Autodesk to Acquire Algor for $34M- whoa!!!

Look at Autodesk, jumping head first into spending some coin. $34M for Algor, hmm, not sure what to say about that. It looks like Autodesk is falling in line with all of the other monsters out there and just gobbling up as much technology as possible. If you look back, they acquired Plassotech a few years ago and more recently Moldflow. They have been fairly slow to incorporate these two products into Inventor. Slow is all realtive, I suppose. But, the buzz has been fairly silent.

I just returned from Autodesk University and was a bit surprised that there wasn't more buzz along the lines of simulation. Tons of hype over "Digital Prototyping", but not as specific to simulation. Not overly surprising as Plassotech has historically been a fairly small player, at least in this part of the world. But Moldflow, was always the standard in mold simulation. I was expecting more "holy cr*p, look at that cool animation" type stuff at AU.



Now we look at Algor. Fairly well known, but always tagged (perhaps unfairly) as the low-end side of the market. Someone referred to them as "Wal-mart style FEA". Not sure that is fair, but still pretty funny way of putting it. After all, Wal-mart is kicking some tale in our little economic "crisis".

The rags are reporting that Algor had revenue of $12M and sold for $34M-- ~3x, not bad. What is the motivation of Autodesk to acquire "yet another" FEA code? Well, look at ANSYS. Why did they purchase CFX and a few years later, arch enemy, Fluent? Is it the technology, install base, potential revenue, future revenue? My hunch is that it is a little of all of the above. I think Autodesk is targeting the up and coming companies. Companies that are still transitioning from 2d to 3d. Companies that still live in a 2d/3d world. These are the same companies that want an introductory step into FEA and simulation. So, perhaps Algor is a fit?

Here is my slant on all of this stuff. I think it is fascinating to see all of these monster companies (Autodesk, ANSYS, Dassault Systems) swallow up all of the market and transition themselves as an all encompassing "solution provider". The concept of "one-stop" shop is great in theory. But it is all about the execution. Can a CAD company, successfully implement, support and develop mold simulation software? Can this same company successfully integrate a CAD system, with a mold simulation tool and work seamlessly with a thermal stress module? Maybe -- no easy task though.

Take ANSYS, for example, can a company founded on structural FEA simulation evolve into a CFD company powerhouse? Goose is getting fatter and fatter. Will it lay the golden egg? Time will tell.

Think back a few years ago. Our good friends at SDRC. They were a powerhouse in the world of CAD/FEA/PDM. Now? They are swallowed up inside of Siemens. Did you ever think that SDRC wouldn't be a major player in the future. Ok, arguably, they still are just with a different wrapper. My point is will we see another disruptive technology come along and make it an even playing field with a bunch of small independents fighting it out like it was in the 90s with SolidWorks and the like? Or will the monsters rule? Editors note: I loved the 90s. Personally, I hope we go back :)

How about our friends at PTC? Who is sleeping at the helm with regards to simulation? Will PTC stick it out and ride the PLM wagon? Suppose Pro/engineer was sold? Suppose PTC sold their CAD business or "retired" it and bet the farm on Windchill.

I know, I'm stretching it a bit. Some of my predictions from last year were way off. What do you want me to say? Such as life. Another famous list will come out in 2 weeks.

Flomerics/Autodesk - No Deal!!

There has been a bunch of speculation on the future of Flomerics. More news has been released this morning that it looks like the deal with Autodesk is not going to happen. Not surprised really as I said in previous posts, just doesn't seem to make any sense for both Autodesk and Flomerics.

It does look, however, like Mentor Graphics is still in the running. This makes a bit more sense to me considering Flomerics has had such a history in the electronics industry. But Mentor is also in discussions with Cadence for a merger/acquisition. Big decisions to be made, for sure. Definitely fun to watch, especially as a spectator and not one of the guys that has to sign the deal.

Seems like everyone is scarmbling to find a new home recently. Acquisitions seem to be happening weekly in the CAE industry. Certainly seems to be the trend to have a few big boys swallowing up everyone and have a monopoloy on the market.

Sounds familiar. Pretty sure we have seen this before.

Flomerics/Autodesk Merger???

Always interesting to see when news of a merger is "leaked" to the press.

Not sure how much merit to give this news or if it is similar hype to Yahoo/Microsoft debacle? Obviously, not on the same scale.

But in my world, it is actually much bigger news. Always trying to look at things from every angle, I am trying to figure this one out.

So, Autodesk's claim is to be the father of Digital Prototyping. With their acquisition of Alias on the design side and then Plassotech on the analysis side, I can see a common theme. They seem to be building momentum. So far so good.

Then there was the recent announcement that they were purchasing Moldflow??! A bit of a stretch as Moldflow is a pretty sophisticated analyst type tool. But, I have always felt that if done properly, Moldflow could be put in the hands of the design community. Always a difficult task when you have a "big boy" product that is priced fairly high, the tendency is to develop an "Express" tool to tease the user base. Exactly what has happened there.

