Tulips, tulips and more tulips

They say that the Keukenhof spring garden is the most photographed place on earth and I decided to find out why. Today I took a bus tour to Keukenhof from Amsterdam and returned with 1 GB of JPG images.

I am not crazy over nature but I do appreciate her beauty from time to time. Today was more like an overdose. Frankly, in those two hours I have seen enough color to last me a lifetime. But jokes apart, the spring garden at Keukenhof is just to beautiful to explain in words. Even pictures do not do justice. You need to actually stand among the flowers and experience them. If you visit Holland, you simply have to experience this.

And this is how they grow them in fields.

If my tour guide has her facts right, centuries ago an ambassador from Turkey came to Holland and gifted the King a tulip bulb. Yes, just one bulb. The king gave it to some wise guy who also happened to be a horticulturist. He found a way to make 2 and 2 into 22 and now Holland exports tulips by the ship load.

Amsterdam - Canal Cruise

Since I am visiting Holland for the first time, I decided to stay back for a couple of days more and do some sight-seeing. I am still at the Holiday Inn in Leiden which is about 30 minutes by train to Amsterdam, where all the tourist action starts.

Yesterday I took a boat cruise in the canals of Amsterdam.

I always wondered how people living in houses like in the picture above handle tides. As it turns out, the water level in these canals stays constant because the water is isolated from the Black Sea by means of gates and dykes. And what's more, about 27% of Holland is under sea level. They have a system of dykes, polders and gates that has managed to keep their feet dry since 1287, when the North Sea flooded the country and created the South Sea. It took them a few centuries to pump the water out using wind mills. Amazing.

The cruise lasted for an hour and a half and we passed though the the older parts of town. These canals were actually dug out as the city expanded and have names like streets and roads. In the olden days, traders used to get goods by ships which were docked out of town. They then transported their cargo to warehouses along these canals using small boats. Most of the old houses you see in the picture above still have hoists jutting out from their front walls which were used to lift the items to the top floors. I was quite surprised to see that some of the front walls were not built plumb. Instead they were built leaning outwards so that the cargo would not damage the walls when being hoisted up.

This is an amazing picture. This is a view of seven arched bridges in a straight line. You cannot see all seven because (1) my camera is not all that good, and (2) there is another boat blocking the view.

ODA World Conference - Quotes

Here are some interesting lines I heard at the ODA World Conference, some of which have already appeared in earlier posts on this blog.

Mauritz Botha of IMSI/Design
"Our AutoCAD constraint plug-in served as a fantastic prototype for what Autodesk implemented themselves in 2010"

Erik de Keyser, CEO of Bricsys
"DRX is proof that ODA is not following Autodesk."
"Recession has been good for us. Revenue is increasing."
"While porting their ObjectARX plug-ins over to Bricscad, some developers are fixing memory leaks in their AutoCAD plug-ins because of a Bricscad command that traps memory errors."

Luc de Batseiler, CTO of Bricsys
"More than 300 AutoCAD plug-ins are being ported to Bricscad"

Neil Peterson, CTO of ODA
"Its nice to see members come up here and show some of their cool stuff. Normally I only hear from members when they complain to me that something is not working."
"The first IT infrastructure of the ODA was delivered to my house in a truck - 15 computers in my bed room which stayed there for 8 years."

Arnold van der Weide, President of ODA
"TrustedDWG was a big mistake and am glad it has been settled".
"Autodesk has been very successful in increasing our legal expenses. We have to be careful in what we do."

Sergey Slezkin, Dev Lead of ODA
"Last week I posted my 2000th message on the ODA forum"

Dmitry Ushako of LEDAS
"What the f**k is LEDAS to tell us about constraints?"

But this one takes the cake. Keynote Speaker of the ODA World Conference, Bjorn Stangeland of buildingSMART said: "The purpose of BIM is not to need organizations like the ODA".

ODA World Conference - ADTdirect and Facet Modeler

Vadim Kosarev, Development Lead of the ODA, gave a presentation on their ADTdirect and their new Facet Modeler.

ADTdirect is the ODA architectural engineering package, based on the ODA flagship DWGdirect library. It is basically a set of DRX files (DLL’s actually) that need to be placed in the same folder as the calling application. It has full support for standard architectural objects such as walls, roofs, slabs, etc. It can create architectural objects from scratch with standard styles. It also provides the user will grips for major entities, which enables the editing of these objects.

Vadim used the ODA test application to create a set of walls and then used the grips to move the walls around. He then went on the draw a few doors and again used the grips to move one of them to an adjacent wall. The wall automatically adjusted itself to accommodate the door. He did the same thing for windows as well. Doors and windows can be standard rectangular and even have a custom style.

ADTdirect also has support for complex architectural objects such as stairs, railings, balusters, etc., which are all created parametrically. They come with grips which can be used to dynamically it using the mouse.

ADTdirect also comes with support for slabs and roofs using 2D profiles. All ADTdirect objects can be exploded. For example, when a door is exploded the wall automatically fills up the place where the door existed.

The Facet Modeler is another component that was originally developed for use in ADTdirect . It is a lightweight 3D modeler for creating boxes, pyramids, extrusions, revolutions and arbitrary surfaces. The Facet Modeler is used to perform the Boolean operations (union, difference and intersection) in ADTdirect, such as removing a door from a wall.

ODA World Conference - Tech Soft 3D and Redway3d

Day 2 of the ODA World Conference had two presentations by 3D graphics engine developers each trying to sell their wares to ODA members, quite similar to how Siemens and LEDAS were trying to convince ODA members to use their constraint management systems.

Ken Royall of Tech Soft 3D (TS3D) gave a brief run down of his company. There are 200+ applications that use TS3D components which span industries line MCAD, AEC, BIM, etc. TS3D is best known for HOOPS, their rich and flexible scene graph, basically a high-performance graphics engine. Under HOOPS, TS3D provides high performance drivers for OpenGL as well as DirectX. Autodesk Design Review, which has 20 million downloads till date, has been completely built using HOOPS. So is SolidWorks eDrawings.

Performance is a big deal in the industry that TS3D operates in, especially since data sets are becoming increasingly larger. 50 million triangles or 1 billion points is not uncommon these days.
TS3D components usually need to be used in conjunction with components from other vendors and TS3D offers component bridges for that purpose. For example, they offer bridges to modeling kernels (ACIS, Parasolid and Granite), 3D InterOp translators for all major CAD vendors, Adobe 3D and even an integration to the ODA’s DWGdirect and DGNdirect. The DGN bridge was built by TS3D and donated to the ODA so that development could be continued by the ODA.

Later we were shown a Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) of their HOOPS technology using a shader based renderer. The plant model used in the demo had 18 million triangles.

Later in the day, Fabien Chauviré of Redway3d gave us a demo of his Redsdk 2D/3D graphics engine. The demo was a more advanced version of the one I saw at the ITC World Meetings in Athens last year (report). The thing which was different was that Redway3d implemented a graphics device for the DWGdirect platform. To put it simply, Redway3d developed a set of DLLs which need to be placed in the same folder as the DWGdirect application and their engine will take over the rendering, object picking, editing, etc. in the drawing view. There is no need to write a single line of code to integrate the Redsdk with a DWGdirect application. This was confirmed by Neil Peterson, the CTO of the ODA in his presentation later.

I found one item in the presentation particularly interesting. Airbus has licensed their graphics engine and has signed a 15 year maintenance contract with Redway3d.

I want to bring something to attention here. I have been singing praises of the DWGdirect and DRX SDKs, so much so that I dedicated an entire book to it. Now consider this. Two companies, LEDAS and Redway3d are offering all 2000 ODA members their technologies in a unique way - by wrapping them up with the DWGdirect/DRX SDKs. This means that ODA members do not need to break their heads trying to build technologies to implement in their DWGdirect applications. Third party component developers can simply do what LEDAS and Redway3d did and offer their technologies to ODA members as a end to end solution in the form of DRX plug-ins, graphic devices, etc., basically a bunch of DLLs. This way code does not get messed up between the ODA members and the component developers and problems are easily located and fixed by either party.

I believe people will eventually understand the full implications of these wonderful technologies that have been put together by the ODA.

ODA World Conference - Constraints

One of the enhancements of AutoCAD 2010 has been a 2D geometric and parametric constraint system. This implies that ODA members who develop AutoCAD clones (ITC Members, Bricsys, Graebert, etc.) would need to add a similar constraint system to their software as well.

