This week the company previewed Autodesk Inventor Fusion for Mac. As part of the Inventor product family, Inventor Fusion is primarily a 3D mechanical CAD modeler application designed to engage emerging young engineers and designers.

Kevin Schneider, Sr. Product Line Manager for Autodesk Design, Lifecycle and Simulation Product Group, noted that Inventor Fusion is the first dedicated mechanical CAD product from Autodesk that is a Mac product.

01 - Autodesk Inventor Fusion for Mac. A new Mac-native ground-up mCAD modeling program for emerging mechanical engineers and design professionals.

“When we look at the next generation of designers and engineers,” says Schneider “we see their expectations of choice and software is very different than the current generation.” Autodesk told Architosh that the company is adapting to trends that show that the future generation of engineers and designers are increasingly coming both to and out of college with an affinity for Apple’s platforms.

While Autodesk Inventor is the company’s Windows-only full-fledged professional mechanical CAD product, Inventor Fusion for Mac is a simplified entry-level product that has been written from the ground-up on Mac OS X. It has a ’state-of-the-art’ modern user-interface and advanced modeling functionality.

The formal release of the product is aimed for the first quarter of 2012. Professionals and students interested in the Mac-based Inventor Fusion can learn more at a special page on Facebook setup by Autodesk (http://www.facebook.com/InventorFusion)

Final pricing has also not been set but those who engage in the public technology preview can try out Fusion for the Mac for free. You can sign up here.

Architosh received word this morning from T-Splines leader Matthew Sederberg. No terms were disclosed in the deal. Sederberg reports in his email that he will be taking up the position of Product Manager at Autodesk in charge of T-Splines technology.

To read the brief press release visit here.

Architosh Analysis: We were a little surprised by this move on the part of T-Splines. This is a tiny software company compared to Autodesk, located a considerable distance up in Utah. T-Splines makes a plugin product for McNeel’s Rhino modeling software platform. Now that Autodesk has purchased this technology we are left wondering if the CAD giant will continue to develop and market this key plugin for a rival’s modeling software. Sederber writes, “Autodesk is currently investigating an approach to continued selling the T-Splines plugins.”

T-Splines actually makes two plugins, one for Rhino and one for SolidWorks. Our guess is that if anything provoked Autodesk to purchase this technology it was tsElements for Solidworks, a major rival to Autodesk in the product development markets.

Select Service members gain access to a growing library of on-demand learning tutorials, priority technical support, and VIP access to downloads. And with Vectorworks Select Service you will always have the latest software versions. 

You can learn more about Vectorworks Select Service by registering for any of these free webinars:

• Apr 13, 2011 at 2pm EDT (register)
• Apr 20, 2011 at 2pm EDT (register)
• Apr 27, 2011 at 2pm EDT (register)

For those with questions they can call 888-646-4223. To learn more about Vectorworks go to their website here.

BeLight Software Ltd, has put up Live Interior 3D Standard Edition on the new Apple Mac App Store. The popular interiors-oriented, 3D design application sells for 49.USD. The application was last release on January 31, 2011. Live Interiors 3D Standard Edition is already in the Top 300 list by Apple.

To learn more about Live Interiors go here.

Archway Systems Joints Pointools Sales Partner Program

Archway Systems, Inc., an established provider of CAD software, consulting and technical services for a broad community of Bentley and Rhino software users, has joined the Pointools Partner Program for North America. Pointools software is used by project teams to reference and reuse the largest point cloud models–the billions of measurement points taken by 3D laser scanners–inside the broadest range of applications for streamlining scan-to-model workflows.

Pointools software works with Bentley, Autodesk, Rhino, SketchUp and Safe Software tools as well as its own standalone application. To learn more about it go to: www.pointools.com

Graebert GmbH Opens App Store (Like Apple) for CAD

Germany-based Graebert GmbH has taken a play from Apple and announced the CAD industry’s first App Store for the DraftSight market. The store will open in April and will let large and small developers, as well as customers, discover and promote solutions and applications that work with Dassault Systemes DraftSight software.

In article published here a Graebert executive said, a week before the Solidworks World 2011 show, that the Mac is coming back in engineering CAD. The Graebert executive said that DraftSight had gained 30,000 new Mac users from December to January. The Mac was not 10 percent of the DraftSight customer base and growing quickly.

