CADalyst articles from July 2001

CADalyst archives from July 2001

Automated area calculations revisited.(Product Support)
July 1, 2001... Tim Vidas suggested an addition to the polyarea.lsp program ("AutoLISP Solutions," January 2001) to extract multiple attributes in addition to the room area. Tim wants a single block to contain the room name and the number. This month's...

Where's the revolution?(Industry Trend or Event)
July 1, 2001... Some attendees came to COFES (Congress on the Future of Engineering Software; April 26-28) expecting heated arguments and passionate debate. Alas, COFES is oriented toward CAD developers, and CAD vendors these days agree (or at least hope) that...

Dialog Box : Thoughts from our readers.(Product Information)
July 1, 2001... CAD priorities In response to a number of comments published in May's "Dialog Box" (p. 8), I have used AutoCAD for about 15 years now, and taught AutoCAD for 8 of those years. There is nothing easy, intuitive, or flexible about AutoCAD or...

UGS parent to purchase competitor SDRC.(Company Business and Marketing)
July 1, 2001... EDS (Electronic Data Systems), parent company of UGS, plans to acquire SDRC (Structural Dynamics Research Corp.) for about $950 million in cash, or $25 per share. The deal is subject to regulatory and SDRC shareholder approval and is expected...

CollabWare closes doors.(Company Financial Information)(Brief Article)
July 1, 2001... CollabWare, developer of GS-Design, a CAD application designed for online collaboration, shut its doors in early May after failing to secure additional financing. Negotiations with potential buyers are underway but may take many months to...

Rapid prototyping resources.(Industry Trend or Event)(Brief Article)
July 1, 2001... Rapid prototyping system sales grew to 1,320 in 2000, a record high, according to a report by Wohlers Associates (www.wohlers associates.com). Wohlers now counts a total of 6,755 rapid prototyping systems installed worldwide that produced...

Autodesk outlines software rental, hosting options.(Brief Article)(Product Announcement)
July 1, 2001... Autodesk introduced three new software delivery options in conjunction with the release of AutoCAD 2002 and related products in June. All are available through Autodesk's dealer channel. Customers in the United States and Canada can rent...

Business.(Company Operations)(Brief Article)
July 1, 2001... AutoSolids developer Varimetric Solutions, Inc., changed its name to AutoSolids, Inc. The company also announced an update to v2.03 of its flagship product, which provides 3D modeling tools for AutoCAD. | 3Dlabs launched its Wildcat Partner...

Mergers.(Company Business and Marketing)(Brief Article)
July 1, 2001... MSC.Software Corp. will acquire AES, a systems and software integrator that is the largest IBM product lifecycle management partner in the Americas. The transaction value of $90 million will include net cash of $6.6 million, discounted notes of...

HARDWARE : Document imaging scanners.(Epson GT-30000, GT-100001)(Product Announcement)(Brief Article)
July 1, 2001... Epson America Inc. released the EPSON GT-30000 ($4,999) and EPSON GT-100001 (starting at $1,499) document imaging scanners. The GT-30000 produces a 60031200dpi true hardware resolution and 36-bit color depth. The scanner comes equipped with a...

HARDWARE : Scanner.(Microtek ScanMaker 5700)(Brief Article)(Product Announcement)
July 1, 2001... The ScanMaker 5700 ($499.99) from Microtek Lab Inc. is a scanning solution with a PDF engine. It scans documents larger than 30MB and saves them as full-color PDFs with a file size less than 1MB. ScanMaker 5700 features both a high-speed...

HARDWARE : Flat-screen CRT monitor.(Viewsonic P225f)(Brief Article)(Product Announcement)
July 1, 2001... ViewSonic Corp. announced the P225f ($999) flat-screen CRT monitor. It features the company's PerfectFlat flat-screen technology for enhanced picture clarity, edge-to-edge precise images, and minimal glare. The P225f is a 220 (200 viewable)...

HARDWARE : Graphics accelerator.(ATI Technologies Fire GL4)
July 1, 2001... ATI Technologies Inc. (formerly FGL Graphics, a division of SONICblue Inc.), introduced the Fire GL4 graphics accelerator ($1,995). The Fire GL4 is a 2D and 3D graphics accelerator for midrange to high-end Pentium III/4 and Athlon workstations....

