HUNTSVILLE, AL (Solid Edge ST4 Launch) – The enhancements are coming fast and furious at the Solid Edge ST 4 Launch event. I cannot keep up.*  I’m catching a few highlights, especially the ones that are applauded by the attendees. Like Range Offset Value, no more picking on empty space, prevention of assembly  relationship loops, shadows that appear correctly even on photo backgrounds (done with an invisible plane)… The cynical and those with the competition might say some enhancements are fixes for problems Solid Edge itself has created. Yeah, that happens. But many are bona fide and welcome improvements. If I was a Solid Edge customer I’d be doing cartwheels.

As Dan Staples, Director of Solid Edge development (aka Papa Edge) lists even more improvements, I realize I am witnessing a genuine and concerted effort to improve the product – an effort contrary to the growing belief in the industry that design software is as good as it can be, that all CAD software can basically do everything, all the features needed have already been added, that CAD software has have achieved parity, that it is more or less a commodity.

Bull.

Thank you, Solid Edge, for not giving up, for recognizing that, yes, even with one of the most robust and easy to use MCAD software applications in existence, there is still room for improvement, that users’ lives can still be made easier — and there are still customers to be won.

At 250, the attendance at the ST4 Launch may seem small compared to the big annual CAD conferences. Autodesk and  SolidWorks measure attendance at their annual events by the thousands.  Still, this “launch” is significant in other ways. A gathering of Solid Edge users is a somewhat of a break from the mother ship. Siemens PLM has for several years attempted to lump Solid Edge users with UG users under the PLMWorld umbrella. There was only one problem: Solid Edge users stayed away in droves. The few that did attend PLM Worlds regretted it, telling tales of snooty UG users, being unable to find others like themselves (often cited as the single most valuable benefit of user conferences) and a conference program almost completely filled with UG classes. “We were the red-headed step child,” says one Solid Edge user.

*Get all that I missed at What’s New in Solid Edge ST4, by Siemens PLM (PDF)

I’ve probably sat through hundreds of presentations given by excited CAD executives. So many times has one of them pulled out his iPhone to make a point that I am sick of it. I can see it coming as they reach in. Then they pull it out. It’s followed by something clever, like:

“10 years ago, it took a roomful of computers to do what this little thing does.”

“I don’t need a user manual to operate this.”

Hey, look, just cause you have an iPhone, it doesn’t mean we all do. We might secretly want one, but that only makes us resentful.

And stop porting all your software to every damn Apple product. Have any of you tried to look at E-size drawings on an iPhone for more than a few seconds? Yeah, it’s stupidly small. How about CFD on an MacBook Air?

I don’t have any Apple computers. Nor am I yearning for one. My daughter is. She is way cooler than me. But when I look around, I don’t see any engineer using them. Not for production work. Just writing this will ensure that I will be pelted by Mac enthusiasts, but like mysterious forces others insist upon, I still deny their existence without visual proof.

And while I’m at it, can you guys stop trying to relate with us common folk. It’s not coming off. Your experiences are not our experiences. We are not jetting around the world. A few of us lucky bastards may come to your annual user conferences. We don’t mind that you have to go all over the world, that’s ok, you run multinational companies. But even if your tools of the trade are Smartphones and iPads, ours are still workstations with big hulking monitors, usually two of them. You can keep issuing news that this and that is now running on a laptop. Means nothing to us.

Oh, and another thing. We all might all have wives and drive cars in common, so we might let you get away with a little good old fashitioned wife/driving humor. But when the wife is driving a Mercedes…not cool.

Anybody else got any pet peeves? Besides bloggers going on rants, I mean.

After seeing wondrous projects at Smart Geometry 2011 in Copenhagen, I wanted to know more about how GenerativeComponents worked so I tracked down Huw Roberts, Bentley’s Global Marketing Director, to answer a few questions. As you might guess from Huw’s title, GenerativeComponents is just a small piece of Huw’s world “but an important one.”  

Bentley’s Huw Roberts champions GenerativeComponents in annual conference in Copenhagen

Even after the conference was over, I had trouble categorizing GenerativeComponents. Was it a technology? A module? An application? A programming language? A development kit? What?

It’s an application, says Huw. It’s also an environment. Luckily, he was able to explain.

“You can elect to work with GenerativeComponents is three ways. One is in a graphical environment, with models. Like a CAD program. Or you can work with just the script. GenerativeComponents also generates a graph or flow chart, which is the third way. Each can drive the other. A change in the model will change the flow chart. You can drive the model by changing the script.”