In the article referenced above there is a technical mistake in reference to AutoCAD on the Mac. The article states incorrectly that Autodesk AutoCAD for Mac is still in beta. That is not true, it is released and out and selling.

Well PTC may have introduced Creo to much fanfare recently a chief rival SolidWorks Corporation is right on their heels with the product launch release of SolidWorks 2011. A new SolidWorks 2011 Launch Web Site has been announced.

SolidWorks is a MCAD program we believe will be supported on the Mac within the next few years, as well as supported on Apple iOS. The company shook up the Mac community and CAD world earlier in the year at SolidWorks World 2010 when they showed future SolidWorks products running on an iMac. The event sent waves of excitement and interest into the blogosphere on the matter. The company clarified future direction with respect to developing for the Mac market with Architosh in this article, “SolidWorks clarifies future direction with respect to Mac”, here.  We’ll dig into the future of SolidWorks on Mac more in the near future.

New Dosch Products

Dosch Design has new products that we think may be of interest. One in particular is called Construction Site and contains 50 detailed 3D models for all kinds of construction sites. This product could be very useful to AEC professionals modeling sequencing work in the field for a variety of reasons. Another new library is Doors and Window Details, containing 40 very detailed 3D models of doors and windows.  Dosch Design is a top location for obtaining 3D model information. You can visit them here: http://www.doschdesign.com/

BIM Talk at LinkedIn

A very lengthy discussion topic on LinkedIn asks why companies choose one BIM product over another. At over 516 comments it is one of the more touched upon discussions concerning BIM software selection in the BIM Experts Group.

As part of this selection, Luxion demonstrated the integration of Creo and KeyShot at a launch event this week in Boston.

“Upgrading our existing KeyShot plugin architecture was straight forward,” says Dr. Henrik Wann Jensen, Chief Scientist and co-founder of Luxion. “Not only could we re-use the majority of our existing implementation, but it was also incredibly easy to integrate the user interface components with Creo’s new UI and ribbon interface.  We commend PTC on its vision and look forward to offering our solution on Creo.”

With just a few clicks users can take their part assemblies from PTC (Pro/Engineer) to KeyShot for realtime raytracing visualizations. Once inside KeyShot, the user can turn the Creo CAD data into stunning photographic images in a matter of minutes.

Luxion will continue to support the PTC customer base by providing the ability to import Pro/Engineer data (now known as Creo Elements/Pro) natively into KeyShot on both the PC and Apple Mac platform. In addition, Luxion offers a plugin for Pro/Engineer that provides a dynamic link between Pro/Engineer and KeyShot.

To learn more about KeyShot and Luxion go here: www.keyshot.com

Graebert claims ARES has full compatibility with AutoCAD, has the latest 3D support and Mac-native interface options. The company is seeking resellers and OEMs for Mac ARES.

ARES Commander Edition 1.0 for Mac

ARES on the Mac is the first CAD solution to run native across all three major platforms: Windows, Mac and Linux. The company is currently looking into iPad support.

“Khronos welcomes the use of OpenGL by advanced applications to leverage the hardware acceleration of state-of-the-art GPUs,” said Barthhold Lichtenbelt, chair of the OpenGL working group at Khronos. “Combining the power and cross platform flexibility of OpenGL and ARES Commander Edition for OS X on the Mac offers customers the choice of platform for their 2D/3D CAD needs.”

ARES offers industry compatibility and high performance features for mission-critical design workflows. It features the CAD engine that also powers the new DraftSight software from Dassault SolidWorks on the Windows platform. ARES on the Mac offers users the choice of a Mac-specific OS X interface or a more tailored UI that matches the Windows version. Both UI options are fully command compatible with AutoCAD, says the company.

“The pent up demand for a native Mac CAD solution has been overwhelming and we had thousands of requests by users wanting to be part of our initial beta test process,” said Wilfried Graebert, CEO and founder of Graebert, GmbH. “Now that we have a stable 1.0 version, we are delighted to show everyone just how powerful CAD on the Mac can really be. The announcement a few weeks ago of extremely powerful new Mac Pro systems only emphasizes that Apple has a great platform for high-end computing.”

