The CAD Insider

A Foreword to a Memoir? Not Yet.

I awake to an internal conflict. It’s 3:45 am. Last night’s tater tots are noisily discussing an exit strategy, whether it be a retreat to the North or the South. I go to the bathroom prepared for either, wastebasket in hand. 

Hours later, I am still posed like Rodin’s statue, lost in thought. How did I get here? By the time the birds start singing, I’ve retraced all the roads back to the very first fork, the one that led me astray.

Was it the Spring of 1995, almost 30 years ago, that I veered from engineering into publishing? My first article was about FEA, which was starting to enter mainstream engineering after being forever in the clutches of specialists with PhDs. I was eager to tell engineers how they could use it safely and supply a few guardrails, so planes wouldn’t start falling out of the sky or bridges come crashing down.

It was a practical article, not a scholarly one. Wondering if anyone would be interested I sent it to Cadence, one of two magazines covering AutoCAD, but one that was looking to branch out and cover additional design software. I was stunned to see my article on the cover of the May issue, not because I had gotten the cover with my first article, but because the headline said *Discover FEA for AutoCAD.” AutoCAD did not do FEA. The text below the headline said “ “7 proven ways to create designs today.” I don’t know where “seven” came from. I had listed more than seven ways.

I was to learn that odd numbers in headlines are attractive and editors value creativity more than accuracy. I should have backed down that road then and there. Accuracy was what engineering was all about.

But I stayed in. Mostly because, instead of teaching design to a few dozen students at a time, I had the opportunity to teach a hundred thousand (the number of subscribers Cadence had). 

Looking back, a thousand articles later, I wonder what effect I have had. A more accomplished person might consider writing a memoir. But what would my memoirs possibly be called? 

• A Road Not Taken? Too soul searchy. Besides, i think that’s taken some poet took that one. 
• 30 Years a Slave, for the enslavement of publishers by advertisers? Wouldn’t that be insulting to every descendant of real slaves?
• Burning Bridges, for what a book sprung from my current frame of mind would do. It would be an unfair comparison to Burn Book, by Kara Swisher, a real journalist who dared tell all. 

The sun is rising and melting away my melancholy. There is much still to cover. I am by no means done. The advent of AI in CAD is all by itself a reason to continue, for hope… The time for memoirs is not just yet.

Or have I just written the foreword?

How to Justify over $3K for the Latest Apple iPad Pro? SketchUp

There you have it! Converting an interior space right into SketchUp with the iPad Pro (M4). No export or import took place. 

“I can use it to scan into a SketchUp model, honey.” I realize I am begging. 

It was being honest. My old iPad Pro 12.9 4th generation was not up to the task. SketchUp had announced a Scan-to-Design feature which promised that lets you simply wave your iPad around the interior of a house, office space, what have you (okay, I'm oversimplifying now) and it would be automatically converted into a 3D SketchUp model. This normally takes having to scan with the iPad, use a separate scanning app (I prefer Polycam) and exporting to SketchUp. It is not always a straightforward process and, as is common with converting formats, not always foolproof.

But the real roadblock was my aging iPad, now over two years old. Even though it had LiDAR and was letting me scan most of the time, it would get confused and stop scanning. If I was lucky enough to make it to the end of the scan, it would freeze or close down the app when came time to upload it for the conversion to a SketchUp model.

“What's the problem with SketchUp?" I demand an answer from the SketchUp product manager (editors can get away with this) who patiently explained to me that it was not SketchUp's fault, that having an iPad with LiDAR is not enough, I had to have on of the newer generation of iPads.

I would have known that if I had read the product specs. But who does that?

Chastened, I had to go shopping. Apple had recently introduced the iPad Pro with the M4 chip. It was the first device to use it. I was sure that this superfast, super thin iPad, could handle the scanning without problem. 

Now this was getting exciting. Over $3K* later, I touch the Scan-to-Design button in SketchUp viewer on my new iPad. The camera turns on but the image freezes. I am breaking out in a sweat. Have I just bought something the most expensive iPad ever to watch NetFlix on?

I practice saying, “But just look at double OLED screen, honey.”

