CAD Insider

Autodesk Pushes Interdisciplinary Application

SAN FRANCISCO (Autodesk World Press Days), Jan 13, 2008 - In the AEC demo shown today, Autodesk led off with a design study of high rise towers that were modeled in Inventor -- an application considered by most to be exclusively for mechanical design. Then a train station concept was manipulated in Maya, long a favorite animators/modelers. The remaining applications showed more of the traditional AEC applications but in the MCAD demo that followed, machinery designed in Inventor was brought into a Revit building model.

It's not just for MCAD: a high rise tower concept done using Inventor leads off the AEC demo at Autodesk World Press Days 2008

Such interdisciplinary applications were not isolated incidents, but oft repeated to the point of becoming a minor theme of the press event. Autodesk seems to have seized on the idea that users of its AEC software should also be using MCAD software, and to a lesser extent, vice versa.

Autodesk point: why not use the best tools for the job? Certainly, all the really cool new building designs are curvaceous -- a stretch for traditional AEC applications but very possible with MCAD tools.

Of course, it would be in Autodesk's best financial interest if architects needs surpassed the capabilities of their AEC software. They would be only too happy to sell Inventor to them.

But pity the poor architect. Once all he had to learn was AutoCAD, and he probably felt that had taken a lifetime to master. Now, an architect risks falling behind unless he learns 3D, BIM, rendering, collaboration, and more.

Never mind the cost of all this software -- and the bigger book cases needed -- how can one hope to be proficient in AutoCAD, 3ds Max, Inventor, Maya, Revit, Civil3D and NavisWorks? They all have different interfaces, commands. And what a headache to transfer data! Even some of these Autodesk applications cannot read each others' native data formats.

Autodesk appears to be somewhat aware of this burden. One highly placed Autodesker has said there is a long term commitment to achieving more of a commonality among the various applications to reduce the training burden. "But don't expect them all to look the same," they added.

An alternative would be to add capability to applications the user was already familiar with. Couldn't curvy shape technology could be made available in a Revit pull down menu or icon?

Now, really -- how much profit would there be in that?

Lynn Allen at SolidWorks World: Is it Glasnost?

Lynn Allen, the queen of AutoCAD, caused quite a stir when she showed SolidWorks World 2008 in San Diego. Blogs lit up with Lynn sightings almost immediately, complete with tabloid-style photos. Tongues wagged about Autodesk spying. Some SolidWorks employees grumbled how they themselves would be welcomed at Autodesk Univeristy (they wouldn't --AU gatekeepers are infamous for intolerance of competitive companies and dissenting individuals). 

Lynn Allen, queen of AutoCAD, with Rainer Gawlick, emcee of SolidWorks World 08 and head of marketing for SolidWorks.

But Lynn was open and forthright in her role. She was not here to spy, nor hiding her role as evangelist for Autodesk. She just wanted to see what was going on, maybe even pick up some pointers for AU. She even graciously agreed to and sat through a tough interview by SolidWorks user and and blogger, Mike Puckett.

Though Solid Works conference organizers were getting a bit nervous from sensation Lynn's presence was causing, most CAD insiders felt SolidWork had once again took the high road by keeping the doors open when a lesser company would have slammed them shut.

Will Lynn's visit and treatment at SolidWorks lead to a more civilized behavior by Autodesk to SolidWorks? Maybe it has already started. There were no Autodesk pranks this year, like the previous year when SolidWorks users had to endure in-your-face Inventor ads on every taxicab in New Orleans.

Autodesk Unveils Customer Briefing Center

After seeing the technology that Autodesk will use to show its software in its newly minted Customer Briefing center, I pity the company that has to demo to potential customers with just a laptop.

The Center, which is to serve as a model for future centers in various Autodesk locations (I hear the next one is will be in San Francisco), uses all manners of dazzling high-tech. A visitor is greeted with multiple interactive touch sensitive displays on which they can take a product through various stages of the design process. Software will be shown on a massive 15 foot HDTV display located in an area that, with a touch of a button seals the area as monolithic slabs rotate 90 degrees to form a wall.

The overall effect is "Wow!"

At this point, the potential customer has got to be thinking "If this company put this much technology into the room, their software must be amazing."

Buzz Kross, SVP of Autodesk's manufacturing division, cuts the ribbon for the new Product Briefing Center.

The event, which took place in the newly located offices of Autodesk's manufacturing division in Lake Oswego, Oregon (near Portland), was marked with a ribbon cutting ceremony attended by 120 people. It was mostly customers, several high school students (who were taking part in the FIRST robotics competiton, which Autodesk sponsors) and a smattering of press, It also included members of the state governor's office.

Autodesk has been operating in Oregon for 10 years, starting first in nearby Tualatin.

See official press release Autodesk Opens Customer Briefing Center in Oregon on TenLinks.com

AU 2007 Day 3: Autodesk Labs Has the Neatest Technology

LAS VEGAS, NV - Within the sprawling billion dollar software factory called Autodesk which churns out megalithic software releases that take man years of labor to produce and a vast army of marketers to promote, there lives a small and agile group of developers that have somehow been allowed to roam free, work on projects of their choosing, who have succeeded in creating some of the most interesting and exciting applications I have seen in this market.

