Tuesday, March 31, 2009

Spaceclaim Secures $7M in Funding- Score one for the good guys!

Finally-- some good news about somebody spending some freaking $$$ on a good thing.

Genuinely excited for these dudes. I could easily be classed as a fanboy of Spaceclaim as I have written about it enough. But, it's more than that. It's all about a group of folks that have some really cool technology and believe that there is a better way. They are rockin' the market up a bit finding their way. I am hoping with some more cash, they will rock even harder. Their product is a score for anyone that has found bumps in the road with geometry when it comes to simulation, among other things.

It's a tough world out there in the 3D CAD space, but all things are not created equal. There are some folks that just need to grab, pull, move. There some of us that need to merge, delete, align. Simple as that.

I consider myself fortunate to have a good relationship with quite a few of the folks there. Check out Kevin Leblanc putting it in his own words.. Good stuff boys, good luck!!


Monday, March 30, 2009

Inventor 2010 & CFdesign rocks

Everyone in the world blogged and posted about this a few weeks ago. I have been burning at both ends and neglecting the old blog. But figured it was worth a quick me too post. Check out the video below, it highlights some of the coolness.

Exciting to see our friends at Autodesk, jumping full bore into the simulation world. They are doing what thet do- taking tactful, well thought out implementation of the technology. Some might say a bit slow, some might say just fast enough. They have a dedicated audience of fanatical customers that can truly use some of the FEA capabilities coming from the Plassotech acquisition and expand out into the Mechanical Event Simulation stuff in Algor.

Personally, we have seen a huge interest from the Inventor community in flow and thermal simulation. The future for the Autodesk community looks bright, lots of cool stuff. Looking forward to the day when I am running flow simulations in CFdesign while sculpting my Inventor models with some of the Alias technology and morphing and pulling with Fusion. This day is not too far in the future





Saturday, March 14, 2009

In Today's Economy, Upfront CFD is a Must...

Bold title, huh? I received an email from PTC this week that included a link to an article entitled, Five Things You Should Know About 3D CAD Software. May be worth your time to read, maybe not.

But what caught my attention was the first sentence, "If you’re a design engineer working in a “typical” manufacturing company, you may be spending 60% to 80% of your time updating and optimizing old designs, or making changes for ECOs, instead of creating new designs."

They are some bold statistics. There are a ton of companies that are putting themselves at risk updating and attempting to optimize old designs utilizing physical testing or good old intuition. Whether it is a brand new design or an improvement to an existing design, the main question is -- how are design changes determined? Another question, why is a change required- did it fail in the field? If so, do you know why? How convinced are you that the failure will not happen in the future. Did you simply over-design it this time so that it will certainly not fail again? How much time are you wasting "re-designing"? For every minute you are spending "fixing things", you are allowing your competitors to gain momentum. The old-guard way of over-designing is a death sentence in a rough economy. Companies literally cannot not afford to spend a ton of time and money physically testing everything. But yet, you cannot just wing it and hope for the best. If you are reading this and are finding that you are asking one or more of the questions above, now is the time to act.


Design decisions need proof of concept. Above is a model of the natural convection in and around an avionics assembly. The thermal management of this assembly was optimized over the course of a few days where a number of "what-if" scenarios were investigated before one physical prototype was created. Once the optimal digital design was identified, a physical model was built and tested for verification. Companies that are not conducting some level of digital design studies are putting themselves at risk. The technology is available, you need to see how it can help your bottom line.

The last thing I would say to someone is simply, go purchase some software, it will solve all of your problems. Investing in Upfront CFD or CAE tools is a true investment. You are investing in a technology that has to save you money and time but most importantly provides an opportunity for innovation. There are a few vendors that specialize in creating tools that are tested and proven to solve your problem.

CFdesign is focused on solving flow and thermal design challenges. We created and own the Upfront CFD market. I'm convinced that if you are finding yourself in a tough design environment that involves flow and/or thermal design challenges, we can help. Give one of the folks on our team a call, we have pretty much seen it all and can give you a straight forward solution to your problem.

Thursday, March 12, 2009

A Modern Alternative for Electronics Cooling Analysts

Who is responsible for the thermal management of your electronics components? The answer to this question varies. Some companies rely on their mechanical engineers, others have dedicated thermal engineers. The tools used by these two groups tend to be quite different.

