WorldCAD Access

With NetSuite linkup, Autodesk confirms that it's no longer just a CAD company

Autodesk adds a bi-directional integration between PLM 360 and NetSuite, which it calls the "world's #1 cloud ERP solution," and calls its own PLM 360 "the fastest growing in the market" -- a point that was repeated. Of course growth for any new product is fast because of the mathematics of percentages on small bases. (ERP is short for "enterprise resource planning;" PLM is short for "product lifecycle management.")

The announcement was made to us media last week, but we had to keep the news secret until today. I'd heard of the NetSuite name, but don't know anything about it. So here is some of what Autodesk told us it can do:

• Approved vendor list and vendor audits
• Work orders
• Product development from concept to recycling
• Create M-BOMs [manufacturing BOM]

For me, this is all eye-glazing stuff -- like "Step 2: Create initial vendor record in NS as inactive."

Ken Wong: Will this cost additional fees, or will NetSuite be available to all PLM 360 subscribers?

Autodesk: Customers already of NetSuite will purchase PLM 360. PLM 360 customers will have to contact NetSuite to pay them. [Autodesk is providing the integration only.]

Randall Newton: How easy or tough was it to put together the technologies to make this happen?

Autodesk: We use our PLM Connect for integrating systems like this. It is similar to integrating with traditional PLM. On a relative scale, it was easier than with traditional, because Web-based technologies make integration easier.

Unknown media: How customers get it: are you or your resellers are reselling it? Or do customers contract NetSuite separately?

Autodesk: It is the latter. We will each have listings on our partner pages. We will work with our respective sales teams to help customers get the joint solution.

In Other PLM 360 News

In other news, Autodesk told us that they have new partnerships with Assent, Octopart, and Jitterbit. PLM 360 will have its own app store with several categories, like quality management. Last October, Autodesk acquired Inforbix and now its search technology is built into PLM 360: it recommends other documents that are potentially related. For example, search for a BOM item and related drawings are also returned.

Some 70% of Autodesk customers who started up PLM 360 did not have PLM before, mainly SMBs (small and medium businesses).

Kenneth Wong: What are these partnerships allow people to do? If I am working on an assembly in Inventor, will I be able to see costing or compliance? Or is it confined to the PLM environment.

Autodesk: Most of the data will be inside PLM, but not from inside Inventor.

Al Dean: I have a question-- It is completely gone! It's quite late in the day. Sorry!

Autodesk: That's my favorite type of question.

Al Dean: Got it! You said 2/3 of customers of PLM 360 did not use PLM. How many used PDM [product data management] or EDM [engineering data management]?

Autodesk: A majority, if not all of them. There are a bunch of our Vault users in there. We are getting a lot of Solidworks users, as well. A majority of PLM 360 users work in multi-CAD environments.

Al Dean: Pulling compliance data-- this is going to be useful to pull this information at a very early stage. Can you see it going to the guys using Inventor? Or will it always be a two-stage process?

Autodesk: We have nothing for that yet. There might be a bridge we might make one day. That is a future expansion idea.

So it seems that information is being kept in PLM 360, and isn't particularly available to MCAD and AEC designers early enough in the project. From the answers given to the questions posed by Kenneth and Al, we can summarize that the "product" and "lifecycle" parts are truncated in PLM from Autodesk, but that the "management" part is growing. 

http://usa.autodesk.com/360-lifecycle-management-software/plm

Viewing, Sharing Revit and SketchUp Models with Vizerra Revizto

In business since 2008, Russia's 3DreamTeam (which does business as Vizerra) writes software for viewing 3D worlds interactively. Their idea is to make it easy for designers and clients to collaborate in areas like AEC, urban planning, product design, and even virtual tourism (see figure 1). For now, however, emphasis is on AEC, and in particular, Revit and SketchUp.

 

Figure 1: Vizerra's Revizto Viewer software displays 3D models exported by Revit or SketchUp

What Revizto Consists Of

There are three tasks that Revizto software performs:

• Convert and Edit - Revizto for Revit ($399) converts Revit and SketchUp models to Visual Information Model (VIM) format and edits the lighting and materials; Revizto for SketchUp ($99) does similar work with SketchUp only. The software runs on Windows, with a Mac version for SketchUp coming soon.
• View - Revizto Viewer (free) allows one or more people to view the files output by the converter software. There are versions for Web browsers, Android and iOS devices, and for Windows and Mac computers.
• Gallery - stores the VIM files on the cloud for viewing by the public or authorized users. The gallery operates in supported Web browsers only.