I met with Doug Look, Sr Strategic Designer of Autodesk Labs, as this group is called (http://labs.autodesk.com/). The concept appears similar to Google Labs, where the search engine giant hosts many "not ready for prime time" applications, many of them quite useful, all of them for free. Same idea here. Doug's group is also not constrained by profit pressures and gives away all its applications.

Autodesk Labs made the biggest splash with Inventor LT, a surprisingly robust solid modeler that differs from its commercial counterpart mainly in its limitation to parts (not assemblies) and geographies (can only be downloaded in US and a few other select countries).  Though not developed by the Autodesk Labs team, the Labs site serves as its distribution center.

Eddy Kuo of Autodesk Labs shows how easy it is to manipulate an architectural model in Autodesk Design Review with the multi-touch screen.

Here is a sampling of other projects Doug's group is working on:

• ProjectDraw. Web-based drag and drop drawing application like Visio (or should I say, like Actrix, an application Autodesk no longer supports). You can just go to http://draw.labs.autodesk.com and start drawing -- you don't need to download any software. You will need to register with Labs before you can save the drawing, but after that you can save to a few formats. Not DWG or DXF, though.
• The coolest application is a "multi-touch" screen that is at once a giant display and an interface. Not a big deal, you say? Sure, Apple has a touch screen on the iPhone and the latest iPod. But this baby is huge and it's called multi-touch for a reason: touching it at multiple points of contact can generate greater variety of commands. For example, touching the screen with 10 fingertips will reset the model and the view when used with Autodesk Design Review. I tried it and was able to zoom, pan, rotate easily and naturally -- something I have not been able to do with other 3D input devices. It's not cheap (the screen itself costs $100,000) but according to its manufacturer, the military is already a big customer. I can see it quite at home in a big corporate office. Certainly, no one would fall asleep during that design review. (see how it in action on Mark Kikers blog)
• Labs is also doing much with searches, both metadata (content) and visual (shape) searches. What a boon to be able to locate a part that already exists -- perhaps one your company already has designed -- rather than make it from scratch! Currently, the metadata search will look through a list of AEC content sites only, but a mechanical oriented search is being considered. The visual search uses VizSeek technology and can start with a sketch (you do it online), a 2D drawing, 3D model (assuming you have a similar shape, I guess) and even a photograph. The sketch input did not work so well when it was demonstrated but it is a work in progress.

If you have a few moments, you should definitely check out the applications available at Autodesk Labs. There are too many neat things to mention here. Even if you don't see anything you can use at the moment, bookmark this page because I expect Doug's industrious and motivated little group to unleash several more handy, gee-whiz gems in the future.

See a more complete list of Autodesk Labs technology on display at AU on here.

AU 2007 Day 1, Main Keynote

LAS VEGAS, NV - Carl Bass predicts a near future with 3 billion people with mobile phones.  I wondered how this could possibly segue into into green design, something Carl has been pushing lately. To me it seemed that all those cell phones will generate so much e-waste, primarily with all the batteries that wear out.

No, Carl was using the cell phone example as a part of his point about how the world is changing and how we (CAD users) need to adjust to it. It was a part of his 4 important trends of our time:

1. Going digital
2. Globalization
3. Infrastructure boom
4. Rising cost of energy

According to Carl, the Library of Congress contains 20 terabytes of data. Google indexes 850 terabytes. Of course, much of the web content Google indexes would not be worthy of the Library of Congress.

Autodesk CEO Carl Bass makes use of a round stage and a wraparound multiscreen display at Autodesk University 2008

Despite some doom and gloom stats about energy consumption and exploding population, "it's not a time to despair." "Today's world is going to test our ingenuity."

Next on the main stage was Yves Behar, founder of fuseproject, a San Francisco design and branding firm. I googled the site but was quickly ensnared in an overly creative navigation and had to bail. Yves talked of a design of a child's $100 laptop [pictured balanced on the head of a child in a dusty village], a children's water bottle that becomes a construction toy after its contents are consumed as "reuse is the best recycling" [obviously, Yves has not had to try to recycle tons of toys from kids who tire of them -- and besides shouldn't the kids just drink from the tap?), and the Leaf Lamp designed for Herman Miller, which looked flimsy but kinda cool, too (see picture)

Carl introduced Jeff Kowalski, CTO, as a "great friend." That might be but I was more interested in what Jeff was going to tell me about great technology at Autodesk. A CTO should be good for that, right? I'm such an optimist. Jeff seemed content to speak in broad terms like "visualize, simulate and analyze." But I did learn that the new Ford Mustang's look was derived from Steve McQueen's face (see picture by Shaan Hurley -- you have to squint).

A design example showed a game controller go from concept (Alias) to design (Inventor), to analysis (ANSYS) and production (mold design). Nice to see actual software at work, I thought. But a game controller? Now we'd really gotten away from the seriousness of saving the earth that Carl had started with.

On the whole, I'll remember this presentation for the dazzling display of technology of another kind -- an audiovisual technology with huge screens that encircled the audience. A BIM model of some city (was it Las Vegas?) brought oohs and aahs from  the crowd.

Lynn Allen fans got to see her for a few minutes before she introduced CEO Carl Bass.

