Here's a small excerpt:

What’s the difference between CAD and Productivity? CAD is just a tool. In the same way that a hammer sitting on a bench isn’t putting a new roof on your house, CAD itself is just a static tool. Productivity is the combination of a tool and the ability to use it. It’s like a two part epoxy - either part on its own is just a sticky mess that you can’t do anything with, but put them together, and you’ve got something of value. If I buy a CAD product and have no idea how to use it, the software itself has no value to me. Ironically, the value is created by the customer, not the vendor, when the customer learns how to use the tool. So often, the customer has to pay extra for training on the tool. It is only when the abilities confered by the training are combined with the software that you have something of value - productivity.

Matt actually wrote this article a year ago.  But I don't know that the subject will ever be stale.

Here's my thought:  Advanced capabilities do far less to help make typical CAD users productive than do improvements in baseline usability. 

I think what is more interesting than software subscription is software as a service (SaaS). Done right, it can have real benefits for users, particularly in shifting maintenance and procurement costs to vendors, and in converting front-ended loaded overhead costs into scalable variable costs. Yet, I don’t know that any of today’s major CAD vendors are anywhere near the point of being able to deliver serious SaaS solutions. And I don’t know that the current SaaS platform vendors are anywhere near providing the kind of capabilities demanded by such solutions.

Ben Kepes, who writes about Software as a Service, had this comment:

• It uses SharePoint Server as a repository for DWG files,
• It finds and uploads all Xrefs associated with a DWG, detecting and maintaining path information,
• It allows you to download all associated files, as a group,
• It keeps all revisions, and allows easy rollback.

 

• CATIA and NX are the big players in the aerospace and automotive businesses, and particularly in airframe, auto body, and aero turbines.
• Pro/E has meaningful parts of the aerospace and automotive businesses (for example, it's historically strong in auto powertrain), and a strong presence in capital equipment.
  
• SolidWorks and Solid Edge are strong throughout a range of sectors.
• Inventor seems to be strongest in the manufacturing equipment sector.

- Abraham Maslow

Once upon a time, between when I graduated from High School and went to college, I worked in construction, setting concrete forms for basements of tract houses. The job required more muscles than tools, but one of my most important tools was a hammer.

My hammer of choice for form-setting was an Estwing, with a smooth face 22 ounce head, rip-claws, one-piece forged head and shaft, 16” overall length, and a molded nylon grip. You can buy nearly the same hammer today.

I didn’t choose that particular hammer by accident. I chose it because it was perfectly suited for the type of work that I was doing. Had I been doing framing, I might have used a Vaughn framing hammer with a milled face, or possibly a TrueTemper rig axe. (Today, I’d also use a pneumatic nail gun.) But for form-setting, the Estwing was nearly perfect.

Choosing a CAD tool is a lot more complicated than choosing a hammer. But CAD tools, like hammers, vary in their suitability for particular types of work.

For the last 20 years, the vast majority of popular CAD tools for mechanical design have been more similar than different. Inventor, SolidWorks, and Solid Edge are all based on a concept pioneered by Pro/E: parametric feature-based modeling.

Parametric feature-based modeling was such a powerful concept that it helped PTC take the CAD market by storm, and essentially forced every other significant player in the MCAD market to follow suit.

Despite its strengths, there are two problems with parametric feature-based modeling that are inherent to the technology, and that can’t be fixed:

• It doesn’t work well for most people, and
• It doesn’t work well with most data.

While I can back-up these points with peer-reviewed research, I’m going to save that for another time. For now, I want to talk about a CAD technology that overcomes these two limitations: feature inference modeling.

Let me put a definition to that term: Feature inference modeling is a technology combining feature recognition and direct editing. It allows a user to intelligently edit a solid model, irrespective of its source or underlying construction history.

Feature inference modeling is available today in products such as SpaceClaim, KeyCreator, CoCreate, and IronCAD. It will be available soon in Solid Edge and NX. I expect that, within the next several years, most major MCAD tools will incorporate some level of the technology.