Autodesk has licensed the 2D Dimensional Constraint Manager (DCM) from Siemens PLM for use in AutoCAD 2010. So it made perfect business sense for Siemens to sell to the other side as well. That’s why on Day 1 of the ODA World Conference, Siemens presented its 2D DCM to ODA members. Jim Thorpe from Siemens PLM Software gave a basic demo of 2D DCM and another demo showing how the system can automatically apply constraints to a “dumb” 2D drawing.

IMSI/Design has already licensed 2D DCM for use in their AutoCAD LT killer - DoubleCAD. In fact, in his presentation, Mauritz Botha from IMSI said, "Our AutoCAD constraint plug-in served as a fantastic prototype for what Autodesk implemented themselves in 2010".

On Day 2 of the conference, ODA members got to see a presentation by a Russian company called LEDAS Ltd. LEDAS has developed a geometric solver quite similar to the Siemens 2D DCM solution. Dmitry Ushako, Director of Product Management of LEDAS Ltd. showed us a demo of a DRX module (basically a plug-in for a DWGdirect application) that implements their constraint system. “We have already done it”, exclaimed Dmitry. The only shipping DWGdirect application I know on the market today is Bricscad and Dmitry showed us his company's technology working inside Bricscad as a plug-in. IntelliCAD 7, another DWGdirect application, is still in alpha and probably a long way from seeing the light of day. Dmitry mentioned that a Rhino plug-in was being developed as well.

Dmitry told the audience that LEDAS was ready to sell their DRX modules to end users of DWGdirect applications, but would prefer to license it to ODA members so that they could ship it along with their software. Whats more interesting is that LEDAS charges a flat annual fee and no per copy royalty. I am not sure what Siemens' licensing options are.

It will be interesting to see if Siemens can play catch up. As far as ODA is concerned, CTO Neil Peterson commented, "We are working closely with partners like Siemens and LEDAS to help them integrate their technologies with our platform so that our members can choose the solution that suits them and their business model".

ODA World Conference - DWG 2010

Neil Peterson, CTO of ODA, updated us on the progress of reverse engineering the AutoCAD 2010 DWG file format. "We can read DWG 2010 files", Neil said, and he created a simple drawing of the ODA logo in AutoCAD 2010 and saved it to DWG 2010. He then opened the file in OdaMfcApp, the ODA's test application and it showed up just fine.

"We are in good shape with DWG 2010", Neil said. "We intend to release this in two stages. The first stage will allow read and write of DWG 2010 files. In the next release we will add features that take care of the new stuff on DWG 2010. We intend to release a 2010 version of DWGdirect in late 2009".

ODA World Conference - Book Signing

Today I attended my first ever book signing event. And incidentally I found myself on the other side of the desk, the side on which the author sits.

All attendees received a copy of my book "OpenCAD - A Step by Step Guide to Developing a Professional CAD Application".

I hope my book helps the ODA in re-branding itself into a organization that develops and supplies a CAD platform as opposed to just DWG read/write libraries. The book and the associated OpenCAD software are good enough proof of that.

ODA World Conference - Day 1 - Development Status

Neil Peterson, the CTO of the ODA, spoke about some of the past work done by the ODA and updated us with the current development status of the ODA platform.

Neil was the first employee of the ODA and was hired 10 years ago. He gave a brief roundup of the OpenDWG Toolkit and Viewkit, the ODA components in 1999, and what their limitations were.

In 2000 the ODA expanded their two man development team and developed an early C++ platform to fix the problems of the C based Toolkit and Viewkit. They basically rewrote the components from ground up. They added a rendering framework and import/export modules, the first one being DWF and then added other interfaces like SVG and PDF. They then added ActiveX support and more recently added support for .NET which has brought it a whole new set of members. Subsequently, members requested rendering support for ACIS solid models since they didn’t want to license the full blown ACIS modeling kernel just to display 3D solid models in DWG files. The ODA wrote an in-house ACIS Rendering and Conversion module for that purpose.

"Support for Custom Objects has been the reason for the success of our DWGdirect SDK", Neil said. He rubbished Autodesk’s claim that their "Trusted" DWG files were better than the ones coming out from DWGdirect. "I have been in this business long enough to know better", he said. "I haven’t seen anything that proves a word they say. This is mature technology and is in use by members for a number of years."

As part of the image change, the ODA is looking for new names for DWGdirect, DGNdirect and other technologies, all of which will go to constitute the ODA platform. Neil also mentioned that the ODA has developed in-house ACIS support for rendering, read/write/convert. Members that need full solid modeling support, can license the ACIS modeling kernel from Spatial and use ODA's Spatial ACIS Integration feature. The ODA has also developed in-house Parasolid rendering support to render solid data in DGN files as well.

Neil spent some time explaining the DRX SDK, a subset of the DWGdirect SDK. He mentioned that custom objects can also be created using the free DRX SDK.

Neil admitted that documentation has been weak and that they were changing that. The ODA now has a dedicated team for documentation. He urged the members to download the new DWGDirectX Developer’s Guide document and give feedback.

The ODA is in the process of putting up my OpenCAD book on its web site as a Wiki, so that users can contribute to it. I think this is a wonderful idea. For example, if a user sees a bug they can go ahead and fix it. If they have a better way of doing something they can go ahead and edit it. I believe that the Wiki will serve as an excellent resource for new as well as existing users.

Neil mentioned that the ODA’s customer base has been changing since 1999, where most customers wanted to write DWG utility, rendering or import/export applications. Today people are using the ODA libraries to build vertical applications, full CAD systems and even web based applications.

ODA World Conference - Day 1 - Opening Remarks

Arnold van der Weide, the President of the ODA, gave the opening remarks on the first day of the ODA World Conference, which saw a total of 92 attendees.

He started by calling the members of the ODA staff, all 25 of them, and introduced them one by one. I finally got to put a face to the names of the programmers that I have been corresponding for all these years.

These are the guys that work tirelessly in the background and make all the wonderful things happen.

Arnold also felicitated Ralph Grabowski on his 600th issue of upFront.eZine by giving him a plaque. He went on the give a presentation on the ODA, its beginnings, what happenned in the past and what lies for it in the future. The ODA now has a new goal: "To develop a platform for Technical Graphic Applications". I am glad the word "DWG" didn't feature anywhere. He laid out what the ODA does and does not do.

The ODA does:
1) Interface to the DWG and DGN file formats.
2) Support multiple operating systems
3) Create API’s for useful third party components like ACIS 3D Modeling, Redway’s Red engine, etc. so that ODA members can simply license and implement the components.

The ODA does not:
1) Develop a CAD system
2) Deliver to end users
3) Deliver libraries
4) Spend $ on administration

Arnold spent some time on what he referred to as the "painful history" involving the embezzlement of $600,000. After the fiasco, an investigating committee was constituted to get to the bottom of the matter. In Nov 2006 the committee submitted its report to the ODA board and a decision was taken to fire the President at that time, Evan Yares, although he was not directly responsible for the fiasco. Evan was fired because it happened on his watch.

The findings of the investigating committee indicated a lack of financial control. The ODA has now put in place a system to ensure that such an embezzlement does not occur again, which includes a new procedure for paying invoices, monthly financial statements and a yearly audit, among other things.

At one point in time the ODA had 5000 Associate members. The ODA had one person full time handling these people, managing their agreements and keeping track of the software that they were building. Last year alone they closed down 4 web sites for wrongful use of the libraries.
To put a lid on the situation the board decided to put a handling fee for Associate members and also created a special Educational Membership class.

Arnold explained how the ODA technical team had two development streams, one for DWGdirect and the other for DGNDirect. This has now been streamlined to use the DWGdirect platform. Source code was spread across all over the world and there was no test system. It has now been moved to a single location on 13 servers. A bi-weekly status report goes out to every member to let them know what has been done, what is being done and what will be done in the future. Personally, I find this report very helpful.

According to Arnold, the ODA is a stable organization and income is growing. In 2007, the ODA raised its membership fees, the first time in 10 years. That led to an increase in 23.7 % jump in income. Moreover the erosion of existing members has stopped. Contrary to expectations, there was a 11% increase revenue for in Q1 2009, in spite of the economic downturn.

Arnold admitted that the legal battle with Autodesk on the TrustedDWG issue was a big mistake and was glad it had been settled. He thinks that it is unwise to give Autodesk an opportunity because they would use it. "Autodesk has been very successful in increasing our legal expenses. We have to be careful in what we do", he reminded the ODA members in the audience.

