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The Open Design Alliance may well be one of the most important organizations in the world, for what the ODA develops is then implemented by many of its CAD member companies. And we use CAD to design the world.
Producing the ODA Summit
Some of the 1,200 members are well-known CAD vendors, but most are corporations who develop CAD viewing and editing tools for internal use. Members save time in not needing to develop code themselves.
At last month’s ODA Summit 2021 (sadly online, not in Munich as first planned — darn you, coronavirus!), we got a deep dive into what the ODA is working on. The ODA works on a lot of new stuff. I found myself on the drench end of a fire hose of information.
With the ODA’s founding in 1998, it first offered individual SDKs [software development kits] for DWG and DXF, and then DGN, general formats used by the CAD industry. During his keynote address, ODA president Neil Peterson described how much has changed in the last five years. (See figure below.) The first shift was for the ODA added SDKs that read and wrote PDF and 3D PDF files.
From there, it went to offering complete sets of interoperable technology packages for members working with CAD or BIM on any platform, including the Web. We see this in the recent explosion of CAD programs reading IFC [industry foundation classes] and/or Revit files; this is not the result of Autodesk being open, this is the Open Design Alliance opening things up.
ODA president Neil Peterson during his keynote address
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With so much information at the conference, I decided for this article to focus on just a few areas, and then present info about STEP support in a later issue. The conference is available as a four-part video at youtube.com/opendesignalliance:
Complete CAD Interoperability
Complete BIM Interoperability
Beyond Data Interoperability
Scan-to-BIM Panel Discussion
How Autodesk Helps Make the ODA Popular
Mr Peterson stated that 3Q 21 was the strongest quarter in the organization’s history for membership growth. Part of the reason for this is Autodesk’s changes and lack of changes.
Autodesk has had a tumultuous history with the ODA, from initially insisting there was no need for open access to the DWG file format (DXF was good enough, it declared), to a FUD campaign over the un/trustworthiness of DWG, to blocking use of “DWG” through the registered trademark process (it failed), to suing the ODA, to mimicking it with RealDWG, and then partially capitulating by become an ODA member, albeit on the IFC side of things.
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MicroCAD Software produces kitchen design software, where the quality of renderings and walkthroughs is crucial. The company had been an AutoCAD OEM customer for 23 years, but felt constrained by its limitations. To see where to go, MicroCAD made a list of pros and cons.
The advantages to using AutoCAD OEM is that it “transmits trust and is instantly recognized by designers”; it has a powerful and reliable ACIS-based modeler. MicroCAD told us that the disadvantages to AutoCAD OEM include
Limited rendering that has not changed since 2016
A walkthrough module that is the same as in AutoCAD 12; the technology is 30 years old
A form of GDI that prevents AutoCAD from showing rendered print previews as they will be printed
Shadows in fast-shade mode that cannot be updated with the kinds of normal computers used by MicroCAD’s clients
Response time for technical service that is long
Cost of royalties that has risen more than 50% in the last three years
With little development by Autodesk in recent releases of AutoCAD, MicroCAD had no ability to improve renderings of kitchens and other interior designs.
So, three years ago they began the switch to the ODA’s platform, which afforded them access to high quality renderings, speedy fixes, higher quality technical support, and an affordable fixed fee not based on sales. Improvements and fixes to ODA offerings are based on what programmers need, and not the wants of AutoCAD end users.
AutoKitchen running on the ODA-based DWG engine
Switching to the ODA, however, had its drawbacks:
Programming took MicroCAD longer, as tools available in AutoCAD had to be developed for use with ODA; DLLs (dynamic link libraries) could, however, be re-used with minor changes
Rendering isn’t great, but this drawback allowed MicroCAD to use a third-party renderer better suited to its needs
Solid modeling kernel is not as powerful as AutoCAD’s ShapeModeler
Most blocks worked correctly in ODA, but some had to be redrawn to work correctly
Most of MicroCAD’s time was spent on making the new UI look like the old UI (see figure above)
It took about two years for MicroCAD to make the ODA-based AutoKitchen run like the AutoCAD OEM-based one.
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Graebert GmbH is working with a special interest group inside the ODA to overcome the problem customers face when Autodesk stops supporting some software. (For instance, I have a side service in which I covert Actrix drawings abandoned by Autodesk to DWG.) For instance, this year the ODA added new internal classes to its MDT-compatible Mechanical SDK for converting mechanical objects to older versions.
“New product design has migrated away from DWG-based solutions,” said Graebert cto Robert Graebert. (See figure below.) Mostly, product design is now accomplished on proprietary systems from PTC, Dassault Systemes, and Siemens. “But drawings continue to be a key workflow in the industry.”
So, at the conference, Mr Graebert announced that his company was taking on the challenge to maintain Mechanical part information, “maintaining legacy drawings in the product design market.”
