WorldCAD Access

Matrox: We Create Monitor Envy

Matrox is the other Canadian graphics board maker (#2 behind ATI, now part of AMD). They used to target the CAD industry, as well as medical and business environments with their boards. But they got bored with CAD, and then got into doing multi-monitor displays.

Yesterday their press release landed in my Inbox, and I almost didn't look at the attached graphics, because it was in a ZIP file. (Who puts a single highly-compressed JPEG image into a ZIP file?)

Anyhow, this picture oughta create a case of monitor envy that you might not have yet:




Yah, so that's 16 monitors. I'll let the press release headline and subhead explain it:

Matrox Announces World’s First Single-Slot PCIe x16 Octal Graphics Card for Mission-Critical Environments.

Matrox M9188 supports up to eight DisplayPort or DVI Single-Link outputs and can be combined with a second M9188 to drive up to 16 displays, all from a single workstation.

The board contains 2GB RAM to drive resolutions of up to 2560x1600 per monitor, and costs $1,995. Lessee, 2 x $1995 for the two boards, plus 8 x $300 for hi-es monitors = $6,390. Sales tax additional. Available by year's end.

www.matrox.com/graphics

Can nVidia Pull Off a Tegra?

Interesting article on Tegra, nVidia's competitor to the Intel Atom, by Kevin Tofel at jkontherun: Confirmed: Nvidia Working on Chrome OS Tegra Devices. With the ASUS EEE series of netbooks, Asustek blew apart Microsoft's conception of what the next generation of computer should look like. Now nVidia hopes to do the same:

Consumers still want support for x86 and Windows, but why? It's all in the application support these days, but with the rise of the web as “the ultimate app store,” Nvidia is poised for the shift.

Poised, yes. But making the shift, the way that Asustek did, is another matter. Here is a point made by commenter HereAndNow [along with my comments in italics]:

One of the key benefits of moving to Web apps is that, without any porting effort, they will run on:

• Any OS (Windows, OS X, Ubuntu, ChromeOS, Android, Moblin, iPhone, Symbian, WebOS, Blackberry, WinMo, …) [Any OS that has a Web browser capable of handling today's advanced Web sites, that is.]
• Any device type (smartphones, netbooks, notebooks, desktops, tablets, eReaders, photo frames, carputers, …) [Web browsers have to be adapted for the device, however.]
• Any CPU architecture (x86, ARM, MIPS, …).

Plus:

• Web app improvements or bug fixes can be propagated to millions/billions of users instantaneously. [Well, I'm not keen about automatic updates that induce fresh bugs.]
• Web apps can be offered for free/sale/subscription, to any user located anywhere in the world. [Language is an issue.]

The good thing is that HTML5 & WebGL are advancing quickly, so web app developers will be able to base their implementations on native browser standards, instead of proprietary, CPU & power-hungry plug-in technology like Flash & Silverlight.

And that's what I am finding. As long as the device supports the Opera Web browser, then I am a happy man.

Two Updates for 3dconnexion's Big 3D Mouse

3dconnexion's SpacePilot PRO 3D mouse sports a color LCD window that can report useless-to-me information like recently-arrived emails in Outlook.

But now an update from the Logitech subsidiary makes the device a touch more useful:

Model Properties Applet reports file property information from SolidWorks, Inventor, Pro/E, and NX -- what, no Solid Edge? The info reported includes:

* Mass, volume and density
* File size and type
* Creation date and time
* Login name of the last editor


Another part of the update adds a pop-up that reports the name of the Intelligent Function key command activated.

[Disclosure: I was one of those many bloggers who got the free 3D mouse earlier in the year, but unlike most others, I never got around to writing about it.]

Source.

Realtime Raytracing Just a Coupla Thousand Dollars Away

At last week's Siggraph, hardware vendors were promising near-realtime raytraced renderings. In all cases,  they are using GPUs, the CPUs of graphics boards to get the needed speed for processing data. 

Here's a sampling of the claims:

• StudioGPU matches their MachStudio Pro software with ATI's FirePro V8750 3D graphics board "to deliver real-time and near real-time workflow performance on a desktop workstation." $4,999.

• NVIDIA introduces their OptiX ray tracing engine "as the world’s first interactive ray tracing engine to leverage the GPU." Price not announced.

• Caustic Graphics announced its CausticRT package already last year as "is the world's only massively accelerated raytracing system," but now they have lined up some names: LightWork Design, Robert McNeel & Assoc, Realtime Technology AG, Right Hemisphere, and Splutterfish, as well as interest from Autodesk and its "jaw-dropping architectural design demo." Price not announced.

$5000 this year; $500 next year? And then someone will figure out how to do it in just software, and then it will all shift back to the CPU and cost $0.

CUDA Babysteps Into CAD

A new display driver from nVidia's Quadro graphics boards allows AutoCAD's hidden-line visual style to access the CUDA GPU, resulting in a 5x faster display. Conceptual and realistic visual styles are also said to be faster, but no numbers were given by the press release.

The company's cheapest Quadra board is just $99. The updated drivers are available free from the nVidia Web site.

Source.

In the months/years to come, I expect we can see more of AutoCAD's functions handled by the Quadro board and its CUDA processor.

New Oce Monochrome Printer Does Not Print in Green

Headline of press release received last week:

New Simple, Green, Durable Océ PlotWave 300 All-In-One System Saves Money and Space 

It's a monochrome printer that does not print with the green color, nor is the printer hardware painted green -- despite the wording of the headline. As I've said to my wife, it's a good thing our car is painted green, so we can tell people "We drive a green car."

No More 3D Display from Phillips

Phillips has shut down its division that had been producing 3D displays that required no glasses to view. Its sole 56" model didn't sell well "into the living room," though found some sales among businesses.

We still believe in 3D without glasses but the payback is too long.

Source.

3D CAD API for iPhones

ARS Technica is reporting on Apple's development of 2D and 3D graphics for the iPhone:

The WebKit team added CSS Transforms to nightly builds of WebKit back in October 2007, transforms that included scaling, rotation, skewing, and translation in 2D space. As the specification matured, 3D and animation capabilities were added. Eventually, the 3D transforms were broken out into a specification of their own. 

The hardware-accelerated CAD-friendly routines are enabled on the Mobile Safari Web browser running on the iPhone and iPod Touch only.

Details here.

4 Fingers Soon; 3D Touchscreens Later

Rumors are abounding of Apple introducing hardware/OS that'll sense the motions of up to four fingers on a single touchscreen. Four times the fingers, four times the finger grease.

In other technology news, Mitsubishi Electric is showing a prototype touchscreen that senses the distance to your finger -- effectively adding the z coordinate. 

By calculating the time variation of capacity in the z-axis direction, the acceleration of the finger approaching the panel can be detected.

Z detection is two-fold: speed and distance. The screen detects the speed of the finger's approach; distance is detected in 256-steps over a maximum distance of 20mm (just under one inch) -- about 325dpi.

Source.

Foam Table to Replace Glass

Multi-touch tables covered by glass are so last year. This year, it's foam covered tables. 

Impress shines a laser on a sheet of foam; the laser draws the images, while the foam allows 3D touching: x, y, and now depth. For example:

Draw a new object with different radius and pitch depending on the intensity of pressure.

Or...

Model a 3D object by lower or higher intensity of pressure at any desired position. 

You can see pictures and videos here.