WorldCAD Access

The unthanked who put on CAD events

We show up at CAD marketing events and expect it to be interesting, worthwhile the trip. Some are not; many are. While we in the media show up on the day the event starts, others have been preparing and practicing.

The CAD vendor's staff can spend entire days just doing dress rehearsals. Staff are trained in how to react positively, enthusiastically towards the media. Spiral bound photocopied notebooks document the resumes of every media attendee so that the CAD staff have an easy source of conversation making. And at the end of the event, sometime a CAD staff member will let it slip by looking exhausted. We don't notice any of this, but do complain about the food or the transportation or the content of the presentations or the location of venue. (My pet peeve location: Orlando.)

So it is with interest that I read today's press release from ZWSOFT, which contains a thank-you to the staff that put on the company's annual reseller event. The headline features the over-the-top adjectives characteristic of Chinese marketing: "Behind GPC 2013: The Bitter-sweet Story of 100 ZWSOFT Young Staff."

Here are excerpts from the press release:

---

GPC 2013, an annual gathering for ZWSOFT global partners to exchange ideas about product development and business opportunities, concluded satisfactorily in applauses and cheers. While behind the curtain, there is the unsung heroes -- the 100 ZWSOFT young staff, who have worked tirelessly for over 3 months and put together their minds to ensure the success of the conference. 

...Representing the future of ZWSOFT, some 100 young staff assumed the responsibility of this great work. Every detail, from keynote speech discussion and rehearsal, to venue selection and decoration, has been well-designed to give a professional and impressive experience to partners.

During the three-month preparation, though everything stayed within schedule, to ensure perfectness, no one knows how many modifications of speech contents have been made to ensure the quality of the presentation, how many rehearsals of award ceremony have been organized to make sure every detail is well considered and how many free talk topics have been changed to make them fruitful and beneficial. During the tough three-month period, the young staff clubed ideas and exertions to combat every difficulty. Their work was proven by the consummate conclusion of the big day.

After long preparation, ZWSOFT unveiled the most exciting part of GPC where they managed to present the result of their extraordinary efforts in the past three months. On the stage, ZWSOFT management team made a stirring speech about the remarkable achievements made together with global partners. At the same time, groups of young people were carrying out their responsibilities behind the scene to ensure the conference to run smoothly. Some of them were listening to every word of the keynote speaker and made adjustment to PPT, sound and lighting, while the others were busily preparing tea break and live demo. When hearing the conference successfully concluded, they were so moved that everyone was surrounded by cheers and hugs.

After a whole day’s hard work, these young people had fun with global partners and fully enjoy at the thank-you banquet... This banquet is not only for ZWSOFT partners but also for their team members.

 

Live blog: Autodesk talks about BIM

Autodesk is this morning speaking to investors about building information modeling. We're listening in to hear what might be new or different. Us and 27 others are on the phone line.

 
"Autodesk pioneered the concept," says Amar Hanspal, senior vice president of Information Modeling & Platform Products Group at Autodesk. "Ten years into, we are at a medium level adoption level [in North America and North Europe]." Number of firms adopting BIM grew 45% between 2009 and 2012, according to McGraw Hill -- from 49% to 71%. But not all these design firms are using BIM on all projects.

Because he is speaking to investors, he needs to tread the tricky line between 'BIM is successful!' and 'BIM still has lots of future sales! [and hence future growth for Autodesk]' "It is a good news story, but there is still more to get," he explains.

Governments are legislating the use of BIM in projects now or within a few years, as illustrated by this slide:

 

Some builders specify Autodesk software, or Revit, or Civil 3D. Now he is showing slides to make investors happy: massively increasing sales. Spending on all brands of BIM is $2 billion now and will more than double  over the next couple of years.

Autodesk likes emphasizing the growth of its suites (26%) because being a new "product" they are growing faster than individual packages.

Now showing a couple of user case studies, including the Botswana Innovation Hub building. On this project, Revit Architecture was the primary design tool.

"BIM in infrastructure is where architecture was ten years ago. So that's an opportunity going forward." He presents dismal statistics, like:

• Construction has had little in producitivity gains in the past 40 years
• 50% of projects break schedule targets
• 30% of cost is from waste 
• Construction industry has historically spent almost the least on IT, just 0.15%. 

But do  not despair, investor: Construction is starting to spend on IT! For instance, they were the first to adopt cell phones. Autodesk hopes they will now adopt iPads, too.

 Here is the conclusion:

 

AutoCAD 2014

Autodesk is announcing their 2014 line of software this morning, and we are listening along to the Webinar. There are about 1,560 others watching at this point.

First item up is an emphasis on you buying their suites of software. Did you know that you can be 42% happier just by using a suite? The science of statistics says so.

Live from San Francisco.

 

ReCap is the first product mentioned, the name being short for  Reality Capture. Actually, it is just a rebranding of Autodesk's collection of software for processing point cloud data, and is included with all suites

Geolocation with Live Maps is also included with all suites. Perhaps there'll be more details later.

AutoCAD 2014 supports Windows 8 and Design Feed. Will there be more on this later? (See http://www.autodesk.com/products/autodesk-autocad/features.)

