IntelliCAD World Meeting - Day 2 Afternoon Sessions

The first session after lunch was a presentation by Redway3D, a french company that offers a real-time 2D/3D graphics visualization software with photo-realistic rendering extensions. Redway3D was founded by CTO Renaud Deparis, who was a 3D Visualization Manager at Dassault Systemes and designer of the graphical component for CATIA V5.

It is a known fact that the AutoCAD graphics system is far superior that that curently employed by IntelliCAD. Open a fairly large DWG file in IntelliCAD and you will notice the severe drop in perfromance. The ITC is now exploring solutions to help eliminate this problem.

Some history. A year ago, the ODA and Tech Soft 3D annnounced an integration between ODA's DGNdirect libraries with the HOOPS graphics components from Tech Soft 3D. The ITC watched and waited for the ODA to extend the integration to the DWGdirect libraries, the foundation of the IntelliCAD. Since this has not yet happenned the ITC is now looking at other options. One option is Redway3D and Lionel Schmitt, the CEO of Redway3D, is here to showcase his technology and introduce a royalty-free business model that his company could offer to ITC members.

First the CTO showed us what his Redway3D engine can do. And I must tell you it can do a lot. He opened a 2D drawing of map of South Carolina in his test application containing 1.5 million curves and 72,000 text objects. He then zoomed and panned across the drawing and you could not see any time lag. He mentioned that he was using a medium performance laptop. Next he opened a model of a car designed in CATIA V5 containing 40 million triangles. He zoomed, panned and rotated and the the performance was simply mind blowing.

So here is the deal about the royalty-free business model. If the ITC chooses to use the Redway3D engine, it would cost each member [snip] (Upon request from Redway I have removed the financial information of the deal). Cedric Desbordes, the Chairman of the ITC, pointed out to the ITC members that if they were complaining that IntelliCAD was slower than AutoCAD, now they had a chance to make it faster. I am curious to see where this is headed.

The ITC has already started integrating the Redway3D engine into IntelliCAD 7. A couple of Russian ITC programmers in the audience showed me a huge car model containing 100,000 triangles loaded into IntelliCAD and being rotated, zoomed and panned around very smoothly. I will be posting a few images and videos later on IntelliCAD.net.

The next session was a presentation by DP Tech given by Cedric Desbordes on their Project Management solution called Iplus Concept. The solution consists of plug-ins for IntelliCAD, AutoCAD, Word and Excel that synchronize data from the user's local computer and a web server. Drawing files are automatically named and versioned and title blocks automatically updated. If you have an outdated drawing file, the plug-in downloads the latest version from the server and later publishes it back to share the file with others. Linked drawings can be grouped, quite similar to assemblies. The server side is equipped with a rights management system which ensures that the right people get access to the right information. There is also an online comparison tool whereby a project manager can open two files in two windows and see the differences between the two in a third window.

The last open session of the day and of the World Meeting was a customer testimonial by Charalampos Kovras from Elxis, 4M customer who used the 4M IntelliCAD verticals to build the some of the stuctures for the 2004 Athens Olympics. As a sample case study we were shown how Elxis used FineHVAC for Heating, Ventilation and Air Conditioning design the International Broadcasting Center for the Games.

Tommorow is the last day of the IntelliCAD World Meeting and is meant only for ITC members. I have meetings with a few ITC members this evening and tommorow morning and leave in the afternoon back to India. That's if a Greek cab driver does not get me killed on the way to the airport.

IntelliCAD World Meeting - Day 2 Morning Sessions

Day 2 started with parallel sessions. Ralph Grabowski attended the AppTranslator session, whereas I attended a session on "Porting to DRX in IntelliCAD" by Mark Barrow, Dev Lead of the ITC.

Mark briefly explained how to make a normal DLL into a DRX DLL so that IntelliCAD, or for that matter any DWGdirect based application, can recognise it as a plug-in. At SYCODE we have been experimenting with the DRX SDK, so most of this was not new to me. He also went on to explain a little on the IRX SDK, the SDK that is built over the DRX SDK which gives programmers access to IntelliCAD specific features such as it's user interface.

