Techno Babble

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/.

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).

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

CSI (CADDSoft Solutions Inc.) have released Concepts Unlimited version 3.

http://www.csi-concepts.com/

Concepts Unlimited targets Macintosh® and Windows® design communities who need fast, flexible, and intuitive tools for turning ideas into precise 2D and 3D designs.

But the thing that caught my eye was the description regarding their photo-realistic rendering capability:

Typically creating photo realistic renderings requires a certain level of expertise regarding the lighting, reflection, and refraction associated with a scene. Version 3 eliminates this necessity for beginner users with the introduction of Rapid Render Environments. Now all users can quickly create impressive renderings with a press of a button by choosing either a metal, plastic, glass, or mirror render environment. These new rendering tools do all the work for the user with respect to adding lights, materials, drop shadows, and environment maps; turning everyday users into rendering wizards.

For those users wanting more control over a scene, Version 3 adds the ability to drag and drop environment maps into scenes. An environment map is a 2D image that is reflected back onto 3D objects. Environment maps are a great feature for adding visual realism to a scene without having to generate and position additional 3D objects.

The photo rendering tools can be combined with the newly introduced animation tools which can be used to explode assemblies or to simply animate objects and cameras along paths.

In particular, the description of

…renderings with a press of a button by choosing either a metal, plastic, glass, or mirror render environment

The once dominant giant of the workstation industry is hitting hard times.

They have moved to reduce their debt by approximately $250 million and have filed voluntary petitions under Chapter 11 of the US Bankruptcy code. The company expects to emerge from Chapter 11 within 6 months.

Read the Press Release at

http://www.sgi.com/company_info/…/sgi_reorg.html

“We want to assure our customers, our employees and our communities that SGI is operating-business as usual,” Dennis P. McKenna, the recently appointed, Chairman and CEO of SGI, stated. “Our customers can continue to rely on SGI for its mission-critical products, services, and support.”

SGI is a leader in high-performance graphics workstations and is located in Mountain View, California and can be found on the web at

www.sgi.com

TTF SA, is a leading company in CAD data interoperability and Digital Mock up solutions. Back in November 2005 they announced a new version of PRC II – their Data Compression technology.

“The quality and power of PRCII is not only its compression technology. It is also because it is based on our geometrical kernel that takes into account all the mathematical definitions we have seen since 15 years in the different cad packages we use. When making a PRC file only the tools provided by TTF are used, unlike other
solutions which need products that are coming from different companies and have different quality and releases over time.” said Didier Guillaud, VP applications.

“We now have many customers that use our PRC format to exchange files on the web. As PRC is a geometrical format, they translate the PRC into their own software and then manufacture the part, keeping the necessary accuracy” said Jean-Luc Brocard, President, Support and Quality team.

PRCII like PRC will keep the history tree alive and of course will retain the feature based definition. We can easily imagine that in the next future, we will rebuild the PRC tree and feature into a target cad package in order to make featured based translators from the PRC format. This will be interesting when dealing with very big assemblies that you want to send live through the internet for collaboration or project review. PRCII format could also be crypted to ensure the privacy of the data over the web.

Still digging …