Of the various articles in this feature series, perhaps it is the iPad article, our second in the series this week, that looks farthest afield to view a future in computing where architects, engineers and design-related people reshape our world using entirely new work flows. These will be built around new types of tools and accessing design and engineering data from anywhere one chooses to work.
Loosing the Bow Line
The future of design and creation is about it being untethered from the studio from which it traditionally came. The bow-line has been untied from the cleat. And design process can now sail away from the common harbor where mutual activity in creation and engineering poured forth.
What we now have in front of us is a new era defined by the synergies between two powerful new technologies. The cloud. And the tablet.
When we talked to our CEOs and experts in this series about the role the iPad could and should play in their industries one theme kept popping up again and again. They see the iPad as the cloud’s partner. Cloud computing has many reasons to exist separate from mobile tablet devices and smartphones, but yet it is the iPad and these new devices that are giving rise to the cloud’s fullest potential. In many ways the two are new dance partners who have just taken to the floor, and as the years move forward, they will stun us with new expressions that we can’t yet even imagine.
Sean Flaherty, CEO of Nemetschek Vectorworks, a global CAD leader and the market-leader in the Mac space, said it rather directly. “Fundamentally, I see the iPad as a cloud device. Without an Internet connection it is a useful device,” he notes, “but connected to the Web it is a dramatically new way of computing.” This view helps shape perceptions of why Apple built its enormous new data center in North Carolina and why iCloud will grow to such large importance in time.
James Scapa, Chairman and CEO of engineering software giant Altair, the makers of market-leading CAE (computer-aided engineering) software and owners of solidThinking, remarked that the iPad “provides a natural means for users to orchestrate and access all their work from wherever they are.”
That “wherever-they-are” is made possible because of the cloud.
What the cloud does is free us. What the iPad does is make it extremely practical to access that information in the cloud. In some ways these two new inventions will help mankind expand in a manner not unlike the history of maritime exploration and the history of the magnetic compass. In this case the iPad is like the large sailing vessels of the medieval world, but it is the cloud that is our new magnetic compass, giving us that omnipresent reference, that marker, enabling a global means to see our world and the information in it and the exact location of where we are and how our data and us fit into it.
The iPad is indeed a vessel of sorts. A breakthrough in mobility with its stunning battery-life and its ideal form-factor. With it we can transport our information, ideas and dreams to any corner of the globe.
This human breakthrough–this combination of the cloud’s omnipresence and the tablet’s great mobility–is not lost on the leaders of the world’s biggest engineering software companies. Carl Bass, CEO of Autodesk, the global leader in CAD, remarked that “fundamentally it’s about the creation of new work flows and new means of access to your information.”
“…so whether you look at this idea of turning photos [from your mobile devices] into 3D models, or AutoCAD WS doing collaboration through the cloud,” notes Bass, “there is just a whole bunch of stuff that wasn’t possible before these new technologies.”
next page: The iPad as a New Vessel
The iPad as a New Vessel
A year ago at D8 Steve Jobs noted that the history of the desktop computer may follow a similar path as that of the truck. He remarked that there was a time when trucks outsold cars. The utility of the truck may still be as useful as today as it was when many more of us worked on farms, but the car has continued to evolve in response to changes in how we live.
In some ways the desktop computer has followed a similar life. Jobs sees the desktop like a truck and mobile laptops and tablet devices are like cars, in all the glorious, detailed permutations.
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What makes the iPad particularly special isn’t that Apple invented some beautiful new type of cross-over (between smartphone and laptop) but rather that its particular formation–and this includes its software–hits a unique sweet-spot in mobility in relation to the power of the cloud. It’s the magical combination of camera, large work surface and extreme battery life. In this way, the iPad is more like a sailing vessel, analogous in time to when humanity discovered the means to travel great distances safely across the seas, with great speed and with large storage capacity.
In order to discover new worlds Columbus needed two things: the vessel to carry him there and the navigation equipment to reference himself to something omnipresent and global. Is it truly too much to suggest that the iPad and the Cloud can combine to transform human history just as much?