I am using this opportunity to make the right noises on behalf of DRX developers all over the world. Currently the various flavors of IntelliCAD load third party plug-ins in a variety of ways. There is no standard method. Some needs an icad.sds file in the IntelliCAD folder. Others need the DLL to be dropped in the IntelliCAD folder. Some others have a startup suite like AutoCAD. It's one big mess. This make installation and loading a big problem for end users. We often find ourselves spending a lot of time guiding IntelliCAD users on how to load our plug-ins into their flavor of IntelliCAD. This turns out to be quite frustrating for the users and for us as well. So I explained my problem to Mark and asked him if IntelliCAD 7 would have a standard way of loading third party plug-ins. I was happy to hear the words "consider it done", as opposed to "we will look into it".

Next up was a presentation by 4M, an ITC member from Greece. 4M has built some fantastic verticals on the IntelliCAD platform, some of which were shown to us. They showed us IDEA, an architectural solution, complete from model creation to rendering to a walkthrough. We also saw STRAD, a solution for Structural Analysis and Design of 3D Concrete Frames and FINE, a Mechanical Electrical and Plumbing (MEP) solution.

Next was a presentation by Neilsoft, an engineering and technology services company based in Pune, India. They showcased various software solutions that they developed, maintained or tested for clients worldwide and highlighted the benefits for ITC members in the audience to outsource their projects to them.

We now break for lunch.

IntelliCAD World Meeting - Day 1 Sessions

I was not particularly in the state to blog after last nights cocktail dinner, so I didn't try. Anyways, let me quickly run down the highlights of the sessions of the first day.

After the keynote by Arnold Van Der Weide, which was more of a scolding, Dave Lorenzo, the Development Director of the ITC took the stage. He presented the Development Roadmap for IntelliCAD 7. Much of Dave's presentation was spent on the quality and performance. He quite frankly admitted, "Quality is an continuing problem with IntelliCAD". This was mainly due to the highly disorganized state of it's source code. He explained how it was not uncommon to find 5000 line functions the current source code. As a programmer I know that a 5000 line function is just bad programming. If you go to change something at the start of the function you are bound to break one or more things downstream. And that, admits Dave, was exactly what has been happenning over these years.

This time around, they have completely rewritten IntelliCAD keeping the tried and tested DRX SDK from the ODA as the foundation. I have programmed with the ODA's DRX SDK and Autodesk's Object ARX SDK, the foundation for AutoCAD. I can tell you that they are almost the same. In fact, the ODA has done an excellent job of cloning the ObjectARX SDK, and in some places improved it. For example, the DRX SDK uses smart pointers which virtually remove the responsibility of memory allocation and deallocation from the programmer, which is the main source of crashes and instability. The ObjectARX does not support smart pointers as much as the DRX SDK does. So in my opinion it is quite safe the assume that once done, IntelliCAD 7 will be far stable and faster than it's predecessor.

Dave explained how they have built a full blown system to test as they develop. "We have more bugs that developers to fix", he explained, "Thats why we first developed a full fledged automatated testing system." To give you an example of what he was talking about, let me explain the Visual Comparison test. This is a system where in they have a set of scripts that automatically load DWG files into IntelliCAD, takes screenshots and saves the file. The files are then reopened and snapshots are taken. This is done all day, every day for hundreds of thousands of DWG files that they have in their database. These two screenshots are then automatically compared by software and differences are reported. This way ITC members can submit problem DWG files to ITC's QA department and they then run these tests for each and every build of IntelliCAD. Modifying code to fix one bug can sometimes break something else. This system is designed to trap and report exactly such occurrences.

Besides the Visual Comparison test, they have a DXF Roundtrip test as well. This involves verifying the data at the level of bits and bytes. For example, the arc sweep angle for circle is 2 x PI. But 2 x PI is the same as Zero. So an arc with a sweep angle of Zero and 2 xPI will look the same and pass the Visual Comparison test. But this test will catch and report the problem. "Quality is an issue for us", admits Dave and it seems that the ITC is doing everything it can to take care of this nagging problem. However he asserts, "We are not going to release IntelliCAD 7 till it is ready". And by "ready" I guess he means "stable". Sounds like a good decision.

Speaking further about the old source code Dave said, "The IntelliCAD 6.x architecture is killing us", and added that the decision to build IntelliCAD 7 over the stable DRX platform was the wise thing to do. I completely agree. I can feel his pain because I know the difference in developing old style IntelliCAD plug-ins using SDS (equivalent of AutoCAD's ADS) as opposed to developing DRX plug-ins. DRX is like a breath of fresh air.