A free 30-day trial of ARES Commander Edition for Mac OS X is available for download here. Cadalyst Magazine recently gave it a fairly positive review which you can read here. ARES requires a Mac running on Intel processors and OS X 10.5.8 or above.

At SolidWorks World 2010 what as shown was what Fielder Hiss called “technology components” or pieces of software that are demonstrating the technology that SolidWorks is developing in its labs. “They are not products or future products,” said Hiss. Those components were shown to demonstrate how SolidWorks is trying understand and solve customer problems…by looking at “what is core to what customers are really trying to do.” Specifically in terms of the Mac or what was shown with the iMac at SolidWorks World was technology components which leverage the cloud or cloud-based computing.

Clarifying the Mac

What people saw off the Mac was being run from a cloud server. It was running a design tool that “does not have a name” according to Hiss. “We are trying to find the best way to deliver solutions when the cloud becomes a common solution for our customers and the industry.”

“The component technology we are developing in the labs is future oriented.” said Hiss. “We are architecting these components in a way where we can deliver not just cloud-based solutions but deliver to native platforms if and when the market needs that.” These component technologies according to Hiss are 3-5 years off before they become products that ship. “We do not have clear plans today to deliver our flagship product (SolidWorks) to the Mac.” he said.

Fielder Hiss noted that the Mac is a in-demand item with their customers, especially in the home. “I’m a Mac user at home to be honest,” he said, “there is a lot more excitement about the Mac out there in the community.”

The Future is Flexibility

For SolidWorks the future is about being flexible. Mr. Hiss gave a wonderful example of a typical dad working on a product and rushing off to see his daughter’s soccer game late in the afternoon, then returning to his design later in the evening from home (possibly from a Mac) to continue further work. The future is about being flexible, about having options for how you can access information from different devices from anywhere in the world through the Internet. The cloud-based technologies SolidWorks showed at SolidWorks World are aimed at meeting that kind of flexibility.

As for native versions of SolidWorks? The company is officially saying there is no commitment to ship a native Mac version of its flagship SolidWorks application. What was said on stage and to other press was that they are studying concepts for native Mac software–thus some of the confusion.

SolidWorks Community Cheers Loudly About Mac

Desktop Engineering reports that the 5000 plus attendees cheered loudly when SolidWorks CEO, Jeff Ray announced support for the Mac. “Clearly he hit a nerve,” writes Desktop Engineering’s Kenneth Wong. “The spontaneous applause that erupted in the audience was louder and longer than the initial one he received when he first walked in.”

Later this year SolidWorks Corporation will release a new cloud-based computing solution for SolidWorks customers. “A web-hosted CAD modeler is bound to be accessible to both Windows and Mac users,” writes Wong, “but addressing the demand for a Mac-compatible CAD in such a fashion may not fully satisify dedicated Mac fans, because this approach doesn’t take advantage of Apple’s hardware and OS.”

Solidworks World showed Mac and multi-platform Cloud future for SolidWorks. (image courtesy of Desktop Engineering)

The mandate to push for future technologies and compute models was delivered to SolidWorks research and development (R&D) three years ago by Jeff Ray. Now the first fruits of that multi-year effort are being delivered later this year. It is not clear yet when a native SolidWorks for the Mac will be ready, but based on the feedback in applause to Jeff Ray’s news it should be readily apparent that the demand for this is out there. And now that this news is out, what will Autodesk’s response be? Will the CAD giant and chief SolidWorks rival sit back or will they respond with Mac versions also?

To read the Desktop Engineering article go here. There’s a few pictures too.

There are other troubling aspects of this rumor post as well. The writer seems to think that Solidworks competes with ArchiCAD, a fully native — since the beginning of its existence — BIM program for the architectural market. It doesn’t!

However, the source of this story on Hardmac.com is this blog post from coverage of Solidworks World 2010 where up on stage we seem to be looking at Solidworks presenters showing us something (which we relate to the screen shot) on an Apple iMac computer.

What is this iMac doing on stage at Solidworks World?

It seems to us that Solidworks Corporation clearly has some reason for that iMac on stage but it doesn’t necessarily mean new native Mac software. The company already makes some viewing software native on the Mac now and it could be related to that. We’ll have to dig into this further but we definitely wanted to post this interesting nugget now!

