Novedge Pulse™ of Kenneth Wong

At 3:42 PM Pacific Time today, when I started writing this blog post, GrabCAD status showed 1,229,266 downloads, 19,249 CAD models, shared by 72,419 members. By the time this blog post went live at 4:40 PM, the counter has risen to 1,229,533 downloads, 19,250 CAD models,  [more...]

Once, stress analysis was an optional module, available for purchase from the CAD vendors’ software partners. Today, most CAD packages offer some type of basic linear analysis feature, embedded right into the 3D modeling window. Today, the growing interest among  [more...]

CD-adapco is updating its STAR-CCM+ engineering simulation package. In v7.02, set to release at the end of February, the company expands its 3D CAD reading features. The software now imports tessellated formats, along with PLMXML data. Other improvements in CAD interaction  [more...]

In about two weeks, if you find yourself at SolidWorks World, you can stop by Luxion Keyshot‘s Booth (406) for a demonstration of the company’s latest rendering software, KeyShot 3. Released in November 2011, KeyShot 3 marks the debut of an optional animation  [more...]

In 2007, when Adobe released Acrobat 3D Version 8, it hailed a new CAD translator and its ability to “convert virtually any CAD file into a highly compressed 3D PDF file.” Squarely targeting the manufacturing crowd, the brochure said, “Use the de  [more...]

IMSI/Design‘s TurboViewer, previously only available on iOS, is now available in Android Market. Like the version for iPad, Android TurboViewer is available for free. For $3.99, you may upgrade to TurboViewer X. The Android version of TurboViewer lets you send  [more...]

Earlier this week, we — the three judges — agonized over our upcoming decisions to pick one from the three worthy ideas we had before us: Jason Cox’s remote-controlled mouse, detailed in Google SketchUp; Ray Kelley’s bottle cap blaster, designed  [more...]

Editor’s Note: In early December 2011, DE invited readers and fans to submit their ideas for a cubicle toy. After the honorary judges have reviewed and scored more than 80 entries, three finalists emerged. Jason Cox’s remote-controlled fake mouse is one of the  [more...]

Editor’s Note: In early December 2011, DE invited readers and fans to submit their ideas for a cubicle toy. After the honorary judges have reviewed and scored more than 80 entries, three finalists emerged. Mark Norwood’s water-spraying Sherman tank is one  [more...]

Editor’s Note: In early December 2011, DE invited readers and fans to submit their ideas for a cubicle toy. After the honorary judges have reviewed and scored more than 80 entries, three finalists emerged. Ray Kelley’s bottle cap blaster is one of the finalists.  [more...]

This week, we checked in with the finalists of our DE Cubicle Toy Design Contest to learn more about who they are. They are presented here in no particular order (so no, you may not conclude who the judges favor more or less based on the order in which they appear  [more...]

Creo Direct 1.0, part of PTC’s Creo app family, was “built from the ground up,” in PTC’s own words. That warrants an explanation, as PTC already has a robust, commercial-class direct modeler. Under the campaign to remake itself as the house  [more...]

As the new year rang in, Inforbix’s COO Vic Sanchez began shooting a movie. The star of his short film was a mobile app, the outcome of the company’s efforts to bring search functions to mobile devices. With the help of a digital camera mounted on a tripod,  [more...]

If you’re a member of Local Motors, you could get access to portions of Siemens PLM Software’s Solid Edge (SE) CAD package for as little as $19.95 a month. Local Motors, which pioneered the idea of crowd-sourced automotive design and do-it-yourself manufacturing,  [more...]

IMSI/Design is laying the groundwork for a mobile app ecosystem, revolving around its TurboViewer app (currently available for iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad). To entice other developers to come on board, the company plans to offer a free SDK (software developer kit)  [more...]

If you’re among those attending the annual Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Nevada (CES, Las Vegas Convention Center, Jan. 10-13, 2012), you can try cloning yourself, first digitally, then in polymer as a miniature 3D-printed object. The 3D conversion  [more...]

ERP (enterprise resource plannning), PLM (product lifecycle management), and BPM (business process management) belong to the same class of corporate acronyms: They all make you cringe. In many cases, they turn out to be precursors to lengthy implementation periods,  [more...]

