Autodesk completes Softimage: Is the CGI industry sown up?

Images courtesy of Virtual-Mechanix - here's a nice user story about how they use the products here.
While there are many modelling systems active in the CGI industry, there have been three consistent players in the game over the last two decades: 3dsmax, Maya and Softimage (its pronounced soft-ee-marj, betraying its French Canadian roots). When Autodesk acquired Alias a couple of years ago, bringing it in house alongside its 3dsmax product, many foretold that it was game over for Softimage, who have been passed around a fair old amount in the last few years, from Microsoft (in 1994) then to Avid Technology a couple of years later.

This week the acquisition by Autodesk was completed and all of the assets of the company became part of Autodesk's product offering for 'Media and Entertainment' division. Does Autodesk have the CGI industry sown up?
It's looking that way, with a trio of products that provide it with a huge installed base. What are the companies plans with it? It seems that as its done with 3dsmax and Maya, its looking to maintain the Softimage brand and intends to "sell standalone versions of both the Softimage|XSI and Softimage|Face Robot 3D software products," with its Softimage|Cat character animation plugin for 3ds max being built into the max product line.

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Autodesk post Fluid for Jesus Phone

Everyone except me has an iPhone it seems (yup, I love my blackberry to death. its own death usually) and I've finally got an excuse to get one, or at least an iPod Touch. Autodesk has just released its first (as far as I'm aware) foray into the world of the multi-touch device. Yes, it has been demoing all manner of large scale multitouch goodness for some times, but this is the first demo that's available for a decent, consumer level product. If you've got an enabled device, look here or more details are here.

This technology has been around for some time, but this is still very very cool. Its a fluid simulate, activated and interacted with by multi-touch. What I really want is a motion and multi-touch senstive version of the Chameleon.

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Bass breaks the bad news

Carl Bass, president and CEO of Autodesk has admitted they are feeling the pinch of the global financial crisis, as demand for products fell throughout October.

"The sharp downturn of the global economy is substantially impacting our business. Demand for our products fell dramatically in October in all geographies as the financial crisis worsened," said Bass, blaming the downturn in the global economy for customers delaying projects

Profits for the financial quarter ending in October were in the range of $604 million to $607 million, having previously been forecasted in the region of $625 million to $635 million. As a result, forecasts for the next financial quarter have been greatly decreased.

"Our third quarter net income will include the benefit of some reductions to previous cost estimates. In addition we have begun to take actions to reduce our cost structure," added Bass, without elaborating on what these would include.

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DWG: Do We Give a...

For anyone trying to keep tabs on the flurry of law suits being undertaken and pending between the major CAD software producers, Autodesk have asked for their action against Dassault Systemes to be suspended.

This move comes after they have already spent a reported $2 million in this case of 'handbags' over the use of the initials DWG.

Having registered DWGgateway and DWGeditor as trademarks, Autodesk went to work on Dassault in the civil courts, being particularly annoyed with this (the same initials as the .dwg file name they feel they have rights over). Autodesk are hoping that the action through the civil courts will be enough to avoid dragging the whole carbuncle up to the US patent office. Not as exciting as OJ, but news nonetheless.

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Autodesk get down with the kids... Fo'shizzle

Fusty old Autodesk have decided to have a shake-up of its student design and engineering community website to make it more like the "popular social networking sites frequented by students."

This could be viewed as an attempt to drag the 350,000 plus members of Audodesk's online student community away from 'poking' each other on Facebook and back into doing some actual studying using their products.

In addition to the new, not-unlike-Facebook interface, users are offered showcases for their work, a careers centre, learning guides, and the opportunity to write their own informative, witty, nothing-like-this blog.

"We created the Student Community to provide students with the vital tools and information they need to learn the design process and be successful in their careers." LOL'd Paul Mailhot, director of worldwide education programs at Autodesk.

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'Flexible Software Delivery' becomes Autodesk's buzzword of the week

Cleverly upgrading their subscriber services in the same week that Solidworks have managed to anger some of their customers, AutoCAD's new two-pronged delivery system should have software updates into the eager hands of designers quicker and with less fuss.

In the same way that Microsoft Office gives you the option to upgrade when new feature packs are available, AutoCAD products now promise customers earlier access to new features, delivered on demand.

Subscription bonus packs containing new software features are currently available through the AutoCAD subscription centre, and are to be released on a regular basis. Meanwhile product updates will be automatically delivered to all licensed users, giving access to updated patches and fixes.

Subscription accounts for around three-quarters of AutoCAD users, and with this easier way of picking and choosing the upgrades you want it should make the most of Autodesk’s vision of a truly customisable software.