So at least it appears as though Autodesk is not only jumping into the analysis business, but they are trying to make a big leap. Pretty tall task. They are trying to convert some of their AutoCAD customers to Inventor, but they are now exposing them to some specialist type of analysis tool. AND, they sell majority of their products through a reseller network. What SolidWorks did with COSMOS seemed unheard of at the time, but they seemed to do a great job. But, what COSMOS does and what Moldflow/Flomerics do are drastically different. Not sure it would be possible to push these products through a channel?

Continuing with that theme, we now see that Autodesk is entertaining the idea of acquiring Flomerics. Trying to be open minded here, but I am searching for the logic. Ok, so historically, Flomerics has had tools (Flotherm, Flovent etc) that were geared almost strictly for the analyst-only community. They acquired NIKA to give themselves some exposure to the design community. NIKA has modules that are geared toward Pro/e, SolidWorks and Catia V5 users. They also have a general module for everyone else. The general module uses SolidWorks on the front-end...! Hmmm.. So, where does the Flomerics "solution" fit in with Autodesk's grand scheme. I am obviously not privy to the logic, but seems like a cluster to me.

Anyway, all this merger stuff is great fun to watch.

Autodesk France does it in style

I was fortunate enough to participate in an event hosted by the largest Autodesk reseller in France. They conducted the event at Chateau Rajat. That is Rajat Castle to us Yanks. Simply amazing. Typical event, there were break out sessions in various rooms showing all the cool latest goods rolling out of Autodesk - Revit, Inventor, Autocad etc.

We were given the opportunity to present CFdesign for Inventor to a small group. Below is a quick link to a lightening quick demo of an exhaust manifold flow analysis in Inventor 2009.

After the event, a colleague and I sat in one of the grand ballrooms working on a few projects. It was really cool to be sitting in a castle that was a few 100 years old (new in French terms) connected wirelessly to the outside world. Clearly one of the small perks of being a road warrior.

CFdesign is the Preferred Industry Partner for Autodesk

This post is more than just a marketing plug. I've been running Inventor since it came onto the market. It sure started off slow. It lagged substantially behind SolidWorks and Solid Edge. But over the last few releases it has advanced quite a bit.

I was fortunate enough to participate in an Autodesk event a few weeks ago. I saw first hand the vision of Autodesk the company and the plans for Inventor. It was awesome to see how Alias, Autocad, ProductStream etc all worked seamlessly together. I am really looking forward to the world of Simulation for Autodesk, I think they have a bright future in an untapped market for their customers.

Offshore Technology Conference (OTC) is around the corner

We have had quite a bit of success helping folks in the Oil & Gas Industry design better products. It is interesting that 95% of what they do involves fluid flow and some thermal, yet doing CFD early in the design phase is relatively new to them. Quite similar story in many industries, actually. But this all changing for the better. Check out the video below (has audio too...).

We will be at OTC this year. For some this may be near and dear to you, others - probably not. OTC is the world’s foremost event for the development of offshore resources in the fields of drilling, exploration, production and environmental protection. With more than 2,500 exhibiting companies, divisions, and subsidiaries, the Offshore Technology Conference (OTC) is the largest conference and exhibition in the offshore industry. It is being held at the Reliant Center in Houston, TX on May 5-8th, 2008. We are sharing booth #5763 with our friends at Autodesk.

Marin Bikes are designed using Autodesk Products

I wrote in a previous post, that I have been bicycle shopping. I chose to stick with REI as my bike shop. Quite a few reasons why I chose REI, partly because it is local to my house and I figured I'd support the co-op. The two main bike brands that REI sells are Novara and Marin. It was tough to decide between the two, but I noticed the Marin had a sticker "designed using Autodesk". Being a big fan and user of Autodesk Inventor, I easily picked the Marin.

I decided to go with the Marin Muirwoods 29er. It is a hybrid bike that I can ride mostly on the streets of Philly but allows me to hit some of the gravel paths in the neighborhood parks.

Here is another shot of a model our team worked on for one of the other bike manufacturers.

I am looking forward to the warmer season and one of my goals this summer is to drastically reduce the need to drive a car. Not only is it great exercise, but it is one of the many things I think we all should be doing to help improve the environment.

The Cost of Wind Tunnel Testing vs. Upfront CFD

I have written many times that I am a huge fan of Desktop Engineering Magazine. There was an interesting article recently on Conceptual Design. It is my favorite type of article. They poll four different representatives from four different vendors (Rhino, SolidWorks, Siemens & Autodesk) and ask a variety of questions to see how each tool responds to demands of the market.