Arnold explained why every member will need to re-sign their membership agreements. The old membership agreements were written in 1998 at a time when web applications were not an issue. Now members are making use of their outdated agreements and developing web applications using the ODA libraries, thereby selling more licenses that they are entitled to. There will also be new membership class called “Corporate Membership”.

As for the future, Arnold mentioned that the ODA was looking to support PDF as another file format. Support for more third party components is also on the cards as is more testing systems and procedures. The next ODA World conference will be in Florida.

In the question and answer session that followed I asked Arnold whether ODA had a long term plan, say 5 or 10 years from now. He didn’t directly answer my question but did mention that he expected the ODA to continue to grow at 10% every year. He also saw a future where Autodesk would believe that the ODA is not a threat and is an organization that it can work together with.

ODA World Conference - The Platform

The ODA World Conference starts tomorrow. The tag line on the conference web page gives you an idea of what this conference is all about.

The platform — Meet, discuss, discover and network

I have been screaming myself hoarse on this blog for quite some time now about how the ODA has been viewing itself solely as an organization dedicated to providing the world with libraries to read and write DWG files. In reality they offer much more. I even wrote a book about it and all attendees of the conference are going to get a free copy of it. In my opinion, this conference is part of an exercise of the ODA to rebrand itself into an organization that develops and supplies a platform on which its members can develop full blown CAD applications among many other things.

The conference goes on for three days, the first two being dedicated for presentations and discussions by third-party component developers, ODA members and ODA technical staff. The third day includes a couple of sessions hosted by the ODA development staff for those interested in learning more about the technologies that the ODA has to offer.

Leiden

I just checked into the Holiday Inn Leiden in Holland. I flew into Brussels this morning and then took the train to Leiden. While on the train it occurred to me that it was the first time that I was crossing a country border by train. Normally I fly over them.

The ODA World Conference begins tomorrow. Among the CAD press I know, Ralph Grabowski and Randall Newton will be attending. I will be staying back after the conference to tour Holland and Belgium over the weekend. Next week I am spending a couple of days at Bricsys after which I return home.

My two boys are missing me and I am missing them as well. It's been two weeks since I left home. Another week and a half to go. I have been telling Reuben, my 5 year old, that I would be bringing him toys when I come back. That kept him quiet for a while. But now he is getting impatient and is probably smelling a rat in all of this. My wife is doing her best to hold fort. But it seems like she's fighting a losing battle.

Boston Red Sox

Mark christened me a Red Sox fan when he made me put an official Red Sox cap on my head. I guess if you enter Fenway Park wearing a Yankees cap, you may be asking for trouble and may end up getting it. Mark explained the rules of the game and I caught on pretty quickly. I find baseball far more interesting than cricket, mainly because something needs to happen every time the pitcher pitches the ball, unlike cricket where the batsman can bore the hell out of everyone by sitting around and leaving the ball or simply touching it. But I seriously think they need to re-engineer the bats a little. They kept breaking in half and I am told that it is a common occurrence.

Another good thing about baseball is, unlike cricket, there is no third umpire. A third umpire in cricket is someone who sits in a closed room in the stadium and closely watches the game on TV and analyzes TV replays in slow motion. So if the two umpires on the ground are not sure which way to award a decision, they consult the third umpire by means of walkie-talkie. While this may be “fair” to the game and the players, I believe this has killed something. People no longer relive the game by discussing and debating decisions over drinks after the game or during play. You end up simply sitting and watching things as they happen and then maybe comment later. Sometimes sport gets far more interesting and enjoyable when people make on the spot decisions based on their assessment of the situation. I hope baseball does not follow that route. Don’t get me wrong. Technology is a good thing. Just that it makes us less human at times.

Fenway Park was almost sold out. The street leading up to the gate we entered was like one big carnival party with beer flowing everywhere. And that was probably the reason that the line to the men’s bathroom was way longer than that to the ladies, a first for me.

I even got to meet Wally, the Red Sox mascot.

And so did Mark.

The Red Sox won the game 5-4 after being down 2 runs in their last innings. It sure was fun. I had a ball at the ball game last night. I will be keeping the ticket. This one’s special.

Right now I am languishing at the JFK airport in New York. I just flew in from Boston this morning and my flight to Brussels is this evening at 6:10 pm. I guess that’s the price you pay when you tell your travel agent to get you the cheapest fares and then don’t bother to check connection times.

This wraps up the US leg of my tour. I now begin the European leg which includes attending the ODA World Conference in Leiden, Holland, and a visit to Bricsys in Gent, Belgium.

PTC Visit - Revisited

Rick Stavanja left a comment on my post titled "PTC Visit" letting me know that he missed the "meaty unfettered opinions" that he is accustomed to hearing from me. He found it odd that the PTC executives had not discussed the role I would be taking as a visitor before I arrived there.

I know all this sounds quite odd. In fact it is. But I think I need to clarify a few things here. PTC did not pay for my travel or stay. I am paying for all my flight tickets for this entire 25 day US-Europe trip. Marc insisted that I stayed with him while in Boston, but that is more of a personal thing and has nothing to do with PTC. I guess the only thing PTC is paying for is the tickets to the ball game ;-)

I think yesterday's meetings/presentations at PTC were originally designed for a blogger/press. But they as well as I knew that it would be quite a challenge considering the kind of mix I am. As I see it, PTC's aim was to change my perception of the company and its products and that objective would never have been met if they treated me as press. I know far too much to be fooled by the crap that CAD vendors feed the press these days. That is why I believe they ended up showing me stuff that they would never show the press at this stage of development.

This situation in not uncommon for me. CAD vendors are faced with this problem all the time. They really don't who they are dealing with - a blogger, an analyst, a developer, a partner. I wear all the hats at the same time. I cannot take one off and wear another. That makes me kind of a moving target.

So although I may not be allowed to blog some (or rather most) of the stuff, I believe this visit was a good thing for me personally. But I do intend to write at length about some of the stuff after I get back to India. I asked the PTC executives some real tough questions and I was quite surprised to get back some real frank answers. Nevertheless I have asked them to supply me with the "official" positions so that I can mention them in my writings for whatever they are worth.

PTC Visit

I spent the entire day at PTC headquarters in Needham, Boston.

My meetings with top PTC executives went off well. In fact, I think they went off too well. So much so that they gagged me from just about everything they told and showed me.

Before we even started, John Buchowski, Director of Product Management summed up the general feeling in the conference room. He looked me straight in the eye and said, "I am finding it hard to figure out something here. Am I talking to a blogger or am I talking to a PTC partner?" I wasn't sure myself and I told him so. So we decided to go with the flow and take things off the record as and when required.

What followed for the next eight hours were conversations and presentations that started on the record but quickly went off record. Now as I look at my notes I am so utterly confused that I am not sure what is on and off the record. So before I go ahead and write something that lands me or someone in PTC in trouble, I had better cross check.

But there is an irony to all of this. I embarked on this PTC due diligence excercise with the intention of figuring out the company and it products for myself before forming an opinion. As it turns out most of the opinions that I have been expressing on this blog are pretty close to the fact. However, after seeing the stuff that I have seen today, there are some opinions and conclusions that I need to change, but PTC is not allowing me to do so, although deep down they really want me to. Its complicated.

But I am going to say something here and hope that it does not get me into too much trouble. So here goes. Contrary to what PTC executives told me at PTC World in Mumbai, as far as direct editing is concerned, PTC is not sitting idle. I would like to leave it that and let you draw your own conclusions.

The day started out with Hiren Kumbhojkar, Senior Project Manager, giving me a demo on the PTC Product Development System. Andy Barlow, Senior Director of Business Development, was my host and took care of me the entire day. After the PDS demo I sat with Andy Barlow, John Buchowski, Tom Shoemaker (Vice President of Product Marketing) and Asa Trainer (Director of Product Management) and gave them a brief introduction of SYCODE and Print3D Corporation. But they were more interested in my perspective of PTC and I let them have it. Needless to say, what followed was quite an interesting discussion.

I asked them what PTC thought about blogs and bloggers. Asa was of the opinion that blogs were influential and PTC needed to pay more attention to them. All four executives admitted that PTC was not the most press friendly CAD vendor and needed to be more agressive in its marketing in order to keep up with its competitors. Just about everything was taken off the record in this one hour session. But all said and done, I really appreciate them for patiently listening to my views and also sharing with me information about PTC, its products and its future plans, some of which were quite sensitive.