AU 2007, Extensive Blog Coverage

LAS VEGAS, NV - Though Autodesk University may be the worlds biggest CAD user meeting, for every CAD user that is here, there may be a thousand more that stayed home. Those people will be happy to know that AU will covered in detail by a small army of bloggers. Look at this list of blogs I have found to virtually attend AU. You may not get to attend all the useful sessions or meet Lynn Allen in person but on the other hand, you won't catch anything in Las Vegas (why do they insist on having AU in this godforsaken place?)

• Autodesk University Blog (BLAUG) - official blog with many stats about this year's AU, by Joseph Wurcher, Manager of AU Program Development at Autodesk.
• Between the Lines - good description of the super hi-tech keynote, plus link to photos of event, by Shaan Hurley
• CADman-DO - includes photos and even video, by David Cohn
• Autodesk University 2007 - focus on new technology at Autodesk Labs on display at AU, by Scott Sheppard of Autodesk
• BLAUGI - some photographs, official blog by Autodesk User Group International (AUGI)
• Live from Autodesk University, Streaming Video of 6 Sessions - video and handouts, but it appears that you have to be a registered attendee to see them, by Shaan Hurley of Autodesk
• Civil 3D Rocks - includes getting to AU, how to prepare, more, by Dana Probert, who is a AU presenter
• news, views and analysis - covers opening day and promises more, by Arzan Sam Wadia, architect and urban designer
• Eat your CAD - see "latest on the site" for AU entries, may require free registration

AU 2007 Day 0, Off to Las Vegas

LAS VEGAS, NV - This time of year means more to AutoCAD users than just what to do with all the left over turkey. It's time to pack up and head to Las Vegas for Autodesk University, the biggest CAD user meeting in the world.

The numbers are not in yet, but over 10,000 are expected to attend. Autodesk itself is sending almost a thousand of its own troops. The flight from SFO, being near to company headquarters, has about 25 Autodeskers on it. For the old pros, there is a "been there, done that" weariness about AU. But for the users, there is an unmistakable buzz. For many, it is their biggest event all year. The week they can get out of the office. In Las Vegas, no less.

AU07 - most efficient registration ever! 5 minutes to log in and get a badge.

Unlike previous AUs, most of the press will be left sitting this one out. Autodesk has separated its "press events" from Autodesk University. AU used to be where AU would announce its latest products and updates but as product cycles are less likely to follow the calendar regularity of a user event, a large press attendance does not seem so critical. That seems to be the official story, though at the last minute Autodesk manufacturing division got into the act and a select few press members got invited anyway.

For me, attending the biggest user meeting in the world is a must. Being among so many CAD users is like once again feeling the earth under my feet, a reminder of why my company (TenLinks, Inc.) does what it does and a reminder of who it does it for.

Autodesk Needs to Lead in Technology, Too

If you look at financial metrics, Autodesk is a clear market leader. It is closing in on $2 billion annual sales. But what of technological leadership?

At a recent press event, Autodesk was asked about haptics - -a technology that would allow the ability to "feel" a design, arguably a technology on the frontier of CAD research. The question seemed to reflect an genuine expectation, asked by a member of the press who sees a lot of new technology of an Autodesk VP, who might be expected to know of it. We'd all seen a lot of gee-whiz graphics by that point, including "real-time" ray tracing. Call me jaded, but lately, the changes in visualization seemed to be incremental, each version eking out a tiny bit more realism than we had before. But a real engineer will pick up a product, feel it, truly interact with it. Haptics might be a way to get that interaction.

Autodesk knew nothing of haptics. Ditto, virtual reality. The press member stopped short of asking about nanotechnology, another ground breaker.

A minor point or an indication of a larger problem? If a market leader cannot explore leading edge technologies, who will? Autodesk has long been flush with cash, why not use it to advance the state of the art by applying it to R&D?

Autodesk may argue that its acquisition of small technology-intensive companies is sufficient to keep it on the leading edge. But I doubt if many small companies can invest in pure research, the research-for-research's-sake from which there are many flops but also huge discoveries. Some companies are famous for their research, such as IBM, GE or 3M, from which we got Big Blue (the chess-playing super computer), Lexan, or yellow sticky notes. That kind of trial and error takes a lot of money.

It seems like universities are still doing pure research. I had attended the recent CAD Conference last June, in which much pure research was given a spotlight. For example, a couple of presentation were given on shape-based search engines. But none of the major CAD companies were in attendance. What a lost opportunity, it seemed, as all that CAD research being done for free, so to speak. If I was a CAD vendor VP, I'd make sure to monitor such proceedings. Just cherry picking the best and brightest would be worth the price of admission but latching onto an idea that has been hatched and nurtured in a CAD lab that can make lives easier for all your users would be a jackpot.

The Greening of Autodesk

Autodesk's CEO Carl Bass flew in to address the press and analysts assembled for the manufacturing division's press event in Paris But he wasn't just here to talk about Inventor, though it may be Autodesk's biggest success since AutoCAD, or the manufacturing division's stellar sales ($99 million last quarter). His was a bigger mission. Carl was there to save the planet.

I should have known Autodesk was turning green. The evening before, I had cruised down the Seine where even the beauty of Paris at night could not dissuade Buzz Kross, head of Autodesk's manufacturing division, from a discussion of the greater good, all the way from conserving paper by printing on both sides at his office to determining the carbon footprint of a part made in Inventor.

