Autodesk on its Mac Manoeuvres

So, we've had a little chat with Paul Brown at Siemens about why the company has ported its NX product to the Mac, so I thought it only fair to have a chat with Autodesk about the same. In the last year, the company has ported a number of its Media and Entertainment applications across, such as Mudbox and Stitcher, but its the last few months that saw a much bigger move made to bring Alias Design to the Mac platform, so I caught up with Thomas Heermann, senior product line manager for Industrial Design.

What made Autodesk make the move to the Mac platform? The acceptance of and the market share of Apple hardware among creative professionals.

Why now?
Availability of high performance Apple hardware leveraging the Intel chip set and Nvidia high end graphic cards support.

Any figures or ideas in terms of market share amongst the professional market (I’m specifically interested in the product development market). We have not encountered statistics surrounding the product development market as a whole. But based on our data, and talking to a lot of customers over the years, we believe roughly 30% of creative professionals prefer the Mac platform over Windows.



Any plans for a more engineering/design type tool (ala Inventor) for the Mac platform?
We are continuously evaluating the hardware and software operating systems our customers are using and plan to use. While we can’t discuss specific future plans, as you have seen through recent visits with Autodesk and at Autodesk University, we are experimenting with different design and engineering technologies for the Mac platform.

I’m assuming that Mac hardware will be fully certified by Autodesk in some manner. Yes?
We have updated the Alias Qualification charts to include qualified hardware specifications. We provide system requirements for the Mac to run Alias and other software, but we are not certifying hardware at this point.

Also related to that do you think it’ll be possible to have the same for those users looking to run Inventor under Bootcamp.
As with all officially supported platforms, if we choose to expand official support to Boot Camp we would include system requirements.

Any plans for a viewing tool (ala Design Review) for the Mac platform? Some sort of Inventor/DWG viewer. SolidWorks have their eDrawings viewer for Mac.
Freewheel (freewheel.autodesk.com) is a free web service solution to view and share 2D and 3D design – all without the need to download or install any software – that lets Mac users review designs created using many of our software applications.

Are plans afoot to move Alias Design to a fully Cocoa-based user interface?
We continue to monitor user preferences on this.


Alias Design (and the other Alias variants) retain the familiar Alias user interface and experience rather than adopting an Mac-native UI style.

Plans to integrate fuller support for multi-touch?
Adding a tablet to Alias provides greater benefits especially for Sketching. Multi touch came along very nicely over the years. We are monitoring this technology closely and evaluate how it will provide value to our customers.

Any other Mac related news we should know about?
No other news at this time.

We're just working our way through relearning Alias Design as it's been a good 12 years since I used it last professionally, so once I'm through and up to speed, look out for a run down on how the system works and what it can do.

Siemens NX on OS X is a-go-go

So those eagle-eyed amongst you will have noticed that there's been a lot of discussion of Siemens PLM launching its long awaited NX system on the OS X platform. According to some of the press release "NX is used by leading companies around the globe to design and manufacture some of the world’s most innovative and sophisticated products. Its wide adoption throughout the global manufacturing industry is due in part to its ability to support a wide range of operating environments – including Windows, UNIX and Linux – in a heterogeneous or single operating system deployment." I've been playing with the system for a couple of months, but I wanted to find out a little more about the plans for the system on an on-going basis, so got in touch with Paul Brown, senior director of NX Marketing, Siemens PLM Software.

MacDesign: What functionality will be included and excluded from NX on Mac OS X?
NX on Mac OS X features virtually all of the CAD and CAM functionality in NX 6 along with synchronous technology. This includes all feature and free form modeling, rendering, drafting, assemblies, routing, sheet metal, turning, milling and much more.
The primary functionality not available with NX on Mac OS X is the CAE suite of tools. This is based on initial market demand expectations as well a number of required third party applications that are currently not available on Mac OS X. In addition, some specialty applications such as Mold Wizard and Progressive Die Wizard have not yet been fully tested in this environment. We will continue to monitor and evaluate the business case for these items.

MacDesign: Any insight on development plans for OSX in terms of synchronising platform and OS releases - will there be an OSX lag? NX 6.0.3 is being released and made immediately available on Mac OS X, Windows and Linux simultaneously. The plan is to maintain this synchronous platform release schedule, however, there will be one exception to this before it fully takes effect.