Some of the mechanical engineers have access to MCAD tools. It is a natural progression for these guys to leverage their existing geometric models and use an upfront tool for flow and thermal simulation. It allows for a nice compact environment where you can do parametric digital design studies right on the desktop. We, at CFdesign, have been helping companies solve their flow and thermal challenges for over 16 years in this space.

But there are a fair number of mechanical engineers and the majority of thermal engineers that do not drive MCAD tools everyday and rely on the mechanical designers for that part of the process. This group tends to gravitate to analyst type tools simply because up until recently, that was the only option. There is an unfortunate disconnect between the design guys and the thermal folks. There needs to be a bridge between the two extremes.

We have been seeing a fair amount of "gopher popping". A silly term for engineers popping their heads up and looking around to see what's out there. Times are tough and money is tight. They have been spending a tremendous amount of money on these analyst type tools. Many of these tools have gone through major acquisitions lately and they aren't getting any cheaper.

A simple solution would be to engage with your mechanical group and leverage the models that already exist. But the simple fact is that you still want a fast intuitive modeler to put together some basic layouts, have the ability to read in ECAD data and often times chop away the excess of the MCAD model so that you can strip out only what you need.



There is a better way. Take a serious look at our friends at Spaceclaim. Above is a bit of an old skool demo I did about a year ago.. They have a super cool, intuitive modeler, reads in all the major MCAD data, has a slick ECAD reader and on top of that is completely integrated with CFdesign. Works exactly like it does with all of the MCAD tools. Open your model in CFdesign, run a simulation, make a change in Spaceclaim, copy all of your settings and compare your what-if scenario in CFdesign.

I need to update a demo to show the ECAD module, its pretty fierce. Ping me or my buddy Jeff, both be happy to show you the Spaceclaim/CFdesign combo.

Wednesday, March 04, 2009

Bye-bye itunes and XM; hello Slacker & Amazon ?

I've ranted enough about itunes. Time for an alternative. Clear example of poor user experience. Some people may love it. Personally, I hate it. My main gripes...

  1. I store my library on an external drive, the same external drive everytime and itunes never remembers. So each time I plug into my network, it fails to recognize the drive. Drives me crazy.
  2. For various reasons (no comments, Charlie), I reinstall my OS fairly often. itunes only allows 5 computers per account, so I am constantly in a deauthorize/authorize war.
  3. I have more duplicates of songs than you can imagine. I am sure it is operator error, but give me a break.
  4. For an Apple product, the ui sucks. Try multi-selecting and then trying to right click to create a playlist on the fly? Just lame all around.
So, now, what's my alternative? Good question. I am not totally sure. But, I am narrowing in on a few alternatives. Evaluating Banshee and Rhythmbox. Ideally, would love the manager to be web based???

Saying goodbye to satellite radio (XM) is hitting me a bit harder. I have been a huge fan of satellite radio for a few years. Recently been dedicated to XM but at one point I had both Siruis and XM. The merger was music to my ears. I listen to XM online, in the car and via DirectTV. But recently received an email that I had to commit to a year contract in order to continue listening online or pay an additional fee. Fair enough, I tried upgrading online to pay the monthly fee, no dice. After an hour on the phone and countless solicitations to commit to a 3 year contract, I am done. Really bummed. Here is where satellite failed me.
  1. There is close to ZERO online support.
  2. The online player hasn't been upgraded in years, its clunky and old.
  3. Lack of effort supporting portable devices. They missed the boat altogether with this one. They partnered with Napster but there was no easy way to seamlessly have my music wherever, whenever.
  4. No iphone app. Biggest mistake they made and believe it was one of the final straws that they are a dinosaur and not able to quickly capitalize on a perfect oppty. I don't want yet another device to listen to my music.
I've been listening to Pandora, Last.fm and recently, Slacker. I like Pandora but the selection is limited and repeats are common. Last is ok, but the interface is too busy, I can't seem to want to use it. A friend suggested slacker. So far so good- upgrading to the Pro account for a few $ a month is worth the no commercials and unlimited skips. I like their automatic link to amazon for purchase.

I am not a slacker power user, but I do have one gripe. I am able to create a playlist by song, and it begins to play my songs but then includes "similar" songs. I want ONLY my songs???

They are also pushing their own portable player, would rather use my own mp3 or ipod player. Their iphone application is awesome! So, how about allowing me to listen "offline" for a fee for flights etc.

So, who is using Amazon? What do you think? What are you using to manage your music? How about Rhapsody, Napster, what else?