As it turns out, Autodesk now has a Sustainability Czar, and judging by speed at which a Corvette-driving senior VP has turned green, this person has a lot of clout. I couldn't find a lot of details (Carl was whisked away after his talk faster than a rock star after a concert) but judging from Carl's zeal on the subject, I'd guess the Sustainability Czar was Carl's idea.

A CEO with a conscience are always welcome as far as I'm concerned, and should serve as a model for others.

Some highlights of Carl's discussion.

• Paper or plastic? That oft asked question at the grocery store presupposes that there are only 2 choices. What about bringing your own reuseable bag?
• A PBS program (which Autodesk sponsored) showed a how many farmers in Minnesota now run wind mills on their land. Calling themselves wind farmers, they treat the wind as a cash crop. Though not cheap (one wind turbine costs $2 million), once functional, each wind mill can generate enough power for 3,500 homes. State assistance and a complicated financing scheme (companies buy the machine, and pay the farmers to maintain the machines for 10 years, and then transfer the ownership of the machines to the farmers all in return for government tax credits) have allowed even some down-and-out farmers to make money from wind. According to the program, this shows promise of reviving many small towns that have been depopulated by urbanization and mass farming. Not only that, the maker of the windmills (Suzlon) has decided to manufacture in Minnesota, creating 300 much need jobs.

Pretty Makes for Competitive Advantage

Industrial machines were known for heft and brawn -- not good looks. But that seems to be changing. The HTC 2500 iX, a floor grinder/polisher (designed with Autodesk software) is probably the dream machine of that job description. Shown recently at the Autodesk Press Event, it emphasizes the emergence of aesthetics in all products, not just those for the consumer.

The HTC 2500 iX may be the prettiest floor grinder/polisher, evidence of the importance of aesthetics even in industrial equipment.

And why not? Isn't every product in a competitive market? All thing being equal, why wouldn't a buyer give a nod to the machine that not only does the job but looks good, too?

It may be harder to justify the CD/DVD player, however.

The HTC machine was very much in evidence throughout the 2 day event, being used to show how various Autodesk softwares could be used from concept design to analysis. HTC used Alias to to create the "Batmobile's" good looks.

Buying Alias allows Autodesk to say that its software is used by 100% of all the major automotive companies.

Autodesk Gets FEA, Part 2

The PlassoTech Acquisition

Amy Bunzel, Autodesk's Director of Inventor Product Management, was kind enough to answer my questions about Autodesk's acquisition of Plassotech.

Why PlassoTech, I asked? Autodesk liked PlassoTech's ease of use. The solver is fast.

PlassoTech had most of its customers in Japan largely due to the work of 3Ga, a Japanese reseller. PlassoTech is an American company, headquartered near Los Angeles, California. Both PlassoTech founders, Dr. Yuri Kizimovich (CTO and Chairman of the Board) and Dr. Tomi Mossessian (CEO and President) will be retained by Autodesk. Their new roles and titles were not available at the time of this writing.

PlassoTech had less than 10 employees.

(click for larger picture)

Autodesk will be incorporating PlassoTech technology into the Inventor products. It will discontinue selling standalone products or add-ons as separate items. PlassoTech used to sell 3G.author, 3G.access and 3G.central, billed as associative with many of Inventor's rivals, including Solid Edge, Pro/ENGINEER and SolidWorks. But Amy assures me Autodesk "will honor existing relationships."

Will there be fallout among Autodesk's current FEA 3rd party developers, such as ANSYS and ALGOR, now that Autodesk has brought FEA in house? Amy says there should not be any fallout. As mentioned in her comments to the original post on this subject, she expects FEA partners, notably ANSYS, to stick around. Many of the FEA partners offer different capability than PlassoTech offered. For example, ANSYS would still offer Inventor customers non-linear and computational fluid dynamics (CFD), just two examples of high-end analysis PlassoTech did not touch.

(click for larger picture)

Autodesk Inventor did have some FEA capability, though it was limited to part analysis and licensed from ANSYS. Now, presumably, Inventor can offer the whole slew of PlassoTech capability including structural, thermal and dynamic analyses. Beyond that, it is not clear if Autodesk will be offering Inventor bundles with varying degrees of analysis --at various prices -- such as SolidWorks has done with COSMOS.

Amy would not reveal how much PlassoTech made in revenue or how much Autodesk paid for it. And it sounds like Autodesk, a public corporation, does not have to reveal that information as the amount paid is deemed to be insignificant.

I wondered what insignificant meant to Autodesk, a company on the verge of breaking $2 billion in revenue. A quick look at news of acquisitions by Autodesk over the last few years showed that the lowest amount it has disclosed was the $15M it paid for Colorfront, a Hungarian company, in 2005, back when Autodesk was only (!) a $1B company.

Autodesk Finally Gets FEA

Autodesk today announced that it had acquired PlassoTech, a California company that is in the business of creating FEA software. (see Autodesk press release)

Autodesk had revealed last Friday that it had secured a $250 million line of credit. I guess we now know why.

Financial terms were not disclosed.

