3D CAD NEWS

The original plan called for the release of NX 5 for the Mac after the release of the Leopard update, now scheduled for October 26. But a source inside Siemens says doing so would have meant releasing a beta version of both NX 5 and NX 6 for the Mac to early adopters for testing at almost the same time. "We are releasing [NX for the Mac] with NX 6," said the source, who did not want to be identified. "This gives us time to incorporate some additional functionality based on customer feedback from our early adopters."

Our sister publication CADCAMNet gave NX 5 an enthusiastic review earlier this year. As reviewer Al Dean noted, NX 5 sports a new user interface, Active Mockup, Requirement-Driven Design Validation, and many more features. Beyond the specific new features, Dean said NX 5 "removes ambiguity, maximizes knowledge retention, and reduces the time invested in learning." We can only imagine at this point in time what goodies await the (rarely) patient Mac users who want the power of NX in OS X, now that they must wait for NX 6.

It is a dog-eat-dog world, they say, so today your economic geography lesson is about the portion of that world known as PLM. Some of the inhabitants are names familiar to CAD users, including Dassault Systèmes, UGS (now Siemens PLM Software), and PTC. There are other inhabitants, like Agile Software which is currently being eaten alive—pardon me, acquired—by Oracle. And there are smaller players like ARAS Software and Arena Solutions (the former BOM.COM). And then there is SAP. (Autodesk is considered by professional analysts as a PLM firm, but in this dog-eat-dog world Autodesk is a cat and refuses to acknowledge the dogs.)

Oracle takes a $495 million liking to Agile.

Look at total revenue and you realize quickly that Oracle and SAP are the true big dogs of the territory. The CAD firms are Chihuahuas nervously treading beneath the feet of Irish Wolf Hounds. Thus we must pause and note when one of these big dogs marks his territory. That’s what SAP did today in announcing its PLM road map.

Over at CADCAMNet I’ll do a more complete (competitive analysis and all that), less doggy explanation of what SAP has in mind, but here we cut to the chase. Here’s what SAP will do to make you sit, roll over, and beg:

2008 (Sit): Simplify the SAP PLM user interface with role-based presentations.

2009 (Roll Over): Offer a “new enhancement package” for the bean-counters to ram down engineering’s throat.

2010 (Beg): Assimilation of real-world information such as RFID data.

[Editor’s Note: The prohibition against yawning is now lifted.]

We tried to get everybody together for a portrait, but only SAP and Dassault Systemes showed up.

UGS PLM Software announced today that Tilo Brandis, who was appointed President when UGS became a division of Siemens Automotive and Drives,must step down from the position due to family health issues in his native Germany. Brandis had started to relocate to UGS HQ in Plano, Texas, but is returning to Germany.

Tilo Brandis,
outgoing
UGS PLM Software
president

Brandis will be replaced by Dr. Helmuth Ludwig, who joins UGS PLM Software from Siemens Systems Engineering, a division of A&D, where he has served as president since 2002. As created when UGS merged with Siemens, the office of president reports to UGS CEO Tony Affuso, and is responsible for overseeing the integration of UGS into Siemens. Ludwig has already started relocating to Plano.

Helmuth Ludwig,
incoming
UGS PLM Software
president

UGS also announced to its staff today that effective October 1, 2007 the name of the division will change from "UGS PLM Software," to "Siemens PLM Software." The name "UGS" will continue to be used in front of product suite names.

More details later today at CADCAMNet.

Recently we started a series on RoHS (Restriction of Hazardous Substances) and its effects on producty designers in CADCAMNet (available to subscribers only or for a free month trial when you click 'subscribe') .

It is our perception that these stringent restrictions, which, while starting in the EU have already proliferated across South Korea, China, and will eventually come into effect in the US, will demand yet more of the manufacturers than the burden they already have for making safe products. But what it also brings is a position of strength for the PLM vendors. All of the major vendors have modules and applications that support RoHS activities, and for once, they all make sense to the product development process.

RoHS and WEEE (Waste Electrical & Electronic Equipment) requirements demand that certain documentation is created with each product to ensure compliance. This in itself is an exercise in paper-pushing, but one that is based on the Bill Of Materials (BOM). The BOM is also a central point of pretty much most PLM software products available today, so it is an ideal tool on which to build RoHS compliance tools.