Feature inference modeling is not a simple "check-box" item on a spec sheet. Different CAD tools implement it differently, and to different extents. There are two characteristics common to all implementations of the technology:

• Intelligent editing. This means the software is smart, so the person using it doesn’t have to be.
• Dumb data. This means the software can work with any boundary representation solid model data (the kind created by all modern 3D MCAD programs), no matter how it was created, or where it came from.

There may be some argument about which company actually pioneered feature inference modeling, however all the players I’ve talked to agree that they have Siemens PLM to thank for legitimizing the technology, by its announcement and promotion of Synchronous Technology (which incorporates feature inference modeling, combined with 3D constraint management.)

Feature inference modeling is a really big thing. No kidding. For 25 years, I’ve watched mainstream CAD tools get increasingly more complicated and insular. This is the first technology I’ve seen that really changes the game.

My feelings of inadequacy started a very long time ago. AutoCAD version 1.4 was the last CAD program I can honestly say that I mastered completely – and only because the program did so little to start with. Over time, I've worked on a whole lot of CAD programs. I'm guessing maybe 50 or so. Though I've been able to use many of them sufficiently for my purposes, I've never really mastered any of them.

I remember in the late '80s, watching a customer of mine, Brett Graffin, moving so quickly with AutoCAD that I couldn't even follow the commands he was using. (To be fair, Brett was a two time national champion in the VICA drafting competition.) In '96, I remember Rick Chin doing the same thing with SolidWorks. In both cases, I felt like a beginning guitarist going to see Jimi Hendrix play for the first time. For a few moments, I felt like I ought to give up, and walk away. (For what it's worth, I've heard stories to the effect that guitarists such as Pete Townshend and Eric Clapton felt the same way when they first saw Hendrix play.)

Ultimately, I recognise that I'm not all that dumb. There are other people who are in the same situation that I am. One in particular comes to mind: A mentor of mine named Bob Attarian.

Bob is an engineer's engineer. He's had quite a career, ranging from working on the SR-71 Blackbird, to the Corona spy satellites. He even studies theoretical physics in his spare time (though he has yet to solve the grand unification problem.) Yet, when he uses CAD software, he finds himself more frustrated than satisfied.

The closest thing I've heard to an explanation of the problem with CAD was something Bob said to me at least 10 years ago: "you've gotta be too smart to use this stuff."

So, what do you think?

Geolus.

Chuck Grindstaff just answered, yet another time, the question of how Synchronous Technology is distingushed from CoCreate (and, implicitly, Kubotek and SpaceClaim.  This time, I thought the answer was even clearer than in the past.  He said that Synchonous Technology combines three things:

• Direct editing,
  
• A Feature recognition engine, and
  
• 3d constraint management & optimization.

It's the last item that I've not really found a good way of describing up till now.  This is the part that allows the re-parameterization of dumb models.

The way Chuck described the last item doesn't, however, tell everthing.  NX, for example, uses Synchronous Technology to add associative intelligence (e.g. cae meshes, toolpaths, PMI data) to inferred features on dumb models.  You might want to think about the implications there.

I found a few bloggers and writers who seemed to get it in a general sense, but not many who actually understood the deep implications.

To understand what Synchronous Technology is, it helps to look back a bit at the history of CAD.

In the late 1980s, PTC took the CAD market by storm with their Pro/E CAD product. They were so successful over time that parametric feature-based modeling, the methodology underlying Pro/E, became the de-facto standard for mechanical CAD.

Parametric feature-based modeling can be incredibly powerful, but it does little to help users deal with dumb or imported models. For this, the essential method is direct editing (sometimes also called explicit modeling. The terms editing and modeling are, in this context, interchangeable.) Implementations of direct editing vary by program, but the basic concept is pretty simple: editing operations are made directly to the boundary representation model. The end result of direct editing is a dumb solid model – one with no parameters or features.

