in this issue
Who's On First?
Ralph Grabowski recently cited two conflicting
reports in an issue of upFrontezine.
(www.upFrontezine.com).
One report, from Joe Greco, a highly respected
columnist, stated that there are 4.96 million mechanical
CAD users in the world. His findings were based on
press releases issued by the respective companies.
These seats included educational and commercial. The
top five CAD
software programs in use:
- 1. Pro/ENGINEER
- 2. CATIA
- 3. Unigraphics (including I-DEAS)
- 4. Mechanical Desktop
- 5. Inventor
The other report from Cambashi, a management and
marketing company tracking corporate trends -
including the CAD industry, came up with different
numbers: 1.172 million mechanical CAD users in
commercial industry. The top five CAD software
programs in use:
- 1. Autodesk Inventor & MDT
- 2. Dassault CATIA
- 3. PTC Pro/E
- 4. Dassault SolidWorks
- 5. UGS SolidEdge
The big discrepancies in the number of users indicates
that there are almost four times as many educational
seats as seats in industry. Additionally, I always look
at press releases with a jaundiced eye, so, depending
on where Cambashi got their numbers, I consider them
more reliable. More interesting to me
is Cambashi's website, which offers some great free
material on the CAD market, industry trends, etc. If
you are a reseller or a large company concerned about
what is going to happen next, you should check it out.
Find out more about Cambashi
Quick Links...
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Greetings!
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The Inventor Hole Dialog - The Saga Continues
Turns out that I missed a key upgrade in the Hole
dialog available in Inventor R9. Thanks to Zachi Gat,
from Israel, and R. Paul Waddington, from Australia, for
pointing it out.
If you look in the upper left of the dialog, you now have
four different methods for placing a hole: From Sketch,
Linear, Concentric and On Point. These methods are
similar to the methods used in MDT. Prior to this
release, holes were placed using a sketch.
The Linear method allows you to select a face, then
dimension from any two sides of the face. The
Concentric method has you select a face and then the
cylindrical side to be concentric to. On Point uses a
workpoint and a direction - which is very cool if you
want to create a cylindrical groove in your part.
Now, that I've played around with the new features
(instead of just creating holes from sketches), I gotta
say it is a major improvement...and makes hole
placements fun and easy. However, Autodesk could
still make the dialog smaller so it takes up less space.
Zachi says "fewer mouse clicks". Paul says "better
functionality".
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The Portable License Utility
When Autodesk first rolled out their new and improved
registration methods, I was skeptical. The new
registration hard-codes your software authorization to
your machine. I was reassured by Autodesk that it
would be easy, even fun...no trouble at all.
If you need to move your software license to a new
machine, simply go to your Start Menu, Programs,
Autodesk, and select the Portable License Utility. The
Utility will list all the Autodesk licenses you have on
your machine. You select the licenses you wish to
move to the new machine, export it to a text file, copy
the file to a floppy/CD, and then transfer the licenses
over to the new machine.
And, what, I had asked, would happen if a hard drive
crashed? Autodesk assured me that this would not be
a problem. Well, this week I found out, because one of
my hard drives crashed - killed and eaten by a virus
which attacked the system registry. I can access my
data files using recovery techniques, but none of my
application files work...including the Portable License
Utility.
Autodesk tells me that I have to re-register the
product, but I can't do that using their webpage...I
have to email authcodes@autodesk.com directly, so I
can explain about the hard drive crash, so they don't
think I am trying to get away with something criminal.
This is exactly the hassle which I anticipated when
Autodesk introduced this new registration format. In
the real world, hard drives crash...usually because of a
virus....and I use a virus checker and a firewall.
Additionally, I recently tried to register new product
(product I had not previously registered) and was told
that the Request Code provided by my computer was
wrong. Heck, I didn't generate the Request Code, the
Autodesk software generated the request code...how
could it be wrong? I ended up emailing the authcodes
center a screenshot of the dialog showing the Request
Code, so they could see it for themselves. Once they
got the screenshot, an auth code was issued.
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Free PowerShape Viewer Available from Delcam
There must be a tremendous market need for free
viewers. In the last month, it seems like every
company out there is offering one. Delcam joins the
parade, but with some caveats...only works on
Windows 2000 and Windows XP.
It's used mostly for DELCAM files and iges files, so if
you have Inventor, you can use it, but you have to
convert to an IGES format first.
Download here.... »
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ALIGN command available in 2005
Thanks to Alan Seidel, of St. Louis, MO, who points out
the lisp routine I provided in a previous CADzette is not
needed if you have AutoCAD 2005. That version comes
with an ALIGN command that does exactly what the
fella wanted - aligns two geometrical objects and works
pretty similarly to the lisp command I wrote.
If you don't have 2005, then the routine I wrote may
come in handy for you. Beginning LISPers may just
want to check it out to see how the code works.
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