3D CAD NEWS

The ignoble Pushmi-Pullyu (“push-me pull-you”) is a two-headed beast made famous by the Doctor Doolittle stories of the 19^th Century. The mythical animal is noted for its ability to do either two things at once or struggle to do nothing, and to oscillate between these two extremes. Our 21^st Century CAD equivalent is history-free feature-based 3D modeling. For years a few vendors struggled to gain market share with it (CoCreate and Kubotek come to mind), but suddenly Pushmi-Pullyu CAD has become the rage.

SpaceClaim got way more press than it deserved for its new “natural 3D design system” last year, then PTC embraced its inner pushmi-pullyu by buying CoCreate. Today Siemens PLM Software becomes the latest CAD company to abandon the CAD Reich gospel of parameters uber alles with the introduction of what it calls synchronous technology (as if there is something mysteriously asynchronous about using existing 3D CAD tools; but we digress).

The Pushmi-Pullyu, new mascot of Siemens PLM Solutions

No less an authority on these things than Dr. Ken Versprille, the father of NURBS and resident PLM guru at CPDA, says in a published quote (I’ll bet a dollar he was paid to write), “its ability to recognize current geometry conditions and localize dependencies in real time allows synchronous technology to solve for model changes without the typical replay of the full construction history from the point of edit.”

Ken's quote is a real mouthful, so let us translate for the SolidWorks bloggers among our readership: You don’t have to redraw the damn part to make a single damn change all the damn time anymore. The good doctor goes on to say that “… users will see dramatic performance gains. A 100 times speed improvement could be a conservative estimate.”

Wow! Models 100x faster than with Autodesk Inventor and probably 300x faster than CATIA? Siemens resellers must be doubled over with orgasmic spasms at the mere suggestion of such superior results, especially because this new technology will be added to both NX and Solid Edge. Maybe Solid Edge will actually sell some copies again.

When you get the previous word picture washed out of your mind, let us consider something a bit more serious. CAD pundits (self glamourously included as shown below) refer to the Big Four CAD Vendors: Autodesk, Dassault Systemes, Siemens PLM, and PTC. A year ago not one of these had history-free feature-based modeling; now two do. Not that long ago Autodesk and Dassault entered into a bidding war over Seemage; perhaps SpaceClaim just might survive long enough to be so lucky.

A self-proclaimed Leading CAD Pundit caught in the act of meditating on synchronous technology at COFES 2008.

 

Every time I attend a PTC event or talk to someone from the company, I am amazed at the variety of snappy one-line put-downs about their competition. Several months ago a Wall Street analyst commented on it, noting that he loved being on the quarterly PTC conference call so he could hear all the “colorful color” PTC adds to its commentary. Lines like “There is no center in Teamcenter” roll of the tongue of a PTC employee like Bible verses roll of the tongue of a Sunday School scholar.

Recently I was talking to an executive of a CAD company that competes directly with PTC. I told him that a PTC employee referred to his company as a “just a parts company” that will never succeed with a holistic approach to PLM.

“PTC people must have a class in one-liners to bash the opposition,” I told him. “They come up with so many of them.”

“I used to work at PTC for six years,” my interviewee told me. “They do have a class on that, as a matter of fact.”

Imagine that, a class in how to put down the competition with one-line zingers! What a novel idea.

I wonder where you get a curriculum for teaching people the art of the one-liner. The modern masters of the one-liner have recently passed away. I’m thinking first of Jerry Orbach, who played wise-cracking Detective Lennie Brisco for years on Law & Order after a long career on Broadway.

Jerry Orbach, whose character Det. Briscoe once looked at a corpse in a tuxedo and said, “How convenient, he came dressed for his own funeral.”

And we must not forget the great Rodney Dangerfield, who milked his trademark line “I get no respect” into a 40-year career.  The ‘no respect’ bit was all too true. After starring in and/or writing nine successful feature films, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences denied his request for membership.

Then it dawned on me. PTC CEO Dick Harrison didn’t go to business school; he majored in English Literature at Penn. He must have learned the art of witty repartee while pulling all-nighters on Shakespeare and Swift.