There is a lot more to Revizto than meets the eye, and so I strongly urge you to review the help file online at help.revizto.com. In addition, I found useful the set of video tutorials the company provides atwww.revizto.com/support/tutorials. There is a lot of support for starting up.

Exporting Models to Revizto

The primary Revizto software exports 3D models from Revit and SketchUp into VIM format, and then allows you to edit the result to make models look more realistic.

To export from inside Revit 2011-2013, choose the Add-ins tab, and then click Export to VIM. Vizerra recommends that you next click Revizto on the Add-Ins panel - instead of immediately opening the VIM file in the Revizto. This is because the extra step applies additional optimizations, such as compressing data and replacing Revit plant objects with more realistic ones.

To use custom Revit materials, be sure to export the model with the Export Custom Materials checked box in the export options which will export all the custom materials you have used within Revit. While it has generally been considered impossible for non-Autodesk products to export custom materials along with the Revit model, Revizto provides that option.

In the case of SketchUp, don't export models from inside SketchUp; instead, use Revizto to import the SKP files and then convert them. There is no FBX option, naturally.

Using Revizto for SketchUp

I tested the Revizto for SketchUp software, as Revizto for Revit software would not install on my computer because I do not have Revit.

Revizto for SketchUp is a 200MB download. During the setup process, I got blocked from finishing the install until I created an account with revizto.com. Once I verified my account through an automated email message, the setup continued, installing Revizto for SketchUp, Revizto Viewer, and Revizto Activation. The latter ensures “correct” use of the software.

To test out the software's abilities, I got some SKP files from Trimble (Google) Warehouse atsketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse. After downloading the SKP files, I used Revizto for SketchUp’s File | Import command to open one of them. A big file opened pretty quickly, in five seconds flat (see figure 2).

Figure 2: A 3D model created by SketchUp displayed by Revizto

 

Once Revizto opened the model, I could fine-tune the materials and lighting settings. I won't get into detail about the many functions, but I'll provide this overview:

• Imports and export files
• Applies lights, and sets the position of the sun
• Inserts panoramic images and skyboxes
• Optionally excludes selected objects, families, and categories
• Merges meshes, generates flat-ish terrains, reduces object complexity, and groups parts
• Edits materials (see figure 3), and imports them; a single scene can have multiple material libraries and can switch between them
• Creates new projects (groups of VIM files) and synchronizes them

Figure 3: The Materials dialog box has an extensive set of parameters for creating and tweaking the look of materials

 

As you can see from the list, Revizto does a lot more than just show off pretty models. Note that the Revizto for SketchUp version lacks some of these functions, such as changeable light settings and plant replacement, as well as other features specific to Revit. Hence, the lower price.

While in the model, I can place markers to indicate places of interest. I click the "i" icon on the toolbar, and then enter a note that gets attached to numeric markers (see figure 4). The marker consists of a rotating colored "i" icon.

Figure 4: Markers indicate places of interest

 

I can use Revizto to view models interactively, or use the Revizto Viewer. To do so, I need to first save the SKP model as a VIMPROJ project file using the Project | Save VIM to Project As command. The model then becomes part of a list of VIM files saved in the VIMPROJ file (see figure 5). Project files are used for viewing and for collaboration, as described next.

Figure 5: Project files contain one or more VIM files

Revizto Viewer

The free Revizto Viewer is meant for anyone who doesn't have the primary Revizto software. I tested the Windows and Android versions of the viewer, and found the two so identical to each other that the Android version did not adopt any Android user interface elements. This consistency of user interface is good when switching between Windows and Android. Looking at the Apple AppStore, I see that the iOS version also looks the same.

I initially made a mistake, which was solved by Vizerra's fast response to my tech support question. My problem: when I started testing the viewer, I found that it would not open VIM files. The solution: the viewer only opens VIMPROJ project files; this is to ensure synchronization.

When the Windows Viewer starts up, it displays a Configuration dialog box in which I select the resolution and the quality of the viewing area (see figure 6). The default settings are "1024x768" and "Fastest." I found that Fastest quality was sufficient, because Fantastic quality didn't look any better to me yet slowed the viewer's response to a crawl. Fantastic mode turns on SSAD (screen space ambient occlusion), tone mapping, HDR (high dynamic range). The slow speed could well be due to the integrated Intel graphic chip my computer uses; the display speed would improve with a dedicated AMD or NVIDIA graphics board.

Figure 6: Start up options for the viewer

 

Selecting a resolution is unnecessary for tablets because they display all apps full-screen and so the dialog box does not appear. To change the quality, click the Options button on the toolbar.