We are now hearing about other suites, though not features but how the software is being used. "By using suites, the firm saved thousands of dollars." Yup, buy-our-suites is the Big Push today. Odd thing, though, is that the suites are shown in very tall boxes, even though I don't think you can buy Autodesk software in boxes anymore, let alone really large, Release 12-size boxes.

This product box must hold a lot of software!

 

The number of viewers peaked at just over 1,600 and is now falling, perhaps because of the lack of information about the new software releases. It is disappointing.

I think the problem with customer stories is that all CAD vendors have them, meaning that just about any software can be used for any project. For example, is Inventor the only CAD package that can design an oil platform? A rhetorical question, because Catia, Creo, NX, and others are just as capable.

And so that's why the (missing) list of new functions is crucial: how is Autodesk's 2014 software different from its competitors? We don't need to know how it is the same.

"As you know, numbers don't lie." This factoid is being used to push Autodesk's vision of the cloud. For instance, one million online renderings in the last three months.

"We've covered a lot in a short amount of time." The Webinar is coming to a close.

 

From AU2012: An Early Look at Fusion 360

During today's VIP luncheon, Autodesk gave a live demo of their new Fusion 360 software.

It starts off with a dashboard that shows all of your firm's projects. Next, a sandbox lists just the work you are working on. Files are dragged and dropped into the product; the format does not matter, as it gets translated automatically.

Fusion 360 runs on PCs and Mac, and uses both local and cloud processing. The cloud, for example, does the translation and generates thumbnails for the dashboard. As you do your work, Fusion 360 creates snapshots of the design, making it searchable; this allows you to see what a design progressed the way it did.

Fusion 360 modeling enviroment

The modeling environment is vaguely like recent releases of Inventor. In the demo, we see how the model is a mix of surface and solid models. Only four commands are needed for most of the work. To add geometry, hold down a hot key. T-Splines is used for working with shapes interactively -- for doing the sculpting. You can change the faces of solid models, without having to change modes as in AutoCAD (where you have to enter separate commands to convert models between solid and surface, and then not always successfully).

Translation in and out, lots of formats, like STEP, Pro/E, SolidWorks, etc. Fusion 360 uses the same f3d format as Fusion for Mac. The software is now in beta, and you can sign up to request a beta test of it at http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/pc/index?id=20884205&siteID=123112#form2 .

The timeline function in Fusion 360

It will become available in Spring 2013. It occurs to me that Autodesk pulled off in a couple of years what Dassault has been working on for five (SolidWorks V6). Autodesk customers can try out the new Fusion 360 software, while nobody still has no idea what V6 will run like, except that it uses Enovia V6 as its "file format" (database).

Q&A

Roopinder tara: Who is this for?

A: Small businesses, small consultants, and some large firms are checking it out.

Evan Yares: How much of it is threaded?

A: All of it had the be threaded. This was the hardest part of writing the code. Booleans are threaded, ShapeManager [3D modeling kernel] is threaded, graphics are threaded.

Evan Yares: Is ShapeManager running local or remotely?

A: ShapeManager runs both remote and local, and we can throttle how much is delivered to the client from our end.

Ralph Grabowski: You mentioned that it can work with CAM and other software. How does this work?

A: Through file translation, which is done of the cloud. We support many CAD and neural formats.

Ralph Grabowski: How long have you been working on Fusion 360?

A: We have been working on this for several years. Parts took us a year, the multi-threading of ShapeManager took three years.

 

Autodesk staff introducng Fusion 360

Autodesk University 2012 Keynote

One of the themes at Autodesk University 2012 here in Las Vegas is "working in a connected world." I recall during the First Internet Boom of the late 1990s when "collaboration" was so over-used by CAD vendors that we in the media began calling it the "C word," because we got so sick of hearing about it over and over. 

So here we are, more than a decade later, and apparently the collaboration problem never got solved, just renamed as connected. Autodesk this morning at the keynote address is claiming that we all suffer from "connectivity schizophrenia". This is where we are all well-connected in our personal lives, but not in our professional lives. Clearly, whoever came up with that one doesn't know about our household, where it is the other way around.

Two Big MCAD Announcements this Morning

The two big MCAD announcements both involve the cloud, but the two different kinds. First, from Germany, Geomagic announced Spark, which combines their 3D point cloud processing software with SpaceCaim. The combination lets you go from point cloud to assemblies in one package priced at $10,000, and ships at the end of January, 2013. http://www.geomagic.com/en/products/spark/overview

That's one kind of cloud connectivity. The other is Fusion 360 announced by Autodesk this morning in Las Vegas. It does free-form modeling, surfaces, and solids, and has a user interface that adapts to user-experience level. There is mention of it running on Macs and PCs, and beng asissted by cloud processing. Price and shipping date not announced, other than "term" pricing and being available next year. http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/pc/index?id=20884205&siteID=123112

CEO Carl Bass

Carl Bass quickly introduced new software, two of which were announced yesterday: FormIt, Infrastructure Modeler (combines data from models, GIS, and raster, and then creates drivethroughs of road projects), and Fusion 360. He also mentioned BIM 360 as "BIM in the field." I wonder how it compares with TurboSite?

