The CAD Insider

A CAD by Any Other Name...

CAD means computer aided design, right? Type ‘CAD’ into Google and you are likely to get a lot of irrelevant links. Why? Apparently, CAD has many meanings. After years of searching and conducting hundreds of searches a day, TenLinks has found that CAD means many things to many people:

• Civil Aviation Department
• CAD professional microphones
• Communications Aids Design
• computer aided dispatch
• cash available for distribution
• Center for Advanced Diagnostics
• Confined Aquatic Disposal
• computer aided detection
• coronary artery disease
• Commercial Affairs Department
• Civil Aviation Department (Hong Kong)
• Cash Against Document
• Children's Aid Direct
• Component Advanced Development
• Computer-Aided Debrief
• Command Area Development
• Component Advanced Development
• Croydon Communities Against Drugs
• Committee for Agricultural Development (Iowa)
• Capital Adequacy Directive
• Galveston Central Appraisal District
• Communities Against Drugs
• Citizens Against Drugs
• California Academic Decathlon
• cold agglutinin disease
• Cold Air Damming (weather)
• smooth muscle-specific caldesmon (h-CaD) and non-muscle (l-CaD)
• Campaign Against Dumping
• Columbia After Dark (place for Christian singles to meet and greet)
• Ni-Cad rechargeable batteries
• PAMSCAD, povertyCAD, BeatingCAD etc CAD (from Ghanaweb.com)
• Consumer Affairs Directorate
• Computer Aided Drug Design

Using Google ads? Your CAD products and services my be showing up in all sorts of unintended places. Reminds me of what John Wanamaker said:

"I know half the money I spend on advertising is wasted, but I can never find out which half"

Know any more meanings of CAD?

Availl - Made for Sharing

Distributed engineering teams ought to appreciate Availl's software. In case you didn't have enough acronyms to contend with, Availl fits in a category called WAFS - wide area file systems. It lets you share CAD files among remote offices. Say your manufacturing facility needs to access a CAD model from headquarters, Availl will copy the file to a local server (as they change). As CAD models can be rather large, this should make access much faster than sharing the file over a wide area network or the Internet because access takes place at hard drive speed. Availl takes care to use real time file locks to prevent conflicts as it simultaneously monitors and mirrors multiple file/directory locations, keeping them all in synch. How is this different than the competition, such as Steelhead from Riverbed Technology? First, it is a software-only product, whereas Riverbed requires hardware. So it should be cheaper but don't try finding prices on Availl's website (why do companies hide that most important information!) Says Craig Randall of Availl, "We make the whole file local," implying that Riverbed does not.

Lock it Up - Rights Management by Pinion Software

Product Highlight from NMW 2006 - Worried about your cherished designs falling into the wrong hands? Rights management software can let you sleep at night. Pinion Software has line of software that can control access to your CAD files, allowing you to determine who, when and how long someone can see them. Peter White, Pinion's sales engineer demoed the software. You can view, zoom and pan, even measure but you can't Save or SaveAs. So tight is Pinion's security, it even disables the Windows copy commands. Don't even try the print screen function, Pinion is way ahead of you. You can set files to "self destruct" after a set time. I pictured smoke coming out of the computer and suggested that be done to Mission Impossible theme music. Mr. White laughed politely and said they would consider it. It's amazing what you can get away with being an editor.

Pinion makes its reader available freely (following the Adobe model of distribution) and charges for the Desktop Packager, on which rights are created. 

Price is $299

NMW - Same Place Next Year (Hopefully)

Having the show up for sale doesn't mean you can't plan for the next one. Reed Exhibitions has scheduled NMW 2007 for March 12-15, 2007. The NMW website doesn't mention the location but at this years show a sign stated that it would again be in Rosemont. Fine with me. It is SO conveniently located from O'Hare. Several hotels are only a short walk away. I stayed at the Hotel Sofitel, part of a French chain of hotels. It has free shuttle service to and from the airport. It connects via an elevated walkway so you never have to step foot outside. Rooms are bigger than most downtown hotels. The rate through the NMW travel site was $145/day (whereas the hotel website showed a $270/day rate).  The most pleasant surprise was that the food at the hotel was actually good (see review on TenTravelTips)

National Manufacturing Week 2006 Wrap Up - Part 1

Here are some highlights of the show not covered by previous posts.

