One of the top-secret 3D CAD News moles who has gone "deep cover" inside Autodesk Manufacturing surfaced just long enough this week to send the editorial team an encrypted message. When we ran it through our translator, we got the following message. "2 nu prod soon. PDM & SCM."
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.
Autodesk executives told investors today that revenue in its first quarter of fiscal 2008, which ends April 20, 2007, will be "at the high end, or slightly above, the previously issued revenue guidance range of $490 million to $500 million."
As they used to say at Autodesk Australia in the late 1980's, "Every day's a g'day, mate, when you're making buckets of money."
The buckets currently used at Autodesk will be replaced by virtual buckets capable of holding unlimited proceeds from AutoCAD upgrades and Revit cross-grades.
The NASCAR-watching 3D CAD-using demographic is pretty huge, I'm told. If you count yourself among that legion, then rush right over to the Dassault Systemes web site and sign up for a web cast and learn how the Ray Evernham team gets extreme with PLM. Fifty lucky attendees get a cap. I get goose bumps just thinking about it.
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?
Flomerics says today it will provide its engineering fluid dynamics (EFD) simulation software to universities and colleges around the world for teaching and research purposes.
Flomerics EFD products are gaining popularity because, unlike traditional computation fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation software, EFD operates inside mechanical CAD software, working directly with the CAD data. "This unique feature allows users to skip the most time-consuming aspects of using CFD software," said John Parry, research manager at Flomerics. "The user doesn't need to learn a new interface, there is no CAD export and meshing is fully automated, so students can focus solely on learning about fluid dynamics instead of how to use software."
Products available for engineering purposes:
EFD has sophisticated physical models to simulate a wide range of engineering tasks -- from creeping non-Newtonian flows to supersonic gas flows with high mach numbers. EFD is also provided with a number of detailed ready-built and documented validation cases that can be used as course material. The version of the software available to education has the same capabilities as the commercial version, with no restrictions on physical modeling or meshing.
COSMOSFloWorks is a SolidWorks product developed by Flomerics that uses the same underlying technology, so educational users of SolidWorks may already have COSMOSFloWorks.
EFD is available for immediate shipment to educational and research institutions. Interested readers may download their choice of free EFD online demos at http://www.nika.biz
Engineering students at Looking-Glass University discuss
modifications to their gas flow analysis of a new design for a hookah.
Datakit says the new converter:
The converter requires Inventor and Windows 2000 Sp2 /XP/Vista in order to work properly. It does not require a license of CATIA V5.
For more information: http://www.datakit.com/page_telechargements_plug.php?tele=8.
It was another great fiscal quarter for PTC. Profit jumped 62 percent (compared to the same quarter a year ago) to $17.4 million, on revenue of $228.1 million (up 14% year-over).
The PTC fiscal year starts on October 1, so the quarter being reported today is PTC's second quarter of fiscal 2007. Full details tomorrow at CADCAMNet.
The idea behind this MCAD mash-up (never thought I'd be putting those two words together) is to allow product designers a way to get their goods on display in Google 3D Warehouse and Google Earth. I guess somebody could accurately illustrate the contents of the city dump. "Look Mommie, I drew the toaster we threw away."
"Google SketchUp is widely used for conceptual and architectural design while Alibre Design is primarily used for precise mechanical design," we are thoughtfully told in the Alibre press release.
Now, here's the sneaky stuff. Using Alibre 3D Publisher for Google SketchUp, ANY 3D model from ANY CAD or modeling system can be exported in industry standard formats such as STEP, IGES and SAT, as well as models created natively in Alibre Design. Then the model can be published directly to the Google SketchUp format, then edited or enhanced in Google SketchUp and uploaded to the Google 3D Warehouse or placed on Google Earth. As Alibre says in its press release (we are not making this up) "This means millions of visually accurate 3D designs from thousands of popular 3D design and CAD programs, including SolidWorks, Pro/ENGINEER, CATIA, Unigraphics, SolidEdge, Inventor, Rhino, Maya, and more, can be used in Google's most popular graphics programs." I guess Alibre knew that most of those big-shot MCAD programs wouldn't be caught dead playing in Google's 3D Warehouse.
Once converted to the SketchUp format, mechanical models can also be edited directly in SketchUp via its "revolutionary and easy to use "push-pull" interface" (again quoting Alibre). To continue to quote--and please note the precise techical terms about to be used: "Unlike other conversions that simply dump out a glob of unrelated facets or triangles, [those are the technical terms I warned you about-- Editor] Alibre's 3D Publisher constructs geometrically correct models which can be directly edited in SketchUp. This provides an excellent platform to modify or create new conceptual designs relative to existing precise mechanical models, such as mounting hardware or consumer packaging. Other examples include precise woodworking models like furniture or cabinetry that can be parametrically designed in Alibre Design and then incorporated into a SketchUp model of an entire house or building."
Google SketchUp is rapidly becoming the de facto standard for 3D design among the great unwashed masses who have never considered buying CATIA. It was a smart move for Alibre to hook their star to Google in this way.Alibre would like you to know that if you want more information about the Alibre 3D Publisher for Google SketchUp, you should visit their website at www.alibre.com/Products/3Dpublisher.asp.
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.
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