    

Rodney Dangerfield (left) and Dick Harrison: Twins separated at birth, or spiritual kinsmen in a common cause?

 

Aras Corporation today announced that its Open Source PLM software is one of the first 10 products to ever achieve Microsoft's Windows Server 2008 certification.

It appears that gaining this certification is no mean feat. As explained in the press release, "Windows Server 2008 Certification comprises approximately 100 test cases that independently confirm an application's compliance with best practices for reliability, security, availability, and compatibility on the new Microsoft platform."

Or as Aras Marketing VP Marc Lind said to our editor-in-chief, Randall Newton today. "Having gone through the process of becoming certified, and knowing what it requires, I would be surprised if any of the other PLM providers will ever achieve this certification."

Aras' PLM software is the only Open Source PLM software that we are aware of, and is used by some surprising customers including Motorola, Rolls-Royce, Freudenberg, Lockheed Martin, Ingersoll Rand and ACCO Brands. Why surprising? Because I still have some inborn snobbery towards Open Source software, which apparently is unmerited and inappropriate. I will have to keep trying to rethink my position on this. Congrats to Aras while I do that.

[Editor’s Note: This article was originally published at AECnews.com, but the hosting technology at that website is unable to display photographs consistently, so we are publishing here also, adding photos. -- ed.]

An estimated 2,000 citizens of Xujiahui, China (near Shanghai) have taken to the streets this week in what one participant calls “silence and peaceful” protest of a planned rerouting of an extension to the world’s first Maglev (magnetic levitation) train. The group’s stated goal is to embarrass the German financiers of the project by drawing attention to what they believe are inherent environmental and social dangers.

Our source in Xujiahui explains, “As you may understand we may have no power to fight with the government here, but we may try on Germany side. They should understand that they act against the human rights of Chinese people.” The frustration that brings them to the streets, our source says, is rooted in their understanding of safe distances for Maglev placement. “In Germany, they put the safe line at 300 meters for a Maglev line, while in China they put only 22.5 meters as the safe line. … No real Chinese people want Maglev at our homes.”

In the initial protest on January 6, 2008 approximately 250 Xujiahui residents are confronted by authorities, who turned back the crowd without incident.

The protestors believe that the tight distances will expose residents to unhealthy magnetic radiation, as well as increase the possibility of a serious accident should the Maglev train somehow leave its track. Some residents in the public protests carry small posters of a skull with the slogan “Against Maglev.” The photos we have received show families and persons of all ages participating in the protests.

The initial planned path for the line also drew protest, so last week Shanghai authorities changed the original plan, shortening the line's total length by 3km, increasing underground routes, and avoiding some densely populated neighborhoods. But now Xujiahui residents, closer to the line under the change, are unhappy and are taking to the streets.

 

In a second protest on January 7, 2008, residents affected by the project head to the local shopping center. The posters say "Against Maglev."

In an evening protest on January 8, 2008, approximately 2000 Xujiahui residents march across the river bridge; the revised Maglev line will parallel the river through parts of Xujiahui.

Maglev technology was first developed in Germany in the mid 20^th Century; a line built from downtown Shanghai to the airport in 2003 was the first commercial project, built using joint German-Chinese financing. The Chinese government announced in 2007 that any additional construction of Maglev lines would use largely Chinese technology and investment, despite the initial involvement of German interests.

Transrapid, the German manufacturer and developer of the technology, describes Maglev as “the first fundamental innovation in the field of railway technology since the invention of the railway.” A guideway directs the passage of the train, while powerful magnets lift the train 10 mm. Other magnets provide propulsion and braking. In tests, the trains can run as fast as 500 kph. Transrapid uses a CAD/PLM combination of CATIA V5 and SAP/R3 for design and engineering.

David Prawel, who has organized and hosted the 3D Collaboration and Interoperability conference with SME for the last few years, has announced the conference will now be hosted in Denver, CO, on May 15-16, 2008.

Despite the best efforts of many, interoperability of 3D data can still remain a frustrating problem. Even with the many work-arounds and neutral file formats in existence, the translation of usable 3D data still often doesn't work. According to our CADCAMNet Interoperability survey back in May 2007 (Subscription or free trial required), while interoperability has become more manageable, it is still by no means resolved.

