CAD Insider

AEC is Child's Play

Brian Farrimond  has created an AEC program program so easy to use that nine year olds are using it. This program is fully 3D and is parametric. Furthermore, it will sell for under $50*. Unlike, many bulky CAD programs of today, it will be a 4MB download and can run off the CD (without installation).

I watched Brian demo the program at the recent CAD '07 conference. In 5 minutes he had most of a building created as well as many of the details. Walls, roofs and other features were adjusted easily with slider bars.

There is one catch. This AEC program is rather specialized. It can only make churches. For now. Plans are underway to make a version that can design castles though it might push the minimum age up to 11 year olds.

What if you don't design castles or churches? How about ships? The program would be a bit more complicated but it could be done. I get the impression that the team in Liverpool could produce the same fantastically easy to use program to make post offices, malls, furniture, what have you. "It would only take resources," says Brian.

Brian, along with Janette Bonar Law, both from Liverpool Hope University in the UK, created Church Builder after they sensed a need for a low cost, easy to use and install design program that would fit into the UK National Curriculum. "Kids are already 3D native," says Brian. However, many teachers know little of current technology and UK schools often don't have adequate computer resources. "We have schools still using Windows 98," says Brian. The current crop of BIM programs such as MicroStation, ArchiCAD or Revit would be out of reach.

"Why churches?" I ask. Every community has one, says Brian. Also, they are usually the oldest building around, and it part of the history lessons for 7-11 year olds. The easy access and familiarly to the church also gives the student a sense of accomplishment, being able to create something that all who view would recognize.

For more information, you can contact Brian Farrimond at farrimb@hope.ac.uk.

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*Software has not been released and price not determined but should be in the $30-$50 range.

CAD '07 Conference

WAIKIKI BEACH, Hawaii (CAD '07), June 28, 2007 - The CAD '07 Conference is in it's 3rd day and in full swing. It is attended by 130 attendees, most of them from academia. In previous years, as many as 200 have attended.

The conference lasts 5 full days. Subjects are split into 3 concurrent tracks and cover not only CAD but also CAM and CAE, including geometric design, machining, rapid prototyping, product modeling, shape modeling, features, virtual reality, kinematics, nanotechnology, tolerance analysis, bio-CAD, and more. Presenters are almost without exception university professors and students and almost all presentations are the result of research done at their respective institutions.

Examples of presentations I've attended so far are:

• A Semantic Blend Definition
  (filleting and blending, inlcuded a method for complex variable filleting that simulates a thumb pressing modeling clay)
• A CAD Modeling System for Heterogeneous Objects
• Part Search Based on Web Based Environment
• State of the Art CAD Visualization by Outsourcing
  (which was actually about modeling engineering data using visualization programs)
• Reconstructing a 3D Model by Extrusion Features from a Single View Sketch
  (Converting a hand drawn isometric sketch into a solid model. Sounds like magic but several methods to do this have existed for years.)
• Computer Aided Tolerance Analysis
  (exposed shortcomings in presently available tolerance analysis programs)
• Programmable Graphics Processors in CAD

The full list of presentation is given here (click on each day for presentations)

Mexico Wants In

Mexico design conference raises the possibility of outsourcing  much closer to home

PUERTO VALLARTA, Mexico, June 1, 2007 - Mexico may not be the first country that jumps to mind when one thinks of outsourcing industrial design and styling. But if the government and schools of Mexico have their wish, their design students (hundreds of them flocked to the first ever DIMe v1.0, Diseno Industrial Mexico conference), should soon be able to take on outsourcing powerhouses of India and China.

Over 400 design students gather for DIMe in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico

Mexico had received considerable US investment after NAFTA. Most Americans are aware of US companies with factories clustered just over the border that churn out cheap goods. It's meant a lot of manufacturing jobs for Mexicans. Now, it seems that Mexico is setting its sights on exporting its intellectual assets, too.