Dave is also of the opinion that IntelliCAD needs to do something more than AutoCAD. "We are reactive by nature", he admitted frankly. "We need to be proactive". I could not agree more.

Next up was Mark Barrow, Dev Lead of the ITC. He gave an update of the current status of IntelliCAD 7 and a demo as well. "Overall stability is still poor but is improving quickly", he explained. He sang the same tune as Dave, "The IntelliCAD 6 code was a nightmare to maintain".

Mark went on to explain the IRX SDK of IntelliCAD. Basically, IntelliCAD 7 is built over the ODA's DRX SDK which is a clone of Autodesk's ObjectARX SDK. However the DRX SDK is meant to be used as the internal engine of a CAD application and leaves the developers to code the application specific functionalities separately, stuff like object selection, which can differ from application to application. So the ITC has developed another SDK to sit on top of DRX called IRX. This will allow plug-in developers to use IntelliCAD's internal features that are not covered by the DRX SDK. Mark stressed on the need to tackle the performance problem. He mentioned that they have two developers working full time on nothing but performance related issues.

An ITC member asked whether the ODA or ITC would be developing a source compatible version of the DRX/IRX SDK so that they can simply rebuild their existing ObjectARX code to get an IntelliCAD plug-in. Mark replied in the negative and stated "legal reasons" as the rationale behind the decision. Later in the day I asked Arnold Van Der Weide, the President of the ODA, whether the ODA would be modifying their DRX SDK to make it source compatible with Autodesk's ObjectARX SDK. He replied in the negative and cited the same reasons. "I prefer to spend the ODA's money to pay programmers than lawyers", Arnold told me.

After lunch, Dave Lorenzo had a two hour session on the details of IntelliCAD 7. Most of his presentation was spent in explaining the QA system that they had developed to tackle the stability and performance issues that have been tormenting IntelliCAD. I will not go into the details as they are highly technical.

In the question-answer session that followed I asked whether the ITC had plans to lay out guildelines for their members to follow so that third party plug-in developers like myself do not have to create different versions of plug-in DLLs for each flavor of IntelliCAD. At SYCODE, this is a nightmare. Since each ITC member gets the source code, they go ahead and add all sorts of features and in the bargain break binary compatibility with plug-ins developed for the "official" version of IntelliCAD supplied by the ITC to it's members. Dave said that they "would look into it". I certainly hope they do. It's about time the ITC reigns in its members. I believe a key factor to IntelliCAD's success is its adoption by third party developers to extend it's capabilities by means of plug-ins. If the ITC lets it's members run wild and allows them to create flavors of IntelliCAD that do not respect third party plug-ins, third party developers are not going to show the respect either.

Next up was Neil Peterson, the CTO of the ODA and he showcased the existing as well as the new and upcoming components being developed by the ODA. I will leave that for another post.

Today's sessions include some training sessions on porting applications to DRX and a couple of sessions by ITC members. Shall keep you posted.

IntelliCAD World Meeting - Keynote

Today was the first day of the IntelliCAD World Meeting. Cedric Desbordes, the Chairman of the ITC welcomed the 70+ attendees and announced the good news that IntelliCAD 7 is ready. The not-so-good news is that it is ready for ITC members to download and begin porting their vertical applications. There are quite a few stability and performance issues which are expected at this point in time. That's mainly because IntelliCAD 7 is a completely rewrite and has to go through the lifecycle of a completely new software as opposed to an upgrade of an existing stable release. The ITC hopes to have everything ready by June 2009 so that ITC members can start shipping it as soon as they are done with their verticals.

Looks like the ITC has decided that it badly needs a change of image. They have hired Bob McGill as a Business Development Manager whose main job would be to rebrand IntelliCAD into something more respectable and reliable and also generate new business for the ITC. Bob had set up the OEM network at SolidWorks.

Arnold Van Der Weide, the President of the ODA, gave the keynote address on the "Opportunities for IntelliCAD Technologies in the CAD market". He admitted that one of his hobbies was to keep a close eye on Autodesk and noted that it's stock had crashed by 50% in recent times. He also noted that the price of AutoCAD LT doubled to $1200. "I can't understand it", he exclaimed. "Why should a drafting system cost $1200?". Arnold showed us some numbers that Autodesk disclosed to it shareholders whereby he noted that the numbers of AutoCAD had dropped and that of AutoCAD LT had shot up. "Where are these LT seats coming from?", he asked and opined that it was quite possible that AutoCAD users were downgrading to LT to maintain DWG compatibility as they moved to 3D CAD systems. This, he believes, indicates a trememdous opportunity for ITC members.

