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Greetings!
Dassault v. Autodesk
A few weeks ago, Ralph Gabrowski updated readers of
his UpFrontEzine on the on-going suit between Dassault
(Spatial Technologies) and Autodesk. I expect that by
the time it gets to court, Autodesk will have whittled
Dassault's case down to such a niggling detail that the
court will throw it out, but we'll have to wait and see.
For those of you who don't know the history...here is a
recap as best as I can recall. As most of you know,
most mechanical designers have been disappointed with
AutoCAD's solid modeling ability. Keep in mind that
AutoCAD is almost 20 years old and is based on some
pretty old programming language. It simply is not as
good a modeler as Pro/E or SolidWorks, which are based
on more modern code.
Autodesk was stuck in between a rock and a hard
place. They needed to get a product into the
marketplace that could compete and they were running
out of time...their market share in 3D CAD was being
eroded by the competition. So, they licensed an ACIS
kernel from Spatial Technologies and used that kernel
to develop Inventor. At the time, this kernel was also
being licensed to SolidWorks. Autodesk added a clause
into the agreement with Spatial Technologies that after
a certain period of time they could purchase the source
code.
Dassault then purchased Spatial Technologies. This
gave Dassault (which owns SolidWorks) control of an
ACIS kernel used by their biggest competitor -
Autodesk. Autodesk then exercised their option to
purchase the source code, thus removing Dassault's
control. Well, having purchased the source code,
Autodesk needed to be able to enhance it for continued
use with Inventor. As mentioned in a previous
newsletter, Autodesk has a growing tendency to rely
on subcontractors and outsources some of it's
programming and development - along with technical
support, etc. This makes Autodesk no different than -
oh, pretty much every other American manufacturer.
They outsource in order to stay lean, mean, and
profitable.
Anyway, according to Spatial Technologies' lawsuit,
Autodesk outsourced the development of the kernel to
a third party, D-Cubed, providing them with the source
code as a starting point.
If you go to D-Cubed website, both SolidWorks and
Autodesk are listed as customers. This means there is
a good chance that D-Cubed already had some version
of the source code available to them already.
This is like buying a Ford car with a GM motor. As
most of you are aware, many companies make a lot of
money creating OEM products. For example, when I
worked for ALPS printer division, we manufactured
printers for ALPS and Texas Instruments. The only
difference between the printers were the labels and I
modified the casing to give the TI product a distinctive
branding look.
Anyway, Spatial Technologies is suing Autodesk
saying they had no right to provide the source code to
a third-party.
I'm betting the case gets thrown out.
Check out the list of D-Cubed Customers
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Customizing Right Click Menus |
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Rich Titus, a faithful reader, has generously contibuted
the following tutorial on how to customize your right
click menus.
This tutorial will work for AutoCAD 2000 and beyond.
This appears to be widely used by Autodesk in 2000
series AutoCAD but, as far as I've been able to
uncover, does not appear to be documented anywhere.
Right-click "context sensitive" menus have become a
major user interface which is used at various levels of
the product and there is help and other Autodesk
documentation available for introducing these at the
menu level; however, it is also possible, in the "context"
of choices within a command that is created via a lisp
function, to have the right-click options appear for the
user simply by a slightly different formatting of
the "options" presented to the user within the prompt
as illustrated in the following simple example:
(defun C:DrObj ( / ObjType) ; Draw Object Function
(initget 1 "L C R B M")
(setq ObjType (getkword "Draw
[Line/Circle/Rectangle/Box/MultiLine]: "))
(cond ((= ObjType "L")(command "_LINE"
pause pause))
((= ObjType "C")
(command "_CIRCLE" pause pause))
((= ObjType "R")
(command "_RECTANGLE" pause pause))
((= ObjType "B")(command "_BOX"
pause pause))
((= ObjType "M")(command "_MLINE"
pause pause))
);cond
(princ)
);defun
In this routine, by simply enclosing the choices within
brackets [ ] in the prompt and using / as the
demarcation between the choices, the user can
respond to the prompt with the usual keyword response
or with a right-click and the options will appear as a list
in the "context" menu. Indeed we might consider, in
such cases, altering the prompt to read as follows:
"Right-click -or- Enter Object to Draw
[Line/Circle/Rectangle/Box]: "
This works in a similar fashion with any initget/getXXX
combination (for instance getreal, getint, getstring)
where finite choices are to be presented.