HARDWARE : Redline printing.(KIP America's KIP 9020 RLP)(Brief Article)(Product Announcement)
July 1, 2001... KIP America announced the KIP 9020 RLP ($79,995) high-volume, wide-format two-color printer. The 9020 RLP uses four rolls of media to print documents from 8.50 3 110 to 39 3 509 in combinations of black and red. You can use red to draw...

AIA Show Report.(Software Review)(Evaluation)
July 1, 2001... CADALYST editors attended the 2001 AIA National Convention, held May 17-19 in Denver. After reviewing the many software offerings on display at the show, the editors bestowed Best of Show awards to three products that stood head-and-shoulders...

COFES Show Report.(Industry Trend or Event)
July 1, 2001... COFES (Congress on the Future of Engineering Software) is not your typical industry trade show. The focus is not so much on linking buyers and sellers as on defining and solving issues facing engineering software developers and users. The...

CAM SOFTWARE : CAM software.(Surfware SURFCAM 2001)(Brief Article)(Product Announcement)
July 1, 2001... Surfware, Inc., announced SURFCAM 2001 (call for pricing) for 2D and 3D mechanical design. Improved wire EDM production methods simplify programming with features such as automatic tab (glue stop) positioning for core applications. A corner...

CAM SOFTWARE : Milling software.(Brief Article)(Product Announcement)
July 1, 2001... Roland DGA Corp. announced its ProMill milling software ($1,499) that combines high-end machining and visualization technologies with CAD and Roland milling equipment. ProMill supports SolidWorks, VisualMill, Rhino, and AutoCAD. You can capture...

GENERAL & MCAD SOFTWARE : Color copying.(Brief Article)(Product Announcement)
July 1, 2001... VIDAR Systems Corp. released CopySystems 4.5 (call for pricing), a hardware and software bundle to copy wide-format documents up to 540 wide. Version 4.5 offers improved HPGL support, ICC profiling, scan to e-mail, direct scan-to-PDF, and...

GENERAL & MCAD SOFTWARE : Scanning and printing.(Brief Article)(Product Announcement)
July 1, 2001... Oce announced Oce Color Copy v5 ($8,000) color document management software. Version 5 offers scan-to-file and scan-to-print functionality with support for TIFF, TGA, JPEG, BMP, and PhotoCD formats. You can load data from Oce Color Copy into a...

GENERAL & MCAD SOFTWARE : Plot files.(Brief Article)(Product Announcement)
July 1, 2001... EquivaQ introduced EquivaQ ($69) to send plot files to a plotter or printer across LAN, WAN, and local LPT ports. EquivaQ detects configured local drives and network drives and is fully compatible with all versions of AutoCAD, ArcView,...

GENERAL & MCAD SOFTWARE : Parametric software.(Brief Article)(Product Announcement)
July 1, 2001... The Synthesis Company released Synthesis Professional R16 for AutoCAD 2000i ($6,500). Features include Web-based parametric drawing generation, expanded AutoCAD 2000i 3D drawing entity support, associative dimensions for master drawings and...

GENERAL & MCAD SOFTWARE : CAD program and plug-in device.(Brief Article)(Product Announcement)
July 1, 2001... Nemetschek North America introduced VectorWorks 9 ($895), the newest version of the company's Industry Series, and RenderWorks 9 ($300), an updated version of its photorealistic plug-in. VectorWorks 9 supports a 64-bit floating point coordinate...

GENERAL & MCAD SOFTWARE : Parts library.(Brief Article)(Product Announcement)
July 1, 2001... SolidMech 3.2 ($295, $50 for upgrade from v3) from EMT Software, Inc., is a parametric parts library for SolidWorks 2000. The add-on package includes a library of more than one million parts and features listings from 37 vendors. SolidMech 3.2...

AEC Project Management ONLINE.(Internet/Web/Online Service Information)
July 1, 2001... As the online service industry continues to solidify, hosting services divide roughly into two main types: project collaboration services and full-service portals. Both types offer benefits--which you choose depends on your needs. Project...

GET THE BIG PICTURE : Four large-format scanners support color copying.(Hardware Review)(Evaluation)
July 1, 2001... For some CAD users, a large-format scanner is as indispensable as a printer or plotter. Traditionally, large-format scanners are used for archiving paper drawings--replacing those flat files with digital files. In GIS applications, large-format...

Chroma 8040 : Contex.(Hardware Review)(Evaluation)
July 1, 2001... Chroma 8040 Contex 5 stars out of 5 909.466.4006 www.contexscan.com The Contex Chroma 8040 ($24,900), part of a family of large-format color scanners, has a scanning width of 400 and accepts documents as wide as 420. You can scan...