He advised the ITC members to stop undercutting each other and fix the price of IntelliCAD at $600. He drew attention to the fact that by pricing IntelliCAD at $250, they would still need to sell thrice as much to make more money. "If you are fighting a product that cost $1200 why are you selling for $250?", he asked the ITC members

Arnold was quite critical of the ITC, an organization that he led till recently. He admitted his mistake of allowing the ITC members to completely rebrand IntelliCAD into something totally different. "Why are you not pround of being an ITC member?", he asked. "Some of you do not have 'IntelliCAD' or 'ITC' anywhere on your product", he observed.

He also noted that one cause of instability in IntelliCAD was that some members were changing the source code of IntelliCAD to suit their particular requirements. He advocated the need of having one standard IntelliCAD for all members and urged the ITC members to discontinue naming their products like 'xxx IntelliCAD'. According to him there should be only three brands allowed: (1) IntelliCAD, (2) IntelliCAD Inside; and (3) Based on IntelliCAD Technology.

The bad news is that Arnold is no longer the Chairman of the ITC.

I am now going to attend the cocktail dinner. I shall write about the rest of the happennings of the day later.

Roaming in Greece

I have been roaming Greece for the last two days. This is Ralph Grabowski and me adding splendor to the Parthenon, an ancient Greek temple atop a hill in the middle of Athens.

I have finally figured out why the ancient Greek structures are falling down. Take a look at the following picture.

There is no way in hell this column in going to stand for the next 2,500 years. Especially with people like me adding to the forces of nature.

Jokes apart, the Greeks are trying their best to keep these ancient monuments up. They are on a massive restoration project which involves reverse engineering the damaged pieces of marble and sticking them back. See the picture below.

The idea here is not to reconstruct the monuments to their original form. They are simply trying to keep what’s left of them from falling down.

Travel Advisory: Greek cab drivers are crazy. They smoke to a point of suffocating their passengers, talk loudly on their cell phones when driving, regularly jump the red light and speed like there is no tommorow. Greece does not need a theme park with a roller coaster. Their cab drivers do a much better job. I repeat, Greek cab drivers are crazy.

The IntelliCAD World Meeting 2008 starts tommorow. I already know what the big news is. Cedric Desbordes, the chairmain of the ITC shared it with me in the lobby of the hotel this evening. But I think I will let him announce it first. The news is good and I am pleased to hear it.

Watch this space.

IntelliCAD World Meeting 2008

I am on my way to the IntelliCAD World Meeting 2008 in Athens, Greece. As I type this, I am holed up in a hotel in Mumbai with nothing much to do. I am killing time till 4:30 am when I catch a flight to Dubai and then another one to Athens. I am arriving a couple of days earlier and hope to see what the Greeks have been upto these last few centuries. I hear some of their structures are still standing.

Arnold Van Der Weide, the President of the OpenDesign Alliance will deliver the keynote speech on "Opportunities for IntelliCAD technology in the CAD Market". With a topic like that I hope he does not talk all day. I could. Dave Lorenzo, a Director of the ITC is going to lay out the IntelliCAD Roadmap, something which I badly want to know. Neil Peterson, the CTO of the OpenDesign Alliance, will also be speaking on the ODA components that are the building blocks of the new IntelliCAD.

Rumour has it that there is going to be a major announcement. I am not sure whether the new IntelliCAD 7 is going to be launched at the World Meeting. Either way, I am eager to meet the developers who work behind the scenes and hope to learn more about the new IntelliCAD 7. At SYCODE, we have frozen all new plug-in development for IntelliCAD till the new IntelliCAD shows up. IntelliCAD 7 is a complete revamp and our plug-ins would need to be revamped as well.

The IntelliCAD World Meeting is two days of open sessions (29th and 30th October) and the third day (31st October) is a members only thing, where they elect the Board of Directors and discuss other management stuff. You can see the full agenda here.

If any of you have some advice on how to deal with Greeks, now would be a good time to tell me.

