At the Nemetschek North America press event in Baltimore this weekend I had a chance to sit down with Dr. Biplab Sarkar, chief technology officer for the Vectorworks CAD/BIM developer. The company will officially announced Vectorworks 2009 this coming Monday and Siemens PLM Software Inc, will also announce news of their new partnership and latest licensee of Parasolid.
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The Interview
AFR: Dr. Sarkar, can you tell me how you went about making the decision on Parasolid, when did this take place?
BS: Back when I joined the company coming from PTC (Parametric Technology Corporation) my focus was on making Vectorworks strong in modeling. At that time we adopted geometric modeling kernel technology from SMLib. In 2002 Gary Crocker, a co-founder of SMLib, broke off from that group and formed IntegrityWare taking his solid modeling libraries with him. We continued to utilize these libraries until our decision a few years ago to look for a better modeling kernel technology.
AFR: So you were using both SMLib and Solids++?
BS: The technology stayed the same, just the companies changed.
AFR: Tell me how you and Sean Flaherty approached your superiors in Munich about the idea of adopting Parasolid. I’m assuming you needed some approval given the cost considerations, right?
BS: Yes…(laughs). Sean and myself went to Munich and broached the subject with the CEO who at that time was a real technology driven person. We didn’t go ask straight out, we brought it up. It turned out they were very interested with this idea.
AFR: So they said go for it….
BS: Absolutely. They are also interested with addressing the same issues we were having in Vectorworks with ALLPLAN.
AFR: So nearly two and a half years ago you did this. Who else was on your short-list…did you look at Spatial’s ACIS?
BS: We looked at ACIS but in the end we believed Parasolid was the better choice. Everyone uses it, it’s even used in ProE and CATIA.
AFR: Wait a minute, doesn’t ProE and CATIA use in-house kernels?
Reader Comments
There are four major geometric modeling kernels in existence for developers to license. Spatial’s ACIS, Siemen’s Parasolid, SMLib and IntegrityWare’s Solids++. Other kernels include Autodesk’s Shape Manager, itself based on ACIS from several years ago, plus PTC’s proprietary kernel in ProEngineer and the proprietary kernel behind ultra-highend MCAD player CATIA.
There are four major geometric modeling kernels in existence for developers to license. Spatial’s ACIS, Siemen’s Parasolid, SMLib and IntegrityWare’s Solids++. Other kernels include Autodesk’s Shape Manager, itself based on ACIS from several years ago, plus PTC’s proprietary kernel in ProEngineer and the proprietary kernel behind ultra-highend MCAD player CATIA.
In the AEC world:
Vectorworks 2009 = Parasolid
AutoCAD = Shaper Manager (ACIS related)
Microstation = Parasolid
ArchiCAD = Unknown (in-house developed?)
Revit = Shaper Manager or proprietary based on earliest version of Revit (it could be ACIS based.
In the lastest ArchiCAD 12 review by Jerry Laiserin at Cadalyst he notes that the ACIS kernel is behind ArchiCAD.
http://aec.cadalyst.com/aec/Review%2C+AEC+Software/ArchiCAD-12-Cadalyst-Labs-Review/ArticleStandard/Article/detail/556437?contextCategoryId=6574
In the lastest ArchiCAD 12 review by Jerry Laiserin at Cadalyst he notes that the ACIS kernel is behind ArchiCAD.
http://aec.cadalyst.com/aec/Review%2C+AEC+Software/ArchiCAD-12-Cadalyst-Labs-Review/ArticleStandard/Article/detail/556437?contextCategoryId=6574
Love the redesign, Anthony. It’s just beautiful … and functional. Kudos to you and your team. Thanks again for your great work, and especially for your recent interview of my colleague, Dr. Sarkar.
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