Next was a one on one session with Tom Shoemaker, who explained PTC's vision of Social Product Development. This was followed by a working lunch with Andy Barlow who explained to me the recently revamped PTC Partner Program. After lunch, John Buchowski gave me a brief run down of the upcoming Pro/ENGINEER WildFire 5.0 and explained its roadmap. He literrally breezed though his presentation and I kept wondering why he was in such a hurry. After the presentation I came to know why. He wanted to show me the "new stuff" that the PTC R&D team in Needham was working on, stuff that amazed me but unfortunately was meant strictly for my eyes only.

Asa Trainer spent more than an hour explaining the PTC interoperability roadmap. At SYCODE we have been working on our first plug-in for Pro/ENGINEER, a STL file import plug-in and I gave him a brief run down of what it does and how it will help Pro/ENGINEER users. Asa discussed various issues related to data exchange. I made a few suggestions to improve the usability of Pro/TOOLKIT, the API used to build plug-ins for Pro/ENGINEER.

After I get back to India I hope to gather my thoughts and write some more about the things that were discussed today. Tommorow Mark is going to take me around Boston and then later we will be going to see the baseball game between the Boston Red Sox and New York Yankees, tickets courtesy of PTC. I have been advised to wear a Red Sox cap before I enter the stadium.

Boston

Today I find myself in the cozy home of Mark Lobo, PTC's Director of Windchill CAD Integrations. Mark lives in a beautiful town called Ashland on the suburbs of Boston. This is my first time in a suburban town of an American city and it feels wonderful. To give you an idea, Mark's house is on the edge of the woods and I am told that deer come to graze outside his window.

I arrived into Phoenix from Hawaii this morning and eventually landed in Boston this evening. I lost a few hours along the way and that is probably the reason my mind and body are all messed up right now.

Tomorrow I spend the entire day at PTC, where I believe, I will be put in front of a firing squad, the members of the squad being:
1) Andy Barlow – Senior Director of Business Development
2) John Buchowski - Director of Product Management
3) Tom Shoemaker – Vice President of Product Marketing
4) Asa Trainer - Director of Product Management

The agenda has been pretty much firmed up. It got tweaked a little after I met Brian Shepherd, Executive Vice President (Product Development) during my PTC Vendor Appointment at COFES 2009. I guess the most interesting item on the agenda will be between 9 to 10 am, where I am the speaker and I am supposed to speak on "Overview of SYCODE and Deelip's perspective of PTC". If I live to tell the story, I will do so on this blog.

On Friday PTC and Mark are doing something special for me. They are taking me to a baseball game - Boston Rex Sox vs New York Yankees. I don't know much about baseball, but I do know that this is a big deal. After all, Wikipedia has a page dedicated to the Yankees-Red Sox Rivalry.

This is going to be my first baseball game and Mark will need to fill me in on the rules. Back in India, we have something similar called "cricket" in which, like baseball, you basically hit and run. I am curious to see how the Americans do it differently.

Booze for Breakfast

The Bloody Mary you see in my hand is a special one because that is the very first one I have ever had for breakfast. Yesterday we had breakfast at the Wailea Golf Club and I decided to follow the saying "When in Rome do what Romans do". As far as alcohol is concerned, I thought I had done it all. Apparently not.

Bloody Mary

I still cannot believe people here have booze for breakfast. Back in India, we have a word for such people. It's called "drunk".

And here is something that some of you may not know. Back in India, and maybe other parts of the world, we have something called "mocktail", which is essentially a cocktail minus the alcohol. They taste deceptively similar to the cocktails and have names that match. For example, the mocktail version of "Bloody Mary" is called "Virgin Mary". I believe this was designed for women, since it is rather uncommon for women to drink alcohol in India.

Last night we had dinner at a lovely waterfront restaurant in Maalaea. The food was simply out of this world. And so was the ambiance.

With Ron and his lovely wife Rhonda

We eventually did get some business done with some more slated for today. It's really difficult to talk business in an environment like this.

I leave Hawaii this evening for Boston. PTC is hosting me for a couple of days at their headquarters at Needham. I will be staying with Mark Lobo, PTC's Director of WindChill CAD Integrations. Mark is originally from Goa and we got to know each other through this blog.

I am getting myself mentally prepared for the long flight to Boston via Phoenix. Usually I refrain from having a drink while flying. But when coming into the US, the Goa-Mumbai-Brussels-Newark-Chicago-Phoenix route really got to me. To put myself out of misery, I decided to have have one. I soon realized that a Bloody Mary at 33,000 feet does far more damage than one at sea level, especially if you have been languishing at airports and changing planes for more than 24 hours before that. I guess I learnt my lesson the hard way.

Hawaii on a Harley

In my opinion the best way to enjoy Hawaii is by riding around in a Harley Davidson. Ron gave me his 1700 CC mean machine and I went riding the winding roads of Maui. That piece of work is so loud that my ears were ringing long after I parked it back in the garage. I hear that you get Harley's on hire as well on Maui. We Indians drive on the left side of the road. So getting used to the American way of driving on the right side of the road took some time.

You can choose to ride around the beautiful mountains or along the breathtaking coast line. I took the coast line.

This is Clint Eastwood's house in the background. I thought of dropping in to say Hi to him, but was in a hurry to get back home. Maybe some other time. Maybe I will have some time for his neighbor Jack Nicholson as well.

Hawaii is a lot like Goa, where I come from. The climate, vegetation, beaches feels just like Goa. Just that the people living here are a lot more richer and drive much better cars.

Hawaii

Just to give you a sense of my current state of mind, I am sitting on an easy chair in the garden of a beautiful house overlooking the Pacific Ocean on the beautiful island on Maui in Hawaii, one of the most spell binding places on earth. The fact that I am in the middle of the Pacific Ocean simple adds to the sense of seclusion and calmness that I feel, quite contrast of the high level of activity at COFES 2009. Its 8:30 in the morning and all kinds of birds have come out to greet me. All that is left to do is take in the marvelous air and listen to the waves in the distance.

I arrived last evening after a six hour flight from Phoenix. I am actually here on business, but I don't think I am going to much of it in this environment. My business partner in Print3D, Ron Barranco, lives on Maui. He was supposed to attend COFES 2009 with me, but something came up and he could not make it. So I decided to fly here instead.

Ron's taking good care of me. I hear that he has arranged for a young lady to come over and give me a massage this afternoon. My wife is reading this blog back in India. So I am not going to get into the other plans for today. Last night, Rhonda, Ron's wife and a wonderful hostess, barbecued some Salmon and concocted a lemon drop Martini for us. She let me know this morning that she has made better plans to dinner tonight.

Talking business with Ron in on the agenda, but looks like its got the lowest priority now. I am going to go offline for a while now.

The Bob McNeel Story

I have always considered Bob McNeel to be one of the few people in the CAD software industry who stands out from the crowd. His decision to not go down the path of most CAD vendors of locking customers using proprietary file formats is just one of reasons I admire the man.

On the second day of COFES 2009, in the middle of the Arizona dessert, I got the chance to sit with him and talk business over beer. I learnt a lot of stuff about him, his company and the way he views the CAD software industry. Bob is an accountant by profession. So I asked him how an accountant ended up where he is. What followed was one of the most interesting conversations that I ever had in a long time. A small disclaimer here. This was not an interview and I was not taking down notes. So it is perfectly possible that some of what I am going to say is factually incorrect. Moreover please remember that we were having beer and my brain does not do a very good job remembering things when alcohol is in close proximity.

Anyways, as it turns out, once upon a time, Bob McNeel was a practicing accountant. Along the way he started writing accounting software for himself and other people. Things started working out on the software front and he ended up with quite a few customers. A few years down the line, one of his customers asked him for some help which involved purchasing and installing a license of AutoCAD. So Bob picked up the phone and called Autodesk. They told him that if he signed up as a reseller and ordered a reseller kit (2 licenses of AutoCAD) he would get a 50% reseller discount. So Bob figured that he could break even since he could sell one of the licenses to his customer and would still be left with another license which he could sell to someone else. So Bob signed up as a reseller and purchased a reseller kit.

The thing with Autodesk is that they do not sell directly to end users. If they get a direct inquiry, Autodesk routes it through the reseller for that area. So through no effort of his, Bob started getting inquiries for AutoCAD and began selling it. Soon enough, reselling AutoCAD started becoming quite a profitable business and Bob expanded his operations to include HP plotters and all kinds of stuff that CAD users need.

The reseller business started taking up so much of his time and resources that he slowly let the accounting software business disappear. Bob started adding value added services to his AutoCAD customers which included writing plug-ins and scripts for AutoCAD. One thing led to another and he ended up developing plug-ins that he sold commercially. At one point McNeel became one of the largest AutoCAD reseller in the entire North America.