The article was near and dear to my heart. Conceptual design is something I live and breath everyday. Each rep from the various vendors had some really cool and unique views of where their products add value in the conceptual phase of design. I came across the following quote and almost fell out of my chair.

“For example,” he says, “wind tunnel or tank testing often is not all that expensive [when] compared to setting up and running CFD analysis. It is often easier to make the design iterations by playing around with a handful of clay and turn the wind tunnel back on, than it is to change the computer model and rerun the CFD analysis. But structural analysis of a large building design has to be done virtually. Physical analysis is economically impossible.”

It is interesting how many people share the same sentiment. The fact is there are only few instances where this may be the case. I was talking to an engineer at a very well-known valve manufacturer about this and he shared a few numbers with me.

He was designing a brand new line of poppet valves. He was responsible to ensure the pressure drop was within a certain range, as well as determining the spring needed to maintain stable flow over a wide range of flow rates. His ultimate goal was to have three prototypes (3 different sizes) ready to be outsourced for final physical testing. I asked how much were the outsourcing costs? $8k for three...whoa! Seemed steep to me, but I am all about virtual reality, I suppose.

So, let's say you didn't perform an Upfront simulation of the model and your three original designs were not up to snuff. So, you had to re-do the prototype testing. You have just justified the $$ for an Upfront CFD tool. But this is really just the tip of the iceberg. In reality if you had the simulation tool in place you could confidently pay for one round of validation testing at the end of the design cycle. But, more importantly, the simulation models would allow for innovative design that is not possible in the physical testing world. You aren't able to get in there and peel things away to see inside where the action is happening in a wind tunnel. You are limited on the data available and you induce inaccuracies with the measuring devices.

So, back to the article at hand. I think I understand where the guy was coming from. In the past, CFD was the big gorilla in the room. Everyone was afraid to go near it. It was too "expensive". Things have changed drastically over the years. More and more everyday. Whether its a wind tunnel, a flow bench or a thermal chamber or even a thermal camera, there are significant investments of time and materials required.

My friendly advice is to fire up Google and do a search for Upfront CFD.

"LABS": Inside View of CAD Skunk Works

Not sure if these are specific to CAD vendors? But I have noticed that both SolidWorks and Autodesk have "Lab" sites. From what I gather, they are sites dedicated to "skunk works" projects and a place to give you a preview of very cool things to come.

It can be as simple as a "widget" that we can use to create structural members in Inventor. Or it can be as sophisticated as giving us full access to a beta program such as, "CB Model Pro" from SolidWorks.

Here is a screen shot of SolidWork's Labs

Here is a screen shot of Autodesk Labs

These sites are really cool. Probably only the really hardcore users are viewing them. But, they have a tremendous amount of information for everyone.

I just downloaded "CB Model Pro" from the SolidWorks' Lab site. It appears to be a free form modeler that the SW folks are working on. It rivals their Cosmic Blobs application. You start off with a bunch of primitive shapes that you can then pull, bend and push, as if it were a piece of clay. Check out what I was able to do in about 2mins.

Not sure what market this will serve, perhaps neither do they? But I think that is the point of the Labs sites. Gives those that are interested added functionality and a peak into the next new thing.

I always find the CAD war fun to watch. Each vendor trying to out-do the other. I am happy to be a spectator and reap the benefits. Go check them out.

Communicating and Sharing our 3D Designs

I remember back in the late 90s, there was a huge push to transition companies from 2D to 3D. Believe it or not, there is still quite a bit of buzz about it. Probably has to do with the fact that there are 4 million+ 2D AutoCAD seats out there. So, companies like Inventor, SolidWorks and Solid Edge are slugging it out to convert companies to 3D. Perhaps I am spoiled, but I can't imagine designing anyting mechanical in 2D. 3D, seems to becoming the accepted standard. I think the creation of the "mid-range" market (SW, Inventor & SE) really exposed companies to the idea of 3D. Prior to 1995, a seat of Pro/e was $20k and required a machine that was equally priced to drive. SW exploded on the market and totally changed the playing field. One "wow" factor that SW used in the late 90s (and widely used today) is "edrawings". It is a standalone viewer that provides a means to share, mark up and view models in 3D. One of the cool things they did was allow users to package up the viewer and model and send it to someone. This bypassed the need to have to download the viewer on the other end. Very cool for the time, however, email servers tend to strip off the "*.exe" these days. As you can imagine, every other CAD vendor jumped on the bandwagon and provided their own viewer. I recently tested out Autodesk's version called, Design Review. I really like their interface. Check out some of the cool navigation tools in the model window.
Things have come even further. We now want the ability to share our simulation results with the world. Check out the video below. It is a 3D viewer for CFD results. It can act as a standalone application or can be embedded inside a power point presentation. So, imagine presenting results to a team of engineers, or even better, non-engineers and have the ability to pan, zoom, rotate and animate your results. Cool stuff...