Crowd gathers for SolidWorks presentation. Despite a big booth at the show, which is typical for SolidWorks, the show was not attended by SolidWorks's top executives. Neither John McEleney (CEO) or Jon Hirschtick (co-founder) were there. NDES has become a second-tier show for SolidWorks. They may prefer to concentrate show dollars on SolidWorks World, their annual user meeting, which they now bill as the "biggest MCAD show."

Fluent was showing how well their CFD product works with the major MCAD programs from CATIA, UGS, SolidWorks and Pro/E. However, no one would supply any dirt on the biggest CAE merger in recent years: ANSYS buying Fluent. In fact, they say they only heard of the deal (reported in February) through the wire. Gotta love those corporate communication people. However, they see it more as a merger of equals rather than an acquisition as both ANSYS were each among the biggest players in their respective areas (ANSYS in FEA and Fluent in CFD).

The deal positions ANSYS as a CAE juggernaut, finally eclipsing MSC as a CAE leader. But how will it shake up the two companies? "We expect to operate as before," said a Fluent employee. That may be overly optimistic as most companies will trim back staff after a merger. "Support" divisions often suffer the most. We at TenLinks often notice a decrease in personnel in marketing and PR staff. Usually, one CEO is put out to pasture and the remaining CEO picks his faithful for top spots. However, there does seem to be a greater tendency to leave companies where they were rather than try to house them all under one roof. Not surprising since cross country relocations can cost $25,000 to $100,000 a shot.

CADENCE editor reunion: me with Peter Sheerin, former tech editor for CADENCE magazine, now a HAM radio buff

A greeter lures attendees at National Manufacturing Week into the NDES pavilion.

NDES Best of Show - Surfware TrueMill

The coolest thing at the National Design Show? Surfware's TrueMill technology. TrueMill is a way to cut material in an efficient manner. Most CAM programs start cutting on the outside of a cutout and then continue with parallel paths towards the center. TrueMill Technology, which Surfware has patented, takes into account, feed rate, depth of cut and spindle speed to optimize maximum material removal. Surfware also claims that TrueMill lessens the risk of the cutter burying itself, minimizes tool changes and increases cutter life.

Dominic Lanzillotta (left) and Bill Horvat of Surfware display TrueMill technology.

The pattern resulting from TrueMill is anything but the “lawn-mowed” look created by conventional CAM. In fact, it can even look haphazard. But wouldn’t you think that employing a computer to optimize tool paths for maximum removal of material would be a no-brainer, rather than just creating tool paths that look pretty?

If They Made Me King…

If TrueMill is indeed as good as it claims to be, Surware should allow other CAM companies to license it. Not only would it validate and popularize the technology, but it could result in higher revenues, with every CAM company using it in effect becoming a Surfware customer.

Fate of NMW—and Trade Shows in General

What is to become of National Manufacturing Week? At one time, it was the must-attend show for anyone doing mechanical design and the must-exhibit show for all MCAD vendors. Now it’s up for sale.

There was a time when trade shows were gold mines. During my days with Miller Freeman and CADENCE, I heard a successful trade show could rake in 80% of its revenue as profit. Trade shows like NDES and AEC/Systems were the plums of publishing companies, raking in big bucks when their magazines (called “books”) often operated marginally in very competitive environments. In fact, it was a widely held belief that trade magazine suffered the second highest mortality rate of all enterprises. The highest mortality rate was restaurants but that was before the dot com bust.

Attendance at industry trade shows has gone down over the years. Why? Here are some possible reasons:

1. 9/11. After 9/11, travel in general suffered, and business travel to national trade shows suffered along with it.
2. The Internet. Even after people, started to feel safe about getting on a plane, they realized that they had been able to get all the information they needed about products and services through the web. These days what executive will send his CAD manager to a trade show to research MCAD systems, at a cost of thousands of dollars, when all that information can be found on the companies’ websites So the vultures are circling over Rosemont’s conventions center. One industry observer has been quoted as Rosemont is where shows go to die. But I don’t think so. They will need to reinvent themselves, however.

If They Made Me King…

Here’s what I would do.