Somewhere along the way Bob McNeel hired Michael Gibson, the genius who now develops and sells Moment Of Inspiration (MoI). One of Michael’s first project was a toolbar plug-in for AutoCAD, the same kind of toolbars that Rhino has till date - the ones where something different happens when you left-click and right-click the mouse.

After a few requests from customers for more free-form modeling tools Bob decided to develop a NURBS modelling plug-in for AutoCAD. At that point, the architecture of AutoCAD offered poor support for integration of a Windows NURBS modeller and his programmers eventually realized that they were going to run into trouble. So Michael was entrusted with the job of developing a standalone NURBS modeller. The idea was to have the NURBS modelling happen in an external application and then transfer the model back and forth to AutoCAD.

Bob licensed the AGLib NURBS modelling kernel from Applied Geometry to do the actual NURBS modelling. Bob soon realized that the AutoCAD plug-in was not going anywhere and decided to stop going down that road. The codename for the standalone modeller that Michael was working on was “Rhinoceros”. When the product was ready, the name that Bob chose for the product ran into some trademark issued and he decided to stick to Rhinoceros. Bob released Rhinoceros 1.0 as an open beta, something which he still continues to do to this day. The response was phenomenal. He got flooded with bug reports and enhancement requests from people all over the world. McNeel programmers found it difficult to keep up with the users. Eventually after about three years, Rhinoceros was officially released and became an instant smash hit.

At this time McNeel was still using the AGLib modeling library. Alias bought Applied Geometry and there arose a conflict of interest. So Bob started developing his own NURBS modeling kernel.

All this time Bob remained a reseller of AutoCAD. He admits that profits from their AutoCAD plug-in products paid for the Rhinoceros development effort. The AutoCAD reseller relationship came to an end shortly after Autodesk bought Alias, which had a product that was in direct competition with Rhinoceros. McNeel still develops plug-ins for AutoCAD and Revit including AccuRender and DOSLib.

To this day, Bob feels that Alias Studio is one of Rhino’s main competitors, which does not seem apparent when you take the cost of both products into consideration. He tells me, “Actually they are competing with my product and not the other way around, if you know what I mean".

So this is the story of how a practicing accountant became one of the most respectable and admired people in the CAD software industry.

COFES 2009 - Day 3 Pictures

Due to connectivity problems I could not upload pictures last night. Here are some.

With Jon Hirschtick

I had the pleasure of meeting SolidWorks co-founder and now Group Executive and Board Member, Jon Hirschtick in the Scottsdale Plaza lobby. We spoke for quite a while and a exchanged notes on business among other things. Jon is a fantastic guy.

Roundtable

This was the "Leveraging Gaming and Social Networking in Business" roundtable. As you can see the table is indeed round. In this picture Lynn Allen was explaining what she used Twitter for. Her point was while most people were looking to exchange information with other people, she was simply trying to put out information using Twitter. And it was working for her.

Congress

This was a highly charged and open debate where the best minds and most influential people in the CAD industry sparred with each other, sharing their experiences and views on the economy and the ways that they were handling the problem.

After the final awards ceremony the bar was open late into the night and COFES attendees made sure that they made the best use of it.

Buzz Kross and Lynn Allen from Autodesk

Shyamal Roy and Evan Yares jamming up

Rachael Dalton-Taggart, Al Dean and Martyn day communicating with the rest of the world

Here is the COFES edition of "American Pie".

COFES 2009 - Day 3

Keynote: Joel Orr

Joel Orr, Vice President and Chief Visionary of Cyon Research delivered a keynote speech with an interesting title: “Remembering the Future”. The idea here was to remember the future that we had envisioned in the past. Confused? I don't blame you. That's Joel Orr for you. I bet he could give therapy to a shrink. This is the 10th COFES and Joel spent some time remembering what it was and what they wanted it to be when they first started it. He reminded us that as engineers we are designing the future every moment of our lives. A couple of quotes to take away:

"Pyramids are things where great people are buried. The same is true for companies with pyramidal structures".

"Stop focussing for looking for what is not working on your company. Rather focus on what is working and improve it."


Keynote: Peter Marks

Peter Marks from Design Insight delivered a keynote speech on Blind spotting. Some pretty heavy stuff, but the gist is that the human brain processes only 1% of information consciously. The remain 99% is processed by the unconscious mind. We make most decisions on people and situations using this unconscious mind and is the reason for our unjust bias towards them. These are the blind spots in our mind. This is how I understood it. For all you know it may be something completely different. I am not very good at understanding this heavy stuff.


Discussions and Roundtables – Round 1

Meeting rooms are set up in suites around the pool where people with common interests sit down and discuss an issue that interests them. The topics of discussion were:

Channel Evolution: A discussion on the changing relationship between vendors, their go-to-market partners (the Channel) and their customers.

Collaboration 2020: A discussion on the kind of form collaboration will assume 10 years from now.

Innovating Everywhere - Helping Customers Secure Their Future: A discussion on how the engineering software world can or should help its customers struggling in this current financial crisis by means of innovation.

Is Direct Modeling the Interoperability “Holy Grail”?: A discussion on the role direct modeling will play in solving the interoperability problem. More than a year ago I published a white paper titled “CAD 2.0 - Finally a Solution to the CAD Interoperability Problem” in which I explained how direct modeling was a solution to the vexed problem of CAD interoperability.

Is SharePoint a Game Changer? – A discussion on Microsoft SharePoint and why everyone has a SharePoint Strategy or is working on one. For those who don’t know, SharePoint is a collection of products and software elements that include browser-based collaboration functions, process management modules and a document management platform. There is a view that SharePoint could be a real threat to existing PLM systems.

Jumping the Gap – A discussion on the widening gap between technology leaders (software vendors) and followers (their customers). Why do customers take time to implement new technologies invented by the vendors?

Turning BIM Towards a Handoff-Focused Data Model – A discussion on the interoperability issues plaguing the BIM world.

User Group Leadership Roundtable – A meeting of representatives of major user groups like AUGI, COE, PLM World, PTC/USER and SWUGN to discuss common issues.

During the time of these Discussions and Roundtables there were Vendor Appointments that COFES organizers arranged for attendees. I could not attend any of the roundtables as four vendors had set up meetings with me, one after another. These meetings are one on one, just you and the vendor. In my case, the vendors were PTC, Autodesk, Nemetschek and Microsoft.


Vendor Appointment - PTC

Brian Shepherd, Executive Vice President (Product Development) of PTC along with three other PTC executives briefed me about Pro/ENGINEER, CoCreate and the PTC strategy for them. Although Brian appreciates my attempts at doing my due diligence with regard to Pro/ENGINEER, he does not completely agree with my findings, some of which I have been writing on this blog. I will be writing on these issues at length after my visit to PTC Headquarters in Needham this coming Thursday, but all I will say now is that we are going to see more of parametrics in CoCreate and more of direct editing in Pro/ENGINEER. This is in complete contrast to what PTC executives told me at PTC World in Mumbai. I get the feeling that this PTC visit is going to be very interesting.


Vendor Appointment - Autodesk

Brenda Discher, VP, Industry Marketing (Manufacturing Industry Group), Hilde Sevens, Senior Product Line Manager (Manufacturing Solutions Division) of Autodesk and I sat outside their hotel suite where they presented to me the Autodesk vision of Digital Prototyping. I have written about Digital Prototyping on this blog in the past. But I would like to let you know about something that was considered classified a while back when I attended the Autodesk DevDays in Bangalore a few months ago. It's called AIRMax and it stands for AutoCAD, Inventor, Revit and 3ds Max. The idea here is to have a unified system wherein a user is able to use Autodesk software throughout the design chain. I hope to write about AIRMax at length. I do not have enough information on it yet and do not with to speculate. Watch this space.


Vendor Appointment - Nemetschek

I had lunch with Sean Flaherty (CEO) and Jeremy Powell (Product Marketing Manager) of Nemetschek where they introduced me to the company and its products. I must admit that I do not know much about Nemetschek and its flagship product VectorWorks, but I have promised myself to change that in due course of time. Nemetschek is very excited about its adoption of the Parasolid Geometry kernel from Siemens PLM. This means that entities (walls, windows, etc.) in Vector Works are pure solids, just like any other MCAD solid modeling system and can be modified as such. Parametric modeling is being introduced as well, which should make the product extremely powerful. I intend to take VectorWorks for a test drive and at the same time, get more familiar with the AEC industry and its products.