I restart the app again and thank God, the camera stays on and a mesh grows over the walls frozen no longer like an invasive ivy -- just like it should. Whew. I am free to move about the space and scan. I hold my breath and touch the Process button so my scan will upload and be processed into a SketchUp model.  I make a cup of coffee. When I return, the screen shows a SketchUp model of my office space.

Success!
_____
*$2199 for iPad Pro with 1 TB storage, $129 for the Apple Pencil Pro, $349 for the Magic Keyboard, $169 for Extended Coverage, tax, 

Hey, Did Apple Just Beat Mathcad at Math?

A natural math interface comes from the most unlikely source: Apple.

A ping pong ball is hit at 10 m/s at an angle of 30° 0.3m off the tabletop. How high will it rise? Time to dust off your Physics 101 textbook.  

Apple’s June 2024 Worldwide Developer Conference was well received by Apple fanboys and girls, but if any of them were engineers, they would surely have been startled by the company's introduction of Math Notes, a feature in the calculator app that is able to understand numbers and formulae, make graphs and do calculations — all from your handwritten input!

It was stunning. Here was Apple — a company never associated with math or engineering software — leapfrogging PTC’s Mathcad with handwriting recognition for math. PTC had just gone on record to say that trying to interpret handwriting as math would be inadvisable. Numbers should not be subject to interpretation. Too many things can go wrong. PTC would not be going there. And here goes Apple showing off the ability to recognize handwritten numbers and formulae -- and solving them!

How Does it Work?

Math Notes is a feature found in the Calculator app which will make its debut on the iPad with iPadOS 18.

In a demo 47 minutes in to the WWDC24 keynotes, we see how simply drawing a line under a column of numbers will total them. Math Notes solves equations and can graph them. Of course, any graphing scientific calculator can do all that — but this is being done by writing on an iPad with the Apple Pencil. It is simply the most natural way to get math into a computer to date.

I have to rub my eyes and check… Yes, was this really an Apple production?

Math Notes understands numbers and mathematical operations. Write an equal sign and it calculates a result. It understands a numerator over a denominator as division. Changes to an equation will update the results. And your writing style may be preserved. In the demo, the results are shown in a style similar to the user’s handwriting -- though I seriously doubt if Apple could duplicate mine.

Skeptical of Apple’s understanding of physics? You might be since the example shown has obvious shortcomings. The trajectory shown is not parabolic and variables are oddly named (x for velocity, acceleration due to gravity should be negative, for example), but the formula is valid and the maximum height the ping pong ball reaches above the table is correct.

Furthermore, we see that if the input is changed, so is the result. This is not just a math formatter such as the one found in MS Word. Replacing the equals sign with “y=” and up pops a XY graph. It gets better: you can adjust the value with a slider bar and see the graph change in real time – just like Mathcad, except Mathcad is $779 per year and Math Notes is no extra cost, it's part of iPad OS. More on cost later. 

We need to temper our excitement, however. This was only a demo of  future product. Will the final release live up to its billing, a calculator with handwriting superpower? Will it handle units conversions as gracefully as Mathcad, for example. Will it have as many advanced functions, be able to solve as many integrals, do partial differential equations, etc.? That all remains to be seen.  And it may be unfair to ask so much from a first release by a company that does not have mathematics or engineering at its core. But Math Notes had me with its ability to do calculations from ordinary handwriting. I will now be free of the keyboard and cryptic keyboard shortcuts.

Efficient use of Mathcad relies on memorizing keystrokes for mathematical notation. For example, you have to use the left bracket key, [, to make a subscript and a colon to define a variable because the equal key (=) is reserved for solution. You can’t use the equals key to define a variable as is routinely done everywhere else. Want to use pi in Mathcad. You can find it on the menu or type the letter “p” followed by Ctrl g. Does that make sense to anyone?

PTC is big on keystroke shortcuts. It has hundreds of them. Granted, those who use Mathcad everyday have memorized many of them and can fly through a worksheet. It is an example of software that is easy to use if you know how to use it and for everyone else, frustratingly difficult.