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New mould analysis tools - for free

Simpoe is planning to deliver a basic injection mould filling simulation tool, called "e-Simpoe " including melt front animation, for free, as a download. It can also be used as a viewer to interact with simulation results performed with any of the commercial Simpoe softwares, whether they are filling, packing, cooling and/or warpage simulation results.

No dates on delivery yet, but with SolidWorks pulling MoldFlowXpress out of SolidWork due to a lack of sales conversions a couple of releases ago, the Autodesk/MoldFlow acquisition at an early stage, there's a gap in the market for a mould filling tool - while it may not be a fully fledged tool for moulders, facts are that having a simple tool to run designs through, to verify your 'Design for Manufacture' related work, makes a lot of sense.

Oh and we're going to be looking at the SolidWorks integrated tool, SimpoeWorks, in the next issue of DEVELOP3D.

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Flomerics goes to Mentor

It seems that raising its bid by 17% (to around $60 million) got Mentor Graphics got Flomerics after all. In one of the most public attempts to sell an organisation for a while, the electronics engineering specialist finally got hold of all that lovely CFD code that it wanted so badly. This follows Flomerics trying to sell itself to Autodesk and them not really being interested.

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Autodesk doesn't go with the flow

Yesterday I met Autodesk's Ken Bado (executive vice president of sales and services) and the first thing we talked about was the potential acquisition of CFD specialist developer, Flomerics. Bado wanted to set the record straight and said that Autodesk was no longer interested in buying the company.

There had been huge speculation of a deal after Flomerics issued a statement to shareholders announcing that the board was in discussions with Autodesk over a possible offer for the company. The move followed aggressive share purchases by silicon design tool specialist, Mentor Graphics.

In an added twist to the plot Mentor has just become the subject of a potential hostile take over from its biggest competitor, Cadence. In a highly fluid situation, Autodesk's shock decision to pull out of negotiations further muddies the waters, as to what fate Flomerics will have.

While a deal now looks unlikely, autodesk has shown its hand and has interests to add high-end CFD to its mechanical pot. The news probably has SolidWorks execs in Boston breathing a sigh of relief too, as had Autodesk got hold of it, Floworks would have vanished.

www.flomerics.com

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Autodesk to buy Flomerics... maybe?

It seems that Autodesk is looking to acquire Flomerics and its range of CFD-based simulation technologies. According to a statement released by Flomerics, this comes after Mentor Graphics tried to acquire the company early this quarter.

According to the statement:

Autodesk, Inc. ('Autodesk') and the Board of Directors of Flomerics Group PLC ('Flomerics' or the 'Company') are pleased to confirm that Autodesk is in continuing discussions with Flomerics and its advisers in respect of a possible offer for the Company.

These discussions are progressing and further announcements will be made in due course. At this stage, however, there can be no certainty that an offer from Autodesk will be forthcoming, nor as to the terms on which any offer might be made.

Unfortunately, I have no idea how these things work, but this is interesting for many reasons. If you take the MCAD market as a whole, there are a couple of missing gaps in several vendor's offerings and they relate to simulation. Namely, PTC and Autodesk don't have a decent Fluid Flow and Heat Transfer analysis offering.

In the world of CAD integrated CFD, PTC has always had a very strong relationship with Blue Ridge Numerics. Meanwhile Flomerics had been the outsider, until it acquired Nika last year. Nika develop the CFD code that's the underlying base technology for SolidWorks' FloWorks as well as its other EFD products.

What's intriguing is that Flomerics has a very wide range of interests. From the EFD tools for CAD integrated CFD, through more specialist electronics-related simulation with the FloTherm products and into the AEC market with the HVAC-biased product, FloVent. Now, who in the CAD world covers mechanical and architectural design? Yup. Autodesk.

It appears to be early days, but this move makes a hell of a lot of sense. What will happen to FloWorks? Will SolidWorks have to go elsewhere for that technology? Would PTC buy out Blue Ridge as a result? who knows? its all speculation. But purely in terms of Product Development Technology, this is interesting. If Autodesk can bring CFD in house (it already has FEA from the PlassoTech aquisition), it is acquiring Moldflow, the company looks be building a very interesting technology base for its Digital Prototyping concept that might finally see it delivered.

