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
Openness is in the DNA. Or not.
The big news in the world of interoperability is the Codex of PLM Openness (CPO). From AutomotiveIT: ProSTEP started the initiative for a CPO in 2011 and developed version 1.0 together with BMW, Daimler, Dassault Systèmes, IBM, Oracle, PTC, SAP, Siemens PLM, T-Systems and Volkswagen. The aim was to develop a common basic understanding on the subject of openness of IT-systems in... 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
Autodesk ForceEffect now has motion
Autodesk shipped its free iOS (iPhone, iPad, or iPod) based ForceEffect program several months ago, and it was an instant hit, especially with students and makers. It allowed users to do static free body diagrams, in a most elegant way. Autodesk has just released ForceEffect Motion. It too is free. It appears to be a phenomenal tool for doing conceptual design of kinematic systems.... 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
SolidWorks Plastics
Mr. McGuire: “I want to say one word to you. Just one word.” Benjamin: “Yes, sir.” Mr. McGuire: “Are you listening?” Benjamin: “Yes, I am.” Mr. McGuire: “Plastics.” - The Graduate, 1967 Dassault Systemes SolidWorks Corp this week announced a new product: SolidWork Plastics. Actually, it’s not strictly new, and it’s not just one product. SolidWorks... Read More
In the future, will Autodesk products all be used online?
TechCrunch just posted this video, where Andrew Keen interviews Autodesk CEO Carl Bass. The interview is about 12 minutes long. About 2 minutes in, Bass makes possibly the most interesting comment in the interview: “I’d say two to three years from now, every one of our products will be used online. The only way to use them will be online.” If that happens, it will... Read More
