View22’s Web-based CAD
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.
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