Apple's Math Notes may finally give us a scratch pad that understands what we write on it. Will we finally be able to do away with the engineering triumvirate, the notepad, computer and calculator, and let us do it all on one device?

How to Hide a Super Power?

Math Notes will be delivered with iPadOS 18 — so some time this Fall. Good luck finding it, though. Apple has hidden it Russian-doll style in the calculator button in the Calculator app. Why not integrate it into Apple Notes? Or make it an app available on the home screen? Or even make it the default in Calculator rather than an option? As it is, the Calculator on an iPad is useless. It's too big for one-handed operation even on the iPad Mini. The big screen will have you using both hands with one moving around to access the buttons whereas on the iPhone you can use a calculator app with in one hand and just move your thumb. It's not a big deal if you are doing one or two calculations but engineers use their calculators a lot. The iPad attempts to make use of the extra space around the calculator keys by show a history and for unit conversion but really can't get over the fact that it is just to big to be useful.  

Apple calls Math Notes the Calculator’s “super power.” Oh, I get it. Apple is hiding it’s superpower under a drab cover like Superman is hidden under Clark Kent.

How Much?

We don't expect engineers worldwide to drop their notebooks and calculators in favor of a iPad for price reasons alone. The cheapest iPad is currently selling for a minimum of $329. The most expensive, the iPad Pro, can be configured for well over $2K. You can’t use your finger to draw or write. You may have to get the Apple Pencil Pro, which costs $129. You don't pay anything for Math Notes per se, as it is part of iPados 18, but if you don't have the most recent versions of an the iPad and Apple pencil, you will have to spend at least $458 to have Math Notes.

Still, that's a one time cost. Compare that to subscription pricing for math software. Mathcad has a free version but the Pro version without the embarrassing I'm-using-the-free-version watermark costs a whopping $779 per year. 

Also, writing on a glass surface using a stylus takes a little getting used to. It’s feels at first like ice skating. There is no friction. It had the effect of make my messy writing even messier. You can, however, buy aftermarket films that increase the friction a little –without noticeably reducing brightness or the touchscreen function.

What Happened at Autodesk?

It’s been a wild ride for Autodesk the last couple of months.

In that short time, Autodesk launched an internal probe of its accounting that sent its stock price tumbling. The company concluded the investigation by saying nothing was remiss, but they would be replacing their CFO anyway. Not placated was an activist on its board of directors who sued them, stating their top executives had done a cash grab, plying top customers with discounts if only they would only pay now for future years of software use — something they had vowed never to do again but were doing so now to release a torrent of cash that would flow into FY24 and ensure their annual bonuses.

Let’s look at the chain of events.

On April 1, Autodesk filed for a delay in 10-Q reporting because it found discrepancies in the company’s recent accounting of free cash flow. A 10-Q normally follows the annual report and provides more detail, containing information valuable to analysts such as threats to the company’s business. Also, it carries extra responsibility for corporate officers who have to swear under oath that all information contained is accurate.

Not filing a 10-K on time results is a big deal. The SEC will issue a fine in most cases and a late filing will set off alarms among investors. The day that Autodesk said the 10-Q was late, the share price dropped. It wouldn’t stop dropping for over two weeks, going from $259 on April 1 to $211.

Autodesk valuation dropped over $10 billion in 18 days.

On May 31, Autodesk announced that it had concluded its internal investigation and would now file the 10-Q. The company had indeed found some discrepancies, most having to do with how cash flow was accounted for as the company “engaged in programs designed to incentivize customers to accept multiyear upfront filling, renew early, and/or pay before the end of the year.”

But in 2022, Autodesk had stated that it would shift from multi-year upfront billing to annual billing. Now it was now saying it was reverting to multi-year upfront billing in a big way to make its free cash goals for the year. Also, the “free cash flow was one factor in the company’s executive compensation program,” according to Autodesk’s own press release.

In the aftermath of the 10-Q delay, Autodesk relieved Debbie Clifford of her role of CFO and slid her sideways into a Chief Strategy Officer role, a role that had been vacant for over 20 years. Clifford would seem an unlikely candidate for a Chief Strategy Officer, judging from her LinkedIn profile, having held only roles with strictly financial duties. Carl Bass, last in the CSO role, had considerable knowledge and insight into design and manufacturing.