To more information about Solidworks go here. http://www.solidworks.com/

With HP now picking up Stratasys 3D printing may be poised to enter the mainstream market and drive down 3D printer prices. This will enable more architects, product designers and engineers to prototype their computer-aided design (CAD)-based creations.

We’ve been saying that at Architosh for ten years Ken!

Next Generation Want CAD on Mac

But as I have been expressing privately to many of the CAD industry leaders who are already on the Mac for years now, it is the next-generation of young designers who will be putting the pressure on the switch over to the Mac platform. So I was pleased to read this quote in full here. Marc Chapin posted this at Desktop Engineering:

“The next generation of design students who are growing up with the Mac now will be looking for trusted CAD solutions for that platform, regardless of the aging CAD population who use Windows/Linux. The first big CAD provider who jumps onto the Mac platform, regardless of the huge expense, will reap the rewards of being the first to enter that market and will receive the greatest financial payback.”

Marc then writes…

“I am a young industrial designer (5 years experience) and use SolidWorks on Windows XP 64 and am considering NX 6 on a new Mac. I think that if any one of the mid range priced CAD modelers like SolidWorks, ProE, SolidEdge, or Inventor were to port to the Mac platform, they would instantly reap financial rewards from people like me. Just my 2 cents.” 

NX 6 on Mac Articles and Video

While Architosh just recently posted a story on the official release of NX on Mac, there are three separate but related stories and blog posts coming from the main press that covers highend (and PC-only) CAD. 

Kenneth Wong’s article from Desktop Engineering contains the user-feedback quotes we noted above, and the new MacDesign blog by Develop3D magazine online also covers this new story (and with some different graphics) and an interview, and finally there is the SolidSmack post. You can check out some YouTube videos of NX 6 on Mac above and below.

The full computer-aided design and manufacturing (CAD/CAM) functionality of NX, Siemens PLM Software’s flagship digital product development application, now includes the Mac in its list of supported operating environments. 

01 - Siemens' NX software is a full native 64-bit Mac OS X application. It requires an Intel-based Mac (ie: it is not Universal Binary and thus does not run on PowerPC-based Macs).

“We are delighted to add the Mac to the comprehensive list of operating environments supported by our NX CAD/CAM applications,” said Joan Hirsch, vice president of Product Design Solutions, Siemens PLM Software. “Today’s announcement further expands the flexibility of NX and provides customers with the freedom to choose from one of industry’s broadest range of supported operating systems.”

Siemen’s PLM Software’s NX (a descendent of Unigraphics) is used by leading companies around the globe to design and manufacture some of the world’s most innovative and sophisticated products. Its wide adoption throughout the global manufacturing industry is due in part to its ability to support a wide range of operating environments–including Windows, UNIX, and Linux–in a heterogeneous or single operating system deployment. Now Apple’s popular Mac OS X environment–which is UNIX based and has tripled in installed based in the past two years–rounds out NX’s deployment options. 

“NX has been our exclusive CAD/CAM software for several years because of its unmatched ability to handle all of our product design and manufacturing needs,” said Marcel Eggimann of Eggimann Design. “At the same time, we have always preferred the Mac as the system of choice for the work we do. Now we can have the best of both worlds as these two great technologies come together. We have been using NX on Mac OS X for three months now and we are very impressed with its performance and reliability.”

The Mac OS X version of NX includes all of the software’s robust CAD and CAM functionality, as well as support for Siemens PLM Software’s Teamcenter platform through rich client capabilities embedded in NX and the thin client based on Apple’s Safari web browser. As a result, NX for Mac OS X can leverage all the capabilities of Teamcenter, the world’s most widely used PLM portfolio, including its ability to support a multi-platform CAD strategy.

“It’s pretty clear that more and more people are demanding that their primary software tools are available on their operating system of choice,” said Al Dean, Editor in Chief, DEVELOP3D.com. “Siemens PLM Software’s move with NX to Mac OS X should see them gain a foothold in a growing community.”