SuperWIDE 8050 : IDEAL.com.(Product Announcement)
July 1, 2001... SuperWIDE 8050 IDEAL.com 5 stars out of 5 800.764.3325 www.ideal.com IDEAL is one of the largest distributors of Contex scanners. The IDEAL SuperWIDE 8050 system ($29,500) includes a Contex Magnum 8050 scanner that you can use...

Color System 4050 : Oce.(Product Announcement)
July 1, 2001... Color System 4050 Oce 5 stars out of 5 800.714.4427 www.oceusa.com The Oce Color System 4050 ($26,800) scans documents 51.50 wide and captures up to 500 of the document. Capable of scanning documents up to 0.60 thick, the Color...

TruScan Surveyor : VIDAR.(Product Announcement)
July 1, 2001... TruScan Surveyor VIDAR 4.5 stars out of 5 703.471.7070 www.vidar.com The VIDAR TruScan Surveyor ($31,950) has an optical resolution of 400dpi and a maximum interpolated resolution of 1600dpi. Aimed primarily at GIS and mapping...

CLEAN AND CONVERT YOUR RASTER SCANS : Five raster-to-vector solutions speed up conversion of paper drawings to digital files.
July 1, 2001... Scanning in paper drawings is the easy part. To convert the raster (bit-mapped) images that result into vector graphics that you can manipulate in your CAD program, you need raster-to-vector software. Scanners capture drawing data in binary...

Autodesk CAD Overlay 2000i : Autodesk, Inc.(Software Review)(Evaluation)
July 1, 2001... Autodesk CAD Overlay 2000i Autodesk, Inc. 5 stars out of 5 800.964.6432 www.autodesk.com/cadoverlay Autodesk's CAD Overlay 2000i ($1,395) is unique because it's the only one of the five that doesn't offer fully automatic...

GTXImage CAD PLUS 2000 : GTX Corp.(Software Review)(Evaluation)
July 1, 2001... GTXImage CAD PLUS 2000 GTX Corp. 5 stars out of 5 602.224.8700 www.gtx.com GTX Corp. has developed raster-to-vector conversion tools since the 1980s. Its offerings have evolved into the AutoCAD-based GTXRaster CAD series and the...

RxAutoImage COLOR PRO R5 : Rasterex International a.s.(Software Review)(Evaluation)
July 1, 2001... RxAutoImage COLOR PRO R5 Rasterex International a.s. 4.5 stars out of 5 281.340.7525 (U.S. distributor SoftCopy Imaging) www.rasterex.com Rasterex International's RxAutoImage ($3,945) has always been a stellar performer....

Hitachi updates Image Series software : Raster-to-vector tools work with AutoCAD Release 14-2000i.(Image Series 6.0)(Product Announcement)
July 1, 2001... Just as the deadline for CADALYST's 2001 review of raster-to-vector software arrived, we received a press release from Hitachi Software Global Technology announcing the release of its Image Series 6 image-editing and raster-to-vector software...

Scan2CAD Pro 6 : SoftCover International, Ltd.(Software Review)(Evaluation)
July 1, 2001... Scan2CAD Pro 6 SoftCover International, Ltd. 5 stars out of 5 See Web site for resellers www.rastertovector.com SoftCover International's Scan2CAD Pro 6 ($249) wins the prize for the most improved program since our last review....

VPStudio v6.73 : softelec, Inc.(Software Review)(Evaluation)
July 1, 2001... VPStudio v6.73 SOFTELEC, Inc. 5 stars out of 5 512.329.5870 www.hybridcad.com In spite of its high price, VPStudio ($3,900) has been our overall top choice for the last five years. This is fast, elegant, and very powerful software...

IronCAD 4: A unique modeler -- IronCAD offers a choice of kernels.(IronCAD's CAD software)(Software Review)(Evaluation)
July 1, 2001... The pace of software development is amazing, especially for mechanical design. In a few short years, parametric modelers have gone from essentially a few expensive brands running on high-end UNIX workstations to almost a commodity product on...

New AutoCAD stands on firm ground : AutoCAD 2002 inaugerates Autodesk's new subscription model.(CAD software)(Software Review)(Evaluation)
July 1, 2001... As you read this, the newest version of AutoCAD--AutoCAD 2002--should be available. If you missed the usual hype, rumors, and expectations that have historically preceded an AutoCAD release, that's because there has been none. In a major shift...

