3D CAD NEWS

Last week during the heavily-attended Oracle OpenWorld User event in San Francisco, Oracle Company President Charles Phillips, (who is also total ‘keynote candy’ according to some of the team), introduced the new Oracle Agile PLM applications.

As reported by Randall Newton in this week’s issue of CADCAMNet (subscription or free trial registration required), Oracle Agile PLM will be a CAD-neutral platform that integrates completely with Oracle’s other business applications such as CRM, ERP, and SCM.

Oracle’s aim, writes Newton, is “to simplify what have become complex IT environments. Oracle wants to rid corporate culture of a tool-based approach to problem solving, replacing a fragmented IT environment with a unifying middleware stack that allows the various tools to be united by a common dashboard interface.”

But, while CAD vendors can probably leverage the software giant’s move into PLM, Newton predicts that PLM vendors will have more to worry about: “Five years from now, the Oracle Agile line will have a PLM market share that surpasses at least one, if not two, of the Big Three CAD-centric PLM vendors” he writes.

You can also view a video news report of Oracle’s PLM announcement at www.cadcamnet.tv

Video of the keynote at Oracle OpenWorld, featuring Charles Phillips who, simply put, could be Central Casting’s answer to Barack Obama, can also be viewed here:
http://www.oracle.com/openworld/2007/keynotes.html

This week at CADCAMNETtv, Greg Smith, our Big Mac Guy (you’ll understand the double meaning when you watch) gives an overview of both Parallels and VMwareFusion running Windows XP, with AutoCAD and Rhino software, on a Macintosh.

If you’ve ever been curious about whether you can run your CAD system on a Mac, well this might give you pointers. However, be warned that only a select few Windows CAD products will actually run on the virtual machine, but at least it opens up the options a little more from what we have now for CAD on the Mac.

To watch the review, go to www.cadcamnet.tv; Greg’s review is about half way through the broadcast. If anyone knows of any other CAD products that work on the virtual machine, please do share!

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Want to see what this Digital Prototyping thing that Autodesk has been pushing is all about? CCNtv has a 13 minute (or so) video of the company’s demonstration during their recent press event in Paris.

It is at

http://www.cadcamnet.tv/asseen.html

This week’s main CADCAMNETtv broadcast is up and running at www.cadcamnet.tv

Kevin Schneider - Manufacturing Solutions Evangelist takes the stage at Autodesk’s Manufacturing Media Summit.