Is there more than meets the eye with Autodesk’s wrap up of their own investigation? Monica Schnitger, a CAD industry analyst, thinks not. “There is nothing to see here,” she says in her detailed account of the accounting. Autodesk did after all, have a great quarter, she says. As if to say who are we to question who gets billed when and who cares about 10-Qs? Executive compensation does not register.

But not all have been convinced that Autodesk conducted its accounting and investigation properly. We learn of Starboard Ventures having a $500 million investment in Autodesk, a 1% stake, but sufficient for a seat on the board of directors. Starboard filed a lawsuit in the state of Delaware (where Autodesk is incorporated) to delay the company’s annual meeting so new board members can be elected and in a June 17 letter argued that the investigation had uncovered “significant issues and questions about the Company’s accounting and disclosure practices, executive compensation practices, and oversight, or a lack thereof, from the Board of Directors” that ought to be addressed.

Why was Autodesk in such a rush to increase free cash flow? Two reasons, according to the Starboard: Autodesk reports free cash flow as a key operational metric and uses it as one of the primary determinants of executive compensation (emphasis theirs). Starboard goes on to contend that while Autodesk was telling the world one thing (that annual billing was in effect), it began an aggressive campaign to secure free cash by upfront billing, that “substantially exceeded historical levels, helping the company to meet its lowered annual free cash flow target” (Emphasis theirs), offering discounts as an inducement.

Autodesk uses free cash flow targets in its calculations of PSUs (performance stock units) awarded to key executives. The payout from PSUs formed 50-53% of the key executive’s total compensation for the year. A PSU is equal in value to a share of common stock and is taxable. PSUs and RSUs (restricted stock unit, nontaxable, based on stock price, not on free cash flow, and forms 33% to 35% of the total compensation) combine for an annual bonus — and it can be sizable.

Andrew Anagnost’s PSU and RSU awards combined for over $20 million. Debbie Clifford, in her last year as CFO, got $6 million in PSU and RSU awards.

Starboard maintains that in failing to inform shareholders of the free cash issue, Autodesk deprived them of a chance to nominate incoming board members, an issue it hoped to rectify with a delay in the annual meeting, when presumably new board members would be announced.

However, the State of Delaware denied Starboard’s request, a ruling favorable to Autodesk. The annual meeting and board appointments will take place as Autodesk had planned. 

I don’t think this is the end of the story, though. The meeting date and board appointments may not have gone the way an activist investor intended but the alleged issues of company underperformance, accounting practices and executive compensation will likely be brought up again.

While some may believe that its back to business as usual for Autodesk, I am reminded of Carl Bass, who after leading Autodesk into its golden days was ousted by an activist investor.

OMG, Autodesk DID Discover AI

Like learning of Columbus discovering America in 1492 only to find out Leif Erikson had found it centuries before, we find that Autodesk had AI with its Design Graph technology in 2016, a dog’s life before ChatGPT kicked off the current AI frenzy.

It was in this 2016 post that Autodesk puts forth all the benefits of ML (machine learning) with Design Graph, a shape-based search.

What was Design Graph and How Did it Work?

If you were designing a vehicle, like a motorcycle, and you needed a part, like a gearbox, Design Graph would search through your company’s cloud-based design library (then called A360) for such a gearbox using a search based on name, shape, category and other properties.

While a search based on textual metadata is old hat, a shape-based search would have been a game changer. Many have tried but as of yet, none have come up with a good one.

“We created Design Graph to enable designers to focus more on solving design problems rather than the mechanics of representing their design,” said Mike Haley in 2016, then Sr. Director of Machine Intelligence at Autodesk. “Design Graph can save valuable time, eliminate redundant work and reduce costly errors.”

Clearly, Design Graph was a product ahead of its time, never emerging from the Lab, never to see the light of day. Was it the odd name? Was it ahead of its time? Did it not work as promised? Did Autodesk lose interest? Was CAD just in a geeky niche the rest of the world could ignore? Was it a combination, all of the above?