AutoCAD and 3D

A reader of my earlier post "SolidWorks, Siemens and their AutoCAD Strategies" didn't quite like my view that AutoCAD users need to move to a 3D modeling system to effectively design in 3D. He wrote, "To state that AutoCAD users need to ditch their tool in order to design in 3D seems to me at least disingenuous and possibly even a little insulting."

Maybe I need to explain where I am coming from. Before I started my CAD software business I worked for a company that built bus bodies. I was an AutoLISP programmer and we used AutoCAD 12 for DOS. We used 2D drawings in the entire design process and not a single DWG file had an entity with a Z coordinate in it. And yet our buses turned out to be completely three dimensional when they were finally built. All was well.

Then one day I was given the task of creating a walkthrough animation of our new model to be shown to a prospective client. So I modeled the entire bus, complete with seats, upholstery and all, in AutoCAD 12. It took me a week and drove me to the brink of my sanity. I then exported my model into 3D Studio, applied materials, adjusted lighting and rendered a fantastic walkthrough animation. This was a decade ago. Now if you ask me whether I would do the same thing today, I'd prefer to shoot myself instead.

If a user believes that AutoCAD is the best tool to design in 3D, I strongly urge him to stick to AutoCAD. Then someone needs to tell me why Autodesk has gone ahead and created Inventor. And why Autodesk is trying every trick in the book to get AutoCAD users to upgrade to Inventor? And why are AutoCAD users themselves wanting to upgrade to Inventor?

According to Autodesk, FAQ No. 1 for Inventor is:
Can I upgrade from AutoCAD to Autodesk Inventor?
Yes, AutoCAD users can upgrade their existing software to Autodesk Inventor software. With Autodesk Inventor you get the best of both worlds, with 2D and 3D design tools in one package delivering enhanced 3D mechanical design productivity while preserving your company’s 2D engineering designs through native DWG compatibility.

Correct me if I am wrong, but isn't Autodesk implying here that Inventor is the better tool for 3D?

SolidWorks, Siemens and their AutoCAD Strategies

It is a known fact that the massive install base of AutoCAD users is the number one target for CAD vendors. The question is not whether the bulk of AutoCAD users are going to switch to 3D. Rather it is when will they do it.

In order to help AutoCAD users make the leap of faith, SolidWorks has been bundling free licenses of DWGeditor, their flavor of IntelliCAD, to their customers. Siemens, on the other hand, has taken a different approach. They are offering their 2D drawing program for free, not only to their customers, but to everyone.

To me these look like two solutions to solve the same problem and I like only one of them. First off, the switch to 3D is going to be gradual, if not painful, with ample scope of the user getting stuck in limbo between the 2D and 3D. He would need to work with his old data and his old suppliers while going through the process of rewiring his brain to think in 3D. I know that Solid Edge's 2D program can do many things that AutoCAD can. But all said and done, it is a completely different software which looks and acts in ways that AutoCAD users are quite unfamiliar. Somewhere in the transition process, the user would invariably need to edit a DWG file before using it in his workflow. Using DWGeditor, he will barely feel the difference. However, editing a DWG file in Solid Edge's 2D program is going to be a far more difficult, time consuming and probably frustrating. Remember that Solid Edge, like other 3D solid modeling systems, considers a 2D drawing to be an end result of modeling and not the start point, as does AutoCAD. So by intent Solid Edge's 2D program is quite simply not designed to work like AutoCAD.

So now the user has to learn two things: how to think like Solid Edge wants him to think and how to make Solid Edge's 2D program do things that it was probably not designed for. While it may be technically possible for users to do just about everything in Solid Edge's 2D program that can be done in AutoCAD, I see no point in wasting time figuring it out or get trained to do it.

If given the choice, I would choose DWGeditor over Solid Edge's 2D program. After all, as a 2D user making the switch, I would prefer spending my time learning 3D rather than figuring out another way of doing 2D.

Will History Be History?

Of late I have been working 48 hours a day to get Print3D up and running. Now that I have some time to breathe I can finally get back to blogging. I have been reading the recent posts from Roopinder Tara, Matt Lombard and Kenneth Wong on Synchronous Technology and would like offer my $0.02.