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New SolidWorks Integrated mould filling analysis

I got a release through from UK SolidWorks VAR, New Technology CADCAM about it adding SimpoeWorks to its product portfolio. I recently talked, following the Autodesk/Moldflow acquisition, about how there were limited options for those looking to perform injection moulding simulation, citing the only other code I was aware of being Vero's VISI-Flow. It seems I was wrong and SimpoeWorks is "fully featured general purpose plastic injection simulation software for plastic injection analysis." It's a SolidWorks Gold Partner Product offering "complete filling, packing, cooling and part warpage simulation"

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DWG editing goes Web

It seems that the battle over the DWG format is still raging - Autodesk claim it's
there's, others protest. Autodesk tries to copyright and protect it, others protest and to be honest, it's a battle I'm not really interested in. DWG was an abbrieviation long before the advent of CAD and the copy of BS308 (for those non-brits out there, this is a British Standard for Technical Drawing) proves it - job done.

Anyway, what is interesting is that SolidWorks Labs just launched an online hosted DWG editor called BluePrint Now and it looks pretty slick. With many talking about delivery of CAD over the web, then this is a good indicator of what the first batch of tools will look, feel and smell like. Its built using the Microsoft's SilverLight technology and the UI is nifty, if a little clunky (as all over the web, CAD apps have been to date). But does it work? I'm going to spend some more time playing with it, but first impressions are that it has some basic tools, lines, circles, arc etc. You can output the drawings as PDF, as DWG again (useful if you've made an edit) from AutoCAD R14, right through to the latest rev - or you can email a link to share it with someone.

SolidWorks DWG data - works fine - as you would expect.

I did try loading some data, both from Inventor as AutoCAD DWGs and from SolidWorks. The app has a 1Mb file limit, which is going to be pretty quickly hit if you've got any data of any size. It loaded the SolidWorks DWGs fine, displayed them after a few hiccups but you could actually pan and zoom the drawing, add some basic detail. Same for the Inventor generated data.

Inventor DWG file, uploaded to Blueprint Now - seems to work just fine

But this isn't the point of Labs projects. these things are put out there to show the vendor's future thoughts - whether they actually reach fruition and become a shipping product remains to be seen. Oh and I just realised two things - Yes, I tried this using Safari and Yes, it works on OSX.

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STL for Revit

I found the recent addition to the Autodesk Labs web-site pretty interesting. There's a new download for an STL exporter for Revit. According to the web-site you can "Create 3D Prints of your Revit 2009 models. As architects and engineers start their digital designs earlier and keep them digital for longer, they want a way to still physically interact with their designs. With the economical availability of 3D printers this has become possible."

This is interesting for two reasons. Firstly, the Architectural world is going nuts-out-crazy for 3D printing and other rapid prototyping technology that designers and engineers have been using for decades (in some cases). Also, its interesting that this comes out for Revit, when the Inventor STL output tools are a little sketchy. It doesn't allow you to export individual parts from an assembly (each has to be created separately), and it only supports the heavyweight ASCII version of STL, rather than the more compact binary version.

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Autodesk to maintain MoldFlow partnerships

Courtesy of RalphG at WorldAccessCAD, Autodesk's Buzz Kross has confirmed at the company is planning no change with regards MoldFlow's partnerships with other vendors.

I heard you were wondering if we intended to continue the link to competitive tools. Absolutely. We plan no changes. Moldflow is a key aspect of our CIM strategy. We intend to keep the solution open and will continue to work with everyone. Earlier today, I sent a e-mail to virtually all my competitors telling them that this is our plan.

Good news for everyone that's currently using MoldFLow for their simulation processes as this technology is pretty hard to come by. The only other solution that we're currently aware of that gets anywhere near to MoldFlow is Vero Software's VISI Flow application described in its own words as "a unique prediction tool, ideal for pre and post production analysis and concurrent engineering of injection moulded plastic components."

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Autodesk to acquire MoldFlow

News of Autodesk's intent to acquire MoldFlow came as a bit of a surprise. Considering Autodesk's Digital Prototyping plan over the next few years, to enable users to take a product from concept to manfuacture without too much in the way of physical prototypes, the move makes perfect sense - but how?

The answer is that if you look at what Autodesk are openly (to the media anyway) about in terms of current developments - such as Mould and Die design tools currently on test in China, its establishment of the 'Computers in Manufacturing' group (headed up by people instrumental in the development of IronCAD and CoCreate's SolidDesigner/OneSpace modelling tool), the demonstrations of Functional Design tools developed in partnership with Attilo Rimoldi of ImpactXoft fame), then the ability to simulate the injection moulding process is a missing peice.

What's perhaps interesting and won't become clear is how this will effect MoldFlow's work with other vendors. MoldFlow technology is built into SolidWorks (MoldflowXpress), CoCreate, and many others. There is also a huge range of MoldFlow products that are not quite so well known, but provide a huge arsenal that covers everything 'injection moulding' related.

The deal is expected to go through in the second quarter of 2008, so stay tuned.

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