Whatever it was, Design Graph did not catch on.

In a recent interview on engineering.com, Mike Haley, the Leif Erikson of this story, politely reminds us of our failure to credit Autodesk with AI implementation. Clearly, Autodesk Labs, had landed on the promising technology of the future, but from the nerdy niche of design software, rather than in the mainstream of software (Microsoft and Google, with billions to spend, turning a big light on for all the moths (example: Microsoft’s $13B investment in OpenAI) whereas Autodesk, 8 years ago, had the punch but never got a shot at big time. I picture Mike Haley as Marlon Brando, whose Terry Malloy character in Elia Kazan’s On the Waterfront saying “I coulda been a contender, instead of being locked in a 7-way CAD race.”

Somehow that does not have the same ring to it.

*The seven CAD contenders are Autodesk, Bentley, Nemetschek, Trimble , Dassault Systèmes, PTC and Siemens.

Is Apple’s Vision Pro Already a Bust?

Image: Apple

Apple’s $3499 Vision Pro was to have revived a moribund AR/VR/XR market with a (relatively) sleek design, state-of-the-art optics and the type of savvy marketing that only Apple can provide. Yet, early indications would have you believing that the “spatial computer,” as the company calls their mixed-reality headset, is not living up to expectations.

With less than expected sales and perhaps more than expected returns, Apple has slashed forecasts and scuttled plans for a design refresh, according to industry analyst Ming-Chi Kuo.

There were earlier signs of a product in trouble. A Bloomberg report published February 18, a little more than two weeks after the Vision Pro was introduced customers were unhappy with the headsets and were returning them within the two-week refund window. There were many early adopters and Apple fans that are keeping the products and the ones who returned it may have just intended to get a free trial, but Bloomberg says employees at Apple stores said returns were “average to above average” for a new Apple product with some of the biggest stores accepting as many as 8 returns a day.

Now Kuo reports that Vision Pro shipments were 400,000 to 450,000, about half of the expected 700,000 to 800,000 and that Apple no longer plans to have a new Vision Pro model in the 2^nd half of next year. The report, published on Medium, unconfirmed by Apple, has been picked up by every tech pub under the sun with no fact-checking, is being seized upon as a sure sign of a bust.

Still the Apple faithful cling to the brand, including the Bloomberg reporter who wrote his report on a Vision Pro and vows to not return it.

Let’s see how this plays out.

Edison vs Einstein, Who Won?

By the time Albert Einstein first visited America, his reputation had already preceded him. He was mobbed by crowds, his lectures were packed. You might say he was treated like a rock star, but this was 43 years before the Beatles were mobbed on their initial tour in the US.

Never before had such adulation been heaped on anyone not royalty or celebrity. Not on Isaac Newton. Not on Thomas Edison, America’s most famous inventor.

Thomas Alva Edison, America's most famous inventor. Image:
Louis Bachrach, Bachrach Studios, 

Though Edison never received a formal education, much less an engineering degree, engineers have retro-accepted him into their ranks. Humor us for a second, so we may ask the question:

Scientist or engineer?  Who is better?

Each camp has both respect and disdain for the other, but disdain makes for more interesting reading.

When Einstein found his son, Hans Albert Einstein, wanted to become an engineer, he was “disgusted,” according to biographer Walter Isaacson in the best-selling biography of Albert Einstein.

This may have been based on Einstein’s father, effectively an electrical engineer, whose electrical technology businesses often failed.

Edison’s disdain for theoretical knowledge and preference for practical knowledge and excellent memory was often a barrier to job applicants. Edison gave them a test with as many as 146 questions. The questions, taken individually were not difficult ones, relating for the most part to general knowledge, similar what we might encounter in a Trivial Pursuit game or the Jeopardy! quiz show. For example, “What countries border France?”  and “What is felt made of?”  A few questions were about science or mathematics but the sheer number of them, with a much sought after job on the line, that proved unnerving and overwhelming. 

