Revisiting KeyShot, a dedicated rendering tool for CAD users Is always a revelation. Sold as a standalone or plug program, Keyshot is a professional tool with an emphasis on ease of use. It’s well entrenched in the SolidWorks customer base, but there’s plenty of competition from within. SolidWorks, which has its own rendering module, Visualize, which is based on GPU … Read more
The Open Design Alliance has gone through a major transition as it expands to accommodate the varied requirements and interests of its broadening user base. Originally founded, with what now seems a fairly simple goal of making Autodesk's proprietary DWG/DXF format available as data exchange to companies and customers outside of Autodesk, the ODA developed its own CAD engine allowing … Read more
The path of Blender as a company and an organization has never been straight. As it has gained new supporters and users the Blender’s features have multiplied along with new add-ons. As the Blender community celebrates its 25th anniversary, Blender shows signs of growing up. As Blender celebrates its 25th anniversary, it’s worth asking: how long does it take to … Read more
Parallels’ best-known product Parallels Desktop, which enables Windows products to run on the Mac. (Source: Parallels) Just before Christmas 2018, Corel Corporation had announced plans to acquire Parallels, creating a surprise package for many industry observers. The tech commenting community seems to fall into two categories: those people familiar with Coreland those familiar with Parallel because many of the comments were … Read more
Following up on successful Autodesk University and building on its successful transition to subscription presented its investors with a positive accounting of its fiscal quarter Q3, 2019, which ended October 31, 2018. In addition, the company announced its plans to expand its focus on building and construction for the AEC sector with the acquisition of PlanGrid. Autodesk has declared the … Read more
Hexagon AB continues its aggressive expansion into new markets with the acquisition of Belgian CAD software developer Bricsys. Founded in 2002, Bricsys introduced its flagship product BricsCAD as an AutoCAD competitor and that is still the company’s largest base of users. However, the company has a talented team of developers and has added on new products and expanded the BricsCAD … Read more
Altair has acquired SimSolid and the company says it will change the process of analysis. SimSolid, founded in 2015 was based on technology developed by Victor Apanovitch who was also the co-founded of SimSolid. The company has pioneered meshless analysis. The software is able to run structural simulations on actual CAD models rather than requiring models to be simplified for … Read more
Why not Prague? Cultures come together and sometimes clash in Eastern Europe. The ODA is all about finding common ground. (Source: Ralph Grabowski) The Open Design Alliance has transformed the CAD universe with the development of standardized formats for content exchange. This year they held their annual conference in Prague and CEO Neil Peterson unveiled his latest plans to … Read more
This January, Onshape CEO and co-Found Jon Hirschtick did the rounds of press and analyst sites with jovial interviews and updates about the progress of OnShape. His message is that Onshape is ready for primetime. When we chatted, Hirschtick told me that OnShape has “thousands” of paying online subscribers. To those used to hearing vendors claim “millions of users” for … Read more
Explorations in sustainability, material science, and fabricating The work of Israeli-American designer and architect Neri Oxman lives at the place where art, engineering, and nature come together. It’s a that’s just being explored as older ideas about engineering improving on nature give way to ideas about how much nature teaches us about engineering. Art, as it turns out is a … Read more
Epic’s acquisition of Datasmith reveals ongoing problem of data conversion The rise in the use of game engines to create content and applications has emphasized a long-time challenge of putting CAD data to work: how to port heavy CAD data for use in other mediums such as animation, interior design, analysis, and now VR app development. As the technology du … Read more