The conference will follow its standard format, with a few extras thrown in such as:

• Multi-CAD interoperability,
• Migrating CAD data,
• Cross-PDM interoperability,
• Lightweight 3D formats,
• and, of course, a lot lot more.

This intimate conference will convene at the beautiful Denver Athletic Club, with stunning views of the Rockies (just so you don't forget how insignificant mountains can be). Early registration ends January 15th 2008.

You can find out more at: www.longviewadvisors.com

Today PTC published an open letter to CoCreate customers from CEO Richard “Dick” Harrison, welcoming them to the PTC happy family. Sifting the usual marketing drivel from the interesting stuff, the news seems to be that CoCreate will continue as a product line.



As CEO, Harrison gets first dibbs on all new acquisitions.

Harrison said PTC will:

• Maintain, enhance and further develop all CoCreate products indefinitely, including OneSpace Modeling, OneSpace Drafting, OneSpace Model Manager, OneSpace Drawing Manager, OneSpace Live! and OneSpace.net;
• Continue to offer all CoCreate solutions as stand-alone offerings.
• Integrate CoCreate solutions with complementary PTC solutions (such as the earlier acquisitions from MathCAD, ITEDO, and Arbortext, as well as existing PTC products including Windchill).
• Drop the term “dynamic modeling;” from now on, PTC will refer to CoCreate’s history-free approach as “explicit modeling.”

Also today, a note from Ulrich Mahle, VP Marketing and R&D for the CoCreate division, says that OneSpace 2008 will go to product stabilization and QA after Christmas. He promises the 2008 edition will offer a new approach to creating patterns of user-defined form features, such as sets of faces building a boss or a pocket. Once defined, a form feature can be applied to the model repeatedly. For example, Mahle says, a user could position several instances equally in a circular arrangement. It will also be possible to unshare features from the pattern for individual modifications, and a feature can also be modified and the modification used in other features shared in the pattern definition.

 

Last week during the heavily-attended Oracle OpenWorld User event in San Francisco, Oracle Company President Charles Phillips, (who is also total ‘keynote candy’ according to some of the team), introduced the new Oracle Agile PLM applications.

As reported by Randall Newton in this week’s issue of CADCAMNet (subscription or free trial registration required), Oracle Agile PLM will be a CAD-neutral platform that integrates completely with Oracle’s other business applications such as CRM, ERP, and SCM.

Oracle’s aim, writes Newton, is “to simplify what have become complex IT environments. Oracle wants to rid corporate culture of a tool-based approach to problem solving, replacing a fragmented IT environment with a unifying middleware stack that allows the various tools to be united by a common dashboard interface.”

But, while CAD vendors can probably leverage the software giant’s move into PLM, Newton predicts that PLM vendors will have more to worry about: “Five years from now, the Oracle Agile line will have a PLM market share that surpasses at least one, if not two, of the Big Three CAD-centric PLM vendors” he writes.

You can also view a video news report of Oracle's PLM announcement at www.cadcamnet.tv

Video of the keynote at Oracle OpenWorld, featuring Charles Phillips who, simply put, could be Central Casting’s answer to Barack Obama, can also be viewed here:
http://www.oracle.com/openworld/2007/keynotes.html

Want to see what this Digital Prototyping thing that Autodesk has been pushing is all about? CCNtv has a 13 minute (or so) video of the company's demonstration during their recent press event in Paris.




It is at

http://www.cadcamnet.tv/asseen.html

This week's main CADCAMNETtv broadcast is up and running at www.cadcamnet.tv



Kevin Schneider - Manufacturing Solutions Evangelist takes the stage at Autodesk's Manufacturing Media Summit.

Two announcements landed in my inbox this morning. They came from two different vendors, but they carried the same underlying message: Despite the catcalls from many in the CAD media, and despite the mocking from Autodesk, product lifecycle management (PLM) software isn’t shuffling off into the sunset anytime soon. So, 3D CAD News finds it necessary to announce that the reports of PLM’s demise are greatly exaggerated. But we do believe the industry could use a little help with its collective image.