Changing the script to change the model somewhat similar to parametric modeling.  Any comparison between GenerativeComponents and parametric modelers, such as Revit?

“Oh, it’s so much more, “says Huw. Sure programs like Revit have rules and constraints, but GenerativeComponents scripting is far more versatile. “For example, try to put a window in a roof in Revit and call it a skylight. Good luck.”  GenerativeComponents allow you to be much freer in your design, more creative. Certainly those sorts of applications are great for floor plans, basic layouts, BIM, but with GenerativeComponents you can do things like size your windows to the results of a thermal analysis.

GenerativeComponents is offered free to one and all. You don’t even have to be a Bentley subscriber. What’s in it for Bentley? Why would a for-profit company be so generous, not only in the distribution of the software, but also sponsoring annual conferences, schools, etc.?

“We feel that getting GenerativeComponents out to a wide audience will result in a better technology,” says Huw. “Of course, Bentley does benefit in using the technology in its applications.”

I have to ask about Grasshopper, very much in evidence at the GenerativeComponents conference, even though it appears to compete with GenerativeComponents. “A lot of people do use Grasshopper,” concedes Huw. “It is also free.  However, it only works with Rhino, which you have to buy. Also, many Grasshopper users will find limits and then use GenerativeComponents. They find it more robust and it works better with professional applications.” So GenerativeComponents is positioned more as industrial strength solution that users graduate to? “You could say that,” says Huw.

Bentley’s largesse is also apparent in their decision to make GenerativeComponents stand alone, allowing it to work with not only Bentley apps, but Autodesk apps by virtue of DWG output. 

For more information and to download GenerativeComponents, go to www.generativecomponents.com.

LAS VEGAS, NV (PlanetPTC 2011), June 14, 2011 – A chance to address your top customers is not an opportunity to be missed. CEO Jim Heppelmann has taken the main stage during the annual PTC user group meeting. He wastes no time. He talks fast.

“I’m an engineer,” Heppelmann tells us.  He has already been introduced as a tinkerer, someone with a “big workshop” who “loves to visit customers.” It’s a tough sell.  The crowd has been rather reserved. It is their second or third day in Las Vegas. By now people are moving a bit slower in hallways of the mega-complex that is Caesar’s Palace casino. I’ve had to go around them.  I guess even engineers just wanna have fun. It is Las Vegas, after all. Don’t ask; don’t tell. During breakfast, the coffee runs out.

Heppelmann has been in the top position for 9 months. He replaced Dick Harrison, who is nowhere to be seen. 

So what does Heppelmann bring to the show, his first big public user gig as CEO? A boundless energy, for one thing.  His words come quick, like a machine gun. Only once did he stumble and that was over which one of the new PTC products does what. But who isn’t confused?

PTC has blown up the old brands Pro/E and CoCreate in favor of a myriad of Creo products. Why would PTC throw a grenade in its own house? One might argue CoCreate, a MCAD also-ran, might have needed a boost. But why mess with the venerable Pro/ENGINEER? Why “abandon a name that’s synonymous with 3D?”* If anything, change the company name. The “Parametric” in PTC no longer tells the whole story.

Heppelmann tells how sales had been stagnant for years. A high level meeting was called. Hard questions were asked. Those who suggested the status quo was due to a mature market were challenged with the question: “Have all the problems been solved?”

But it was a rhetorical question.  A trap.

“No, they have not,” he answers himself. “These products are fundamentally hard to use! It was the elephant in the room.”

He is not done. The problem was deeper.

“Once upon a time, we were the innovators.  We had a great product. We had the only product. Somewhere along the way we became complacent.”

“We have the best parametric modeler in Pro/E,” he said. “We have CoCreate.” He lists other PTC applications. “Why don’t we think outside the box, put all them in the blender and see what frappe comes out?”

Those that didn’t share the vision may no longer be in PTC’s employ. Heppelmann had climbed to the his vaunted position to wait for consensus. “Only 2 of our executive staff were there 2 years ago.” I’m thinking if you don’t agree with Heppelmann, you don’t stick get to stick around too long.

Heppelmann is on a roll. He is taking a shot at the term CAD itself.

“We don’t call it CAD anymore. I think we can assume that all design is now computer aided.  It’s not 1970.”

Elephants. Frappes. Questioning “CAD” itself.  Amidst the distraction of wildly clashing metaphors, a lapse into subjects that usually put me to sleep (PDM, ERP), shaking the bedrock of TenLinks (a CAD site) and typical CEO bombast (“We are the leader and we’re opening our lead”), I have to mentally withdraw to preserve my sanity. But I think I’ve got what I need.