Some time ago I took the time to figure out Synchronous Technology and wrote a series about it. Since I had to piece things together and speculate how this techology worked, I was glad when people from Siemens let me know that I had got most of it right. I am done analysing the technology. I know the technology is good. It solves far more problems than it creates. But all said and done, what I am most interested to know is whether the time for this technology has come. This is more of a business question, and less of a technical one.

I believe it's time has come. Here is why. The CAD industry has its limits. CAD vendors are spending too much marketing money in trying to eat into each other's market share. Roopinder rightly mentioned that changing religion may be easier than switching over to a different CAD system. As I see it, the easiest way to increase revenue is to increase the market itself. And you just cannot do that with strict parametric modeling system. You need to dumb it down so that it can be used by people who do not have the patience, skill or IQ to create or figure out a convoluted feature tree.

Look what SketchUp did to the ordinary computer user. People of all sorts of shapes, sizes and ages are populating Google Earth with buildings. People, who till recently used MS Paint to come up with anything creative on a computer.

History will testify that things start out complicated and then get simplified in time. I started out in DOS and first programmed in Turbo C. I cannot tell you how much pain and code was required just to display the mouse cursor (basically a block character) on the screen. Then came Windows and life became much easier. We left Windows to handle the mouse and were only bothered with what our program should do when someone clicked it. My point is that in the days of DOS, you and your code needed to be wired up correctly to be able to come up with any worthwhile program. With Windows, the operating system handled the user interface stuff and you were left with the job of adding functionality to the program, which was why you started writing the program in the first place. So in a way, programming became dumber and many more people started programming. But even though programming became dumber, the programs didn't. These new programmers who had a fraction of patience, skill or IQ as compared to the DOS programmers came up software far superior than their DOS counterparts. To emphasize my point, the reason why everybody cannot be a rocket scientist today is because designing rockets is still a very difficult to do.

If you are sailing a boat you had better know which side the wind is blowing. I believe the smart CAD vendors like SpaceClaim, Siemens and the like know the direction of the wind. The others will watch them and say, "Crap!! That's the direction. OK, now lets play catch up".

Yes, history will be history.

The Print3D Blog

Print3D now has a blog aptly titled "The Print3D Blog". I will be using it to post information about new and upcoming stuff at Print3D and offer my $0.02 on the Rapid Prototyping industry in general.

In case you need it the blog's feed URL is http://feeds.feedburner.com/print3dblog

Print3D - Put the factory in your file menu

I have been flirting with the Rapid Prototyping industry for many years now by developing STL import/export plug-ins for CAD systems, founding the OpenRP Initiative and developing custom RP related plug-ins for clients the world over. Now I am done flirting. Today I embrace the RP industry with arms wide open. Today we announce Print3D Corporation (http://www.print3dcorp.com/), a company I co-founded with Ron Barranco, a veteran of the RP industry and founder of Stereolithography.com.

Print3D is a global provider of rapid prototyping services, basically a service bureau, but unlike any other. We offer a unique method of quoting and ordering parts directly from your CAD system. Our press release explains:

"Print3D version 1.0, offered as a standalone PC application and as a plug-in for several major CAD systems, makes ordering designs into production as easy as sending a document to a printer. CAD users receive real-time, guaranteed quotes for plastic or metal prototypes for whatever components they have open in their modeling workspace. Users can customize their order through the integrated interface, adding paint and finish options, and then send the request to rapid prototyping facilities directly from their 3D modeler.

Print3D is the first rapid prototyping bureau to develop an offline method of pricing and ordering parts. The innovation not only gives CAD users the opportunity to iteratively check costs anytime through the course of design, but also makes enormous strides both in convenience and security beyond the online ordering methods used by competing bureaus." (Full press release here)

Print3D offers next-day delivery on most simple SLA and SLS plastic prototypes, and two to three day delivery on more complicated orders, such as customized paint, dye, or metallic-plating finishes, or metal-casted components.

Currently we have plug-ins for Alibre Design, AutoCAD, Inventor, Rhinoceros, Solid Edge, SolidWorks and SpaceClaim. Development and testing of plug-ins for other CAD systems is on full swing and we should be releasing them shortly.

Do drop in and try out our software. It's free. And when you do have the need for a part, just print it. Click File and Print3D in your CAD system, save a quote, order your parts and we will deliver them to you anywhere in the world. Wait, let me rephrase that - wherever FedEx offers service. The last time I checked FedEx did not ship to Iran and North Korea.