To learn more about NX for the Mac please visit this website: www.siements.com.plm

You can get in on COFES twitter action by following some key individuals listed below:

• @randallnewton – AECnews.com EIC
• @stavanja – Acting EIC of CADwire.net
• @joeltweet – COFES co-founder
• @bradholtz – COFES co-founder

Also new in this version are more shader materials. David Forrester, Managing Director at LightWork Design commented, “We are pleased to see the addition of LightWorks technology within TurboCAD Pro and to see the real advances that this makes to the product.”

To learn more visit: www.imsidesign.com or www.turbocad.com.

IDSA Northeast District

solidThinking will kick off its IDSA tour by presenting at the Northeast District Conference (27-29 March) on March 28. Jim Hassberger, solidThinking, Inc.’s vice president of business development and customer relations, will speak about the challenges and opportunities in product design arising from the combination of human thinking and computational inspiration.

solidThinking: enjoyed a good presence at its first Macworld Expo. The CAID company will be a major sponsor of the IDSA regional conferences throughout the USA this spring. solidThinking is gaining much traction due to its ability to run superbly on Apple's Mac OS X platform (in addition to Microsoft Windows) where a lot of younger designers revere Apple and are already Apple product users. Their ability to run a design tool like solidThinking on a MacBook Pro or Mac Pro combining its world class feature set with their favorite computer platform is a strong pull for them.

solidThinking will be demonstrating exciting new techniques in CAID (computer-aided industrial design) technology that enables today’s designers to explore and generate exciting new forms that are aesthetically pleasing as well as functional and adapted product engineering requirements. solidThinking has been gaining much attention in the USA market over the past year as the company has made great gains in academia and has caught the attention of today’s young designers. The product is one the just a few of the most advanced software programs specifically written for product and industrial designers that works natively on the Mac OS X platform–what Apple refers to as the “platform for creatives.” 

In fact there is so much interest by younger designers today in working on the Mac OS X platform that Autodesk has taken its famed AliasStudio Tools to the Mac OS X platform too, with a native release planned for later this year. 

Hassberger will be demonstrating to IDSA audiences some of the unique and industry-first technology in solidThinking, such as its powerful and unique History Tree functionalities.

The T-Splines folks will be at SIGGRAPH this summer. Unfortunately the company says there will be no T-Splines plugin for Rhino on Mac OS X yet because the Rhino folks have not yet released a SDK (software development kit) for the Mac version. Matt Sederberg of T-Splines told Architosh that once the SDK for the Mac version of Rhino is available they will produce a T-Splines plugin for the Mac. 

At SIGGRAPH 2009 this summer the company will exhibit and the likely big news will be the official unveiling of the T-Splines 2.0 plugin for Rhino on Windows. For more info visit them at: www.tsplines.com

Luxology and modo news

Luxology president Brad Peepler is back on the Web with another modo user interview. This time Seneca Menard of independent game developer studio id Software discusses how modo fits into his daily production pipeline. Seneca has also been scripting in modo since its inception so modo users who are hip on its scripting abilities may want to check this out. 

Also of interest to modo users and architects and AE visualization pros, Luxology has a new architectural interiors training video out focused on lighting. This is currently featured on its home page.

Gehry Technologies News

Famed architect Frank Gehry’s technology offshoot Gehry Technologies has announced the latest release of Digital Project V1 R4. Digital Project is an advanced 3D/BIM application for the architectural industry and it is based on CATIA. The new release features over 200 new and improved features including the full release of the Architecture and Structural Building Information Modeling (BIM) workbench, improvements to its automated production of architectural drawings, and enhanced IFC interoperability. 

There is a new add-on Fitting simulation and 2D layout for 3D design, and new functionalities of photo studio, real time rendering and 3D annotations and dimensions all bundled within GT Designer. To read the full listing of new features go here. 

Back in May 2008 at the AIA conference, Architosh was treated to a private presentation of GT’s Digital Project running on a MacBook Pro under boot camp.

Unlike the overall 3D market, the CAD market is still–regretfully–intensely Windows-based. Mac users have been crying out for numerous applications for years, such as SolidWorks, AutoCAD, ProE, Revit, and the list goes on. To the benefit of having a Windows CAD inside your Mac is strong–even if it must live inside Windows itself. 