Carl Bass

He does not, however, give any details on new software, just running over lightly all their cloud apps. This is disappointing, as it would have been nice to see a few minutes of each one in action.

"We are the first company to provide professional tools that are cloud based to do the entire projects, " he summarizes. To conclude, he addresses the concerns of cloud skeptics inadequately, and fails to address the issue of data integrity, where data leaves the design frm for destinations unknown with no guarantee of protection. (Surprisingly, he uses the long-discredited online banking analogy.) The fellow sitting next to me mutters, "Every firm I know implementing cloud software does it on private servers. They don't trust data leaving their premises."

Live Blogging: Autodesk Press Day 2012

Well, here we are at Autodesk press day, one day before the launch of Autodesk University 2013 in Las Vegas. I'm not sure how much I'll be able to report, but we are due to start things off in a few minutes

The media fills the room, while an empty stage faces us. 

We must be close to starting, the uplifting video has begun to run on the giant screens in front of us. In the video, a guy just kissed in minature giraffe. CAD?

Greg Eden is Autodesk head of global public relations, and he is starting things off. The experience word gets used. 85 media from 13 countries, and 8000+ attendees to AU. By the way, Autodesk covered some of my travel expenses. Mr Eden is promising some hard product news.

Greg Eden

 First speaker is Andrew Anagnost, svp of industry strategy and marketing. Here he is speaking on the cloud: How we are creating new value on the cloud.'

 

Andrew Anagnost

 We are hearing success stories of firms who are happy they bought suites of software from Autodesk. the math is remarkable: 'We are making more money off them, even though they are paying us less money.' The EU ought to look into this! He is running through lots of stats, too quickly for me to record them.

 PLM 360 has just over 8,000 users, plus another 340,000 kicking the tires.

New Software

Autodesk FormIt runs on iPads, and lets architects conceptually see what a building looks like on a site photo. See photo below. It has the advantage over SketchIt by having BIM data.

Project Mercury is infrastructure design on the cloud. It handles very large projects, and displays plans on iPads.

Tomorrow an announcement will be made regarding new manufacturing software.

How does this affect the channel, someone wants to know. Mr Anagnost agrees that most things are sold directly, but Autodesk wants to get this cloud stuff happening smoothly before handing it over to resellers.

Someone wants to know how many of the 360 customers were there before 360 launched? Mr Anagnost isn't sure, other than the number of customers accelerated since the launch of 360. Admits customers are not using up their free allotment of cloud usage.

Jon Pittman is vp of corporate strategy. He is new to me, even though he has been at Autodesk 17 years. He wants to talk about AU, but starts off with a history of Autodesk -- automating the drafting table story. The phrase he repeats is, This is not your father's Autodesk. Well, my dad never did Autodesk.

Jon Pittman

[A bug in Chrome means I cannot use quottion marks, parentheses, and some other punctuation marks in this blog. One workaroud is to type the ! in another program, and then copy and paste it into TypePad here.]

Innovation Forums is about the future of design, and they are holding some 90-minute sessions tomorrow at AU, at which we media is scheduled to attend. First session will be -- you guessed it -- on the cloud. Design Awards at the end of the day, tomorrow.

The media hard at work during press day

 Time for a break; two more hours to go! Back soon...

 

Next up, Mary Hope McQuiston is director of marketing and business development at Autodesk's consumer group. She wants to talk about consumer trends. Is this Autodesk's conter to Monica Menghini?

Mary Hope McQuiston

She is saying that it used to be that corporations and governments used to adopt tech first, but now consumers are. I dunno about that. I seem to recall use consumers being the first to adopt PCs already in the mid-1980s. Anyhow, corporations like Autodesk need to understand where consumers are leading.

Trends she is watching:

• Personalized design
• A return to making 
• [missed one]

 Autodesk has 12 million professional customers, more than any competitor. Now, with their collection of consumer software, they have 95 million. I wonder how many come from SocialCAM, whose numbers has fallen 83 per cent since June, from 83 million to 4 million [Autodesk bought the company in August.]

We are now getting an overview of their consumer software. In the last six months, SocialCAM has been downloaded 20 million times. But as Cristina Cordova reminds us, downloads does not equal users. See http://cristinajcordova.com/

The final point she wants to make that every professional is a consumer. Autodesk sees this as a way to get a deeper relationship with its pro users, such as through Instructables. 

Everyone deserves to be creative, she concludes. 

Q&A

An industry analyst is asking if Mary Hope McQuiston sees consumers as a source of revenue. Most of Autodesk's consumer apps are free or 99, with one at 59 dollars -- as opposed to thousands of dollars as for the pro software. She thinks there is a great opportunity, but today Autodesk is just learning about the market. She hopes to make money by

• selling apps and services
• memberships are coming soon
• advertising

Asked who their direct competitor is, she said here is no one company as their competitor, considering the range of Autodesk software.

Someone asks how Autodesk can educate users about which software will last, and which won't have longevity. I don't think we got an answer?

One media guys notes that there seems to be a concentration in quantity, not quality, in the social apps Autodesk is acquring. I know this person, and that he is speaking of SocialCAM ,which on Twitter he calls 'shite software.' Autodesk, she relies, is looking for apps that the masses are interested in. But more than that, Autodesk is looking for engagement with consumers. I wonder if engagement means distributing software as a loss leader to get customers buying more expensive software, eventually.