I clicked the Input tab to review the list of keyboard shortcuts that let me navigate through the 3D scene (see figure 7).

Figure 7: Modifying keyboard shortcuts

 

I'll reproduce them here so that you can cut out the list as a handy reference:

Control Name	Cursor	Keyboard
Horizontally right	right	d
Horizontally left	left	a
Upwards	...	e
Downwards	...	q
Forward	up	w
Backwards	down	s
Jump	...	spacebar

The keyboard assignments can be changed by double-clicking a control name, and then tapping the key I prefer to use instead. In practice, I found using a combination of both keys and the mouse to be best:

1. Right-click the screen to go into navigation mode.
2. Move the mouse to change my viewpoint - looking left, right, up, and down.
3. Use the cursor keys to move forwards, backwards, and side to side.
4. Right-click to exit navigation mode.

There is one significant difference between the desktop and tablet versions. Touch-based tablets cannot right-click to switch between viewing and motion modes. To overcome this problem, the Android viewer screen is split into two parts: I drag my fingers in the left one-third of the screen to move through the scene, and drag them in the right two-thirds to rotate the view. Because tablets have limited working RAM, yet they can open files with average complexity.

Also missing from the tablet versions are keyboard shortcuts (a pity, for my Android has a keyboard dock). The option for recording track is still available, although they cannot be exported into AVI or MOV format, unlike the standalone one viewer.

The toolbar across the top of all versions of the viewer has icons that perform the following tasks (see figure 8).

Figure 8: The Viewer's toolbar

• Show/Hide Toolbar - toggles the toolbar
  
  
• About - displays the About dialog box
• Open Project - opens a .visproj file
• Synchronize Project - syncs changes back to the online storage
• Layers - toggles the visibility of layers
• Open Scene - opens a scene
• Markers - more about these later
• Movies - records movies of navigating through the scene
• Screenshot - grabs screen shots
• Settings - accesses the settings dialog box
• Fly/Walk toggle - switches between flying and walking at ground level
• Collision toggle - switches between crashing through walls or not
• Help - accesses on-line help
  
  
• Close - closes the program

Tip: When Revizto Viewer stores VIMPROJ files locally on Androids, it uses the/Android/data/com.Vizerra.ReviztoViewer/files folder. This is useful information, because the software is not (yet) linked with Dropbox or other file sharing services.

When the desktop viewer is not in navigation mode, it is in selection mode. In selection mode, I can click items to get information about them (see figure 9).

Figure 9: Clicking on objects tells you about them

While I could run both Revizto and Viewer at the same time, open files are locked and so changes cannot be saved until I closed one of the programs.

Revizto Gallery

To give others access to my models, I needed to save them to the online Revizto Gallery. The gallery provides 2GB of online storage at no charge, and this is where screen grabs and videos are also stored.

The process for saving models online is easy enough, but then sharing it with others was more complex than I thought necessary. Here are the steps I took:

1. In Revizto, I clicked the Sync to Cloud button.
2. I entered my username and password, and then waited for the project file to be uploaded.
3. Revizto Gallery was opened in my default Web browser, listing my projects (see figure 10).

Figure 10: Revizto Gallery lists projects and related data

1. To give access to others, I can make the project public, or else restrict viewing to selected people, or generate a Web link. Alternatively, I could add people to the Project Working Group list, which generates an email inviting the recipients "to join the project as a Viewer atwww.revizto.com."
2. As the recipient, I clicked the Accept button in the invitation email, and then I was taken to a registration page.

I feel that this is too much resistance for inviting people to view my projects; it should be more like Dropbox, where a link accesses a file without needing to signup. Vizerra tells me that they have these measures in place to provide additional security, and they feel that the signup process is pretty simple.

For public examples of projects, visit the Gallery at http://www.revizto.com/gallery/demo. Click the 3D tab to experience the viewer with your desktop Web browser; it uses the Unity plug-in. I also accessed the online Gallery using Firefox on my Asus Android tablet (see figure 11). I could view the Gallery Web page, the screenshots, and the video walkthrough (hosted by YouTube). I could not, however, launch the 3D viewer in the Web browser, because Unity is available for Windows and Mac only.

Figure 11: The Revizto Gallery in Firefox running on an Android tablet

Summary

Revizto was announced and has been shipping since last November. It currently works with files generated by Revit and SketchUp. I think that some of its workflow could be smoother; nevertheless it is sufficiently mature at this young age to be useful even now. I was impressed at how it handles large files effortlessly.