Basically, PTC, under Heppelmann, has put all its wood behind the new products. For better or worse, the old brands are going away. The new programs (apps) are smaller, lighter…modern!  It’s a move that ought to be applauded.  Sure, the hard core Pro/E users will bitch. However, most CAD insiders have been saying for many years that PTC needed to wake up and react to its shrinking influence in the market it once owned. PTC was the frog in the pot of water slowly heating, but never summoning the will to jump.

Well, the frog has jumped. We can guess how it will land, to be sure, but credit must go to Jim Heppelmann for not only recognizing the need to adjust course, but also being able to push it through the organization.

—

See entire keynote, PTC Corporate Strategy & Customer Executive Panel Discussion

*Sean Dotson, on Twitter

Under three teeny icons lies a whopper of an idea – one that promises to bring simulation into the early stages of the product cycle.

BOSTON, MA, May 25, 2011 (NAFEMS World Congress) – By now, we’ve all heard that we should be analyzing earlier in the product development cycle, about how the majority of lifecycle costs are determined during concept and early design phases. We’ve heard the scary stories how if only FEA had been done, the rework would not have happened, the tooling would have been correct, that millions of dollars would have been saved, the factory wouldn’t have had to close, and so on. Duly sobered, we may have sworn that, yes, indeed, we would do the analysis early. What else can you do? It’s like world peace. A damn good idea. You can’t argue against it.

But good intentions cannot withstand “I need this on my desk tomorrow– if you want to keep your job.”

The solution may come from Autodesk, who has an implementation of the early-analysis concept that is simply brilliant. I have to credit their newly formed SIM Squad for showing it to me at NAFEMS World Congress recently held in Boston.

(click for larger image)

The Autodesk MoldFlow Adviser Design plug-in’s three little icons promise a revolution in up-front CAE, providing instant readouts of manufacturability, cost and environmental impact. Note the wiper at different levels on each icon – an indication an analyis is being done in the background.

The Autodesk Moldflow Adviser Design plug-in puts 3 little icons on the screen of Autodesk Inventor, which the SIM Squad calls gauges. The user creates a plastic part in Inventor as they normally would. But as he is doing so, the “gauges” reflect the quality of the part, measuring manufacturability, cost, and environmental impact issues. The add-in is evaluating draft angle – or lack of it. Adequate undercuts. Wall thickness. Maybe a dozen other criteria of good plastic part design. You can use it to see sink marks. A whole lot of information can be found by clicking on the little warning marks that appear when inside the icons. They’ll even turn red if you’ve really screwed up. Look closely and you’ll see a little wiper that goes up and down over each icon. The SIM Squad tells me that indicates a full Moldflow analysis is occurring. A real analysis. In real time. Practically as the part is being created.

An Inventor user can click on one of the Autodesk Moldflow Adviser Design plug-In icons to see a list of potential problems. Each problem can be isolated onscreen. In this case undercuts are shown directly on an Inventor part model.

How is this even possible? Ok, I may be old enough to remember having to come back the next day to get the paper printout of an analysis, but I have conceded that today’s tools can spit out results during coffee breaks. But real-time analysis – that is just unreal.

No supercomputer was hidden under the demo table. I looked.

The SIM Squad tells me that the Moldflow Adviser plug-in (which also works in Pro/ENGINEER) is a precursor to similar implementations. So expect to see similar gauges for stress analysis (using Algor technology). And maybe even fluids, as Autodesk has also acquired Blue Ridge Numerics.

The University of New Mexico became the latest RhinoFabLab last week (see announcement). With  recent coverage of TechShop (some of it right here), I was reminded that RhinoFabLab concept has been around for quite some time.

When did RhinoFabLabs get started? And how are they different from TechShops? From FabLabs?

I sought out Robert McNeel, CEO of the company by the same name that makes Rhino. Bob tells me RhinoFabLabs started out as and still serves as a online support group for Rhino users who need to fabricate their designs, especially the more challenging ones.

“The online Rhino user community has always been an important part of what you get when you buy Rhino,” says Bob. “With RhinoFabLab (www.rhinofablab.com) we are just trying to make it easier to find information and/or the Rhino users that are most involved in the nitty gritty of the fabrication.”

“With RhinoFabLab, we are also trying to make it easier for Rhino users to find the fabrication experts willing and able to help them get started with digital fabrication.”