Vendor Appointment - Microsoft

This appointment kept me guessing till the last minute. I kept wondering why on earth would Microsoft want to meet me. As it turns out at the hotel suite, Peter Schroer, President of Aras Corporation, was waiting to introduce me to something I knew absolutely nothing about. Aras is a PLM software provider that turned its business model upside down in January 2007. As Peter put it, "I fired my sales staff and made my software open source". I thought to myself, "Wow! I sure hope I don't have to do that one day". Here is why Aras did it. They found that the cost of selling their PLM solution to companies was way too large. So one fine day Aras went open source and began charging for implementation and support. They changed the business model "to grow faster" and in the first year their revenue increased 62%. The reason Peter was sitting in the Microsoft Suite was because his PLM solution is built around Windows Server, SQL Server and SharePoint.

I really like these Vendor appointments where vendors request COFES organizers to arrange one on one meetings with people they find interesting. Now I have been fed with just the right amount of information to start investigating these companies and their products. The CAD, PLM, AEC, MCAD and whatever acronym you may find out there is just so large that it is almost impossible to know and understand everything. I am sure as hell going to try.


Discussions and Roundtables – Round 2

The Discussions and Roundtables in round 2 were:

Abstract Modeling and Optimization: The Next Wunderkinds of CAE: A discussion on abstract modelling, basically a modelling technique where you play around with meshes and fiddle width polygons. This is a good example of Abstract Modeling in Cinema 4D.

Blurring Corporate Boundaries: A discussion on “coopetition”, a cross between “cooperation” and “competition”, basically how vendors license and use each others technologies in competing products and the implications of doing so.

Dealing with the Harsh Realities of our Customers: A discussion on whether vendors are listening to their customers. Are vendors actually solving their customers’ specific problems?

Leveraging Gaming and Social Networking in Business: A discussion on how Gaming and Social Networking can be used in business.

Putting a Stake in the Ground: Visions of Future Interfaces: A discussion on how today’s futuristic thinking play a role in providing a vision for stuff that we will actually end up doing in the future.

The Next Big Thing – Making Current Building Inventory Less Inefficient: A discussion on how the operation of buildings, as opposed to automobiles, is a major sustainability concern, especially since they were built at a time when energy conservation was not considered a serious issue.

Where AEC and MFG Meet – A discussion on the increasing blurring of the line dividing the AEC and Manufacturing segments as both sides begin to use each others software tools to get their job done.

I attended the roundtable on "Leveraging Gaming and Social Networking in Business". Sparks flew all around the room. All throughout COFES 2009, I heard just about everyone use the word "Twitter". I believe there are three kinds of people (1) people who think they get it (2) people who don't know whether they get it, and (3) people who don' t get it. I belong to the second. The room was filled with people from all three categories. So you can imagine what it must have been. We also discussed other forms of social networking such as Second Life. Finally a wise man who sat silently in the corner for the entire discussion got up and suggested that we start using fax machines.


Congress - The Business of Design and Engineering: It's the Economy, Stupid!

This was basically an open forum with the aim of discussing current issues and explore future opportunities. I missed a major part of this because Chris Williams was giving me a demo of Vuuch in the lobby. More information here. The congress discussion was about the economy. As expected the discussion was very lively. At one point someone stood up and said that nobody in the room knew a damn thing about the economy and when it would get fixed. But I guess the telling moment was when one very wise old man stood up and very calmly said that the people who were going to end up actually solving the problem were all seated in that room. There was a momentary silence as this simple yet profound statement sank into everyone seated there. Incidentally this person was Jack Ring of Kennen Technologies LLC, the same guy who yesterday gave the presentation titled "Transforms and Transformations", the one that went right over my head. But I am pretty sure that what he articulated today was absorbed by everyone in that room and they understood exactly what he meant.


Dinner & Awards

After dinner, there was an award ceremony for the CADwire.net and CAD Society awards. The CAD Society is a not-for-profit industry association with the goal of fostering a community and encouraging open communication among those who make their living within the CAD industry including AEC, mechanical, manufacturing, and GIS. Every year they felicitate people for their outstanding achievements. This year Richard Doyle of SolidWorks received the 2009 CAD Society Community Award for his role in building a vibrant and open community for SolidWorks users worldwide. Bill McClure and Dan Staples of Siemens PLM Software were joint winners of the 2009 CAD Society Leadership Award for their vital role in developing Solid Edge. Richard Sowar, co-founder of Spatial, was the winner of the 2009 CAD Society Lifetime Achievement Award for his role in development of the ACIS 3D geometric kernel, which forms the backbone of a large CAD system today, 20 years after it was first introduced in 1989. The CADwire.net award for Innovation went to Chris Williams for Vuuch.

In his acceptance speech, Richard Doyle said something that I am not going to forget in a hurry: "You cannot have a meaningful conversation with someone using 140 characters or shake the hand of an avatar".

COFES 2009 - A Conversation with Evan Yares

On the sidelines of COFES 2009, I sat down with Evan Yares to get his perspective on the ODA and the reasons why he intends to give the organization he once ran a hard time by threatening them with a class action law suit.

Deelip: So Evan, tell me what is all this about?
Evan: First I’ll tell you what it is not about. It’s not about me. Everyone knows that there is a lot of history between the ODA, the people running it and me. So I perfectly understand if people think that this is some kind of a revenge thing. But it is not. This is about the ODA members and more of a fight about a principle, something that I believe is worth fighting for.

Deelip: So what is this principle that you are talking about?
Evan: It’s actually very simple. The ODA is trying to force its Associate member into signing an agreement which requires them to pay for the libraries, when the existing agreement clearly states that there will be no fees whatsoever.

Deelip: So are you saying that the ODA does not have the right to charge its members as and when it thinks fit?
Evan: No, they can. But telling someone that they have to tear up their existing agreement and sign a new one is flat wrong. Furthermore, terminating a member for not doing so is even more wrong. There is a right way of doing this. This is the wrong way.

Deelip: What is the right way?
Evan: I would like to reserve that for the day when I appear in court.

Deelip: Do you really think the ODA is really interested in suing you. That’s the impression I got after reading your blog post.
Evan: I don’t know, but I am sure as hell not suing them.

Deelip: I don’t understand. Then what is this class action suit about?
Evan: I am not suing them personally as President of Purecor and an Associate member. I am going to simply lay out the facts to the class (the Associate members interested in taking this further). I will write a document describing everything and appear as an fact witness if required, at no charge.

Deelip: Help me understand something here. I get the “principle” argument, but to me it all boils down to inconveniencing the Associate members to pay $100 as handling fee. So if you do find Associate members who cannot afford to pay $100 a year, how on earth are they going to pay for this class action suit. I must admit I am new to all of this. Enlighten me.
Evan: That’s a good question. The Associate members joining this class will not have to pay anything. The lawyer taking up this case will figure out whether the case is strong and gauge the amount of compensation/damages that could be won. He will take a percentage of that. And as regards money, I will not spend a single cent on this and neither will I earn a single cent. I have already said that I will donate my share of any settlement to EFF.

Deelip: So what will it take for you to stop this?
Evan: Like I said I am going to write a document and lay down the facts as I see them. If the ODA refunds the fees collected from the Associate members, reinstates the members that they wrongfully terminates, I will then add more information to the document describing what they did and publish the document. If nobody finds a reason to take things forward after that, then nobody will. All I am requesting the ODA is they follow the rules and none of this needs to happen.

Deelip: I am going to ask you a straight question and would appreciate a straight answer. Knowing you I think I am going to get one. Why did you wait 30 days to begin acting? Why didn’t you ask for the bylaws and minutes of the meetings that led up to the decision to charge Associate members on the day you received the first email from the ODA clerk.
Evan: That’s an excellent question. I wanted to see what the ODA would do.

Deelip: Looks like you have some major issues with the ODA.
Evan: I have no problem with the ODA. I care about the organization but I care more about its members. After all, it is a member driven organization.

Deelip: There is a view that you are trying to get back at the ODA management for the manner in which you were made to resign as President.
Evan: Let’s be clear on something. I do not want my job back. In fact, I don’t believe that I am the right person to run the ODA. Neither do I want to be on the Board of Directors. Sure, the organization can benefit from my experience. But I seriously believe that the ODA deserves better.

Deelip: You mentioned not wanting to be on the board. If I understand this correctly, only Founding members can be on the board and Purecor is (or was) only an Associate member.
Evan: You are forgetting that any Founding member could make me their representative on the board. But I am not interested in that.