Up until recently RoHS was regarded as a 'purchasing' problem. But indications are that the responsiblity for choosing the right materials, component parts and so on is moving upwards towards the design team. Once again, PLM tools tend towards communicating with the designers and engineers, and thus are in a perfect position to leverage their tools into this growing area. While we are already seeing major growth in PLM, Ithink the next 2 years are going to be sky-high for PLM growth, acceptance and adoption.

As Tony Affuso said in a recent interview in CADCAMNet, "PLM is not for the faint of heart." Well, neither is RoHS. Gather your strength everyone.

The Brat

In an announcement that took nobody by surprise the European Union has approved the proposed merger of UGS and Siemens.

In a bit of understatement, the Commision said:

The Commission’s examination of the proposed transaction showed that the limited horizontal overlaps resulting from the merger would not give rise to competition concerns since a sufficient number of alternative competitors would remain active on the markets concerned.

Dassault Systemes told the world today that it is buying ICEM, which makes a surface modeling tool that runs with CATIA V5. No big surprise there; the two have been working closely together for a while.

What is a bit interesting, unless you are totally wet behind the ears and don't give a rat's toe about history, is that ICEM has been the proverbial red-headed foster child of the design software industry. It started out as a unit of Control Data Corporation, back when CAD computers required teams of worried-looking weenies in white coats to operate correctly. The hardware was the central sales focus then, and companies created software to drive sales.

For a while it was part of a CDC/SDRC joint venture. That deal went sour, and eventually UGS bought part of the venture, but not the part that became ICEM. (Just think how different things might be today if UGS had acquired the technology that became today's ICEM.) Later, EDS acquired SDRC and UGS, but that's another story.

From CDC it went to PTC, who sold it to investors, who sold it today to Dassault. PTC paid $45 million in 1993 dollars for ICEM, and probably sold it for less. Today Dassault paid 51.4 million Euros for ICEM. Somebody has made a nice bundle of money on all that churning.

In parallel universes, the software that created these lines belongs to UGS, PTC, EDS, and the Ferengi Alliance.

UGS has opened the doors, so to speak, to its new island in Second Life, the online 3D playworld that is increasingly becoming a magnet for marketing ventures. UGS says it is the “first pure-play PLM company to establish a presence in the mainstream online virtual world,” and we don't doubt it for a minute. (Autodesk is playing with SL, too. But they HATE the term PLM, and for now it's a semi-private island. Makes us wonder what they are up to.)

Right now the island is being used as a customer showcase, but UGS says in the future they will use the site to “collaborate with customers and partners, host virtual conferences and provide a more immersive way to experience its solutions just as they are used every day by customers around the world.” Somehow I don't think Belgian Police Babes On Patrol represents “just as they are used every day by customers” in most companies now using PLM.

If you just can't wait to see what kind of furries hang out on a PLM island, visit www.ugs.com/secondlife.

Will this Belgian police officer be called upon to assist Second Life visitors at the new UGS Island?

I have written elsewhere about the demographic issues facing engineering, but it really hit home to me today while attending the opening session of the UGS Connections Americas conference. The average age of attendees here must be 40. I rarely ran into anybody that looked as if they were in their 20's.

The software, NX 5 in particular -- is looking great. (More on that later.) I just hope the Long Beach Convention Center has portable defibulators on hand, since the attendees definitely fit the user demographic. Can they handle all the changes UGS is throwing at them?

It is no wonder UGS has opened an outreach office (my term, not theirs) in Second Life. Both the vendors and the users in CAD/PLM/BIM/EDA, etc. really need young people to take an interest. If I ran a company that relied on engineering, I'd be in SL pitching my wares, too.

I'm in Long Beach, California today, for the opening of the UGS Connections Americas conference. UGS has invited a few members of the press and analyst community to attend this annual user's conference.

In addition to the usual UGS executives and end users, there will be one speaker this year that will probably draw more than the usual interest. Tilo Brandis of Siemens will discuss the pending acquisition of UGS and describe the company's vision behind the purchase.

I've been told there is a 10-year plan under development for the integration of UGS into Siemens. I'll be curious to hear if Siemens is ready to describe it in any detail.