With users becoming accustomed to the "right-click"
options, it is probably a good idea to keep this in mind
for any future or existing routines.
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An unusual bone configuration in horses provides inspiration for lighter and stronger aerospace structures. |
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Researchers at the University of Florida are turning to
horses to produce lighter and stronger structures for
aircraft and spacecraft. In particular, they're looking at
a unique bone characteristic in these animals for design
inspiration. The third metacarpus bone in a horse's leg
absorbs much of the force resulting from its movement.
And curiously, a pea-sized hole-which serves as the
entry point for blood vessels-can be found on one side
of the cucumber-sized bone.
As this unique bone proves, nature has found a way to
outwit a design rule dictating that drilled holes make
structures weaker. Usually, objects with drilled holes
break more easily than solid structures do under
pressure. With the goal of developing ways to imitate
nature's answer to this design conundrum, the research
group of graduate students and faculty led by Andrew
Rapoff, assistant professor of mechanical and
aerospace engineering at the University of Florida in
Gainesville, has devoted the past three years to the
NASA-funded project.
Holes accommodate wiring and fuel and hydraulic lines
in airplanes, boats, cars and other structures. To make
up for the loss in strength caused by holes, the areas
around them are made thicker. But thickening the
material increases the structure's weight. And one
pound of weight removed from an airplane can reduce
fuel needs by 10 pounds, according to an aerospace
industry guideline for fuel efficiency described by
Rapoff, formerly a designer and analyst of aircraft
structures.
The engineers examined the microscopic makeup of the
horse bone around the hole or foramen. Based on this
information, they developed equations describing the
bone's mechanical properties. For example, the
engineers converted the bone's mineral density and
porosity into an equation depicting the stiffness.
Based on their analyses and computer model, the
researchers developed a biologically inspired plate, with
a hole encircled by polyurethane foam to imitate the
composition of the horse bone surrounding the foramen.
Full Story »
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Visual Basic for CAD Forum November 8, 2003 |
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Dale Kopp, from the San Francisco AutoCAD
Customization User Group, has been working tirelessly
to put together a forum where local developers can
speak on how to customize CAD Applications using
Visual Basic.
I'll be there giving a class on how to use Visual Basic
with Inventor R7 as well as sitting on a panel with other
developers. The forum will be held at EBIG in Oakland.
Topics include Visual Basic and VB.net. Panel discussion
on future trends with Elise Moss, Les Pinter, Mario
Guttman, Steve Lukrofka, AEC Technologies.
For more details, contact Dale Kopp at 510.301.1713.
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Autodesk and Oce Form a Partnership |
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Autodesk announced a first-of-its-kind agreement with
Océ to enable Autodesk users to accurately and easily
print Autodesk DWF 6 (Design Web Format) files
without the difficulties and surprises often associated
with production printing, thus simplifying and
accelerating the exchange of complex design
information throughout the lifecycle of a project. Under
this agreement, Océ will natively support DWF,
Autodesk's highly compressed, view and print-ready
design distribution format, within Océ's range of printing
solutions for the technical document market.
DWF files can be viewed and printed to scale with the
Autodesk Express Viewer, a free viewing product
included with all AutoCAD 2004 products and
downloadable at www.autodesk.com/expressviewer.
The viewer is a lightweight, high-performance
application that is easily distributed to anyone on the
project team, even those who do not use an AutoCAD
product but need to view digital design data. For these
who need mark-up capabilities, Volo View 3,
(www.autodesk.com/voloview), enables redline,
markup, measure, view, and plot of DWF files, as well
as native file formats (DWG, IPT, IAM, IDW). DWF is an
open format with a published specification and
developer's toolkit enabling anyone to read and write a
DWF file for free.
