Now that Siemens PLM has acquired Vistagy, will Dassault Systemes play nice?
You may know that Siemens PLM recently acquired Vistagy, whose Fibersim software has been used to design 80% of the composites currently flying in today’s aircraft. Vistagy has been a long-term third-party partner not just to Siemens PLM, but also to Dassault Systemes. Though DS has its own composite design solution, many of its most important customers use Fibersim. To say... Read More
Why CAD is hard: Geometric problems
Imagine you were a CAD programmer (if you actually are one, play along with me here.) What problems would you focus your energies on? From my perspective, persistent bugs and software stability would be a good primary focus. But, let’s limit it to geometric modeling problems. Not just the run of the mill “fix this bug” stuff, but rather the real serious problems. George... Read More
Cloud CAD is really difficult
If you believe the buzz in the blogosphere, there are a lot of engineers and designers who are not at all happy at the prospect of some day being forced to use cloud-based CAD. The public lashback on cloud CAD started building several years ago, and it’s hardly abated since. The conversation has taken on political/religious overtones. In the best of all worlds, clould CAD... Read More
Modo learns to speak NURBS
NURBS may be the standard surface representation for CAD, but that doesn’t mean they’re ideal for all design jobs. For conceptual design of organic shapes (for example, a motorcycle tank), there are certainly better choices. One surface type that’s become popular for this is the Sub-D, or subdivision surface. #gallery-1 { margin: auto; } #gallery-1... Read More
The Dassault Systèmes Social Industry Experience Platform: 3DSwYm
Dassault Systèmes has just introduced a new release of 3DSwYm, its social innovation application. You can be forgiven if you don’t know what a “social innovation application” is. The best description I can cobble together is that it is a web framework, similar to a content management system (think WordPress, Drupal, Joomla), designed to manage communities of interest,... Read More
What is saving 90% in engineering time worth?
Engineer-to-order (ETO) software has been around for a long time, with roots reaching back to knowledge management systems developed in the 1980s. The biggest reason more companies don’t use engineer-to-order software is that the front-end configuration, to set up an ETO system, has often been too much work, requiring lots of training and expensive consultants. Tacton makes... Read More
Geomagic acquires Sensable. 3D just got even cooler.
CAD isn’t the only way to create 3D models. More and more, 3D models start out as 3D scans of real objects. Geomagic has been a leader in software to convert 3D scanned data into useable 3D models. Their software is used widely used for design, reverse engineering and inspection. Last week, Geomagic acquired Sensable’s 3D design and haptics businesses. Sensable is best... Read More
PTC announces Creo 2.0, Windchill 10.1, and shake-and-break 1.0
This week, PRC announced Creo 2.0 and Windchill 10.1. These aren’t big releases in the grand scheme of things, but they are important releases, and show that PTC is working hard to deliver on what it’s promised. Creo 2.0 This release includes fresh and updated releases of the 9 existing Creo apps, and adds a 10th new app called Options Modeler, which supports design-to-order... Read More
Siemens PLM Software is General Motors Supplier of the Year, for the fourth time
You may be surprised to learn this, but there are a lot of companies that are not particularly happy with their CAD and PLM suppliers. It has a lot to do with over-promising and under-delivering. For Siemens PLM Software to win GM’s Supplier of the Year award for the fourth time is really something. The award is given based on ratings for quality, service, technology,... Read More
Active Workspace: Big news for Teamcenter users
Siemens PLM just announced Active Workspace, a new product in the Teamcenter software portfolio. There are three general groups of people who are going to be interested in Active Workspace: those who use Teamcenter, those who’ve thought about adopting Teamcenter, but haven’t made the jump yet, and those who are using competing PLM solutions, who will likely be telling... Read More