I had long suspected Autodesk would be acquiring CAE technology. All other major MCAD vendors have had FEA technology in house, most for many years. I had speculated on these pages that it would have been ANSYS, however. But since ANSYS has revenue of over $330 millions and is highly profitable, it probably was too expensive of an acquisition.

PlassoTech could have been a good deal. But since it is not as well known as some other FEA vendors, Autodesk will now have to educate potential customers about the PlassoTech technology and convince them that it is at least as capable as technology in better known and trusted products.

PlassoTech first seemed to surface in 1992 with an equity investment Kubota, the Japanese tractor company. It may have acquired some traction (no pun intended) in Japan, enough at least to support one user meeting in Tokyo that attracted "several hundred" users. The first product offering I could find for a worldwide market was in late 2003, when it it introduced 3G Design Simulation/Optimization Suite 2004.

Inventor customers should benefit from having a tighter and more seamless integration to analysis. Autodesk will benefit by offering a higher end Inventor product line that offers varying analysis capability, much like what SolidWorks did after it acquired COSMOS.

PlassoTech seems to have been favoring Autodesk Inventor compatability, judging from press releases it had posted, but also provided standalone FEA and integrated with other MCAD programs such as Pro/ENGINEER, Solid Edge, SolidWorks and CATIA -- products that Autodesk would consider competitive to Inventor.

Certainly, this is not good news for Autodesk 3rd party developers whose FEA products worked with Inventor. They may now be cut off from Autodesk. This includes some big names such as ANSYS and Algor. (full list of Inventor-compatible products on Autodesk site)

See Also:
www.plassotech.com

Team Autodesk Finishes the MS150

FOREST GROVE, Oregon, August 5, 2007 - Team Autodesk finished the MS150 event with a 73 mile loop through the wonderfully wooded areas north of Forest Grove, Oregon.

There had been talk of doing both available loops (for a total of 90+ miles) but luckily, every one came to their senses by today's 8AM start time and we only did the one 73 mile loop.

Skies were overcast and even showed threat of rain, which luckily did not come. It was quite a contrast to yesterday, when we finished under the hot sun.

Team captain Grant Rochelle amassed the following statistics for the two days of riding:

• As a team of 11, we rode 1,525 miles, the equivalent of Portland to Fargo North Dakota
• Many of our team rode the maximum 176 miles over two days
• Total climbing elevation for two days was 11,807 feet

Thanks to all who have already contributed. Team Autodesk has raised $9,550* total, just a hair short of our $10,000 goal. (Help us reach our goal )

Route and elevation map for the MS150 Day 2 73 mile loop courtesy of Brian Roepke.

Scenes from the Sunday ride:

Riders mill about Al's Gun Shop, scene of rest stop 1. No Starbucks on today's mostly forested 73 mile route.

How green is the valley? It's no wonder the pine tree adorns automobile license plates.

Got your back. Roopinder rides for sufferers of MS, Larry Krebs, Chili Wu and Liz Bucalow.

*total reflects online and offline contributions

Autodesk Cycling Team Closes In On Charity Goal

FOREST GROVE, Oregon, August 4, 2007 - What if you were a world class athlete one day--and a cripple the next? Maureen Manley was racing in the women's version of the Tour de France (betchya didn't know there was one) when suddenly the world went dark. She had lost her sight because of MS. But thanks to advances in medicine, she regained her sight and has overcome the debilitating effects of the disease.

Maureen was on hand to remind us why we were riding the MS150, a two day charity ride held annually near Portland. I am a riding as a guest of Autodesk.

We had just finished our first day, a 104 mile ordeal. Though the weather was perfect and the scenery beautiful, a ride this long is still a suffer-fest. Our team had mechanical difficulties that left one rider stranded. Another rider sickened to the point of vomitting -- but kept going. A succession of steep hills hit us at the 80th mile. Still, the team persevevered. We all knew that no matter how much we were suffering, the people with MS were suffering more.

Please Help

You may not want to ride a hundred miles but you can still make a donation. Doing so will put wings on the feet of our riders, for this and future events. The success of this event will ensure that it is repeated and, hopefully, be copied by other CAD companies.*

The Autodesk team currently stands as the 2nd biggest fund raiser for the MS150, having raised $8,110 at the time of this writing. We are near our goal of $10,000. You can make this happen. You can make donations even after the MS150 rides are over (until September 7th).

Click here to contribute.

Route and elevation map for the MS150 104 mile loop courtesy of Brian.

Team Autodesk Rolls Along

Scenes from our first day.

(click for larger picture) Back, left to right, Brad Goettemoeller, Ed and Katherine Martin, Brian Roepke, Par Svensson, Eamon O’Gorman, Loren Jahraus, Garin Gardiner. Front, Columbine Quillen, Grant Rochelle (captain) and me, Roopinder Tara

You gotta believe. Par Svensson shows his dedication (I hope they are not real).

Oregon skies have clouds - something we Californians don't see in summer.

The finish line -- a welcome sight after 104 miles!

Speed demons. First Autodeskers across the line are Par, Brad, Loren and Grant.

Maureen Manley, once a member of the US cyling team and victim of MS, addresses the post ride crowd.

*Currently, SolidWorks and PTC also have cycling teams, both participating in the PMC -- a 2 day ride in Massachusetts to support cancer research.