Free 14-day versions of all the software packages are available from http://www.revizto.com/products. Revizto is an interesting solution for teams that need to modify the look of buildings and products - whether in the same office or on the other side of the world.

http://www.revizto.com

 

CAD vendors will be tempted into biasing their cloud pricing

The price you pay for CAD software depends on several factors, including these:

• The country in which you purchase the software (USA workers get the baseline price, with customers in nearly every other country paying as much as double)

• Educational status (students and teachers routinely get the software free; other occupations do not -- except for software reviewers)

• The status of your company (networked licenses cost less; bulk licenses cost less)

• Whether you are part of a target market (I hear cases of software being seeded, given away free to specific customer in specific cities of specific disciplines; in addition, there are competitive upgrades to lure away customers, and so on) 

This is why most CAD vendors no longer list prices, but require you to contact one of their salesman. It's his job to customize the price to you -- meaning that for the same software you might pay more or you might pay less than your competitor. In the end, it seems that the only customers who pay full price are the least appreciated and hardest working ones: the self-employed.

Those CAD software vendors who like the cloud, like it because it allows them to know you in the biblical sense: personally and intimately. The Wall Street Journal this morning is reporting that vendors like Staples vary online pricing depending on the income they guess you have, as well as the distance of the location of your Web browser from competitors. You pay less when your Web browser is closer to a competitor and/or determines you might have a higher income from your geolocation or buying habits. (Remember folks, surf safe: turn on your Web browser's privacy miode.)

But the idea of an unbiased, impersonal Internet is fast giving way to an online world that, in reality, is increasingly tailored and targeted. Websites are adopting techniques to glean information about visitors to their sites, in real time, and then deliver different versions of the Web to different people.

Prices change, products get swapped out, wording is modified, and there is little way for the typical website user to spot it when it happens.

The cloud allows CAD vendors to do away with the salesman sharpening his pencil; like airline seat pricing, the price of your next CAD upgrade or subscription may well be biased -- er, dynamically adjusted -- in real-time.

 

Source:
http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB10001424127887323777204578189391813881534-lMyQjAxMTAyMDIwMzEyNDMyWj.html

Autodesk ceo confirms: "Everything will be available on the cloud"

Fusion 360 introduced this week at Autodesk University is only a transition product, probably.

http://apb.directionsmag.com/entry/carl-bass-i-do-believe-that-everything-is-moving-to-the-cloud/294177

Whereas Inventor is desktop-bound, Fusion 360 is the stepping stone, running half on the desktop, half on the cloud. In my opinion, it is the predecessor to the cloud-only version of CAD, which customers can expect in 2-3 years.

 

 

Small files not worth processing on the cloud, apparently

Some months ago, I reviewed Autodesk's render-on-the-cloud function, and found it less convenient and slower than rendering on my desktop. Some readers then complained that my model (which is one of the most complex ones included with AutoCAD samples files) was not big enough. 

So I asked, how does one determine which models are sufficiently complex enough to pay extra to have rendered on the cloud, and which are small enough to render more quickly on the desktop? 

Which leads to the next level of abstraction: if there are models too small to benefit from rendering on the cloud, what does this mean for those CAD firms wanting to move everything to the cloud?

If cloud proponents say that one of AutoCAD's largest, most complex 3D sample files (Oil Module.dwg at 2.3MB)  should not be processed on the cloud, what does that say for the millions of other drawings that are smaller and less complex?

The big stumbling block of cloud proponents is the contradictions they expose by their arguments.

The cloud has its place for limited applications. This throwing an entire company's lot into the cloud is as silly as those who thought during the bubble of 1999-2000 that profits had no place in selling dog food over the Internet. Those who thought clearly back then knew that the Internet had its place for some things, but not everything.

As James Maeding wrote on blog.cadnauseam.com:

The people flocking to the cloud are consumers that need their phones and music backed up. The rest of us know the cloud as simply remote storage, and generally companies only use that if forced to by some client.

Autodesk responds: 'No way we are going cloud-only'

Autodesk this week reacted to bloggers quoting company ceo Carl Bass, that in 2-3 years "The only way to use [every one of our products] will be online." Evan Yares in April was the first to highlight the video shot by TechCrunch. I read Evan's piece, and puzzled over the statement by Bass. In early November, Steve Johnson repeated it on his blog. The quote was recycled on a number of bulletin boards.

I watched for Autodesk's reaction, but after seven months there was nothing -- other than Autodesk's Marc Petit saying that there was no way all of his Media and Entertainment division's software could be cloud-based, due to the amount of data that gets processed for animations.