Just a few days before the holiday break, two honorary judges and I began reviewing the entries received for the DE cubicle toy design contest. By honorary judges, I meant to say I was honored by their willingness to help me score and pick deserving submissions. The  [more...]

PTC Creo View, part of the company’s ambitious Creo 1.0 app collection, was formerly known as PTC ProductView. It’s a lightweight standalone viewer, a program that lets you view, annotate, markup, share, and animate 3D CAD design files without a CAD program.  [more...]

Consumer confidence is rising, judging from the stream of shoppers crashing through the gates of shopping malls during pre- and post-Christmas sales. And consumers are not the only ones opening their wallets for good deals. Three days before Christmas, Autodesk went  [more...]

In software development, even giving away software seems to come with an expense. Last week, Kickstand, responsible for the popular StretchMesh plug-in for Autodesk Maya software, decided to “[launch] a campaign to evolve StretchMesh Surface Deformation software into  [more...]

CPU maker Intel‘s new architecture, dubbed Knights Corner, represents the move from multicore (two, four, six, eight …) to many integrated cores (MIC, more than 50 Intel processing cores on a single chip). Intel describes MIC as a coprocessor, a power-booster  [more...]

The scale and frequency with which simulation is performed today — usually in tens of thousands — have spawned a new class of software, targeting simulation process management. Dassault Systemes‘ Insight falls into this category. “Isight provides  [more...]

With EcoDesigner plug-in from Trayak, Solid Edge joins the growing number of CAD packages that give you the option to perform lifecycle assessment (LCA) of your design. Like Sustainability Xpress for SolidWorks and Eco Materials Adviser for Autodesk Inventor, EcoDesigner  [more...]

Even though SolidWorks hasn’t done much to reach out to the iPad user community, the company seems to be acknowledging the tablet’s appeal among its customers. In a promotion that began running earlier this month, SolidWorks promises, “When you purchase  [more...]

Project Falcon, Autodesk‘s latest technology preview at Autodesk Labs, is flying straight into the chambers where specialists conduct wind tunnel tests. The downloadable application functions as an independent software program, but it’s designed to complement  [more...]

If you’re a fan of classical mythology, you might remember that, when Pandora opened the box the Gods had given her for safekeeping, she unwittingly unleashed pestilence, torment, and diseases upon mankind (Hesiod’s Works and Days). Last month, at the Venetian  [more...]

In 2007, addressing the press crowd inside Zeum Theater in San Francisco, Autodesk CEO Carl Bass took a few jabs at his competitors who specialize in PLM (product lifecycle management) software suites. His memorable words were, “The only people who need PLM are  [more...]

Early this week in Las Vegas, the weather is expected to be sunny, with temperatures in the low 70s Fahrenheit  But along the marble-tiled corridors bridging The Palazzo and The Venetian, at St. Mark’s Square by the Grand Canal (reconstructed beneath a painted  [more...]

On the eve of Thanksgiving, Dassault Systemes launched what could be a powerful comeback against Autodesk Alias and Maya. CATIA Natural Sketch, according to Dassault, “brings together the intuitiveness of creative 2D painting gestures and the power of accurate,  [more...]

A prank stapler that shoots projectiles, a motion-triggered device that plays the theme from Psycho, a miniature catapult that can be adjusted with an iPad — these are just a few of the ideas we’ve received (so far) from people who’re in the running  [more...]

Just a few months ago, 3D Systems snatched up Alibre, a low-cost CAD package that’s gaining ground among makers and hobbyists. This week, the company signed an agreement to buy Z Corp, a competing 3D printer vendor with color-printing technology. Among competing  [more...]

The simplest way to create a supercomputer is to consolidate a bunch of computers into a cluster, producing what’s generally known as a high-performance computing (HPC) system. Clusters are the best approach (in some cases, the only approach) to tackling complex  [more...]

In simulation-driven engineering projects, the critical decisions you make to your design — to increase or decrease your engine housing’s height, to enlarge or reduce a tube’s diameter, or to change the angle of a piston rod — is determined by findings  [more...]