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CADzette Statistics |
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For those of you who have been tracking this
newsletter since it's debut, you may be interested in
how we're doing.
We currently have close to 300 subscribers. Readers
are from all over the world, which makes my email very
enjoyable and interesting, as I do like to read what
people have to say.
What is interesting to me is how this newsletter
compares with other newsletters that folk send out.
CADzette has a click-thru rate of almost 40% compared
to most newsletter's click-thru rate of 4.1%. This
means that readers click on the links I provide to them,
whether it is a free download, a free tutorial, or to
check out another website. It also means that I am
providing you with content that interests you enough
that you want to learn more.
It is also interesting to me that a lot of people
subscribe to newsletters, not just this one, and then
don't open them to read them - they go straight to
delete.
The average enewsletter that is subscribed to has a
50% open-rate - meaning that half the people who
receive it by email delete it. Heck, just unsubscribe
already.
CADzette has an 80% open-rate, which is
exceptionally high. Means that the folks who subscribe
actually open the newsletter, even if they just scan it
to see if there is something of interest.
If you do get bored, please unsubscribe. My
service charges me based on the number of emails that
go out. You can unsubscribe using the link at the
bottom of the page.
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Firewalls May Disrupt Communications Center |
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I have had three calls this week from users who have
tried to used the Communication Center and gotten an
error message. The issue is that many companies have
put firewalls in place which can interfere with using the
Communications Center.
Communication Center relies on several HTTP and FTP
ports to update the product from the Autodesk Web
servers. Firewalls and other network security devices
can block the ports that Communication Center
requires.
Use the link below to test the ports on your network. If
your computer can access the Autodesk Web servers,
these links will display files from the website, and an
error message will not be displayed.
If you experience difficulty in accessing these locations
in a Web browser, you will need to modify the port
settings on your firewall or network security device.
The following ports are required by Communication
Center:
Port Function
80 HTTP
20 Active FTP Data Port
21 Main FTP Port
Test your Communication Center Access »
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Importing Viz Materials in ADT |
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Problem: You
imported a yellow brick material from VizRender and
when you use it in ADT it
becomes a flat yellow paint without any texture.
Answer:This occurs because of the
bitmap scaling in the material definition. In VizRender,
on the material
editor, note under the "texture scaling" tab what the
values are for width
and height, then in ADT, use the old "Rmat" command,
select the appropriate
material name, then "Modify", "Adjust Bitmap",and enter
the width and height
values from VizR into the U and V scale boxes
respectively. Then Ok out of
all the dialogs, and things should look as expected.
You may have to use regen or
objrelupdate to have the changes go into effect.
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SHORTCUTMENU - NEW 2004 COMMAND |
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Controls whether Default, Edit, and Command mode
shortcut menus are available in the drawing area.
SHORTCUTMENU uses the following bitcodes:
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0 Disables all Default, Edit, and Command mode
shortcut menus, restoring R14 legacy behavior.
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1 Enables Default mode shortcut menus.
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2 Enables Edit mode shortcut menus.
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4 Enables Command mode shortcut menus. In this case,
the Command mode shortcut menu is available
whenever a command is active.
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8 Enables Command mode shortcut menus only when
command options are currently available from the
command line.
To enable more than one type of shortcut menu at
once, enter the sum of their values. For example,
entering 3 enables both Default (1) and Edit (2) mode
shortcut menus.
The shortcut menu is the menu available when you
right click the mouse button. This menu is context
sensitive...this means that it changes depending on
whether a command is active or where you are in a
command prompt.
The idea of the shortcut menu is to get you off the
keyboard and onto the mouse. It is faster to select
options off the mouse than to take your hand off the
mouse and enter characters in a keyboard.
Several users were used to using the right mouse click
as an ENTER command to repeat the last command or
accept the default. In 2004, you can adjust your
setting so that a Quick Click indicates ENTER, while a
long Click indicates bring up the menu.
You can set how your right click works by using the
Right Click Customization dialog. To access the dialog,
go to Options. Select the User Preferences Tab and
then select the Right Click Customization button
located in the upper left quadrant of the dialog.
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