When Phil Bernstein was this week quoted by Business Standard as saying, "Our long-term strategy is to move everything there," I ran with the story. Then yesterday and today, Autodesk reacted by having Scott Sheppard place comments on Steve's blog and mine, suggesting that the private cloud is a viable alternative to the public one.

Today, Autodesk senior vp of industry strategy and marketing Andrew Anagnost called to emphasize that "'Everything moving to the cloud' is completely inaccurate. We are adding to what customers are doing today." There will always be desktop software; Autodesk just wants to be in the lead of all the technology changes occurring these days. Why Mr Bass said that, he does not know.

 

I'll run the full interview with Mr Anagnost in Monday's upFront.eZine. Subscribe now by sending 'subscribe upfront' to editor@upfrontezine.com.

 

 

The problem to Autodesk's approach to PLM is named "DEXMA"

The problem with original PLM is that it was heavyweight. It needed lots of cash upfront, lots of installation, lots of customization, followed by lots more cash. It could take a year to fully implement.

The heavyweight systems sold by Dassault Systems, PTC, and SAP also raised walls of protection. It was so embedded, so-- like bad pizza, it lay heavy in the stomachs of customers.

Autodesk's approach was to make their PLM 360 lightweight, price it with a low cost (free for the first three), pre-customize it-- stuff like that. Now, Autodesk was not the first to use this approach, but they are the most visible.

The problem to lightweight PLM is, however, is that it is cast off as easily as it is taken on. Cloud PLM can be developed easily by competitors. And Autodesk can be underpriced.

There may well be other competitors, but one I've become aware of is DEXMA from Russia's largest MCAD developer, ASCON. This month they unveiled their public beta at http://cloud.dexma-plm.com. I won't go into all the details, other than to note that they include a part library, have a contractor resource system, generate images of CAD drawings using HTML5, and have a three-level pricing scheme:

• Free -- when you use the online site
• $25/user/month -- for running design-only on your corporate server
• $49/user/month -- for running designs, project logistics, and production control on your corporate server

By comparison, Autodesk charges $60/user/month (minimum one year) after the first three free users, and for that price users get everything included. DEXMA's pricing problem is that they don't beat out Autodesk until a firm reaches 17 users (at the $49 price point). OTOH, free for all users is about as cheap as it gets.

Autodesk defense is to add more verticals and more capabilities quickly. Oh, and be glad that DEXMA is targeting Germany first.

(For more on DEXMA, see

http://isicad.net/articles.php?article_num=15601)

Your cloudy future, part LVII

Google updated its Google Chrome Web browser, and now elements of its Google Docs software keep crashing.  

alcove9 prez speaks about Google's shutdown of Mini

Google Mini was a piece of hardware that looked like a rack server, and boasted of being able to search the contents of 220 file types, in-house, at Google Search speeds. It cost $5,000 to search 300,000 documents a year.

Recently, the company discontinued the hardware, as part of the new ceo's efforts at eliminating distracting projects. Not all Web pages, however, pertaining to Mini have been wiped from the Internet, yet: google.com/intl/en_uk/enterprise/mini.

Sam Abu-Hamdan is the president of search company alcove9, and he had this to say about Mini's demise:

Google’s withdrawal from this market is not surprising. Although they pioneered the ‘out of the box’ search appliance, the Google Mini still didn’t solve structured data access, which even small businesses have nowadays.

He noted that "the browser-based and embedded versions of the a9 Hub, Alcove9’s base module, have been designed to index and optimize search by going beyond naming conventions, metadata, and file attributes. This optimization allows the a9 Hub to return search queries in 2 seconds."

The purpose of his comments is to offer Alcove9 as a replacement for Google Mini. alcove9.com

 

 

Alternatives to Autodesk's cloud rendering service

Amongst the controversy created by upFront.eZine's benchmarking of Autodesk's cloud rendering service, RevUp Render president Ry Bruscoe wrote to tell me that he has an alternative.

His competitive service seems more comprehensive than the one provided by Autodesk. For instance, it has an EasyView window that shows you the progress of the rendering as it is performed by nVidia GPUs on Amazon's computer farm. (Video.)

The video shows a model taking six hours to render in Revit, but just a few seconds on Amazon. (Using a RevUp browser window, the model viewpoint is changed, and the scene is re-rendered in a few more seconds -- nearly interactively.) As I asked in upFront.eZine, is Revit just really s-l-o-w at rendering?

RevUp supports more CAD programs than Autodesk's own stable, including ones crucial to designers, like SketchUp and Rhino. With third parties providing the service makes one wonder, Does Autodesk need to be in the cloud rendering business?