Dumb solid models are quite useful, but they're not all that easy to edit in useful ways, because they lack feature information. A user might look at a dumb model, and be able to recognize features such as holes, pockets, and bosses, but for CAD programs, it's a much bigger challenge.

The general concept of being able to infer feature information on dumb models has been around for a while. Trispectives (now IronCAD) was one of the first to do this, at a basic level, in 1995 or so. More recently, Kubotek, CoCreate and SpaceClaim have taken the concept (and technology) further, allowing users to edit dumb (typically STEP or imported) models with a fluidity and ease unmatched by typical parametric feature-based CAD systems.

Simplifying somewhat, these tools use feature recognition algorithms to identify geometric relationships between elements of a model, and then use a smart set of editing commands to directly modify the surfaces associated with those inferred features. In short, feature recognition plus direct editing .

I personally think that names are important, because they give us a mental schema for recognizing things. I've spent a bit of time talking to industry people (professors, developers, analysts, editors, and such), and there seems to be a consensus that a good name for this type of thing is feature inference modeling.

Now, after that look back at history, the question today is this: What is Synchronous Technology?

The quick answer is that it is a technology that enables something that looks like a combination of feature based modeling and feature inference modeling.  But the quick answer is probably not quite good enough.

The word "synchronous" doesn't refer to a modeling process, but rather refers to what's known as a synchronous solver.

A solver is a computer algorithm that solves a group of mathematical equations. Any CAD program that supports creating or editing features will have a solver buried deeply within its code.

Sequential solvers are the oldest and simplest type. They have the limitation of order dependency. If you drew a four-bar linkage in a sketcher program that used a sequential solver, you'd find that the links had an inherent parent-child relationship. Pushing on the first link would move the last link, but pushing on the last link wouldn't move the first link.

Simultaneous solvers (used in most of today's parametric feature-based modelers) are more advanced. They solve all the equations representing the constraints (including relationships and dimensions) defining a feature simultaneously, as a group. This is computationally more expensive than solving the equations sequentially, but it overcomes the problem of order dependency – at least within a single feature.

Typical parametric feature-based modelers hold the definitions for each of the features in a model in a tree structured list. This list is sometimes called a history tree, as the data in it is listed in the historical order in which the user created the model.

When people talk about history-based CAD software, they're essentially talking about parametric feature-based programs that, in the process of regenerating the boundary representation for a model, recalculate each feature sequentially, as they appear in the history tree. If you've used these type of programs for more than about 5 minutes, you probably understand the problem with this method: a change to a parameter of a feature that's in the early part of the tree can cause features that are later in the tree to fail.

Siemens' synchronous solver overcomes the order dependencies that have plagued history-based CAD programs by solving for the explicit and inferred constraints at the same time. The synchronous solver doesn't use a history tree, but rather holds user-defined constraints in groups associated with the surfaces to which they apply.

The synchronous solver actually does a lot more than a typical simultaneous solver. Were any of the programmers who wrote it to read this blog, they'd probably say I was oversimplifying things. I admit that I am - but for good reason: what's important is what Synchronous Technology does for users, not how it works under the hood.

As far as CAD users are concerned, the result of Synchronous Technology is that they can take an existing model (native or imported), make changes to it with no limitations from the history tree, and add new intelligence (constraints and driving dimensions), again, with no limitations from the history tree.  Easy CAD model reuse, without having to be a CAD genius.

Siemens has started to use the term Design Freedom to describe the capabilities provided by Synchronous Technology. Probably a pretty good term.

There is a lot more to talk about with Synchronous Technology.  I've not even touched on its deeper implications here.  Ultimately, though, I believe this to be a transformative technology -- one that represents an important inflection point in the CAD industry.  If you hear someone say "that's nothing new," don't believe them.  Synchronous Technology is a big deal.