Customers tell him that there still a need to maintain part information in drawings. “In our estimation, there are billions of DWG part drawings that need to be updated for products still being manufactured or in active maintenance.”
Graebert GmbH cto Robert Graebert introducing ARES Mechanical
This led Graebert GmbH to write ARES Mechanical to handle custom objects originally created with AutoCAD Mechanical, such as part information, bills of materials, standards-compliant parts and annotations. “These objects are all inter-related and contain a lot of hidden complexity,” Mr Graebert said.
The ODA’s DWG support is insufficient, as it cannot update part information. “The part information in these drawings is not static. It is not sufficient to visualize balloons and bills of material; it is also important to access and edit all properties of referenced parts.”
So, the Mechanical SIG [special interest group] has import, export, and rendering (display) of mechanical objects working well. But not all versions of AutoCAD Mechanical are supported yet; more will be added. DXF export/import is missing; public APIs are being extended.
Q&A
Q: Is ODA planning to develop a DWG server engine to allow several users read and write the same DWG file? It seems like multiple editors could use merging similar to what software developers do with Git, by adding a visualization layer to help with conflict resolution.
A: At the moment we have no plans to develop such a fully functional server engine. But we have developed DWG Revisions technology that supports collaborative editing and can be used on servers.
Q: With ODA software, can you change the camera type to orthogonal? Do you have an example?
A: Yes, it is possible. Here is a code snippet (GS API):
From the DWG database side, it is also possible to use command PERSPECTIVE = 0.
Q: In which version will these new improvements and features mentioned today come out?
A: Most of new features presented are available in the latest release 22.8. Some feature may be in beta state, but in any case they are going to be ready this year. We have a release every month, and the last one this year will be 22.12.
Q: Were can I find documentation about all the features supported by the newest IFC format?
Al Dean, co-founder and former editor of Develop3D magazine in England, is now Global Communications Content Manager at Siemens Digital Industries Software.
Cyrena Respini, former editor-in-chief at CADalyst magazine, is now in marketing for Graebert GmbH.
You’re right, in that Intergraph patented OLE4DM [object linking and embedding for design and modeling], but you’re incorrect (by my recollection) on why the technology never went far.The OLE4DM Consortium was really starting to gain broad adoption and people were beginning to realize the potential of the technology.
It was then that Intergraph announced their submarine patent with a licensing agreement that was unacceptable to the consortium. It was this licensing deal that really killed OLE4DM, not the validity of the technology.
At the time that it all went dormant, multi-system demonstrations were being held involving multiple CAD vendors demonstrating the effectiveness of the approach. To this day, I still maintain that providing encapsulated data with associated evaluators is really the preferred way of exchanging data between systems.
This approach avoids translation and the even bigger issue of mis-evaluation of geometric data between systems. Boeing advanced this in their procedural surfaces where they “black-boxed” their representation and associated evaluators of their surfaces so that they could be seamlessly incorporated into other modeling systems.
Parasolid also introduced this notion of user-defined, procedural surfaces, though it’s unclear who all makes use of this function. Most people look at ACIS- or Parasolid-based systems as examples of how to avoid translation, but even more importantly, using a common kernel supports identical evaluation of the geometry.
Based on what is being said about CAD Direct, there aren’t corresponding evaluators being carried with the foreign geometry, but there is a B-rep “equivalent” created and maintained.
It sure is unfortunate that the OLE4DM approach never had a chance to really address multi-system interoperability. It would have made a considerable impact on the industry. - John Callen
The editor replies: I vaguely remember something about a consortium, so thanks for reminding me of it. In my experience, I never found OLE to work well, including my tries with OLE for D&M. Maybe the problem is that CAD vendors seemed to implement OLE only half-heartedly.
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I would say that Solid Edge is playing catch-up with CAD Direct. Solidworks (3D Interconnect) and Autodesk Inventor (AnyCAD) have had the ability to reference other native CAD models without conversion for years. - Mike DeKoning
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Dan Staples spotted the Solid Edge article that went out on the upFront.eZine and the caption for the first slide with him pictured, where it reads, “Dan Staples announcing that CAM Pro (for 2.5-axis milling) and Simcenter Flomaster (for fluid and thermal analysis) is available to any Solid Edge 2022 customer with a subscription.”
Solid Edge 2022 does not actually include Flomaster; it is in fact an extra-charge product.
Convergent modeling is proprietary Siemens technology, tightly integrated into Parasolid. It is available to third parties to license at extra cost, above a standard Parasolid license. This is unlike Synchronous Technology, which Siemens has chosen not to license. - Alice Bonasio, global public relations Siemens Digital Industries Software
Notable Quotable
“It’s not creative destruction, like the car taking over the horse and buggy: Google and Facebook have not replaced news; they don't make news.” - Rod Sims
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