Novedge Pulse™ of Ralph Grabowski

As just one or two CAD vendors roar full throttle into cloud services in 2012, Infoworld writer David Linthicum reminds us that there are three issues that he sees being/becoming the problem:Blunder No. 1: Security "specifically, the need for identity-based  [more...]

With some 500 articles added to CADdigest.com each month from editorial sources around the CAD world, it can be hard to find the new material which we are commissioning from well-known writers and bloggers.To help solve the problem, we started a Twitter account today  [more...]

In upFront.eZine this week, we have for your reading pleasure... 1. PTC Faces 2012 with Cuts, Reorganization2. From the PTC Q1 Earnings Call Transcript3. Out of the Inbox, and other regular columns.You can read all about the business of CAD at www.upfrontezine.com/2012/upf-720.htm  [more...]

Friday evening 7pm. Fort Langley BC, Canada. Our youngest daughter is one of the organizers, getting nine of her 4th-year art school friends to pitch in $60 each to host their art in a commercial art gallery for three weeks.The show is called Continuum, and doing my  [more...]

It's not just the Big Boys who are CAD viewings and editors for portable Android and iOS devices. Eric Pousse has been writing CAD programs for handheld devices for years now, and just last week he emailed me that a new version of iPocket Draw for iOS devices is  [more...]

In upFront.eZine this week, we have for your reading pleasure... 1. New Webzine Launched 2. KeyCreator Compare - Q&A3. Out of the Inbox, and other regular columns.You can read all about the business of CAD at upfrontezine.com/2012/upf-719  [more...]

My daughter's working through the diamond level for ice dance, the highest level in Canadian figure skating. She's been skating for 15 years now (see photo below), continuing on after graduation from high school -- the point at which most other figure skaters  [more...]

From the Universitätsbauamt Heidelberg in Germany, Konstantin Sakellaris writes to tell me about three commands that he programmed using the C# .NET API of Bricscad. As much as V12 is an advance over earlier releases of Bricscad, it lacks commands like Sweep, Loft,  [more...]

A serious flaw in iPad is that it is not engineering-oriented; well, the problem lies with Apple, who doesn't understand the special demands of our industry.Some of what we need are listed below, and none of which is offered by iPad:lots and lots of RAMfull OpenGL  [more...]

In upFront.eZine this week, we have for your reading pleasure... 1. Exclusive! sgCore from Geometros2. TurboViewer SDK for iOS     - Q&A 3. Out of the Inbox, and other regular columns.You can read all about the business of CAD at upfrontezine.com/2012/upf-718  [more...]

No, it doesn't depend on the cloud for performing its calculations. Geometros (of Russia, naturally) is porting their sgCore C++/C# solid geometry library for CAD development to iOS mobile devices, and then to Android. Since 2006, the library has been available  [more...]

Mike Whusberg over at Geometros alerted me to their C++/C# solid geometry library for CAD development. They have versions for Mac and Windows, with iOS coming soon.If your CAD system does not support the kinds of entities you need to work with, then Geometros suggesets  [more...]

Now this is all at the speculation stage, folks, or maybe a step or two later. You might recall my interview in upFront.eZine #713 with Geomagic, in which senior product manager Kevin Scofield  said his company was interested in going down-market:The company  [more...]

In exclusive coverage in today's upFront.eZine, Intergraph reveals its plan to give away a free 2D piping design add-on for AutoCAD 2009-2012."We estimate that no more than 100,000 are using AutoCAD for intelligent 3D plant design; the rest could benefit  [more...]

What? IMSI/Design was the first with a 3D DWG viewer for iOS, and now are the first with an SDK, software development kit. Who? The idea is that IMSI/Design provides the DWG view/markup engine, on which other programmers can write custom apps for their own needs.How  [more...]

We welcome back our readers to the new year with our exclusive interview in today's upFront.eZine, in which PTC reveals its plans for mobile computing in 2012 and 2013PTC's vice president of product management David Blair briefs us about the iOS versions of  [more...]

Your chance to upgrade to CADWorx Plant Professional 2012 and pay only 30% to died with the birth of the new year. Officially known as the "Intergraph CADWorx Reinstatement Program Phase III," the upgrade price jumped to 50% on January 1 + the cost of one year of maintenance  [more...]

