3D CAD NEWS

[Editor's Note: Our usual policy of providing the visuals is being pre-empted so you can obey the headline.]

 

Events of recent weeks have shaken the status quo in the CAD/PLM business. In no particular order:

 

1. Dassault Systemes unveiled “PLM 2.0″ which can be summarized as “visualize whirled parts.”

 

2. Autodesk bought Moldflow, which can be summarized as “visualize plastic parts.”  

 

3. PTC released a new version of CoCreate, which can be summarized as “visualize our hand in your pocket. Please.”

 

4. SpaceClaim is still in business, which can be summarized as “visualize working for a buyout.”  

 

5. Siemens PLM Software “launched” (which in PR language is an intermediary step between “announced” and “shipped”) new versions of NX and Solid Edge with Synchronous Technology. This can be summarized as “visualize us with hot new technology and an 18-month lead on our competitors.”

 

6. Siemens PLM also announced the delivery of Teamcenter licence number 4 million. This can be visualized as a mountain when compared to the total sales of “pure” PLM seats (PDM on steroids) from all competitors combined.

 

 

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.

3D CAD News has learned Siemens PLM Software, the former UGS, has decided to postpone the release of NX 5 for the Macintosh OS X environment. Instead, Siemens will next release NX for OS X  as part of the NX 6 release in 2006.

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.

NX 5 as it appears in Windows.