How are other divisions using SocialCAM? SocialCAM was an addition to Autodesk's sketch and photo apps; she thinks there might be a place for SocialCAM in other areas. 

We are seeing a photo of a stove that burns twigs and generates electricity through a USB port that was used after Hurricane Sandy by New Yorkers to recharge their iPhones. But, asks one person, how environmentally friendly are wood-burning stoves? The stove is meant for cooking, not heating homes.

Up next is the chief financial officer, Mark Hawkins. He is giving us some the numbers we heard earlier, such as 12 million pro users, 50 millions students 'having access to our software,' 95 million total consumer users. The 95M number is 'growing exponentially.' These are the numbers he starts with.

Mark Hawkins

 Mr Hawkins is asked again, how will Autodesk make money from consumer apps and the cloud. He says Autodesk makes money from the cloud through the subscription fees. He says the consumer group is making money today, but gives no figures. He also figures he'll make money from advertising from 95 million app users, and this will be a significant revenue stream in the future.

What challenges are you facing, because at these events you tend to paint a rosey picture. He says there is the economic environment, the changes they made to their sales forces, and there are other things to work out. 

What are the attach cloud rates from suites? Other vendors have found zero attach rates, the analysts notes. Mr Hawkins won't give numbers, but attach rates are great. 15 million users have used Autodesk 360; 10 million WS downloads; 350 companies using PLM; 10 thousand cloud simulation jobs in the first month; over 1 million renderings.

Ten years from now, we will see how the cloud will go and go and go, he concludes. And it won't be because Autodesk talked someone into it.  

 

On Twitter

Here are some coments from media people on Twitter:

Randall Newton: 3 DOTs [US departments of transportation] on ADSK bandwagon, means only 47 using Bentley now.

Rande Robinson: Don't forget the Canadian provinces are are Bentley users too 

Sean Dotson: Autodesk at Burning Man. I want to see that expense report.

 

...and we are done!

[press F5 to refresh your Web browser with more coverage]

 

Through Germany with just a cell phone

Before leaving on this 3.5-week trip through Amsterdam, Hamburg, the Baltic Sea coast, Berlin, Bavaria, and Munich, I decided to leave my Canon digital camera at home, and use only my cell phone's camera. A bit of a gamble, but I've been to Germany so many times in the last decade that I don't need to take photos as much any more.

So, what's it been like?

Well, it is just like getting used to any new camera, learning what it can and cannot do, primarily how it reacts to lighting situations.

The primary drawback I found was that cell phone cameras do not have optical zoom lenses, and I love my zooms. (The Canon I left home has a 10x zoom.) But I learned to do without, recognizing when objects in the distance were too far away to bother photographing (would end up looking too small in the resulting picture).

 Sailboats at rest in the Baltic Sea port city of Travemünde, Germany

The primary advantage is that I can load all kinds of photo processing software onto the Android cell phone, something impossible with digital cameras. I paid $2 for some HDR software, which takes three photos at different exposures, and then combines them into a single high-dynamic range photo; it even takes care of moving objects, ensuring that only one set appears.

 
Stitched photo of the tallest-ceilinged cathedral in Europe, Wismar

Another advantage is built-into Android 4.x phones: the ability to take self-stitching wide photos, useful inside cathedrals and outside landscapes.

 Self-stiched photo of intersection near City Hall in Wismar, Germany

 

So, two weeks into the trip and I've taken 400 photos with my Google Nexus S phone.

From 6,000 feet high, here's what happened at Spatial's 3D Insider's Summit

by Ralph Grabowski, Managing Editor, CADdigest.com

The 3D Insider's Summit is an annual gathering of Spatial employees, third-party developers, and four of us from the CAD media - in total, about 100 here. Spatial is the division of Dassault Systemes that specializes in translators and 3D modeling kernels that are licensed by other CAD vendors. It is best known for ACIS, the venerable kernel that dates back to the late 1980s.

To start off, director of strategy for 3DVIA Garth Coleman is taking us through the abilities of this software, which seems like a super-duper version of Navisworks. Dassault's 3DVIA handles massive data sets from all kinds of sources (even terrain data and video streams), and then generates renderings, movies, and interactive presentations. It has a programming interface, and an API for connecting to external devices, like Kinect. "We are not a CAD kernel; we are an experience kernel." He sums up, "If your product had a Play button, what would it do?"

Now the topic switches to the cloud, which unfortunately turns out to be an introductory talk on "What is the cloud?" - surprising, given the high level of the attendees. Most didn't bother raising their hand at the mandatory "How many of you have used the cloud?" question.

There is a 3DVIA Cloud, which provides cloud hosting for 3DVIA Scenes, Live Marketing Apps, Mobile HD, Composer Play Pro, eDrawings Pro, and Visual Compare - as well as third-party apps. But no mobile app, because of the tough constraints of getting big data sets working on such small devices.