SPEC's Graphics and Workstation Performance Group is looking for applications, algorithms, and workloads for a proposed workstation performance benchmark. More specifically, they want to measure the performance of workstations running popular applications -- without  [more...]

When press releases cross my desk (er, Inbox), I usually give them two paragraphs to make sense, or else get tossed. Here's one that arrived at 6:26am this morning, and I can't really tell what it does. I thought I'd let you read its second paragraph to  [more...]

Peter Preston  of The Observer and Guardian newspapers writes, "If you choose your own news, you'll be less well read." His argument is that all that information on the interwebs allows people to limit their reading to items that confirm their biases. He  [more...]

This is the only book on the planet that tells you how to customize Bricscad. Customizing Bricscad V12 is the 7th edition, and offers you the following newness:New chapter on FieldsNew chapter on customizing mouse buttonsUpdated text and figures for V12Now 426 pages  [more...]

Solid Modeling Solutions offers a suite of NURBS-based geometry libraries: SDLib, NLib, GSNLib, TSNLib and SMLib  For 2012, the company plans to add the following functions:AssertValid will continue to be expanded to detect more error conditions and to support  [more...]

Autodesk has a cloud infrastructure for its software, and so I wondered if it is possible to use a third-party cloud service, such as SugarSync or DropBox. (I have accounts with both, but use SugarSync since it has the advantage of optionally restricting shared folders  [more...]

Imaginit Technologies is one of the largest Autodesk dealers in the world, and late last month they launched a new portal for its customers around the world -- as well as non-customers (or guest users, who get free registration and some content from the site.) Actual  [more...]

Mobility and Mobile Applications  By 2014, 46% of employees will be mobile only (IDC research). 2011 saw the introduction of many design apps in the industry. We’ll see this continue as more and more employees (and designers) cut the cord from the confines  [more...]

While Autodesk is still talking about adding 3D to its AutoCAD WS software, IMSI/soft has delivered its second release of TurboViewer Pro, which displays 2D and 3D CAD drawings. The non-Pro version is free; release 2.0 of the Pro edition is $20.The primary feature  [more...]

This is the last issue before the annual Christmas break. Look for the next issue of upFront.eZine on January 9, 2012. In upFront.eZine this week, we have for your reading pleasure... 1. FirstTrace's Take on Taking the Cloud Private2. Readers Respond: What  [more...]

In upFront.eZine this week, we have for your reading pleasure...  1. What the Cloud Really Means    - What is the Cloud?    - Virtualized Software is A Next Generation     - Meanwhile, Back in the CAD World   [more...]

China is well-known for developing its own technology, such as its own cell phone system, Linux-based operating system, and space program. It does not want to rely on foreigners (primarily Americans, since they develop most of today's technology); the cost, however  [more...]

by Roopinder Tara, Tenlinks.comPart 4: Autodesk's Strategy is No-StrategyMaybe for the millionth time Carl Bass, CEO of Autodesk, is questioned about the strategy of giving away software, or making it really cheap. The analyst who asked this question at the media  [more...]

Back in April, WorldCAD Access reported on a law suit between a Boston architect and a trio of companies. One of the three, TransMagic, specializes in translating CAD data. In http://worldcadaccess.typepad.com/blog/2011/04/hauled-to-court.html, I wrote:Transmagic uses  [more...]

In upFront.eZine this week, we have for your reading pleasure...1. Infinite Z's zSpace    - zSpace Product and Branding    - Q&A 2. The Cloud is Dead? I Respond3. Out of the Inbox, and other regular columns. You can read  [more...]

Gstarsoft of Beijing over the weekend released a public beta of the next release of its namesake software, the IntelliCAD-based GstarCAD 2012.Probably the highlight is that Gstarsoft seems to have managed to implement the entire dynamic blocks environment (BEdit and  [more...]

by Roopinder Tara, Tenlinks.comOne might think Autodesk would be content in hosting what is by far the biggest CAD gathering in the world, but it's not. It is inflating the numbers: in addition to the 8,000+ that are expected to be here, Autodesk is also counting  [more...]