First, the reports from the inbox. PTC (a company that could use a little good news) says Samsung SDI, a division of the global electronics conglomerate, has deployed Windchill as its enterprise-wide PLM system. Siemens PLM Software, (nee UGS), announces that Burgmann Industries GmbH, a leading manufacturer of seals, is standardizing on Solid Edge CAD and Teamcenter PLM.

These two announcement, from manufacturers with two very different product lines, and many like them, are a regular reminder to us that manufacturers—particularly firms with more than 100 engineering seats—really do want the “single source for all product and process knowledge,” that PLM offers. The newer solutions, like PTC’s Windchill and the latest version of Teamcenter, use modern technologies and are much simpler to install and maintain than previous generations of PLM. The smaller PLM vendors are starting to sell Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), web-based PLM, and the big guys are hot on their heels. Why is PLM viable? Why is it a multi-billion dollar industry with good growth prospects? Consider is quote from the Siemens press release. “To convert development from 2D to 3D, we considered and tested solutions from several providers,” said Daniel Ketterer, project manager for Global Technology Management at Burgmann Industries. “During the testing phase, we were sold on the simple derivation option from 3D to 2D constructions offered by Solid Edge. We develop our seals in 3D, but most customers want to see the constructions in 2D. With the automatic 2D derivation, we are able to tighten our cycle times and optimise delivery times and costs in order to carry out our development processes more efficiently.”

The boom in mechatronics—the combination of mechanical and electronic design—opens up a particularly vein of opportunity for PLM vendors to mine in the coming years.  The Samsung deal is one such example.

Perhaps PLM suffers from an image problem. After all, it is hard to get warm and fuzzy with a database that offers to give a manufacturing enterprise a single source of truth. So, in the spirit of what we do best here at 3D CAD Blog, we offer a few modest suggestions.

A global firm like Siemens PLM needs an image recognized all over the planet to sell their software as “a single source of truth.” Perhaps Siemens could commission themselves a PLM theme song such as “No PLM No Cry” and license the tune from the Bob Marley estate.  

“In me rasta heart I say, PLM de only true way.”

PTC needs a particularly American image, one that stands for speaking truth to power (a real makeover), such as former slave and abolitionist Sojourner Truth. We doubt her fund-raising motto of “I sell the shadow to support the substance” will go over well as a way to promote Windchill. Consider this one a work in progress.

“Am I not a fellow engineer? Do I not also deserve the efficiencies of PLM as my birthright?”

Only a few miles separate the Venus de Milo from the front door of Dassault Systèmes, which makes this long-standing symbol of one artistic source of truth a possible marketing image for the French PLM vendor.

“The missing parts of our vision of PLM beauty will be along shortly.”

In today's article at CADCAMNet about SharePoint as a PLM trojan horse (paid subscription or free trial required to view article), CCN editors comment that proprietary PLM vendors could be soon regarded as dinosaurs.

"...at a conservative estimate of 85 million users, with a proven application that enables standardized file sharing, collaboration, revision control, and workflow process control, SharePoint has become a product of choice for millions of companies worldwide wanting to centralize their data—and then share it out. Manufacturers are no different. Chances are good that their globally distributed teams are using SharePoint for some part of their operations. It makes sense to have their PLM operations on SharePoint, too." writes publisher, Rachael Dalton-Taggart.

While this statement may infuriate traditional (big iron) PLM vendors, many of them have already created PLM applications that support SharePoint operations. Same goes for the AEC/BIM vendors too.

Microsoft, however, is very keen to emphasize its strategy - that of providing the key technology backbones on which developers can create specific applications.

Comments Simon Floyd, Worldwide Industry Strategist for PLM at Microsoft, “Our partners are very important to the success of SharePoint. Where we provide the common platform for document management, search, workflow, etc., they provide their deep domain expertise to deliver industry relevancy. This not only provides businesses with PLM-specific functionality and the ability to share that data across departments and roles, it also enables their IT organization to achieve economies of scale and benefit from the convenience of a common system.”

How many readers use SharePoint already, even for other, more mundane business functions? In my mind, if I could work PLM on top of an existing SharePoint installation, I would do it in a micro-second. But there must be barriers. What are they?

Comments welcome.