“20 years ago, this was done with online bulletin boards. Now we have the Web. The tools have changed,” says Bob. The tools Bob is referring to are the online tools, not the laser cutters, drills. lathes, etc.

“But is RhinoFabLab more than an online community? What about the machine shop, like the one in University of New Mexico,” I ask impatiently.

“Right, so for the last 2 years or so, we have been certifying machine shops,” says the ever-patient Bob. Indeed, to get a RhinoFabLab logo, you have to fill out an application and undergo an inspection. First of all, to be certified as RhinoFabLab, A shop must also be affiliated with an official Rhino training center. “We wouldn’t want to put our name on it and then find out that no one there knows what Rhino is.”

What’s the difference between RhinoFabLab and others, namely TechShop, or FabLab-inspired workshops?

“Well, clearly we cater to the Rhino user,” Bob tells me. “Also our users are actually using the labs in actual production of parts. At FabLabs, they may be making using their shop to make shop tools. TechShops may be making model airplanes or boats. RhinoFabLab users are actually making parts for the actual boats themselves.”

“Of course, hobbyists and tinkers are welcome,” Bob hastens to add. “Especially those that appreciate industrial grade processes and tools.”

So, for Bob the lines are clear. The other shops are used by hobbyists and tinkers. Rhino users are into serious manufacturing — or architecture, as in the case of UNM.

Different, but to some extent, similar. Like the FabLabs inspired by MIT’s Center for Bits and Atoms, RhinoFabLabs  uses “tools that cover the various leading-edge industrial methods and materials needed to design, analyze, and fabricate almost anything.” This according to the Rhino site.

The emphasis on manufacturing may explain why most RhinoFabLabs are overseas. I see only 2 in the US, but several in Latin America. There may be more in Europe and Asia but at the time of this writing, I was not able to see them on the RhinoFabLab website.

“You have to go where the manufacturing is,” says Bob. “Just not a lot of it in the US.”

Are RhinoFabLab open to the public, thinking of TechShops “gym membership” model?

“To the extent that they are in schools which are public institutions,” says Bob.

“Will the shops have only Rhino products?

“We don’t have any restriction on what type of organizational structure is behind a RhinoFabLab,” Bob says. “Of course, there is no reason for them to sign up if they don’t want to offer some kind of services to the general Rhino community.”

“Will you tolerate Inventor being used?” I realize I may be goading Bob. Autodesk is McNeel’s competitor. But I must know. Autodesk’s almost overwhelming support of TechLab threatens to crowd out competitive products. Will RhinoFabLab play that game?

“We realize people use other software,” says Bob. “We don’t demand exclusivity in RhinoFabLab. We understand that people need many software products to design and build products. RhinoFabLabs are open just like everything Rhino related. Open support forums, open files formats, open SDKs, etc.”

Find out more about RhinoFabLab, including how to get certified as one, here at http://www.rhino3d.com/arfl.htm

HUNTSVILLE, AL (Solid Edge ST4 Launch) – The enhancements are coming fast and furious at the Solid Edge ST 4 Launch event. I cannot keep up.*  I’m catching a few highlights, especially the ones that are applauded by the attendees. Like Range Offset Value, no more picking on empty space, prevention of assembly  relationship loops, shadows that appear correctly even on photo backgrounds (done with an invisible plane)… The cynical and those with the competition might say some enhancements are fixes for problems Solid Edge itself has created. Yeah, that happens. But many are bona fide and welcome improvements. If I was a Solid Edge customer I’d be doing cartwheels.

As Dan Staples, Director of Solid Edge development (aka Papa Edge) lists even more improvements, I realize I am witnessing a genuine and concerted effort to improve the product – an effort contrary to the growing belief in the industry that design software is as good as it can be, that all CAD software can basically do everything, all the features needed have already been added, that CAD software has have achieved parity, that it is more or less a commodity.

Bull.

Thank you, Solid Edge, for not giving up, for recognizing that, yes, even with one of the most robust and easy to use MCAD software applications in existence, there is still room for improvement, that users’ lives can still be made easier — and there are still customers to be won.

At 250, the attendance at the ST4 Launch may seem small compared to the big annual CAD conferences. Autodesk and  SolidWorks measure attendance at their annual events by the thousands.  Still, this “launch” is significant in other ways. A gathering of Solid Edge users is a somewhat of a break from the mother ship. Siemens PLM has for several years attempted to lump Solid Edge users with UG users under the PLMWorld umbrella. There was only one problem: Solid Edge users stayed away in droves. The few that did attend PLM Worlds regretted it, telling tales of snooty UG users, being unable to find others like themselves (often cited as the single most valuable benefit of user conferences) and a conference program almost completely filled with UG classes. “We were the red-headed step child,” says one Solid Edge user.