What's New in 3D Interop R23 and Beyond

InterOp is Spatial's translation system, and today we are hearing about what's new in release 23 and in future releases. It has enhancements for importing product structures, geometric data, and PMI (product manufacturing information). Applications using InterOp R23 can now extract tessellated data and graphical PMI from CAD files.

For instance, InterOp now directly translates from competitor Parasolid, non-competitor SolidWorks (which uses Parasolid - it's a complicated relationship), competitor Siemens NX, and non-competitor CATIA V6; it reads and writes Dassault's 3DXML with tessellation. It extracts graphical data from CAD programs like SolidWorks, and then displays it. "Graphical data" means that the imported 3D model looks just like in the originating CAD system, completed with shading, rectangular boxes at the ends of leaders, arrowheads, and so on.

"We want to the world's leading translator when it comes to SolidWorks," a surprising admission, given that Dassault owns both SolidWorks and Spatial.

Translation companies run in a hamster wheel in trying to keep up CAD vendors changing their files formats "Every year, at least one of the five CAD vendors we support does a major change to their file format." This year, it is Creo 2.0 from Pro/E, which now handles simplified representations, hidden entities, and better fillet surfaces. (Only major MCAD not supported right now is Inventor 2013.)

What's going to be new in R24, the next release is some of the following:

• optimize assembly info for performance (only load structure when requested)
• manage multi-process part translations inside of InterOp
• support for assembly PMI and assembly features
• import product structures from Solid Edge

"You cannot buy even a laptop anymore that is single-core; our software should not be single-core." And so R24 gets multi-threading. Look for it in June 2013.

Features to Expect in Next Year's MCAD Releases

Features added to ACIS this year may well show up in your MCAD system next year. That's because ACIS enables functions useful for 3D modeling, which are then implemented by the CAD vendor. I should emphasize, however, that an MCAD vendor does not need to implement new ACIS functions; it depends on whether they have the time or the inclination.

Nevertheless, should the vendor implement them, then these are some of the things you could expect see next year or later:

Fuzzy Booleans - during Boolean operations (union, intersect, subtract), ACIS now handles cases where the 3D solids do not match exactly.

Seeded feature recognition - specify a seed face and feature type, and ACIS returns all faces that are similar.

Cellular topology - identify sub regions in solids, and then mark them up as volumes

Meshing of sub regions

Multiprocessing enhancements - thread-safe Linux binaries; there is a maximum of 1,024 threads, but today that is pretty much unlimited given the limitations of CPUs.

In ACIS R24, the release to come next year, Spatial plans to add the following functions:

• Silhouette projection
• Large model performance, such as moving it
• Near tangency for Booleans
• More functions for multi-threading
• Model repair and optimization
• Robustness and performance for clash detection

Dassault's Other 3D Modeling Kernel, CGM

Dassault Systemes may well be the only CAD vendor having to deal with three modeling kernels: SolidWorks uses Parasolid from competitor Siemens PLM Systems; CATIA uses its own kernel, CGM (Convergence Geometric Modeler); and Spatial makes ACIS, unused by Dassault.

A couple of years ago, Dassault asked Spatial to turn CGM into a licensable component. "This is like a clean sheet for us. What have we learned from the last 20 years that we can make a better customer experience," says Ray Bagley about CGM. CGM is very old, but as a component it is very new; Release 1 shipped in 2011, and is focused on CAM and CMM, coordinate measurement machines.

For release 2, Spatial is adding these functions:

• more modeling operators
• using more formats from InterOp, adding 3DXML
• point clouds and operators
• 2D/3D CDM constraint design manager, which does not have to be used with CGM)
• and a pre-release C3D toolkit that lets customers work with all these components

For release 3 next year, Spatial already has these plans:

• complete the work on C3D toolkit
• add lots of live sample code for documentation
• expose more CGM functions, such as power fill, sweep with untwist, and silhouette operator
• add PHL (Precise Hidden Line ) hidden line rendering for 2D drawings

Mr Bagley concludes that "3D is more than just b-rep"

[Disclosure: Spatial provided me with hotel accommodation, meals, and some corporate gifts.]

This article first appeared on CADdigest.com.

Bricsys developers conference 2012, day two

We're not going to let jetlag slow us down, and here we are back at the conference hall in Amsterdam with the unpronounceable name -- and soaking wet from the downpour that flattened this town this morning.

Update on the new corporate look for Bricsys: the redesigned Web site is due to go live Monday.

Last night, we spent the evening at The Heineken Experience, a former brewery that tries to make drinking beer fun. See photo below.

What's New in Bricscad V12 Since V12 Shipped

Bricsys has programmers in Romania, in two locations in Russia, and in Belgium, the home country. Unlike most other CAD vendors, Bricsys releases updates every month or so -- rather than one big release each year. For us journalists, this makes covering Bricscad difficult, because many new features are shipped with a new release, but many more are shipped over the following eleven months. 

As a prelude to what's new in V13, we are getting an overview of what was added in point releases since V12 shipped a year ago. These include much faster regens for faceted 3D objects, loading of registered object enablers, snapping dimensions to solid features, scale factor for exporting WMF, EMF, and BMP images (how come Bricscad can have EMF, but AutoCAD can't), optimal compression of raster images, more efficient loading of huge (like 4GB) raster images using multi-cores and other technology (it is converted to Bricsys own format, so loads, zooms, and pans nearly instantly);  XOpen to open xrefs; improvements to Drawing Explorer.

