding cars into tight parking spaces.

 

My first full day in Manila was getting a tour of the city, arranged by the highly-organized Emily of PTCC. Here we take a horse-drawn carriage ride around the 4.5KM long wall surrounding The Fort.

 

Our enthusiastic tour guide at The Fort, who filled my head with so many historical facts that I  barely recall any. Behind him are the waterlillies, for which Manila is named.

 The double-wall entrance to The Fort, a prominent feature on the Manila waterfront. It was built in the mid-1500s by the Spaniards. The brass footsteps belong to Jose Rizall, the opthomologist who led the fight (with words) for the independence of the Filipino people from the Spaniards. He  was imprisoned here for treason, and then killed by firing squad in 1896. The footsteps trace his path from prison cell to killing field.

 
Jose Rizall. The Philippines were named after King Philip II of Spain; the country gained independence from Spain on July 4, 1946. While students can learn Spanish in school, most prefer English. The American presence here during and following WWII had a greater influence than the 400 years of Spanish rule.

 The courtyard of an old Spanish villa. (No photos allowed inside, unfortunately.) Inside, it is very richly decorated with dark wood. I like the way they washed dishes: outside the kitchen window, so that the water would water the herb garden below.

 A hotel in Manila Bay, a huge protected harbour that opens to the Pacific Ocean. In contrast to the hot and muggy city center, the ocean front is cool and breezy. Manila became a major port because it served both Asia and the USA. After the Suez Canal opened, Boston was one of the largest trading partners with Manila, curiously enough. The city served as General McAuthor's headquarters in WWII, and his suite at the Manila Hotel is still the most expensive in the city.

 

 The National History Museum has remarkable artifacts from the time before the Spaniards arrived. Here is a reconstruction of an underground burial site, where the clay coffins are made in the shape of body inside, albeit stylized.

 

 ...and then in contrast to burial caves, we have downtown Manila. Jollibee is the Philippine's own fast food chain.

 Manila has no transit buses; instead, these Jeep-neys carry commuters along specific routes. The hood is styled after the Jeep, while the frame, engine, and transmission come from old Japanese trucks. Passengers enter through the open door in the back, and then pass the fare along to other passengers, who hand it to the driver. I particularly like the ones with the Jeep hood, Rolls-Royce grill, and huge Mercedes-Benz logo.

 Traffic is nuts, but it works, as every one looks for an edge over the next car, yet gives way gracefully. Pedestrians wind their way around cars in streams, and it is not unusual for a pedestrian to "take on" a car by not getting out of the way. Nobody drives fast, and nobody slams on the brakes, so there are no accidents. Traffic is as busy at 8PM as it is at 8AM.

Giant ads promise security and luxury for those living in the giant concrete-and-glass high rises. Housing is cheap in Manila. I would rate my hotel room as 3-star, and it is just $65 a day, including breakfast and Internet, just off the downtown of "Makati Village," the central business district of Manila. Office workers can rent a "bed" in town to avoid commuting 1-2 hours each way, each day. The "bed" is like a college dorm situation: a bunkbed in each bedroom, and four bedrooms share a common kitchen, for $50 a month.

 

Photos from Manila

View of Manila from my hotel room window.

 

 Street vendor creating her own products to sell.

 

Flowers blossom along the sidewalk on Manila's main street.

 

Overnight, a Classroom Sprung Up

 

My role has changed from consultant to teacher, and during the night I wondered how I could get the eight drafters to practice what I teach them. Head drafter Christie, who is almost like mother to other drafters, had figured it out. When I arrived in the morning, she had had the IT department transport their computers to an unused area of the office, with my computer sporting a second monitor facing the "class." Overnight, a classroom had sprung up.

The "students" in my class at PTCC.

In the morning, I taught geometric and dimensional constraints and parametrics, followed by dynamic blocks after the break. Two in the class are especially keen, working ahead of me, figuring out how to apply the lessons to their drawings. In particular, Paulo figured out dynamic blocks on his own, after hearing me mention them earlier in the week. A day later, he surprised me by showing a LISP routine he'd written that did the same thing as AutoCAD 2012's Drawing Layout (ViewBase), but ran faster and was easier to use.

After lunch, which tool place at the France Deli, Christie pointed out areas of drawings that are tedious to draw. For example, the distance between mullions is typically 1500mm, and so drafters use the DimContinuous command repeatedly, picking points that would amount to thousands of times for a 45-story structure. 

We wondered if QDim would work. (It places all continuous dimensions at once.) But it would not recognize blocks. I suggested drawing a line along the blocks, and then using the Measure command to place a point at each block, at which QDim would attach its extension lines. It worked, and they were pleased.

And so it went, all day Thursday and Friday, as the drafters pointed out points of tedium, I suggested alternative approaches, and we all worked out if the alternatives would work.

For example, we got dynamic blocks working to more quickly fill walls with insulation symbols, walls that are interrupted with irregularly-shaped mullions. We found that SuperHatch could also do the job, except that it places an excess number of boundary polylines -- excess defined as more than 1. (The Insul linetype was not found useful.) In the meantime, Paulo asked me where the acad.pat file was located so that he could write custom insulation hatch patterns.

Outside of the office, I am getting into the cadence of jay walking. Some 3-5 million commuters drive into and out of Manila each day. I'd describe the driving and the jay walking as a game of brinkmanship as every driver tries to edge out his neighbour and squeeze ahead, and groups of pedestrians squeeze between cars. After all, all you need is 1mm of space between. Or as someone at the office put it, it's good to know the thickness of the paint on your car. Remarkably, cars show no damage.