(Nothing I've written here is based on any secret information.  It's all based on published material, and open presentations and conversations at the Siemens PLM analyst & press event.) 

Ooh, we like a challenge!

Via IFTF:

"[A]n international group of leading technological thinkers were asked to identify the Grand Challenges for Engineering in the 21st Century."

The Engineering Challenges site is running a poll to get some insight into what the top engineering challenges are for 21st century.  Right now the top two have to do with energy (solar and fusion) which is no surprise give the recent rapid rises in energy costs.  Stop by and take a look and vote if you feel strongly about one challenge over another.

What strikes me about this list is that to find solutions to almost any of them a multidisciplinary approach will be an absolute must.  It seem to point to the fact that the age of lone inventor solving great challenges is over (and may have been over for a while) and that teams will have to tackle the next set of great challenge.  Teams that understand sociology, engineering, physics and environmental science.  Teams that can build complex math models that actually replicate and predict what happens in the real world.  And teams that can work together like they were all sitting in the same room even though they may never have met face to face.  May the best team win. 

I highlighted a couple of sentences in Chris's comments.  Why?  Because the capabilities he's talking about are exactly those that his employer should be delivering to its customers.

We talk an awful lot about CAD -- Computer Aided Design.  What we don't seem to talk about much is the concept that in order to design something, you must start with a model.  So far, CAD systems have been pretty good at modeling form and fit.  They've been pretty bad at modeling function.

Consider what it would be like to have a CAD model that actually represented the form, fit, and function of something.  You could use that model to actually "replicate and predict what happens in the real world."    I'm thinking that might be useful.

I'm a research director at Institute for the Future, a 40-year-old non-profit thinktank that helps companies, governments, and foundations think about long-term future trends to make better decisions today. For the last six months, we've been researching the "future of making," exploring how the stuff of our world may be researched, invented, designed, manufactured, and distributed in the next ten years. We held an expert workshop where we brought in a terrific group of makers, conducted interviews, and did a ton of reading on the history of DIY culture. At last weekend's Maker Faire, we released the results of our research in the form of a visual knowledge map, summarizing drivers, trends, and implications. Almost all of our research at IFTF becomes free and public after a year, but this map was made public right away and is Creative Commons-licensed. We hope you enjoy it! From the introduction to the Future of Making Map:

THE FUTURE OF MAKING IS BEING REMADE

Two future forces, one mostly social, one mostly technological, are intersecting to transform how goods, services, and experiences—the “stuff” of our world—will be designed, manufactured, and distributed over the next decade. An emerging do-it-yourself culture of “makers” is boldly voiding warranties to tweak, hack, and customize the products they buy. And what they can’t purchase, they build from scratch. Meanwhile, flexible manufacturing technologies on the horizon will change fabrication from massive and centralized to lightweight and ad hoc. These trends sit atop a platform of grassroots economics—new market structures developing online that embody a shift from stores and sales to communities and connections.

Inspired by the hackers, crafters, artisans, and tinkerers who embody this “maker mindset,” we set out to reverse engineer the future forces behind this transformation. Many of us were already immersed in the DIY culture, hacking code, soldering circuits, creating media, and even tending farms. So to learn more, we reached out to our own communities, brought together innovators at an expert workshop, scoured blogs and magazines, and attended numerous informal gatherings where makers talk shop. It turns out that “do it yourself” may be a misnomer for this decidedly social movement; “do it ourselves” is a more apt phrase. Individual makers are amplified by social technologies that connect ideas, designs, techniques, and, of course, people, to revolutionize the process of innovation and production. 

There is much to be learned from the maker mindset of collaboration, creativity, and open access. Yet the maker culture will not replace traditional industry. In the future, traditional manufacturers and maverick makers will be closely linked— sometimes cooperating, sometimes competing, but frequently blurring the boundaries that separate them. Success will occur when the two cultures are woven together in new and interesting ways. We hope that our map will help guide you in those experiments as you engage with the Future of Making.