VirtualBox 2.1.4

Sun’s latest VirtualBox 2.1.4 now supports Intel’s VT-x hardware virtualization. This means it taps the specific hardware on the latest Intel x86 microprocessors which allows these chips to do virtualization of operating systems. 

Sun's VirtualBox is a free virtualization software for Mac OS X (intel machines).

The new version of VirtualBox 2.1.4 also gains two features useful to running PC-based CAD apps on your Mac. The first of these is support for OpenGL. Currently this support is in a type of beta mode and is therefore installs in “off mode” but is easy to turn back on. The second feature is 64-bit support. This is less important for those running CAD apps on the Mac in virtualized environments. 

Sun’s VirtualBox may be lagging its main competitors Parallels and VMware’s Fusion but it has one powerful feature in its arsenal: it’s free! This likely means that development will continue to lag unless Sun deems the development of VirtualBox very important. 

Sun’s website for VirtualBox list companion projects in which Sun participates and these include notable items such as: OpenSolaris, OpenOffice.org, MySQL, NetBeans and GlassFish.

Parasolid version 21

The new modeling kernel software has recently made news in the Mac computing landscape by being incorporated as the new kernel technology in Nemetschek North America’s globally popular Vectworks 2009 CAD product line, as well as powering the next version of Siemen PLM Software’s NX 6 for Mac.

Siemens PLM Software's Parasolid v21 - leading industrial strength geometry modeling (kernel) component software now powers key CAD and PLM products on the Macintosh (Mac OS X) platform.

Version 21 of Parasolid includes many enhancements to 3D modeling technology capabilities, which will drive enhancements to the more than 350 leading end-user CAD, CAM, CAID, PLM and BIM licensees powering their software solutions with Parasolid. Key areas of improvement include:

• Local operations – Several enhancements have been made to allow significantly more complex changes while performing local edits of geometry. For example, options have been added to automatically indicate desired behavior when features such as holes and bosses interact as the result of a local editing operation.
• Enhanced surface creation – Sophisticated sheet and surface creation and manipulation capabilities have been extended. For example, users can perform sweep operations with enhanced control of rotation as well as with more complex configurations of guide curves. In addition, users can perform loft operations between profiles while twisting along a path.
• Application support – A new diagnostic mechanism has been added and the tools that help application developers track the creation, editing and deletion of entities have been further developed to provide more support for sophisticated undo and rollback algorithms.

For general information on Parasolid, visit this page: http://www.siemens.com/plm.

Indeed it is. 

While the news is shy on details — and we are in the process of obtaining more facts directly from our Autodesk contacts — Autodesk has apparently been working on this. They even have done work on the packaging. The post says there is a new bundle and new naming, in addition to new STL output, new rendering technologies and materials and tool, and a lot more control over surfaces. 

When Autodesk signed a definitive agreement to purchase Canadian-based Alias back in October of 2005, Carl Bass, COO of Autodesk said: “Alias’ technology spans several of our most important markets and augments the synergy between our design and media businesses.” In essence back in 2005 Autodesk saw what was coming down the pike: the collision of the worlds of design and engineering with that of media and entertainment. “Our media and entertainment customers are increasingly using the data created by our design [and engineering] applications for broadcast, film and games projects,” stated Bass. 

Windows Marries the Mac: Pipelines Expand

Creative pipelines are becoming so cross-platform in this “CAD to Ad” world that no longer is it acceptable to customers that Autodesk not provide OS diversity in its portfolio of software packages. You literally have customer segments with rapidly evolving and mixed pipeline scenarios. “The Mac is just like any other platform within entertainment sharing the same roles as Windows and Linux,” said Rob Hoffmann, Sr. Product Marketing Manager 3D for Autodesk, back in January of this year. 

This evolution has shaped the importance of the FBX file format, the default file format of Autodesk MotionBuilder, itself an acquired cross-platform product in the company’s Media & Entertainment division. 

Recently we met with Autodesk in San Francisco to discuss Autodesk’s latest Mac software announcements. In that discussion Carl Bass’ comments from 2005 were both reflected and amplified by the urgency of the evolving industries. Rob Hoffmann made it clear that Autodesk fully intends to meet the needs and demands of its global customer base.

Hence news of the old Alias toolset finding its way to the Mac should shock nobody now.