Carl Bass of Autodesk sees the relationship between the new mobile touch devices and the other types of devices–which include the cloud and web services–as all providing a matrix of interconnected possibilities. “It’s a combination of phone and camera as well as work surface,” says Bass, “allowing us to do a lot more outside the office then we were ever able to do before.”
While many companies have approached the iPad and development on it as another type of ‘creation device’ the truth about it is that the word “creation” may be better substituted for other words associated with exploration and mobility…like “capture.”
Is Creation Off The Table
Dr. Chris Yessios, one of the 3D and CAD industry’s most esteemed leaders and president of AutoDesSys, Inc, the makers of the regarded formZ modeling application, felt that touch as part of the iPad as “creation device” will need further work in order to gain the accuracies needed.
“It will certainly be used as a visualization device and it will be great at that,” said Yessio, “thanks to its portability and interactivity. However, it may require some major capacity enhancements in order to be taken seriously as a CAD/modeling environment.”
next page: Is Creation of the Table Continued and The Human Touch
Royal Farros, Chairman and CEO of IMSI/Design, the makers of TurboCAD and the makers of the leading 3D DWG file viewer on iOS today, remarked previously to Architosh that: “We really believe that the iPad represents an inflection point in the CAD industry.” Farros sees it this way because he emphasizes the remarkable combination of battery life and what is convenient about Multi-touch in the tablet formula. “You simply can’t match what it can do with any other computing device.”
Indeed, and some feel there is much more ground ahead. Bob McNeel, founder and president of McNeel & Associates, makers of Rhino and the new iRhino 3D for iOS, feels that the market is just getting started. “iRhino is a very basic product at this point.” “We can do a lot more,” notes McNeel, “but we wanted the feedback from the market to see how to prioritize the hundreds of potential new features.”
James Dagg, Vice President of Development at solidThinking, Inc., said “we see the iPad as an opportunity to compliment” the 3D modeling focus of solidThinking on the desktop. “For instance, through the iPad you could view your 3D models and play with material assignments, lighting and animation sequences.”
As Yessio remarked, it’s early still to think of the iPad as a primary creation device rivaling or replacing the desktop. And yet is is crystal clear that the iPad is not just a fantastic new vessel for digital voyage and discovery, creating new work flows where none existed before, but one that hinges on that amazing singular feature essential to it: touch!
The Human Touch
Dr. Yessios implies that Multi-touch has to grow (and perhaps the iPad’s work surface too!) in order for it to become a creation device rivaling desktops. That appears obvious to many developers working on such solutions as solving that particular problem is non-trivial.
Of course perhaps touch isn’t the limiting factor we imagine it to be. James Dagg of solidThinking made perhaps the most interesting comment of this series. “We don’t see Multi-touch as a competing technology to traditional interaction,” notes Dagg, “but something that completes it.”
The implication there is perhaps we let go–at least for now–of the idea of trying to make the iPad into a major creation device. Perhaps the deeper lesson about the limitations of Multi-touch ultimately take us back to the desktop. And in this it is Carl Bass, CEO of Autodesk, who will contribute our parting thought:
“It’s kind of like the switch when everyone suddenly had mice,” says Bass, “if you kept building applications just for the keyboard, you would have been equally crazy. The same thing is true now with Multi-touch.”
Editor’s Note
This is the second article in our 2011 State of Apple in CAD/3D Industries special series reports, corresponding to SIGGRAPH 2011 week. We hope you enjoyed this article as we will have more like it this week coming up, including a high-level overview feature titled: Top CAD/3D CEOs Talk About Apple in the Industry
Voices in this article include: Sean Flaherty, CEO, Nemetschek Vectorworks; Carl Bass, CEO, Autodesk; James Scapa, CEO, Altair; Royal Farros, CEO, IMSI/Design; Dr. Chris Yessios, President and Founder, AutoDesSys; and James Dagg, Vice President at solidThinking Inc., an Altair Company.
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