Deelip: Personally, I believe that neither the ODA, its members or you, need this. I hope you guys can find a way to sort this out amicably.
Evan: I could not agree more with you.

COFES 2009 - Day 2

Introductions and Breakfast

Day 2 started out with breakfast at 7:30 am. Later representatives of the Technology Suite sponsors (Autodesk, Microsoft, Nemetschek, PTC, ShareVis, Siemens PLM and VX) introduced themselves and let us know what they were going to present in their technology suites sessions later in the day.

Breakfast

Keynote: Innovative Engineering for a Disruptive Time

Chuck House of Media X delivered a keynote speech on Innovative Engineering for a Disruptive Time. He is the executive director of Media X, Stanford University's Industry Affiliate research program on media and technology. The speech was very informative and humorous, in fact, bordering hilarious. Consider this quote: "Carver Mead invented Moore's law and told Moore about it who told the world." His first slide asked us to "check conventional wisdom at the door".

Chuck House

He dwelt on the reasons why innovation lags in most companies giving examples from the waves of innovation in Silicon Valley. In his opinion, innovative engineering in a desruptive time needs mavericks, people who don't break the rules, but rather, who change them.


Technology Suite Briefings - Round 1

A technology suite briefing is held in a hotel room where people from the sponsor company meet one on one with a handful of attendees. The ides is not to sell a product. After all nobody comes to COFES to buy a CAD system. Rather the briefing is to discuss issues related to the company and its products.

The technology suite briefings for the first round were:

Autodesk - Hilde Sevens, Senior Product Line Manager, Manufacturing Solutions
Topic: Extending Digital Prototyping

Autodesk - Brenda Discher, Vice-President, Manufacturing Solutions
Topic: Digital Prototyping and BIM

Microsoft - Diego Tamburini, Senior Evangelism Manager
Topic: New Technologies for Software Developers

Nemetschek North America- Sean Flaherty, CEO
Topic: Nemetschek's Vision for BIM and Design

PTC - Brian Shepherd, Senior Vice-President, Product Management
Topic: Social Product Development

ShareVis - Nail Sudin, CEO
Topic: PLM with Model-Based Workflows

Siemens PLM Software - Bill Carrelli, Vice-President Business Development
Topic: Differences between PLM for medium-to-large enterprises and PLM for small-to-medium businesses.

SpaceClaim - Chris Randles, President & CEO
Topic: Direct Modeling

VX Corporation - Mark Vorwaller, President
Topic: Capturing and Sharing Knowledge

I attended the SpaceClaim briefing where CEO Chris Randles and co-founder Blake Courter explained SpaceClaim's product strategy and a need for its technology in a multi-CAD environment.

Chris Randles

DaS Symposium

While the Technology Suite Briefings were going on there was something called as the Design and Sustainability (DaS) Symposium. The founding members of the DaS Symposium include Autodesk, Building Smart Alliance, CIFE, Cyon Research, Gensler, Siemens, SolidWorks, Sustainable Minds, et al. The purpose of this symposium was to focus on how design software can facilitate the visibility of sustainability issues at the design stage.


Analyst Briefings – Round 1

An analyst briefing is quite similar to a technology suite briefing, just that the person discussing the topic is an industry renowned analyst who first gives a brief overview of one or more pressing issues surrounding his industry and then answers questions posed by attendees. These replies more then often spark off a debate with different points of view being expressed. This increased level of interaction is what makes it far more interesting.

The first round of analyst briefings for the day were:

Chuck House, Media X
Topic: Issues raised in his Keynote Speech

Deke Smith, Cyon Research
Topic: BIM Changes Everything

Don Brown, CPDA
Topic: Scorecard on Mechatronics

Joe Barkai, Manufacturing Insights
Topic: Will PLM Shake Off Its CAD Roots?

Jim Brown, Tech-Clarity
Topic: Design, Engineering, and Social Networking

Jon Peddie, Jon Peddie Research
Topic: Why Virtual Worlds Fail

Tom Pennino, TP Technologies
Topic: Interdependency of EDA and MCAD

I went in to attend Jim Brown's briefing on "Design, Engineering and Social Networking", but was pulled away for a private meeting. Before I left I caught Randall Newton hiding behind the door twittering away to glory.

Randall Newton

Analyst Briefings – Round 2

The second round of analyst briefings for the day were:

Phares Noel, Cyon Research
Topic: Factory-Floor Time-Bomb

David Prawel, LongView Advisors
Topic: Extending the Reach of Product Data

Ken Versprille, CPDA
Topic: Trends in Design Data Quality

Jay Vleeschhouwer, Financial Analyst
Topic: Wall Street Perspective on the CAD/PLM industry

Bruce Jenkins, Ora Research
Topic: Strengthening Simulation’s Impact

Dave Jordani, Jordani Consulting Group
Topic: BIM – Innovation Under Construction

I attended Jay Vleeschhouver briefing on "Wall Street Perspective on the CAD/PLM Industry". First Jay painted a horrifying picture of the mess that CAD vendors are finding themselves in, complete with numbers and their implications for the future. He noted that the more pressing current situation is that new license revenues are declining rapidly, and that there would be – or already are in some cases – resultant adverse effect on maintenance. He also noted that there were high chances that product development spending could be severely curtailed. He threw some light on the cost cutting measures of adopted by the CAD vendors and stated that customers were showing clear signs of deferring new purchases. Jay was of the opinion that a steep decline did not mean that there would be a steep ascent. In fact, he believes that the upturn, when it comes, will be slower than expected. He felt that Autodesk and SolidWorks may recover faster because their customers have shorter software procurement cycles.

Jay Vleeschhouver

When he eventually got down to talking about the Wall Street perspective on the CAD/PLM industry, he said that investors very rarely look at the software and technologies of the CAD vendors before investing their stock. At present, they are simply interested in cost management. He mentioned that a couple of private equity firms had in the recent past asked him to debrief them about the CAD/PLM industry. He feels that such kind of interest reveals that investors see some potential in the CAD/PLM industry.


Technology Suite Briefings - Round 2

After lunch, there were a repeat of the morning briefings which gave attendees the opportunity to attend a second briefing. I attended the briefing by Siemens PLM. Bill McClure, Vice President of the Velocity Portfolio, discussed Synchronous Technology and what had changed since it was introduced a year ago.

Bill Carelli and Bill McClure

Bill McClure let us know that they were getting ready to ship the next version of Synchronous Technology next month. Incidentally, Inventor Fusion also comes out next month. A major enhancement was the addition of a sheet metal system.


Technology Suite Briefings - Round 3

The third and final round of analyst briefings for the day were:

Steve Wolfe, Cyon Research
Topic: Affordable PLM

Chad Jackson, Aberdeen
Topic: The Innovation Transition

Marc Halpern, Gartner
Topic: Designing Green: Practical or Pipe Dream?

Monica Schnitger, Schnitger Corporation
Topic: Shifting Channel Models

Terry Wohlers, Wohlers Associates
Topic: Additive Fabrication for Mass Customization

Martin Fischer, CIFE
Topic: The Promise of VDC

I attended Terry Wohlers' briefing on "Additive Fabrication for Mass Customization". I have been conversing with Terry over email for a few years now. It was nice to meet him face to face for the first time.

Terry Wohlers

Terry spent some time explaining new methods of additive fabrication (or more commonly known as rapid prototyping) and new materials. He passed around physical models among the attendees, some of which could never have been created using normal machining. He answered question from his small audience and they had a lot of them.


Maieutic Parataxis

This is something that was started last year and became a hit. So they decided to do it again. Maieutic means “the midwifery of knowledge” and Parataxis means “the juxtaposition of ideas, without connection or conjunction”. Putting them together, according the COFES organizers, you get “a series of five-minute vignettes drawn from topics and ideas that, while perhaps not yet fully formed, are likely to impact your thinking about how we design, build, and interact with software in the future”.

A couple of these five minute presentations were fascinating, not always in the right sense. Among the presenters were Bill Barnes from Lattice Technology showing off his XVL file format and player. He showed how a 1.3 GB assembly could be reduced to 6.5 MB without any geometric difference at all. Gary Vanderplats, CEO of Vanderplaats Research & Development Inc. gave a presentation on "Optimization". Jack Ring of Kennen Technologies LLC gave a presentation of "Transforms and Transformers", of which I understood absolutely nothing. Here is one slide.