Layer filters; but not the way you are used to them in some other CAD package starting with "A." When you choose a layer filter, an adjacent preview window shows you the entities displayed by the filter. Additionally, there is a new layer filter droplist that you can add to toolbars. 

It's easier to add content to Tools palette. You can view blocks in drawing that are not loaded in Drawing Explorer. When inserting blocks, they are now sticky along lines and curves; moving the cursor flips the block. Drawing Explorer has a third tab, "Sheets." Printing and publishing improved.

Okay, now let's move on to what's new in V13. 

What's New in Bricscad V13

Bricsys programmers have switched their software and hardware programming and testing to be OS-agnostic, because the Bricscad now runs on three operating systems, Linux, OS X, and Windows. New test software was needed, because "Multi-threading errors are notoriously hard to find, and to reproduce."

Quick list of what's new:

• Command-line auto completion.
• New droplists; adjustable widths for droplists (like Layer combo)
• Dynamic UCS (press F6 or DUCS in status bar to toggle)
• Dimension associate (choose a dimension, chose an entity, and the dim attaches to the entity)
• Array dialog box is resizable and has a live preview window; new Calculate button does the calculations for polar and rectangular arrays
• QLeader command and dialog box; whereas AutoCAD's dialog box is multi-tabbed, the one in Bricscad lays out all options in a single tab.
• Worksets works with named groups of drawings; opening a workset opens a list of drawings; "LastSession" is an automatically created list of all the drawings that were open when you last closed Bricscad
• Menus have been rearranged somewhat, including the addition of Chapoo and 
• Multilines with styles, snapping, grips, and grips editing; MlEdit will be added later; ml styles are done in the Drawing Explorer
• AttSync, AttReDef, BAttMan commands for working with attributes; allows multi-line text and locked positions
• Keyboard and mouse navigation through 3D models in perspective mode
• Power dimensions add-on, to be demo'd this afternoon
• Dedicated graphics per viewport; shade plot per viewport, fine tuning of printing of transparent images, searchable text in plotted PDFs, toggle display of printable area, support for line-end caps and joints, and hiding of paperspace objects.
• Background publishing in a second session of Bricscad
• Sheet sets! Handled by Drawing Explorer; works with eTransmit. But not all functions yet as found in AutoCAD.
• MvSetup command for creating multiple viewports in model and paper space
• AlignSpace command aligns entities in the same or in different viewports.
• Tool palettes import .xtp files from other installations, customize icons, New and Delete options, and so on.
• Embedded PDF fonts much smaller; new options for Offset command; materials can be attached to layers.
• Direct editing enhancements (more later on this)

Due Later in V13

• Image caching
• Web map services and APIs
• 64-bit version

News from Open Design Alliance

"I think cloud is the most-misused in the word in the industry," says Arnold van der Weide. A CAD system has three components: (a) user interface; (b) data manipulation; and (c) database -- all running on hardware. "The biggest mistake made by the industry is in thinking the graphics is the most important part; the data is the most import, such as 'who made a change to a part'."

A flaw in the database (file storing the drawing) is that it is discipline-specific and CAD centered. I think here he means that a architectural drawing cannot be easily used by mechanical engineers. Some crossover is happening, such as MCAD now understanding electrical drawings.

The stop-gap solution is PDM, product data management using metadata to define things like BOMs, so that production can work with CAD drawings.

He is worried by Windows 8 when it comes to the market end of this month, with its odd user interface. "It might create a real problem for our industry" in that Microsoft is trying to move users from desktops to tablets, which are not suitable for CAD. 

The database is what the ODA does, as well as some of the data manipulation. And so ODA needs to think how to stream data from a DWG file to devices in the future. 

www.opendesign.com

That's it for now; more to come after lunch.

Architecturals is now Tris

Lunch is over, and Mr de Keyser is telling us again what we heard last year, that Bricsys is turning their solids-based Architeturals software into a free API. A version will be given free and retroactively to all Bricscad Pro users. And the name changes to Tris.

Now we are getting a demo of how Tris works. It appears to me to be a plug-in to Bricscad, with the primary interface being through a toolbar. It features style families, where some styles take on the properties of a parent style.

Bricsys and MCAD Software

Members of the Bricscad Russia department have taken the stage to tells us about Bricsys is doing in the area of mechanical design. Recall that last year they added direct modeling and parametrics from technology developed by LEDAS. Well, yes, "added," but also purchased the technology from LEDAS, and now Bricscad Russia continues to develop it.

What Bricsys is bringing to this market? They note that Dassault has Solidworks for 3D and DraftSight for 2D; Autodesk has Inventor for 3D and AutoCAD for 2D. In contrast, Bricscad has both in one package.

 What's new is product struture modeling, where individual DWG files can be used for each component for collaboration. There is associativity between subcomponents and assemblies. A new Mechanical Browser lets you look through component, and there is an associative BOM. Hierarchies can be applied to imported geometry.  The library comes with 30,000 standard parts. 

