CADalyst articles from October 2004

CADalyst archives from October 2004

Drawing debate: are 2D drawings today better or worse than before?(Editorial)
October 1, 2004... As promised, this month we'll consider the state of engineering drawings today. Several of you who wrote in response to my recent musings about the dearth of CAD jobs (August, p. 6) remarked that the quality of drawings today is not what it...

Do the Math: Mathsoft finds niche automating and capturing engineering calculations.(Tech Trends)
October 1, 2004... Since the advent of the PC a little more than two decades ago, engineers have taken giant leaps forward in almost all of their design tasks. Freed from the slow and error-prone reliance on pencil and drafting table, mechanical engineers have...

Take the graphics card express: PCI Express graphics cards take technology to a new level.(cadalyst labs review)(Product/Service Evaluation)
October 1, 2004... It's transition time! The introduction of PCI Express graphics cards and the systems that accommodate them has produced a wave of new technology, the breadth of which I've not seen for quite some time. The PCI Express is a new system bus...

Time to move to PCI Express?(cadalyst labs review)(Product/Service Evaluation)
October 1, 2004... So is now the time to move to a PCI Express system? The scope of this transition, for both system vendors and graphics card vendors, is great. It's not just a matter of buying a PCI Express system and plugging in a speedy new graphics card....

NVIDIA Quadro FX 3000 * AGP 8X.(Brief Article)(Product/Service Evaluation)
October 1, 2004... NVIDIA www.nvidia.com Star rating: Not rated Price: $1,300 When the NVIDIA Quadro FX 3000 was released in mid-2003, it immediately became one of the most popular graphics cards for CAD/CAM systems and has remained so to...

ATI FireGL V5100 * PCI Express.(evaluation)(Product/Service Evaluation)
October 1, 2004... ATI Technologies www.ati.com Star rating: 4.5 stars out of 5 Price: $799 (MSRP) ATI recently introduced a family of PCI Express graphics cards to join its AGP line of cards. This new family includes the FireGL V3100, V3200,...

How I tested the graphics cards.
October 1, 2004... With all the graphics cards submitted for evaluation, I ran the usual set of test suites: the Cadalyst Labs C2001 benchmark test, SPECviewperf 7.1.1--the proe-02 test suite, and MAXBench4. I tested all cards with the supplied drivers at...

ATI FireGL X3-256 * AGP 8X.(Product/Service Evaluation)
October 1, 2004... ATI Technologies www.ati.com Star rating: 4.5 stars out of 5 Price: $1,099 (MSRP) The ATI FireGL X3-256 is a newly introduced AGP 8X graphics card powered by ATI's parallel processing VPU (visual processing unit). The FireGL...

More from Matrox.(Product/Service Evaluation)
October 1, 2004... Matrox (www.matrox.com) didn't have any new cards ready for testing for this roundup, but it currently offers an extensive array of graphics cards from several different lines. The Matrox Parhelia Series is designed for 2D and 3D CAD and...

New cards from 3DLabs.(Product/Service Evaluation)
October 1, 2004... Although 3Dlabs (www.3dlabs.com) had recently announced several new graphics cards, none was available for testing at the time I evaluated cards for this article. As they do become available from 3Dlabs, we expect to cover them in First Look...

NVIDIA Quadro FX 1400 * PCI Express.(Product/Service Evaluation)
October 1, 2004... NVIDIA www.nvidia.com Star rating: 5 stars out of 5 Price: $650-$700 NVIDIA recently added a new line of PCI Express card to its burgeoning graphics card offerings. This new line includes the NVIDIA Quadro FX 540, FX 1400, FX...

VX CAD/CAM v10: all-in-one CAD/CAM package.(Product/Service Evaluation)
October 1, 2004... VX CAD/CAM is known for its ability to import and heal advanced surface data from other 3D CAD applications, a fact that has helped it find a niche in industrial design, mold making, and CAM applications in particular. Version 10 builds on this...

AutoCAD Electrical 2005: autodesk brings parametric design to the electrical engineer's desktop.(cadalyst labs review)(Product/Service Evaluation)
October 1, 2004... All reviews, articles, and press releases about AutoCAD Electrical seem to start in the same way, saying something like, "If you design electrical control systems, you need AutoCAD Electrical." Well, they're correct. AutoCAD Electrical is...

CF design 7.0: upfront CFD analysis tool proves easy to use.(computational fluid dynamics)(Product/Service Evaluation)
October 1, 2004... THE GOAL OF EVERY PRODUCT design company is to shorten the time it takes to go from art to part. A crucial portion of any product development cycle is when design engineers send a model to the analysis department. Frequently there are a number...

Samsung SyncMaster 243T: 24" LCD monitor.(first look reviews)(Product/Service Evaluation)
October 1, 2004... SAMSUNG RECENTLY INTRODUCED THE SyncMaster 243T, a 24" LCD monitor ideal for applications such as CAD/CAM, desktop publishing, and content creation. In addition to the sizable screen area, the display offers dual analog and digital inputs and...

Piranesi 4: visualization software.(first look reviews)(Product/Service Evaluation)
October 1, 2004... SINCE ITS INTRODUCTION, PIRANESI has become a must-have for the toolbox of those who produce architectural visualizations and renderings. Starting with a simple model, you use Piranesi to quickly fill in details to create an image that looks as...

VisionREZ: architectural software.(first look reviews)(Product/Service Evaluation)
October 1, 2004... IN MY REVIEW OF ARCHITECTURAL DESKTOP 2005, June 2004, p. 26, I gave the program a 5-star, highly recommended rating as superb and productive architectural software. There is one caveat. Architectural Desktop as it comes out of the box is an...

Primer on project archives: a structured approach to archiving projects makes quick work of retrieving old data.(CAD Manager)
October 1, 2004... Webster's defines an archive as a place or collection that contains records, documents, or other materials of historical interest. Why not extend this definition to think of CAD archives as collections of electronic files that describe a...

Mechanical CAD today: software innovations accelerate the mechanical design process.(MCAD Modeling Methods)(Column)
October 1, 2004... When I was asked to write about the state of the mechanical CAD industry, I was more than a little reluctant to parade the usual charts and graphs that show statistics and market growth for the well-known CAD developers. Such reporting is...

Plant and piping software: vendors strengthen links between P&ID and physical plant model.(piping and instrument diagram)
October 1, 2004... A large segment of the CAD industry is dedicated to plant piping software. Designers and engineers in any industry that moves or manufactures liquids use this genre of software. Piping systems are found in locations as diverse as oil platforms,...

Tips from our Readers: Visual LISP with a dash of VBA.
October 1, 2004... "You been holding these back?" I muttered under my breath as I looked through the CD. Harry chuckled. "I knew you'd like 'em," he growled. This month we've got Visual LISP code to share along with VBA code that uses reactors to make AutoCAD do...

Producing maps with GIS: GIS takes the pain out of map-making.(Spatial Technologies)
October 1, 2004... Mapping is the visual representation of data, and one of the best ways to link information to a place. Maps may show what everyone expects, or they may reveal patterns and trends in data that are impossible to see any other way. Traditionally,...