Autodesk Drops a Bombshell --Inventor LT Available and It's Free!

In a move that is bound to send shockwaves through the entire MCAD community, Autodesk announced a "lite" version of its popular Inventor program, called "Inventor LT Technology Preview" (see press release). Though the product is expected to sell for $999, it is currently available as a free download on the Autodesk Lab site. The software is limited to work only until May 1, 2008, however, but that should give you time to make a few parts. Autodesk promises that when that time rolls around, users of Inventor LT will be given "special purchase incentives."

What's the Catch?

If you're like me, you're wondering if this is too good to be true. After all, Autodesk Inventor sells for around $5,000. Well, Inventor LT cannot do assemblies, only parts. Not all CAD formats are supported. For example, it does not directly read or write SolidWorks file formats. It can read but not write UGS and Pro/E formats (with free add-ins). It will read/write neutral file formats (STEP, IGES, etc.). It cannot do the fancier stuff like sheet metal, FEA and cable/wire harness. It doesn't have Vault. And like it does with AutoCAD LT, Autodesk has chosen to deny Inventor LT 3rd party add-ins and customization via API.

That's a short list. A full list of difference betwee full and paid versions is here.

Model Parts to Your Heart's Delight

What's more important is what it can do. Most importantly, Inventor LT claims to have the full 3D part modeling of its big brother. That should mean that you can model absolutely anything with Inventor LT that you could model in Inventor. Parts created with Inventor are fully interchangeable with Inventor LT. Plus, you can save native DWG files.

I expect a stampede for the free version. I would download Inventor LT immediately before Autodesk comes to its senses. Get it here: http://labs.autodesk.com/technologies/inventor_lt/ . You have to fill out a short form but be warned -- it is quite a hefty file (934MB).

AutoCAD 2008 Does Not Suck

Software quality standards are on the decline but one product stands out...

The last couple of weeks has given me increased empathy for CAD users. Setting up the Innovate3D service, I've had reason to test out a few CAD programs, viewers, publishing programs, etc. Almost every software has given me some grief. Not only have they proven hard to use but all have suffered from one problem. The problems range from difficulty of use, glitches and lack of support to crashes and loss of data. The one notable exception was AutoCAD 2008. It took everything I threw at it and performed flawlessly. Solid, dependable AutoCAD.

Amazingly, AutoCAD 2008 is still in a pre-release state. I would have expected some glitches, but there were none. In contrast, all other software tested were shipping versions.

My problems started with CAD viewers. All I wanted was one CAD viewer that would let me look at several different MCAD formats. Simple, right? I don't think I'm the only one with that need. I downloaded one well-known viewer for a 30 day trial. It worked okay but showed a rather obnoxious "for trial only" in big bold letters on prints.

Another well known viewer product loaded a tremendous number of CAD viewers each with its own monstrously big file. But when I tried to view a SolidWorks part, it would try to download the needed viewer repeatedly without success. After watching the program thrash around for half an hour, I gave up. Life is short. I tried to uninstall it but it would not go peacefully. I had to uninstall each of its CAD viewers individually. I uninstalled about a dozen -- but a couple of big viewers are still stuck to my system like barnacles.

I needed to look at Pro/E *.prt files so I downloaded eDrawings from the PTC site as it promised I could use it for Pro/E files. But after installing, I realized it only lets you look at Pro/E drawings that have been saved in a special eDrawings format. All the Pro/E users out there raise your hand if you routinely save to eDrawings format. I thought so. So I would have to go to each sender of Pro/E files and ask them to resubmit the part in a different format? I don't think so.

Again to Autodesk's credit, you can download a free viewer to look at Inventor files, juts like you can download their free viewer for the DWG files. Aah, relief.

I had tried an AutoCAD "clone." Sure, it reads and creates DWG files. It's way cheaper than AutoCAD. On paper, it looks like the clone would be the way to go. But it crashed. And crashed. And crashed again. In less than one half day, it had crashed 4 times. I was getting so used to it crashing I was saving the file after every operation.

Several programs were picky about what version they could read, often not ready to read the latest CAD format. But worse of all were the freezes and the crashes. Crashes were not confined to the AutoCAD clone. I was getting more crashes than a demolition derby. Even one venerable and respected MCAD product was experiencing crashes. I started to think there was something wrong with my computer...

Then, in desperation I downloaded the pre-release version of AutoCAD 2008. I had heard it was a bear of a program (the download was almost 800MB!) and I really didn't want to download yet another big, heavy CAD program on my laptop. It took a long time to load and it's registration process stripped me every personal detail like the names of every ancestor living and dead (just kidding). But all sins were forgotten as it read every DWG and politely fielded every old command I could remember from the last millennium when I last used AutoCAD. Heck, it would even throw in some delights from the modern era -- like the heads up display.

So if you are wondering how Autodesk rolls up one impressive quarter after another peddling software that costs way more than other, far less expensive software, I have a clue. AutoCAD gets the job done. You can count on it.

Welcome back, AutoCAD.

Autodesk Reorganization - Followup

John Sanders' new title is VP of Busines Development. John was in charge of the platform techology division, which included the core AutoCAD, AutoCAD LT products. This division has merged with GIS and plant product groups to form the PG&P Division and is being headed by Amar Hanspal.