3D constraints are used to position subcomponents (parts), and they can be sued for kinematics. Degrees of freedom limits movement, such as rotations and translation.

Here is a view of the new mechanical add-on with the Mechanical Browser and an engine block make of many parts.

This MCAD software is part of Bricscad Platinum, and costs under $1,000.

As for future plans, they include the following stages:

1. API, import and export for popular formats (Solidworks, Inventor, IGS, etc), exploded views, collision detection, configurable BOM

2. Assembly modeling

3. Feature modeling

4. Knowledge-based engineering

5. Integration with CAD, CAM, PDM, and PLM through the help with third-parties

What Else for 2D in Bricscad V13?

We're now seeing Power Dimensions for mechanical 2D drawings. This is the PDIM command that recognizes what the entity is just by passing the cursor over them. It determines the best fit location for the dimension, which is user-adjustable.

Can add alternate dimensions, underlines, inspection dims, GD&T characters, control the look of dimension geometry on a one-by-one basis, . Change made in the Edit Dimension dialog box are show immediately on the dimension after you make a change in the dialog.

All this is stored in standard DWG. Bricsys does not know yet how it will be distributed.

And One More Thing

to end off this conference, we are getting an overview of Chapoo without the plus. the upload, share, view, and annotate (comments on selected parts of files) functions are free. Comes with 1GB storage; shared folders; views 70 file formats to a tiled file format invented by Bricsys. Chapoo is connected to Bricscad, so this is their version of the cloud.

("Tiled" means that the files are loaded and displayed in a manner like Google Maps.)

While others do not need join Chapoo to see files, they have to join to access shared folders.

Now we are getting a demo of using a DWG file stored on Chapoo with Bricsys. Saved files are given a revision number automatically. More functions will be added next year.

Chapoo runs on iPads (and Androids) because it runs in Firefox and Chrome browsers. But Bricsys has written a Chapoo app for iPad. It uses the same file format as on the desktop. Tap once to view all pages, and then select the page to view. Tap the 'i' icon to toggle annotations made on the file, which are highlighted as yellow rectangle. To make an annotation, drag and release a rectange. An upload function will be added later. 

Who is the target user? Not the Dropbox user, because it lacks the functions found in Chapoo. It is meant for Bricscacd customers. It has links to your Facebook and Twitter accounts.

What is the pricing? 1GB free. We see no need to be cheaper than DropBox. The idea is not that it keep all your files; it is only for files being shared.

Is there a version for iPhone? Not yet, but there might be one with different features. There will be an Android version, of course.

What about xrefs? This is under development. We will add an eTransmit-like function to Chapoo, which finds all xrefs and other support files.

Is there a locking mechansim? This is in Chapoo+. 

Is there an API? Yes, every function in Chapoo+ is available, and so you can create your own "white label" Chapoo.

Are all previous version saved? Yes in both, but Chapoo hides the revisions, where you use Undo.

Can there be a link to work with AutoCAD? We have no problem with this.

What is the pricing of Chapoo+? We are still working on that, but substantially lower than Autodesk 360 with more functions. It will come onto the market in the coming weeks, months.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 

They already have plans for Bricscad V14, and will start working on it in a few weeks in the areas of user interface, extending 2D functions especially for MCAD, and integrating Chapoo deeper into Bricscad.

...and that's all f-f-folks! Tomorrow we'll have for you the opinion of Roopinder Tara about this event.

 

Live Blogging: the Bricsys 2012 developer conference

 Alright, here we are at the annual Bricsys developer network. I'll be live blogging here for the next two days.We're starting off here in Amsterdam with the keynote of the head of Bricsys, Erik de Keyser. He is talking in general terms about where the company was for the last ten years, and some of the future plans.

Also new is the logo. It is a stylized lowercase b.

[Credit to Deelip Menezes for capturing the image from the slide show.]

He says, The binding factor is .dwg, and we connect through a famiiar GUI. But we see different ways to reach those goals and see different opportunities.

• 2D for everyday
• 3D for specialization
• Expansion to mechanical, AEC, GIS, and others

What's New APIs

Now we're getting an overview of what is new in the APIs [application programming interfaces], especially BRX and LISP. BRX now needs Visual Studio 2010, so your old apps will have to be recompiled for Bricscad V13. They have begun to add multi-threading, first for loading files and drawing regenerations. A 64-bit version of Bricscad is forthcoming.

As for LISP, the engine now runs OpenLISP, a LISP Optimizer speeds up code by 20-200percent, and reduces memory use. A LISP Profiler has been added for finding bugs. The aim is to continue supporting LISP for at least 20 years, maintaining compatibility with AutoLISP yet adding much more functionality.

Future plans for BRX include custom entities and commands, more multi-threading, complete work on B-reps, improve Boolean operations, and create a unified SDK for all platforms, as well as 32- and 64-bit versions.

 Third-Party Applications

Bricsys is boasting 700 third-party apps, of which only 200 are published in their online catalog. The other 500 are private ones, used internally.

We're now getting a series of presentations of some third-party apps that work with Bricscad, such as AutoTrack for checking the turn radii of trucks, street cars, jet aircraft, and hospital trollies. Their software must be used for projects in England that involve vehicles.