Who could pass such a test? Not Edison’s youngest son, Theodore, a student at MIT. Not two applicants with prodigious memories able to recount all 146 questions to the New York Times — but still unable to pass the Edison test. Not Einstein, who was asked the speed of sound, one of the questions from the test.

Einstein admitted to not knowing the speed of sound. Isaacson points out that if anyone understood how sound travels in air, it would have been Einstein. But with Einstein’s head full of wave theory, quantum theory, explanations written in vectors and tensors, there was no need to store a scalar quantity.

That is information readily found in books, Einstein said. And in mild rebuke to Edison, he pointed out the value of higher learning is not to fill heads with numbers and facts but in “training minds to think.”

What do you think?

References

Einstein, His Life and Universe, Walter Isaacson, Simon and Schuster, 2008.

Edison Questions Stir Up a Storm, New York Times, May 11, 1921.

Autodesk Delays Annual Report After Finding Accounting Discrepancies

Autodesk delayed filing its 10-K, an annual report required of publicly traded companies by the SEC, because accounting discrepancies had come to light since the company announced its annual results on February 29. The news was not well received by investors and the share price dropped from $259.44 to $248.71, a 4.14 % decrease, it’s lowest point in almost a month.

An announcement of accounting discrepancies is almost never good news for a company and may have triggered a “too good to be true” response to a the Feb 29th report of record revenue (3 straight quarters of revenue growth) and profit (three straight quarters of growth) as reported here.

Forming an external committee to investigate accounting discrepancies is an unusual move.  Wouldn’t an investigation of accounting normally be conducted by the CFO?  Debbie Clifford has been Autodesk’s CFO for a little over 3 years.

Autodesk has been given a 15-day extension to file the 10-K.

Autodesk University 2023: Conferences and Las Vegas Back in Full Swing

Autodesk University is back in Las Vegas after somewhat of a misadventure in New Orleans. There were rumors of attendees being assaulted. It may be that Autodesk and its customers prefer the seedy and the snaz of Las Vegas over one of my favorite cities, but why should that matter? 

Autodesk University, with attendance of as much as ten thousand, is easily the biggest event in the CAD world. The rest of the Big Four (Dassault Systèmes, PTC, Siemens) have conference half that size, as measured by attendance. The recent Trimble conference, same place last week, had about 4,000 attendees. 

Autodesk may not have known that the city of Las Vegas was going to host the Formula 1 race, the inaugural Las Vegas Grand Prix, this Saturday and that road closures would be starting on the last day of the conference. The straightaway will be the Strip. My Lyft driver last week was dreading the event and vows to stay off the road. I wonder how we will be getting to the airport. 

The crowds in the casinos, for AU, for F1, for Trimble last week, make me think that the city is back in full swing for the first time since COVID. And perhaps also are CAD conferences.

 

 

Trimble CEO Rob Painter Conducts a Master Class in Relating to Customers

It doesn’t take TV personality to enthrall an audience – but it helps. This may be what’s working for Rob Painter, CEO of Trimble. I squint and see Anderson Cooper. But there’s more to Painter and it all adds up to keeping the audience riveted at the Trimble Dimensions 2023 being held in Las Vegas.

Most CEOs look like they’re heading for the golf course. But here is Painter in an open neck light blue button down shirt – but with jeans. He may be taking pains to fit in with his audience. There’s a lot of burly men here, all looking like they’d be comfortable outdoors, behind an earth mover, on a construction site, in a safety vest and under a hard hat. There's more  facial hair than any other conference -- and not the groomed stubble that has become fashionable. That's on the men, by the way. The few women in attendance are well coiffed. They tend to cluster at the lunch tables.

Painter speaks with feeling. He knows his products cold and understands what the guys in surveying, building and construction are up against. If he has a teleprompter, I can’t tell that he is using it. He appears to be addressing each of us personally. This is no executive slumming, taking an obligatory quick excursion from mahogany row to get in touch with the masses.

Best of all, he acknowledges the work Trimble users do. The respect is palpable. There is no hint of superiority, of putting on airs. I half expect Painter to drives a pickup to work, if not an earth mover.

If anyone wants to know how to relate to their customers, let Rob Painter be a lesson.