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.

A few readers have reminded me that they would like results from the recent "Name the Mystery Celebrity Keynote" contest we ran leading up to SolidWorks World 2008. Sorry for being so tardy; between the flu and unrelenting deadlines elsewhere, I let it fall through the cracks.

The mystery guest speaker at Monday's opening of SolidWorks World 2008 was Danny Forster, host of the Discovery Channel TV show Build It Bigger. Danny and I were IM'ing on an unrelated topic a few weeks before SolidWorks World, and he mentioned he would be speaking there. As soon as I told him I would be attending, he replied that his appearance was supposed to be a secret and would I please not rat him out. I obliged, but decided to have a bit of fun. And thus the contest began.



Build It Bigger host Danny Forster, left, poses for the obligatory momento with your intrepid correspondent.
Photo Courtesy of SolidWorls Blogger Brian McElyea, the CAD Fanatic.

Technically, there was no winner. I was very specific that entries had to come to me in email or as comments to this blog. But UK CAD writer Al Dean did figure it out Sunday night before the conference. "I had to wade through 18 bloody pages on Google before I put it together," he said. But telling me in person as we rode the escalator in the San Diego Convention Center does not qualify as "submitting an entry" so I wealsed out of buying him dinner at Applebee's.

Al is a fellow member of the press so he didn't need me to feed him anyway; SolidWorks takes very good care of the media at their events. Well, generally speaking; there was an unfortunate bit of ruckus early on, when some SW personnel confused the CCNtv camera with a weapon of mass disruption, but everyone has done the kiss-and-make-up thing now, so we won't get into the messy details.

As has been written elsewhere, the "news" from SolidWorks World last week can be easily summed up: 4,500 SolidWorks users had a nice party. Oh, and engineers who blog find some sort of deep mystery in the use of semi-colons. (Follow the link; I guess to one SolidWorks blogger, semi-colons are to CAD journalists what opposable thumbs are to mammals.)


Historic meeting of blogger (left) and CAD journalist at SolidWorks World. It seems bloggers have opposable thumbs; they just have not figured out how to write semi-colons with them.

But I digress. Sometimes the interesting stuff to be learned at such conferences isn't said in front of a crowd. I learned from a conversation with a Dassault Systemes employee (out on the patio of the San Diego Convention Center) that the recent acquisition of Seemage was preceeded by an ugly bidding war between Dassault and Autodesk. Not ugly, obviously, to anyone who owned a piece of Seemage. Perhaps unseemly would be the better phrase. But all's well that ends well, and now Dassault can continue to pursue its vision of proprietary 3D for all.

What's that you say? What about the contest? Oh, yes. I'll get to that in another post. I was waiting for one of those semi-colon-less bloggers to send me a photo. Moi is a writer, not a photog.

Bruno didn't make the final cut.

He put himself through an Ivy League graduate education doing stand-up comedy.

Two clues this time, actually.

Here is the next clue for those of you trying to guess the mystery celebrity keynote speaker at next week's SolidWorks World conference:

He is still wondering if being called "sweet britches" is a compliment or a put-down.

As detailed in our recent posting, 3D CAD News is sponsoring a contest to see if anyone can guess the identity of the secret celebrity keynote speaker for this year's SolidWorks World.

I narrowly missed being the victim of a random waterboarding session yesterday, adminstered by a group of thugs with strong New England accents. It seems Rainer Gawlick and his band of mad marketers will stop at nothing to prevent this contest from going forward. They were unable to carry off their plans because they couldn't melt the snow fast enough to stick my head in the bucket.



Rainer Gawlick of SolidWorks doesn't look like a man
who would order a sneak waterboarding interrogation. They never do.

Today's official clue: Craigslist changed his life.

As detailed in our previous posting, 3D CAD News is sponsoring a contest to see if anyone can guess the identity of the secret celebrity keynote speaker for this year's SolidWorks World. The entire marketing team at SW has now stopped all preparations for the event and are focusing their talents and resources on figuring out how this esteemed online journal learned this man's identity. Oops, we just gave out an unofficial clue, and eliminated 51% of the human race as suspects.

Today's official clue: He is afraid of heights.