Rosberg Prodok's services design for process and instrumentation, and they use Bricscad as their CAD kernel to connect information from the database to the drawing. They admit their drawings are simple line diagrams, but contain a lot of data. The important point is that they maintain a bi-directional link between Bricsys and the database. More so, they find they can scale Bricscad from local computers, to networks, to worldwide servers.

The speaker from Rosberg notes that a limitation of AutoCAD is that the 32-bit version can only be installed on 32-bit Windows, so they switched to Bricscad, because it runs on 32- and 64-bit Windows. Also, they found it easy to speak with Bricscad about getting special licensing. Prodok V10 will work only with Bricscad, no more AutoCAD version.

Kafe Break

Time for coffee break. Or, as Roopinder Tara pointed out, Kafe break, because Coffee in Amsterdam means mary-jane.

During the break, I met Guy Vanollie, the new CMO -- chief marketing managerr -- for Bricsys. He's been with the company a couple of months, but has already made his impact by rebranding the company -- new logo, new shade of blue as the company color, and new narrow sans serif font as the company typeface.

 Yes, we are in Amsterdam now. Most bikes are cheap, old, one-speed models, which owners don't bother locking up. If it is stolen, no big deal. Here is the view outside of Amsterdam's main train station, Amsterdam Centraal.

After the kafe break, we hear from two more third-party developers: LEDAS from Russia and their outsourced programming services; and ARD advanced road design from Australia. ARD likes Bricscad because it is fast, has a low cost, and has a good implementation of the .Net API. He finds that civil engineers are very conservative, and tend to keep the software they've always used.

Bricscad Changes Skin

Mr de Keyser is back to talk about... not a new UI for Bricscad V13, but about the new corporate look of his company. He repeat that they began with TriForma in 1996 for Microstation, since bought by Bentley. This is to emphasize their roots in 3D BIM.

He notes that the boundaries among mechanical, architectural, and civil engineering become defuse as buildings require all these design disciplines. This is an introduction that Bricscad offers powerful 3D and powerful 2D for detailing -- albeit he admits his CAD program could use more automation when it comes to 2D detailing. Also, the importance of data extraction.

Although mention of Autodesk/AutoCAD was banned from last year's conference, the ban is lifted this year. 

 Lunch is Over

Back to third-party developers talking about their experiences. Vidcad of USA started with Generic CADD, then moved to AutoCAD, and then AutoCAD OEM. Their software designs video systems for the broadcast engineers. But when Autodesk doubled to cost of OEM, they looked for an alternative, and the head of the company picked Bricscad. They allowed 4-6 months for the port, but it took just 90 days. Half of the time was spent working on a workaround to AutoCAD's sheetsets, the other half to fix workarounds their programmers had added to fix bugs in AutoCAD's implementation of dot.Net.

The rollout of the Bricscad-based version occurred during the worldwide recession, and so the lower package price helped sales along. By later this year, they plan to eliminate AutoCAD OEM altogether.

Photo of the hall in whch the Bricsys Developer Conference is taking place this week

 

Up next is Lightworks from England. Last year, they talked about their plans to create a version of their Artisan rendering software for Bricscad. They spent the last six months writing a version for Bricscad, and now they can show it off.

This is the first tme they wrote a third-party app for a CAD program; there is no need to transfer or export the drawing file, just click a button on the toolbar. By reading layers, Artisan tries to make a first guess at what things are. It comes with 700 materials.

The New Vondle

The afternoon break is over; the conference facilities staff found a source for hotter water, and so I am pleased to report the tea was drinkable, finally.

Erik de Keyser is back on stage, talking about PLM from the Big Four, Dassault, Siemens PLM, PTC, and Autodesk. 

He thinks that every design firm will eventually need to implement some sort of cloud-based product design system. Flexible, user friendly, integrated into mobile, and affordable. It was called Vondle, now called Chapoo+ -- same announcement as a year ago, but this year the logo has been updated to match the new corporate look. Randall Newton looked up Chapoo and found it was the name off a battle between British and Chinese forces in Chapoo, China. Here at the conference it is pronounced 'shapoo-plus'.

Chapoo is split off as a separate company, which allows them to address products other than Bricscad, such as Revit. And not limited to CAD, but the emphasis today is on CAD.

Now we are getting a demo of Chapoo for project management. One of the new features is automatic calculated fields, where data is calculated, such as for the proportions of steel, plastic, and rubber in a car part -- which are updated automatically.

Large parts of Chapoo have been rewritten to be more responsive, as it runs in modern Web browsers. Also, more parts work wtih drag and drop.

  Lunch time at the conference center. 

 

Up soon... Me! Talking about "running CAD on small screens," a topic my wife thinks sounds funny to her. During breaks, some people have come up to me, saying they want to get a photo of me holding an iPhone 5. heh! Devil spawn.

 The last speaker of the day provides Bricsys training. He starts off saying that in 22 years, his company will be 25 years old.

And 1,131 words later, that's all for today, folks. We'll be back tomorrow morning, with the highlight being the unveiling of Bricscad V13, which is already in beta.

[Disclosure: Bricsys provided me with hotel accomodation, some meals, and some travel assistance.]