*Get all that I missed at What’s New in Solid Edge ST4, by Siemens PLM (PDF)

I’ve probably sat through hundreds of presentations given by excited CAD executives. So many times has one of them pulled out his iPhone to make a point that I am sick of it. I can see it coming as they reach in. Then they pull it out. It’s followed by something clever, like:

“10 years ago, it took a roomful of computers to do what this little thing does.”

“I don’t need a user manual to operate this.”

Hey, look, just cause you have an iPhone, it doesn’t mean we all do. We might secretly want one, but that only makes us resentful.

And stop porting all your software to every damn Apple product. Have any of you tried to look at E-size drawings on an iPhone for more than a few seconds? Yeah, it’s stupidly small. How about CFD on an MacBook Air?

I don’t have any Apple computers. Nor am I yearning for one. My daughter is. She is way cooler than me. But when I look around, I don’t see any engineer using them. Not for production work. Just writing this will ensure that I will be pelted by Mac enthusiasts, but like mysterious forces others insist upon, I still deny their existence without visual proof.

And while I’m at it, can you guys stop trying to relate with us common folk. It’s not coming off. Your experiences are not our experiences. We are not jetting around the world. A few of us lucky bastards may come to your annual user conferences. We don’t mind that you have to go all over the world, that’s ok, you run multinational companies. But even if your tools of the trade are Smartphones and iPads, ours are still workstations with big hulking monitors, usually two of them. You can keep issuing news that this and that is now running on a laptop. Means nothing to us.

Oh, and another thing. We all might all have wives and drive cars in common, so we might let you get away with a little good old fashitioned wife/driving humor. But when the wife is driving a Mercedes…not cool.

Anybody else got any pet peeves? Besides bloggers going on rants, I mean.

After seeing wondrous projects at Smart Geometry 2011 in Copenhagen, I wanted to know more about how GenerativeComponents worked so I tracked down Huw Roberts, Bentley’s Global Marketing Director, to answer a few questions. As you might guess from Huw’s title, GenerativeComponents is just a small piece of Huw’s world “but an important one.”  

Bentley’s Huw Roberts champions GenerativeComponents in annual conference in Copenhagen

Even after the conference was over, I had trouble categorizing GenerativeComponents. Was it a technology? A module? An application? A programming language? A development kit? What?

It’s an application, says Huw. It’s also an environment. Luckily, he was able to explain.

“You can elect to work with GenerativeComponents is three ways. One is in a graphical environment, with models. Like a CAD program. Or you can work with just the script. GenerativeComponents also generates a graph or flow chart, which is the third way. Each can drive the other. A change in the model will change the flow chart. You can drive the model by changing the script.”

Changing the script to change the model somewhat similar to parametric modeling.  Any comparison between GenerativeComponents and parametric modelers, such as Revit?

“Oh, it’s so much more, “says Huw. Sure programs like Revit have rules and constraints, but GenerativeComponents scripting is far more versatile. “For example, try to put a window in a roof in Revit and call it a skylight. Good luck.”  GenerativeComponents allow you to be much freer in your design, more creative. Certainly those sorts of applications are great for floor plans, basic layouts, BIM, but with GenerativeComponents you can do things like size your windows to the results of a thermal analysis.

GenerativeComponents is offered free to one and all. You don’t even have to be a Bentley subscriber. What’s in it for Bentley? Why would a for-profit company be so generous, not only in the distribution of the software, but also sponsoring annual conferences, schools, etc.?

“We feel that getting GenerativeComponents out to a wide audience will result in a better technology,” says Huw. “Of course, Bentley does benefit in using the technology in its applications.”

I have to ask about Grasshopper, very much in evidence at the GenerativeComponents conference, even though it appears to compete with GenerativeComponents. “A lot of people do use Grasshopper,” concedes Huw. “It is also free.  However, it only works with Rhino, which you have to buy. Also, many Grasshopper users will find limits and then use GenerativeComponents. They find it more robust and it works better with professional applications.” So GenerativeComponents is positioned more as industrial strength solution that users graduate to? “You could say that,” says Huw.

Bentley’s largesse is also apparent in their decision to make GenerativeComponents stand alone, allowing it to work with not only Bentley apps, but Autodesk apps by virtue of DWG output. 

For more information and to download GenerativeComponents, go to www.generativecomponents.com.