Moving people : Two new packages to animate your designs.(Human Extras from PolyGems, Populous from ArchVision)(Software Review)(Evaluation)
July 1, 2001... When I first started doing architectural visualizations and animations back in the old DOS days, just creating a flyby on a 486-33 machine was a great achievement. Back then we had no books or tutorials to work from. I modeled my buildings and...

Walking People.(ArchVision Populous Walking People animation software)(Software Review)(Evaluation)
July 1, 2001... In the last three years, ArchVision has earned the reputation as a leader in 3D visualization and content with its proprietary RPC technology. RPC stands for rich photorealistic content, and it uses image data rather than polygons to represent...

Human Extras.(PolyGems animation software)(Software Review)(Evaluation)
July 1, 2001... Human Extras is the first product from PolyGems, a company that does in-house production service and custom 3D work. Using a proprietary DLM Space Warp routine for 3D Studio MAX and VIZ, these low-polygon characters (150KB for one walker)...

RenderDrive RD3000 : Hardware-based rendering.(Hardware Review)(Evaluation)
July 1, 2001... Sometimes it is all about being the fastest. As applications such as 3D Studio MAX and VIZ mature and users create more complex images and animations, rendering times have gone through the roof. Despite the powerful capabilities of today's...

Clean air, good design.(Product Information)
July 1, 2001... Ron Snyder didn't exactly cut his teeth on environmental design. He spent nineteen years designing General Electric Gatling guns for military aircraft and holds nineteen patents on a variety of products. Snyder does know how to solve...

RedSpark helps project design teams work together.(RAPIDteam)(Software Review)(Evaluation)
July 1, 2001... Information. When you have it, life is good. When you don't, things get difficult. Keeping all of your product development information up to date, organized, and accessible to everyone on your design team can be a daunting task. RedSpark...

Design collaboration software.(Autodesk's Autodesk Streamline)(Company Business and Marketing)(Brief Article)
July 1, 2001... Autodesk now offers a free trial site for Autodesk Streamline (call for pricing), a collaborative product development service for manufacturing. Autodesk Streamline personalizes design data for specific users, whether they are in sales,...

RFP/bid engine.(services for e-IDC.com)(Company Business and Marketing)(Brief Article)
July 1, 2001... e-IDC.com (International Design and Construction Online) launched an RFP/Bid Engine (call for pricing) for commercial design and construction industries. The engine lets AEC professionals exchange drawings, specifications, RFIs (request for...

Construction management.(Bricsnet's Bricsnet Building/Center)(Brief Article)(Product Announcement)
July 1, 2001... Bricsnet launched Bricsnet Building|Center (pricing based on square footage), an ASP-based product that provides real time access to data across a commercial building owner's entire portfolio of property and design projects. Building|Center...

Digital plan room.(Buzzsaw.com's Plans and Specs digital plan room system)(Brief Article)(Product Announcement)
July 1, 2001... Buzzsaw.com announced its Plans & Specs digital plan room system (call for pricing). Plans & Specs lets reprographers host files for their customers locally. Customers can view and manage print-ready construction drawings online and send...

Web version of IntelliCAD 2000.(Web4's CAD software)(Company Business and Marketing)(Brief Article)
July 1, 2001... Web4, Inc., announced a partnership with CADopia.com LCC to offer a Web-enabled version of IntelliCAD 2000 (prices start at $8 per 24-hour access) through Web4engineers.com's SPA (solution providers alliance) program. IntelliCAD 2000 lets you...

Block libraries accelerate AEC CAD design.(Buyers Guide)
July 1, 2001... An old CAD sage once said, "Draw something only once." In this modern computer age, this means that you should take advantage of the block, copy, and reference capabilities of CAD and visualization programs to use predrawn elements to increase...

Zoom, BOOM!(Product Support)
July 1, 2001... We use AutoCAD 2000 with Windows ME and 16-bit color for a piping works project. Each file is about 300KB and contains three xrefs. Every time I zoom into an area and try to pan or try to filter the layers so all I can see are the used layers,...

Tips from our readers.(Technology Information)
July 1, 2001... $50 BONUS WINNER Break crossing lines Tip #1719 [HVBA.LSP] This routine automatically breaks crossing lines on P&ID process flow diagrams at a distance you specify. hvba.lsp prompts you for the direction to break lines (horizontal or...