1. Concentrate on a number of regional shows, rather than one big national show. It’s easy to for a manager to send a staffer out for a day to a local show. No hotel. No flight. You may have to pick up their parking and admission fee (which is usually nothing if all they want is to see the exhibits). Also, getting out of the office for a day would be a great perk.
2. Concentrate on hardware. Engineers love to pickup and handle hardware. You can’t duplicate that on the computer, like you can with software.
3. Perk up the conference schedule. “Classes” that are just sales pitches by vendors don’t hold any credibility. Take a clue from user conferences, such as Autodesk University and SolidWorks World. These have actually GROWN in attendance. Why? Users are guaranteed to be more useful to their companies because classes are packed with useful tutorials, tips, etc.

CoolTech – SpinFire Professional 8.0 Preview

Actify will be releasing SpinFire Professional 8.0 mid April but they were showing it at NMW. SpinFire is a viewer for MCAD models. As with all viewers, it comes in handy when you don’t have access to the native MCAD program—plus they can often have nifty viewing features that are in advance of the native CAD programs themselves.

The coolest thing I saw in SpinFire Professional 8.0 was the viewing of GD&T annotation on a 3D model. That alone could be worth the price of admission. If you rotate a 3D model with SpinFire, the annotation constantly appears to face the viewer. The proper order of the GD&T inside a feature control frame stay in proper order even if the model is turned 180 degrees, as ASME standards dictate. And if that is not cool enough, annotations on oblique planes (those not facing the viewer) fade out so they don’t obscure annotations more germane to the present view. I asked if there was a way to turn off annotations in a particular plane, rather than ghosting them. They guys at Actify thought that was a great idea, maybe that would be in a future release. (I love it when these smart CAD guys humor us pretending-to-be-smart editors).

Also noteworthy in SpinFire Professional 8.0

• exploded views easily created and saved, which can be animated
• easily find center of areas
• chain edges together for distance calculations

Rules-Based Engineering: An Idea Ahead of Its Time?

Is rules-based engineering something users cannot quite see the need for? It may be unfair to judge based on the paltry turnout at a recent presentation by David Vredenburgh of the importance of RuleStream at the recent NDES. Or maybe it was the 3:00 time slot, when most attendees’ brains are so overloaded they can only think of the relief that dinner will provide.

But the man makes some really good points. Consider this:

1. Your company only has resources to respond to only so many RFQs. Say it’s 20%. If you could respond to 25%, even with the same win rate, you’d get more contracts. By the way, RuleStream will help you do that.

2. But why, be happy with 25%? Many contracts are awarded as soon as a acceptable bid comes in. Rulestream, with automated configuration management, will help you send bids sooner. An example cited how the win rate of 20% was increased to 25% just by getting bids in faster.

Vredenburgh kept his presentation non-technical. Perhaps he had heard Stephen Hawking the physicist say for every equation you show, you lose half your audience. Vredenburgh only had 10 in his audience, he could not spare any. But I wanted to see what was under the hood. Rules-based software is based on equations. To create some of the flashy configuration changes shown in RuleStreams PowerPoint presentation must have taken a boatload of equations. I suspect that is why rules-based engineering has not caught on. But that’s just me.

Joke: When you do your cost/benefit analysis that shows rules-based engineering reducing manpower by 5 people, remember you actually have to let those 5 people go. If you repurpose them by making them wash windows, your company will not save any money but will have really clean windows. You had to be there.

Vendor Presentations-- Useless?

It’s tough putting together a conference schedule. You have to entice users with great subjects and find expert – and entertaining—speakers. I did it a few times when I was editor of CADENCE magazine when its parent company, Miller Freeman, was contracted to do Autodesk University. I also did it for a smaller show, MechanCAD, which only made it for two years. Setting up a conference schedule takes months of work. And you may not be able to offer speakers any money, not a popular notion for many who have only their time to sell.

Perhaps because of this, many trade shows resort to vendor presentations. Companies will gladly send people to talk about how good their their products are. You don’t need to pay them to do that. AEC/Systems was like that. NDES, where I am now, is full of vendor presentations. I imagine many trade shows have resorted to filling in the gaps with vendor presentations.

Companies ostensibly agree to talk about “industry trends” or in generalities but more often than not, the talk will turn to how their products offer the perfect solution and the whole thing becomes a thinly disguised sales pitch. And if the speaker has a conscience and tones it down, there’s almost always a bias.

What do you think? I know if you are a vendor, you will disagree. I’d like to hear from users if they have found vendor presentations useful. Ever.