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?
BS: Yes, but they use Parasolid too for compatibility. ACIS is used in many applications, and many lower end applications, but if you look at SolidWorks, which is owned by Dassault, they own Spatial the makers of ACIS, but they license Parasolid for SolidWorks.
AFR: What are the three main strengths that Parasolid gives Vectorworks 2009?
BS: Performance. Stability. Consistency.
AFR: Okay, I understand the first two, what do you mean by consistency?
BS: I mean consistency of results. For example, with some kernels if you are many levels deep into the manipulation of a solid, and then you perform a range of offsets you may get differing results.
AFR: This is what is referred to as “robustness”?
BS: Yes. Parasolid is the most robust, industrial strength modeling kernel in the world. And Vectorworks 2009 is now powered by this.
AFR: You could now go out and compete with SolidWorks and even Siemen’s own SolidEdge and offer the world the first mid-level, industrial MCAD product. Will you do that?
BS: With Parasolid powering Vectorworks we could. Whether we do that I don’t know.
AFR: What about advanced architectural modeling? Will you take Vectorworks and make it compete against those advanced architectural modelers where the cutting edge is taking place, like formZ and in particular Rhino?
BS: Yes.
AFR: There are over 700 underlying geometry functions in the Parasolid kernel. What are you goals going forward to tap this vast array of power?
BS: Our first goal is to get all the architectural modeling components in Vectorworks based on Parasolid.
AFR: What percentage of 3D components or elements today with Vectorworks 2009 are Parasolid-based and what are they?
BS: At least 40 percent. Walls, floors and all miscellaneous 3d objects are all Parasolid-derived objects. Roofs, doors and window objects and some other architectural objects are not yet Parasolid-derived. So our first goal going forward from today is to get 100 percent of architectural 3D objects based on Parasolid.
AFR: What is your next goal?
BS: To start tapping those hundreds of advanced modeling features available from the Parasolid kernel.
AFR: What about “parmetrics”?
BS: That too is a part of our next top goals. And we have licensed Siemens’ D-Cubed software tools and are working on implementing advanced parametrics in the next version of Vectorworks after version 2009.
AFR: Are the D-Cubed tools Mac-compatible today?
BS: Yes.
AFR: Does the Siemens “Synchronous Technology” come with the Parasolid kernel or is that an overlay of technology proprietary to Siemens?
BS: Synchronous is wonderful technology but it is not apart of Parasolid. They built that on top of the kernel.
AFR: I just have a few more questions but my next one is about multi-threading. We just saw your sister company Graphisoft multi-thread parts of ArchiCAD 12 with great performance results — and yes some of that was also algorithm optimization work too — have you guys considered using a tool like RapidMind so that you can continue to focus on single-threaded development and yet gain the performance benefit that comes from all these wonderful Intel and AMD multi-core chips? The world is increasing going multi-chip and multi-core, how will Vectorworks use this?
BS: That is a very good question. We have looked at the work involved in threading our code base for multi-core processors (ed: note: like Intel Core Due 2). It is not as simple as people think. It involves a lot of potential redundancy and there are some inefficiencies with multi–threading just as people mistake 64-bit computing as being automatically better than 32-bit computing.
AFR: Well…I think that’s the whole argument and beauty of using RapidMind.
BS: We are continuing to research this issue and have not yet chosen a path. For the case of RapidMind it is key that your code base is disciplined and our code goes all the way back to mid 80’s.
AFR: I see. So tools like RapidMind work better on probably younger code bases where there is much higher levels of coding consistencies. This is very technical stuff for most users and readers but I just want to bring this issue to light. So you are looking at multi-threading but are still researching the best path forward?
BS: Yes.
AFR: Last question. Your integration of FileMaker into Landmark is very elegant. It’s beautiful. Why not work with a third-party FileMaker developer to tackle the cost estimation application? That way you don’t have to go out and build cost estimation yourself? Partner?
BS: That could be one way to do it. But we are looking at XML and the types of tools that have been built exchanging data via XML.
AFR: Thank you Biplap Sarkar for talking to me.
BS: You are welcome.