3D CAD NEWS

Somebody call the trademark police! Online retailer Newegg.com is selling a device that straps onto your car's steering wheel, providing a flat surface for a laptop. The name of this fine device is the Merax AutoDesk.

 

The Merax AutoDesk is $14.95 plus shipping at Newegg.com. There is no mention at the website how much you must contribute to the Merax legal defense fund, after Autodesk sends a cease-and-desist order for trademark infringement.

This novel device with the obviously infringing name was brought to our attention by Evan Yares. This is the man once described by Autodesk CEO Carl Bass as “the arms merchant to my enemies.” It would seem Carl now owes Evan a debt of gratitude for unearthing this fine example of Chinese manufacturing prowess and marketing idiocy.

Evan Yares with Exhibit A for the prosecution. The next thing you know, he'll land a six-figure consulting contract with the real Autodesk.

Look for a terribly clever report on this during the next edition of CCNtv, coming to a browser window near you March 3.

Today Adobe released a free download that delivers updated 3D CAD translators for Acrobat 3D Version 8. The new version allows Acrobat 3D to support the latest version of many major 3D CAD file formats.

The file formats updated as part of the free download include Autodesk Inventor, CoCreate OneSpace Designer, JT, SolidWorks, and UGS NX and I-deas. The updated translators leverage technology Adobe gained as part of its 2006 acquisition of Trade & Technologies France (TTF).

The product update is available from the Adobe web site at: http://www.adobe.com/go/a3d_update. A complete list of supported file formats is at http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat3d/supportedformats/

I always enjoy the part of the annual PTC press/analyst conference when customers take the podium. They tell their story, give honest answers to pointed questions, and seem genuinely happy to be PTC customers. Of course, PTC wouldn't bother to bring in grumpy customers, but that's not my point. A new national study confirms what I see -- customers really like PTC.

The CMO Council, an international organization of marketing executives, issued its annual ranking of customer affinity in the IT industry today. The report, "Customer Affinity Index of the Top 75 IT Brands Ranked by IT Buyer," rates PTC in the top ten. It is the only CAD/PLM company on the list, and PTC outranks such IT leaders as IBM, Microsoft, Dell, and Oracle.

In the research study accompanying the ranking, the CMO Council suggests that customer affinity "surpasses brand awareness as the key predictor of purchasing decisions." The Council says customers seek out companies that best align themselves with the customer's priorities and needs.

The CMO Council conducted qualitative interviews and quantitative surveys of more than 1,500 key stakeholders in all major industries to analyze the interests of IT buyers. The customer affinity index assesses the strength of the customer/vendor relationship based on six key drivers:

• Market understanding and response to needs
• Product or service experience
• Brand perception and reputation
• Communications quality and frequency
• Accessibility and availability of support
• Corporate confidence, trust, and credibility

This blog finds it way too easy at times to have a bit of fun at PTC's expense. It is a company that is willing to be "out there," taking risks and showing a bit of edgyness and personality. It also has more direct competition than any other CAD/PLM company, since their product line scales from one user to 10,000. It is good to see any CAD company be honored by The CMO Council, and not really surprising that PTC is the one they chose.

It is hard for small third-party developers of CAD add-ins to get recognition in the market. Most suffice themselves to be listed in a CAD vendor's directory; some get noticed by resellers or gain sales via word of mouth. To gain attention, they need to be clever and creative. Which may be the right adjectives to describe a new campaign from Etrage, which makes add-in applications for PTC products Pro/ENGINEER Wildfire and Windchill.

This week Etrage announced an IWBIWYBI contest. Pronounced "Eebbie-wibbie," IWBIWYBI is short for "If We build It Will You Buy It?"The contest is a challenge to PTC users to suggest new ideas for third-party applications for Wildfire and Windchill. Applications can be in the areas of engineering automation, data integration, triggers or other Pro/TOOLKIT applications. Etrage will turn one or more of the ideas submitted into new products. Unless the development costs are huge, if your suggestion is selected you'll get the resulting product for free.

Etrage’s Ron Zabilski says PTC users are a varied lot, and their need for custom features are diverse. "Examples range from triggers that activate programs based on conditions that exist in the part, assembly or drawing or control how these models are saved in the PDM system to automatically creating plots or viewable files to large scale engineering automations where companies look for optimizations of designs through automatic feature creation, automatic drawing creation and annotation, and downstream feeds to NC controlled manufacturing systems," Zabilski told us via email in a sentence I doubt he would say in real life without taking a breath or two in the middle.

Some PTC shops are large enough to have in-house development teams who can create custom applications. The majority rely on third party developers like Etrage. "In many cases," notes Zabilski, "the development of these types of projects are complex because they require software development skills in C and C++, as well as knowledge in the underlying CAD and PDM API's."

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.

 

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?

 

A few days ago in this space I wrote a phrase typical of the "bit of attitude" we try to bring to CAD reporting. I noted that the purchase of Seemage allowed Dassault Systemes to continue its pursuit of "proprietary 3D for all." Which, while historically true of Dassault, isn't really true at all when it comes to 3DLive, the 3D data viewer DS acquired in the Seemage acquisition; 3DLive reads many CAD formats. (Astute regular readers will notice the gratituous use of a semi-colon in the previous sentence, just to confound the amateurs in the audience.)

Anyway, Evan Yares (at his blog) jumped on the phrase "proprietary 3D for all" like a cat jumps on a mouse. He put it on a T-shirt that you can purchase. I've already ordered mine; you should do the same. If my baby (the phrase I wrote) is growing up to become a monster, at least we need to feed it. I intend to wear it for at least a few minutes at COFES, even if it does mean dressing down a bit at my favorite industry event. After all, I'm a journalist, no one expects me to dress to any particular standard. Buy your own shirt by following this link.


The infamous T-Shirt. Text by Randall Newton, Layout by Evan Yares. Production by CafePress.
Inspired by the hard work of the usual suspects.