As we said a little over a month ago, we have witnessed the ongoing and perpetual consolidation of the CAD/CAM industry as companies continue to get swallowed up by others.
We’ve witnessed CAD companies acquiring CAD/CAM companies, simulation companies acquiring CAD companies, and other types of technical software and service companies acquiring CAD/CAM companies. With all the attention seemingly focused on the CAD/CAM side, it’s sometimes easy to forget that there also has been a significant consolidation through acquisition on other sides of technical software as well over the past several years. In other words, with these other acquisitions technical software circles of all types continue to get smaller.
This time around its 3D scanning giant, FARO Technologies, and its recent acquisitions of kubit (AEC point cloud processing software) and ARAS 360 (crime reconstruction/forensic software). Founded in 1981, FARO Technologies Inc. develops and markets portable 3D measurement systems for computer-aided manufacturing measurement.
Coming about six months after its major Windows releases, Autodesk, Inc. announced today the releases of AutoCAD 2015 for Mac and AutoCAD LT 2015 for Mac.
Although Autodesk estimates that only 1-3% of all Macs run CAD software, this is still a significant milestone for AutoCAD for the Mac platform, now in its fifth release. Significant because in the five years since the first release of AutoCAD for Mac, the Mac platform base and presence has expanded from about 15 million to today’s approximately 80+ million. A nice increase in potential market.
I had the privilege of interviewing Justin Lokitz at our studio at our Campbell headquarters in the heart of the Silicon Valley. Justin is Senior Product Manager for Infrastructure & Collaboration Products at Autodesk. He is extremely knowledgeable and passionate about the new release. He talks about the history and evolution of InfraWorks 360 Pro as well as gives some fascinating applications of this product to make decision making easier for city planners. He also talks about how companies bidding on infrastructure projects gain a competitive benefit by using InfraWorks 360 Pro.
Carl Bass is president and chief executive officer of Autodesk, Inc. Autodesk is the leader in 3D design, engineering and entertainment software. Formerly he was Autodesk’s chief operating officer, responsible for worldwide sales, marketing, and product development.
Carl Bass talks about the new rules of innovation… at TEDxBerkeley. Innovation is happening at an unprecedented pace and will continue to accelerate because of 5 trends:
This video is a recording of the AEC Building Design press session staged on 27 March 2012 to support a Media Summit to launch Autodesk’s 2013 portfolio of software and services.
Autodesk Navisworks 2012 accelerates BIM project review through integration, analysis, and communication enhancements. File interoperability improvements help boost productivity by supporting workflows between the latest enhancements in Autodesk Revit products and third-party applications. New user interface and API (application programming interface) for the Timeliner tool provide greater control and flexibility when working with 4D simulations. New multi-sheet 2D DWF support enables users to open, review and explore 2D data sets alongside 3D models.
Here are a series of videos showing new Navisworks functionality (on the next page):
