AfterCAD Software Inc recently claimed to have introduced the First True AJAX based CAD application.

http://www.aftercad.com/

AfterCAD InSite is a server application that organizes and serves CAD drawings to anyone with a web browser.

InSite serves up 2D and 3D CAD data in the same way that Google Map data is served to users.

The software reads the CAD data and converts it into raster tiles, viewing the drawing (in a Web browser) simply displays the tiles. The need for a multitude of plugins for viewing the CAD data (which could be in a variety of formats) is eliminated and the user can zoom and pan about the image from their Web browser.(I guess this is a good approach for viewing images on mobile phones and other small handheld devices)

The company have applied for a patent on the technology, which is not restricted to CAD data and could be applied to any raster image.

The motion sensor in Apple’s MacBook Pro is not just for protecting your hard drive.

This uses AMSTracker, a command line tool that regularly reports on the motion sensors status.

Perhaps the mechanism could be used as a 3D Model Navigation device ?

There is a little more technical data provided by Amit Singh, the author of AMSTracker, read the Article The Sudden Motion Sensor at

http://www.osxbook.com/book/bonus/chapter10/ams/.

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View22’s Web-based CAD

http://www.view22.com/

Can CAD software run in a Web browser? At last year’s Autodesk University, the company’s now-ceo Carl Bass thought not, because it’s too “heavy” — too much data. He thought there was a place for BOMs and markups, which don’t transmit nearly as much information. If AutoCAD 2007 places a burden on 2GHz desktop computers, how could Web browsers cope?

View22 of Ontario, Canada, thinks they have the makings of just such a product, now three years in the making. Their approach was to work the problem backwards: instead of positing themselves at the CAD end (seen by all other CAD vendors at the starting point), they began at the customer end — the final resting point seen by “normal” CAD companies. In this case, the customer is either B2C business-to-consumers or B2B business-to-business entities.

Think FloorPlan 3D running in a Web browser. Consumers dragging and dropping 3D symbols into floorplans. See HGTV’s version of View22’s software at

http://onlinedesigner.hgtv.com/visualizer/GettingStarted.do

Companies like General Electric and Playworld Systems have replaced hundreds of seats of AutoCAD with View22.

The company’s little known secret is DynaCADD. Or, as View22’s Mark Zohar put it, DynaCADD’s DNA runs through them. What this means is that these people have CAD experience from the past, and their product includes CAD concepts like object snaps.

A couple of interesting new items available from Google Labs

http://labs.google.com/

Google Notebook enables you to clip and gather information while browsing the web, in your own Notebook which can be accessed from any computer.

http://www.google.com/googlenotebook/overview.html

Google Trends allows you to compare the worlds intetrests in your search topics. Enter a number of topics and Google will report how often they’ve been searched for over time along with other associated information.

http://www.google.com/trends

For example,

This shows a comparison of the search terms “SolidWorks” (in blue) and “Autodesk Inventor” (in orange).

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Check out the Creature-maker … 3D icons, graphical manipulators, shadows, motion etc.