As VP of Busines Development, John will "lead an effort in conjunction with sales, the divisions, and operations to coordinate our anti-piracy strategy efforts across the company."

John will report to CEO Carl Bass.

Autodesk Reorganization

SAN FRANCISCO (Autodesk World Press Day), February 13, 2007 - Autodesk has had a number of high level changes in management at the VP level, changes that Autodesk is referring to as only "internal refinements." Autodesk has not officially released any information about personnel changes but CAD Insider found out the following during the current press event:

(photos courtesy of Autodesk)

Amar Hanspal takes over as VP of the Platform Geospatial and Plant (PG&P) division, in charge of the Autodesk's core product, AutoCAD, as well as AutoCAD LT, mapping and GIS products, piping and process and collaborative products. This is a big promotion for Hans, as he is known. Hans was VP of the much smaller Autodesk Collaborative Services, which was responsible for Autodesk's DWF and Buzzsaw products. In a way, Amar has returned to his roots: he used to be the product manager for AutoCAD.

Jay Bhatt becomes VP of Architectural, Engineering and Construction Solutions. Bhatt was already VP of Autodesk's' Building Solutions Divsion (BSD) and responsible for architectural tools such as Revit and Architectural Desktop. Now added to his portfolio are Autodesks civil engineering products. Previous to Autodesk, Bhatt was CFO and senior VP of business development for Buzzsaw, a dot com led by Carl Bass and acquired by Autodesk in 2001.

Chris Bradshaw is now VP of Worldwide Marketing. His old role was as VP of Infrastructures Solutions Division (ISD), which included Autodesk's civil engineering applications and geospatial products. Chris used to be the VP of marketing for Buzzsaw. He takes over this post from Tracey Stout, who is still at Autodesk.

Jeff Kowalski is the new CTO, filling a slot vacated by Scott Borduin months ago. Jeff has risen up within the ranks at Autodesk having worked for the subscription business model as well as being on engineering and technology core teams. Jeff also has a long history with Carl Bass, having earned engineering degrees from Cornell University and having worked at Ithaca Software.

Not affected was the Manufacturing Division, headed by Robert "Buzz" Kross, which seems to have survived intact, save for the added responsibility of the Alias product. Sales of Inventor have topped 650,000 according to Buzz. Apparently, Autodesk chose to mess with success.

Autodesk Renames AEC Products

SAN FRANCISCO (Autodesk World Press Day), February 13, 2007 - Autodesk announced new names for its AEC products as follows. So new are the names that Autodesk executives were still stumbling over them as they addressed the press.

Old Name	New Name
Autodesk Architectural Desktop	AutoCAD Architecture
Autodesk Building Systems	AutoCAD MEP
Autodesk AutoCAD Revit Series - Systems Plus	AutoCAD Revit MEP Suite
Autodesk Revit Building	Revit Architecture
Autodesk AutoCAD Revit Series - Building	AutoCAD Revit Architecture Suite
AutoCAD Revit Series - Structure	AutoCAD Revit Structure

Carl Bass - Remaking Autodesk in His Image

When Carl Bass took over the CEO position, many speculated that Carl, a techie, would lead Autodesk back to its technological roots. There was some evidence of that at Autodesk's '07 Press Day:

• a "Minority Report" like computer interface called Touchwell
• a hand held screen on an articulated arm (Boomcam) that when moved, will position the image around a virtual model

The above technologies may not be available in Autodesk's 2008 products, but may indicate a new push towards establishing Autodesk as a technological innovator, a status this company has not enjoyed since its very early days.

Though technology is probably important to Carl's vision of Autodesk features, the years that have passed since Carl worked writing code have given him a bigger picture. Carl chose the day to educate us on major global factors impacting design. Autodesk sees booming economies overseas and earths burgeoning population as an opportunity to sell more software. (I see it as a fast developing global crises but what do I know?)

Carl Bass (left) and Amar Hanspal of Autodesk

Carl also seems to be reworking Autodesk with a personnel reorganization, something that has been rumored among the press for a couple of weeks. Amar Hanspal seems to the lead beneficiary as VP of a division that combines the AutoCAD/AutoCAD LT divisions (called the Platform division) and the GIS division. A (youngish) Jeff Kowalski is the new CTO.

Booth Babe -- We Are Not Worthy

LAS VEGAS, Nevada (Autodesk University) - In a trade show, vendors use many gimmicks to attract attention. One method is giving away freebies. Autodesk University 2007 was no exception as attendees filled swag bags with pens, yo-yos that lit up, penknives, even binoculars. Vendors also pay top dollar for premium locations such as up front-and-center booths.

That wasn't enough for CADzation, though. They upped the ante by hiring a professional model.

In the male dominated CAD and engineering world awash with the plain and practical, the stunning blonde in a little black dress shone like a bright light. Her presence created a  sensation and a crowd was always in presence. Attendees sought excuses to mill about or linger at the CADzation booth.

