The CAD Insider

Has SpaceClaim Found the Future Interface?

Not long after I got my Blackberry Tour, I handed it to my wife so she would be properly impressed. She instinctively touched the screen to access an application. "No, no, it's not a touch screen, " I say. I grabbed it back and showed her how to use the little trackball to coax the cursor over the icon, then click on it. But the moment was lost. I realized my new toy was already yesterday's technology. Thanks a lot, Apple!

In the blink of an eye, a UI transformation is complete. Apple was a genius 20 years ago when it came out with a little white one button mouse and it's a genius again for throwing the mouse away. To use a touchscreen just once is enough to forever alter your expectation of an interface.

SpaceClaim has a touchscreen interface shown here as two fingers used to rotate model.

In our industry, SpaceClaim is right there. They're the first to use touchscreen technology as a CAD interface. Blake Courter, SpaceClaim's cofounder, is giving me a demo. He is using GoToMeeting, so I have to imagine his fingers using the touchscreen... a little wierd. I play the old skeptic. "But are many CAD users using touchscreens?" I ask, forcing Blake to admit that, no, they are not. SpaceClaim is ahead of demand for this technology. But I should be commending SpaceClaim for having the guts go boldly where no man has gone before -- in CAD, anyway. Build it and they will come. Isn't that what Apple did? Companies can keep making safe little incremental changes -- or take big steps, go for paradigm shifts, singularities... whatever the business bestsellers are calling it these days.

There may have been many missteps and wrong paths in innovation, or even good ideas badly implemented. But the future belongs to companies who are not afraid to try and keep trying. 

 

Minority Report - totally cool UI but most CAD operators cannot wave their hands in front of them for 8 hrs a day.

In all honesty, I can't see designers and engineers all using tablet laptops with touchscreens. For one thing, they are too expensive. For another, they don't have  the workstation-type horsepower MCAD needs. Even if there is a desktop monitor with a touchscreen (Blake says he has one), I think I'd get really tired of holding my arms out in front of me trying to touch it. 

But how about a big touch screen in front of me, slightly tilted, like small desk, or the way old drafting tables were? Moving models around on that, mating parts, zooming panning... it would be a breeze. I could rest my arms. Can you picture that? Any one like Apple in the audience?

Quick Graph: Impact of Buildings on Environment

 

It's less about your SUV than your house and office. From a US Green Building Council press release:

"Buildings in the United States are responsible for 39% of CO2 emissions, 40% of energy consumption, 13% water consumption and 15% of GDP per year, making green building a source of significant source of economic and environmental opportunity. Greater building efficiency can meet 85% of future U.S. demand for energy, and a national commitment to green building has the potential to generate 2.5 million American jobs."

Publishing Catalogs and User Manuals the New Way

Having tech illustrators manually drawing isometric views for user manuals and other documentation is so yesterday. If you company still does this, you could score big points by introducing products like Anark's. Anark Core takes CAD data -- as well as ERP, MES, even SQL database and creates a PDF file which can be distributed electronically or printed. No artist required. Not only are links to the data maintained so if something changes in the design (I know that doesn't happen in your company), the PDF is updated automatically. And what is really cool is that in the 3D PDF you can move the image around and zoom  in and out. Try to do that on paper!

Though CAD has certainly displaced manual drafting -- at least in this country -- I get the feeling that catalog publishing, creation of user manuals and other documentation is still slogging along manually. There is a raft of tools available to rectify the situation (see TenLinks list 3D and Web Publishing for CAD). And what does Anark bring of unique value compared to its competition, I ask.

"We work with data further upstream," says Scott Collins, Senior Vice President of Product Development at Anark, who is giving me a web demo. "Plus, we are recipe based." Recipes are what Anark calls the recording of a procedure. I imagine these are like macros: the software remembers what you have done so it can be repeated. Recipes are saved as XML files.

Anark can read just about all major CAD format, staying current to within months of CAD file format changes. You can mark up and annotate. The result is saved as a "pure" PDF, requiring no downloads or plug-ins when using Acrobat's universally accepted readers -- unlike the competitors, says Scott. Anark is is an Adobe Solution Provider. A copy of Acrobat Pro Extended is included with Anark products. Anark 3.0 was first mentioned in an Adobe webinar back in August.

Anark Core 3.0 products are to be released as early as next week. Anark Core Workstation sells for $4,400 to $10K, the server edition sells for $5,400 to $10k per user.

Find out more about Anark at http://www.anark.com/.