Figuring out the path to making CAD more efficient, without the screw-ups

My first two days at Professor Torsten Calvi Corporation in Manila was spent listening to staff members describe and illustrate to me the entire drafting process, from getting drawings from subs to outputting the final result in books of A1, A2, or A3 paper. This company generates over 300,000 drawings a year, and as owner Adam Lee said, "If we can save a minute per drawing, it'll be worth it."

Even though they receive drawings in DWG format, they find that they have to trace over each and every one, because they find that received drawings --- particularly from architects -- are not accurate. Dimensions will have different values from the actual lengths of objects. For me, this was depressing to hear; for them, it is the most time-consuming part of the design process.

CAD Management Standards 

The next step is to create a single template file for the project that contains all drawing standards: layer names, colors, fonts, standard scale factors, title blocks, profiles of mullions, and so on. Good to see that.

Until now, however, the drafters applied these standard elements by copy and pasting. Lots of Ctrl+Tab'ing goes on. I showed them how DesignCenter can be used to access content from other drawings, and how Tools Palette can create customized collections of frequently used items.

I also demo'ed the Standards and CheckStandards commands, but pointed out they were kind of useless, since they were so limited in scope and Autodesk hadn't updated them in years. They did find, however, the LayTrans command useful when I described it to them, for easily changing the names of layers in incoming drawings to match their standards.

I  am impressed that the company is creating a CAD standards manual, one that is much more impressive than the book I wrote on the subject a decade ago. The young woman in charge came into my office (the conference room) to ask me about problems she was finding.

(At PTCC, Every aspect of CAD use  is governed by the fact that the office uses two CAD systems: AutoCAD and Bricscad. Whenever I mention some feature they could consider, the next question is, "But does it work with Bricscad?" In many cases, it does, pparticularly if they were to upgrade from V8. As I explained to them, V8 was a transitional product, where Bricsys was converting the programming code from IntelliCAD to their own. Thus, V8 and V9 concentrate on this code conversion; V10 and V11 start adding features again in a significant way.)

Her first issue was how to do vertical plot stamps in Bricscad. Well, it can't. So, I found a workaround:  place fields along the edge of the layout, vertically, with the filename and plot date.

She interrupted herself, apologizing for getting straight into the work. I said, "I don't mind, I can't stand small talk." Next problem: she showed me that her firm's standard is that all leaders (callouts) are left justified, whether  left or right pointing. A little digging, and I found that Bricscad (un) helpfully freezes the text justification to left or right, depending on how you draw the leader.

"Well," she sighed, "we'll just have to adjust each one manually." I keep reminding the staff to file bug reports, to visit YouTube, to use Google to find answers to problems, but it is not something they are used to.

When she got through her list of questions for me, she announced, "So, let's start the small talk now!"

Finding the Path Forward

Yesterday morning, company owner Adam Lee and I held a three-hour meeting to determine the way forward. He knows he needs to implement more efficient methods but is wary of the screwups new software can create. He related several horror stories from clients he works with.

In one example, a company split its drafters into three teams: AutoCAD, Revit, and Inventor. After one year, the company tabulated the results. They were shocked to find that the AutoCAD drafters were twice as efficient as the 3D modelers. The problem, as Mr Lee sees it, is that 3D modelers are needed when the design becomes complex, but that they cannot handle very complex designs.

How complex? He showed me printouts of some of their most complex projects. One is for  a stadium whose walls look like the eye facets of an dragonfly. Every facet is a triangle, every triangle is a different size, and each one is made of four of more sheets of of rectangular, triangular, and other rectilinear shapes of glass (since glass has a maximum size per sheet). The complexity is unbelievable.

"And," he added, "each piece of glass has triangular stridations, and the architect wants the stridations to line up between sheets and between triangles." In this case, he wrote 100,000 lines of C++ code over five months to calculate the node points, the offsets, the resulting size of each triangle, the size of each sheet of glass, the dimensions of the mullions and other structural elements, and the dimensions placed in each drawing. He ran into problems in trying to prevent dimensions from overwriting each other.

In short, he wrote his own  CAD system, that read data from a DXF file, and produced a DXF file. AutoCAD merely displayed the result, acting a viewer. However, he realized that this was not the way forward, since spending five months writing code -- as enjoyable as it was to him -- meant not running the office. It was at this point he realized he needed to go in another direction, and to get help.

An employee had found a copy of my ebook "Customizing Bricscad," and Mr Lee read it on an airplane trip. He was impressed enough to hire the ebook's author, and here I am today. Or, as Mr Lee sadly put it, "You have only seven more days with us." Sad for me, too. I'm starting to like Manila, crazy city that it is.

With all the background related to me, I came to the realization that PTCC needed a two-stage approach to becoming more efficient. In my other job as CAD journalist, I am sensitive to outrageous claims made by software vendors, and so presented the following scenario to Mr Lee:

 1. Continue wtih AutoCAD and Bricscad, but implement more efficient work procedures.

2. Start with a demo version of Inventor, and then see which parts of the design process could be transferred to it.

 I recommended Inventor over competitors -- SpaceClaim, SolidWorks, Solid Edge, etc -- because it is designed to work  with AutoCAD, intimately. He liked the idea, because at any time he could back out, in case Inventor (or even some of the AutoCAD efficiency ideas) end up being less efficient.

On the spot, he create a working group consisting of one drafter from each drafting group. (PTCC has four drafters in a group, plus a group leader.) Together, we would walk through the design process (again!), and then see which efficiencies could apply to each stage. We figure this will take two days.

When the working group got together after lunch for the first time, I gave them an overview of what would be happening. At one point, I asked, "Who [of the eight drafters] might be interested in trying Inventor?"

Filipinos tend to be demure, but this time eight hands shot up right away.