WTF

I am pretty sure his presentation made sense to a lot of people in the audience. Just that my level of IQ didn't fit the requirement. Stephen Prusha of NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab gave a presentation on "Next Generation Conceptual Design at JPL". Simon Floyd of Microsoft gave a mind blowing presentation on "Work Styles & Interactivity in 2020" which included this video. Torben Sko, a PhD student came all the way from Australia and showed how by using a normal web cam and face tracking software he could navigate a first person shooter game in a real life manner. Truly amazing. Link.


Evening Under the Stars at La Puesta del Sol

To wrap up the day, all attendees were herded into busses and taken to La Puesta del Sol, a great western cookout in the middle of the desert. Last year I froze. This time I made sure I took my jacket with me. Far away from the city lights, you get a much clearer view of the stars in the Arizona sky. They even have a huge telescope.

COFES 2009 - Inventor Fusion is Coming

This morning I had an interesting conversation with Buzz Kross in the Scottsdale Plaza lobby. Buzz is the Senior Vice President of the Manufacturing Solutions Division at Autodesk, basically the man in charge of Inventor. I asked him about Inventor Fusion. "We are letting customers try it out in May", he said. "We just released Inventor 2010. So this will be offered as as a separate application on Autodesk Labs, which will be later integrated into Inventor".

"So has Autodesk finally cracked the case? Is Inventor Fusion really able to do direct editing while maintaining the feature tree?", I asked. "Yes", he replied. "Frankly, I don't find the approaches taken by other CAD vendors feasible. Users will always feel the need for parametrics in a solid modeling system".

I asked Buzz whether this technology was developed in-house or was licensed/bought from some one else. "This is all our stuff", he replied.

So this is how I understand it. We have Inventor 2010 and there will be Inventor Fusion on Autodesk Labs, two separate applications. Say an Inventor 2010 user creates a parametric model and saves it as a part file (.ipt). Inventor Fusion will be able to open the part file and let the user push/pull and mess around. When he saves his changes to the same .ipt file and opens it back in Inventor 2010, the feature tree will stay intact, as will the modifications made to the model when it was in Inventor Fusion. In time, this functionality will be integrated into Inventor.

If what Buzz told me is true or if I have understood this correctly, then this is AWESOME!! Now I cannot wait to get my hands on Inventor Fusion to see for myself.

Someone from Autodesk once told me. "We may not be very good market leaders, but we are damn good followers".

COFES 2009 - Day 1

COFES 2009 starts full swing tomorrow morning. But today afternoon were three special sessions and the Business reception followed by dinner.


Special Session: CAD/PLM Market Survey Results

Brad Holtz, President and CEO of Cyon Research, put forth the results of his CAD/PLM market survey I mentioned earlier on this blog. Preliminary because the survey is still on. So far there have been 447 respondents and he expects the number to rise to 600 to 800. One of the questions asked in the survey related to the decision to buy new software or continue with maintenance in these trouble times. The results were pretty alarming. 25% of people said that they were holding all new software purchases. 19% were delaying purchase and 14% had canceled plans to purchase software. As far as software maintenance is concerned, 33% discontinued unused seats, 45% discontinued selectively and 32% had discontinued across the board. No wonder CAD vendors are posting dismal quarterly numbers.

Brad Holtz

Special Session: What’s Going to Stick

Kathleen Maher from John Peddie Research (JPR) gave a presentation titled “What Sticks to the Wall”, basically an update to her presentation on the Practicality Gap of last year.

JPR is a technically oriented computer graphics marketing and management-consulting firm based in Tiburon, CA, which provides specialized services to senior and middle management in computer companies and companies that are major computer users. Kathleen Maher has worked as an analyst and journalist in technical fields for more than ten years. She is presently the Vice President of JPR and Editor-in-Chief of Tech Watch, JPR’s bi-weekly newsletter on the PC graphics industry.


Special Session: International Business Update

Allan Brehrens from Cambashi presented his International Business Update. Cambashi is a management and marketing consultancy company. Allan's is a director at Cambashi.

I missed this session because I was chatting with Bob Mayer (COO of IMSI/Design) and Bob McNeel (President of Robert McNeel & Associates) in the lobby.


Business Reception and Technology Suite Open House

This was the first opportunity for COFES newbies to meet their hosts. Every freshman at COFES is assigned a leading industry consultant who introduces him to other attendees. Last year, my host was Shyamal Roy, founder of GEOMATE. He helped me tremendously by putting me through to the people I wanted to meet, especially top executives like Jeff Ray (CEO of SolidWorks), Mike Payne (CEO of SpaceClaim at that time) and a bunch of other people. This time I didn’t need anyone and found my way around easily. That’s the beauty of COFES. The environment is extremely informal and friendly. Basically you stick your hand out to the person sitting or standing beside you and start talking. At the end of it you will find yourselves exchanging business cards, which more than often, turns out to the start of a mutually benefiting business relationship.

The Technology Suite Open House is a place where vendors discuss corporate direction, business development, and potential partnerships. This is a time where you sign up for appointment time slots for the Technology Suite briefings to be held over the next couple of days.

In the middle of the Business Reception, Blake Courter, co-founder of SpaceClaim and avid Twitter user took me to his room to give me a demo of the new features of SpaceClaim.

Blake Courter

Spouse & Guest-only Mixer

While COFES Attendees were at their business reception, their spouses and guests were treated to a wine tasting mixer/reception before they joined the attendees in the welcome reception.


Welcome Reception

COFES attendees brought along their spouses for an evening social by the pool. My spouse was on the other side of the planet busy taking care of our two boys. Speaking of which, my wife called me yesterday to let me know that Reuben (my 5 year old) had lost the first of his milk teeth and was pretty excited about it. I feel sad that I missed it. Looking at the bright side, he has many more teeth to go.

At the welcome reception I met Mike Riddle, the man who wrote AutoCAD. I first met Mike last year at COFES itself, where he showed me the latest stuff that we was working on. Yes, this 60 year old man still codes and thoroughly enjoys doing so. We got talking and found myself at a loss of words when he told me that he had purchased my book - "OpenCAD - A Step By Step Guide to Developing a Professional CAD Application". This 60 year old man who wrote AutoCAD 25 years ago (I was 8 years old then) actually bought my book, read it and liked it so much that he is now encouraging me to take OpenCAD forward and make it a complete CAD system. I don't know what to say.

I had a couple of copies of my book with me. I signed and gave him one. I asked him to sign the other for me. He wrote, "Great Idea! Best Wishes. I hope many people pick up on this - Mike Riddle"

With Mike Riddle

This has definitely been an excellent first day. I look forward to tomorrow.

COFES 2009 - Dinner For Early Birds

Brad Holtz was kind enough to host a dinner for a few of us who arrived early. COFES 2009 starts tomorrow. Here is a picture. Obviously my camera does not do a good job in dim light.

Twitter vs Facebook: The Question

At the outset, I would like to say that I don’t think I get Twitter. On the other hand, I think I get Facebook. The source of my confusion with regard to Twitter is the question that I am expected to answer. Twitter asks you the question: “What are you doing?” Whereas Facebook’s question is “What’s on your mind?”

Twitter’s About page states, “The result of using Twitter to stay connected with friends, relatives, and coworkers is that you have a sense of what folks are up to.” And that’s why they ask the question, “What are you doing?” But I see that people are hardly answering that question anymore. At least the people I follow (me including) seem to be answering Facebook’s question, “What’s on your mind?”

Something similar happened with blogging. The word “blog” is short for “web log” and a “log” is supposed to be a listing of what someone did on a particular day. But people soon started using blogs to express their opinion, which is basically answering Facebook’s question, “What’s on your mind?”

Over the past couple of days, I tried something. I used Twitter to tell the people following me exactly what I was doing. I told them that I was getting ready to board a plane in Goa. I told them which book I was reading. I told them I was changing planes in Brussels. I told them that I checked into the Scottsdale Plaza. Basically I answered the question, “What are you doing?” And every time I answered that question, I asked myself, “Why would anyone want to know?” and “Why should they even care?” Frankly, I believe it makes sense to tell someone what you are doing if it is going to add some value (however small it may be) to that person in some way or the other. After all, the people following me on Twitter are actually taking their time out to read what I am writing.

I highly doubt people following me on Twitter will be interested in knowing which book I am reading. But I guess they may be interested in knowing what I think about the book or its author. I doubt they will be interested in knowing what I am eating in a restaurant. But they may be interested in knowing whether I think the food is good or not. I think you get the point.

I am pretty sure people will be more interested to know what’s on my mind as opposed to what I am doing. And I believe this is probably the reason that most people, knowingly or unknowingly, more than often, end up answering Facebook’s question on Twitter.