To tell the story, Robert McNeel & Associates, a major sponsor of the event, invited four of us from the CAD press: Ralph Grabowski (see his blog postings about the event), Randall Newton, Al Dean and me.

The state of Jalisco, in which Puerto Vallarta is located, claims a large share of Mexico's foreign investment. It is proudest of Intel's Design Center in Guadalajara. Guadalajara is Jalisco's biggest city, and second biggest in Mexico (only Mexico City is bigger).

So why would a US company consider Mexico for outsourcing? Well, Puerto Vallarta is a world class resort. My hotel had a swim-up bar....  But forget that for a moment. Mexico neighbors the US, for God's sake! Your overseas office, design center, sweat shop -- call it what you will -- is just a short flight away. Puerta Vallarta was a 3.5 hour direct flight from San Francisco. A multi-stop flight to India will take two days on each end (actual flight time can be over 20 hours). A quick check shows Guadalajara to have one of Mexico's largest universities -- hence it's probably a good source of designers, engineers and other technical professionals.

Lost in Translation

The chief impediment to Mexico entering the international information/IT/outsourcing market is language. I am lucky to have some of the conference proceedings being translated but my lack of Spanish puts me at considerable disadvantage here and almost everywhere else. Even in Puerto Vallarta, a favorite vacation and retirement destination of many Americans, English is rare. Though spoken by many of the hotel's front line staff, it was only Spanish with taxi-drivers, waiters, shop keepers, etc.

Where's the Wi-Fi?

Though I stayed at a 5-star hotel, our rooms had no broadband Internet connection, a service that can now be considered standard in business hotels. Even after a company was contracted to set up wireless connection for us, my colleagues found themselves scrambling to connect. I suspect that if a 5-star hotel has this much trouble connecting its guests, coverage across the country may be spotty at best.

Also somewhat of a problem is "Mexico time," often offered as an explanation for being late. The conference itself was scheduled for 9am but started at 10:30. Or maybe the problem was the final schedule wasn't available till the morning of the conference. None in the milling crowd of attendees seemed to be surprised or bothered by this, but a lack of punctuality and planning would be maddening for American managers.

Still, many US companies could benefit from tapping into a labor force that is cheap, close and sounds eager to get started. By contrast, parts of the world currently associated with outsourcing are already feeling negative effects as superheated economies have caused rapidly escalating wages and rents, employee churn, inflation, etc.

Maybe it's finally time to take the Spanish course you had been thinking about.

Do People Pirate Software Because It Is Expensive?

Why do people pirate software? You might think it would be because they can't afford it. To test this theory, I did a little research and found that cost of software did have a lot to do with it -- but that was not the whole story.

In a study done of several countries*, the relative cost of software is compared to the piracy rate in that country. Relative cost is defined as the cost relative to monthly earnings (gross domestic product per capita, to be more exact). In Vietnam (which has the highest piracy rate of any country at 94%), that's the same as spending 16 months of gross domestic product/capita -- in other words, it would be like an American spending over $48,000 for Office and Windows XP!

Piracy rate is based on data by the Business Software Alliance (BSA).

Curious to see if there was a relationship beyond that example, I plotted the data from the report:

(click to see graph)

While in general the lower the relative cost, the less the incidence of piracy, this is not always the case. It's true that in the well-off US, where software costs little compared to what people earn, piracy rates stand low at 25%. In poor Nigeria, the same software purchase feels like over $60,000 and the piracy rate shoots up to 71%. But drawing a straight line between the two ignores significant exceptions that suggest other factors at play. For example, in oil-rich Bahrain and Kuwait, the same software feels like a mere (!)  $1,621 and $1,231 respectively but the piracy rates are still among the highest (over 75%). Could it be that in some countries piracy laws, if they even they exist, are not enforced? This could lead to a culture of piracy where the norm is pirated software and someone who pays full price is seen as a sucker.

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*Ghosh, Rishab Aiyer, License Fees and GDP per Capita: the Case for Open Source in Developing Countries, First Monday, November 2003