Ms Nyssa Walker greets Autodesk University attendees in front of CADzation's booth (click for larger picture)

I can't blame companies for trying to draw attention to themselves but the hiring of professional models harkens back to Las Vegas' wilder days. CAD insiders may remember Comdex, now defunct, which at its height was the largest computer event in the US. With as many as 100,000 visitors, it made Autodesk University (7,500 visitors this year) pale by comparison. As you might imagine, competition for attention was intense amidst a carnival atmosphere complete with hawkers and entertainers. Pretty young things from the sales and marketing departments were propped up at booths as companies chose looks and charm over knowledge and experience. Many companies would hire professional models and actresses. We called them booth bunnies -- and you could tell where they were by sighting down the isle for the telltale crowds.

But I wondered how and if CADzation was benefiting from the attention their model was getting. Within the crowd, men nudged each other like little boys. They feigned interest in CADzation, fingered brochures, lingered -- all the time stealing glances in her direction. No direct eye contact. They stayed close -- but not too close.

Where had I seen this behaviour? Oh, yes...it was in my past. We CAD guys have never been able to escape the nervous, awkward geeks we once were. We are comfortable behind our computers and calculators. Like everyone else, we see beauty in movies and magazines, but God help us if such a being descends into our midst. We dare not look her in the eye. We are not worthy.

To tell you the truth, with all that going on, I forgot to ask if CADzation was introducing anything new at the show.

What to Expect in the Next AutoCAD - Maybe

LAS VEGAS, Nevada (Autodesk University) - Autodesks faced a dilemma Thursday morning. How do you show the users what to expect in future releases of AutoCAD and still have some wiggle room in case the features shown don't actually make it into the software? Autodesk's response was to precede the presentation with a legal message as to how what we were about to see may or may not be in the next release--or any release thereafter for that matter. However, you only had to look at the Windows title bar to see "Spago -Beta 2." Spago* is the Autodesk code for the next release of AutoCAD.

To tell us about "future" AutoCAD were AutoCAD product manager Abhi Singh, technical evangelist Lynn Allen and Ashok Gadangi, chief software architect for AutoCAD

Here are some highlights

• Dimensioning in model space. At one time, this was verboten. You had to dimension in paper space or stay after class. Now, it's have it your way. You enter a scale factor and model space will recognize it, too. Dimensions and other annotations will appear at the proper height. You can throw away your CadCARD, says product manager Abhi.
• The dashboard interface contains more 2D commands and can now be customized. You will also be able to customize the layer manager by removing or moving columns. New columns have been added to the Layer Manager that allow you to control layer color by viewport.
• Excel in AutoCAD. OLE not cutting it? "Future" AutoCAD will allow you to bring Excel spreadsheet data in as an AutoCAD object that's linked. Plotting problems with OLE objects will be eliminated. Associativity with Excel will be retained, so if data is changed in Excel, the AutoCAD object will be updated.
• Improved use of Word. Bringing in Word data will retain paragraph spacing and MTEXT can be that can be re-sized to fit in columns. Leader Lines. Look for multisegment leaders. Also, you'll be able to pick multiple leaders and have AutoCAD automatically line them up so they are all left justified.
• A promise of 64 bit and multi-core support "pretty soon." (A hardware vendor on the show floor was more specific. He said he would be very surprised if such support was not in the very next edition of AutoCAD)
• Ashok predicted chips aren't going to run faster, but will add more cores. However, he cautioned against expecting multicore to run applications considerably faster. Applications have to written as mutli-threaded applications. He indicated that Autodesk will be looking for ways to use idle cores.
• Real time rendering is a goal.
• "Future" AutoCAD will contain constraints, such as already found in parametiric software such as symmetric, tangent, parallel, etc.
• Expect macro recording. This has been on the wish lists for SO long (Hey, where's that "listening to customers?" we hear about all the time?)
• Drawing search and compare
• Optional "customer feedback." Some would call this spyware, as it transmits user input to to Autodesk. "If we see a lot of UNDOs, we know we may have a problem." Ostensibly to improve the software but I can see a lot of users turning this option off.

*Spago is one of Wolfgang Puck's restaurants, so expect Postrio, Chinois, Lupo, Vert, etc.

Autodesk and Bloggers Still Enjoying The Honeymoon

In an attempt to find out what influence Autodesk exerts on bloggers -- if any -- I sent the following email around to all the bloggers I knew and those I could find an email address for. I asked the following questions:

1. Has anyone from Autodesk contacted you about your blog? Who contacted you and what did they say?
2. Has Autodesk supported you financially? This could be either with direct pay, advertising, software, trips to Autodesk events or facilities, brand merchandise, job offers, etc.?
3. Do you feel free to post anything on your blog, positive or negative, about Autodesk products?
4. Does Autodesk share information with you that the public may not have seen? This includes product release info, pre-release information, beta software, etc.?

I got many responses back from fellow bloggers (thank you, all). I'll try to summarize here:

• Some had received emails, usually encouraging and complimentary of the blog's content. Emails had come from different people at Autodesk.
• No money had changed hands in exchange for blog content. If there were perks, such as software or trips, it was in connection with other arrangements that blog authors had with Autodesk, such as being beta testers or committee members.
• All responders felt free to post any thing. No blogger expressed any reservations about writing something critical.
• Autodesk shares pre-release information under non-disclosure agreements on occasions, most commonly with authors, editors and beta-site testers, but bloggers, per se.

In short, Autodesk and bloggers seem to be having a wonderful relationship. Frankly, as a member of the press, I'm jealous.