While the next major release of NX for all platforms will be NX 7.5, we are planning an interim release that will be targeted at delivering more Synchronous Technology functionality. This interim release will be limited to the Windows platform. With the NX 7.5 release we will resume shipping concurrently on all platforms.

MacDesign: Any plans to move to a fully cocoa/aqua based user interface rather than using X11/Motif?


Siemens NX runs using X11 to enable the interface and cross platform (as pretty much the same code is used across Mac and Linux) - on the mac front, it does require some tweeking of windows and cursor priorities to get it to work effectively.

We have several customers who use multiple platforms mixing Windows and Linux hardware to suit their needs. To ensure all customers can maximize their productivity our goal is to maintain a common user interface. We will continue to monitor our user community and adjust our strategy if necessary based on the best interest of our customers and our business.

MacDesign: Any other OSX planned releases? Native JT viewer that sort of thing? We have not announced any other plans at this time.

MacDesign: Any insight on user interest would be good too. Size of beta community?
We have experienced strong interest from our beta user community as well as others outside of that community with an interest in the Mac OS X environment.

MacDesign: Lastly. Why now?
Delivering NX on Mac OS X has been an important part of our strategy to give customers their broadest choice of platforms. We have been conducting extensive development and testing to ensure that the product met our standards for performance and quality before it was released. The timing of NX 6.0.3 for the other platforms we support made this a sensible choice to be the launch platform for NX on Mac OS X.

There's some interesting debate going on around this subject all over the place - things have got a little bit heated over at SolidSmack.com (with our old buddy Joe Moak from Formlovesfunction.com wading in at the end with the most reasoned response yet). From my perspective, there's two key things on of late. Vendors are porting older code, that's much easier (typically with a Unix-based) to port to the Apple platform to gain some market share. Then there are new vendors jumping to the space. Gut feeling tells this is something that's going to grow and we'll see more and more in the coming months and year.

Oh and some video joy for ya too.

Is Dassault Systems' Catia V6 coming to OS X?

News out of the Catia Operators Exchange, currently taking place in Seattle, is that Catia V6 might be ported to the OS X platform. Neil Littell, posts that V6 will run on Ubuntu and OSX. According to a quick Google, Neil is the Product Lifecycle Management Coordinator for the Center for Advanced Vehicular Systems (CAVS) at Mississippi State University. I've asked Dassault Systemes for more details on this and will post them as soon as I get 'em. In the meantime, here's a little video of Imagine & Shape. UPDATE - SEE NEXT POST

iRhino: Quick update with Bob McNeel

If there's an organisation in the world of Product Development Technology that consistently does intriguing things, long before the others even get close, its McNeel & Associates. Founded in 1980, McNeel is a privately-held, employee-owned company with sales and support offices and affiliates across the globe.

When the company started out developing the Rhinoceros system was in public beta for four years or so, gather numbers of users (in the order of 100,000s). When the Beta ended and commercialisation began, it had a userbase that still outstrips most 3d modelling systems, one that had come to rely on it in their daily working processes. The clever bit was the pricing. Rhino has always been priced relatively low in comparison to other systems that do similar things, so it didn't take a lot to it was off to a good start - a user base that's become reliant on a product, then sell them that product at a much lower price than anyone else can.



Two years ago, at an educational event in Mexico, Bob McNeel, CEO of the company, stood up and announced that the company was bringing Rhinoceros to the Mac platform. The work had been underway for some time and almost immediately available at the website (which is www.irhino3d.com) for beta test. That beta is still underway, it's open to anyone, even for commerical use. You register, get your link and download. Install it and away it goes. It'll have an expiration date on it, but a new release comes out long before your license does (and even if it does, you just get the download and install again). I shot Bob some questions over to find out how things were going - and of course, the first question is, why now?

Bob McNeel: Why not? Actually it has been a market we have been watching for many years. The trick was finding someone that was both a killer OS X and killer Windows programmer. When Marlin showed up and was ready to start on the project we gave him the green light.

What potential market share do you think the mac platform has with the various industry sectors Rhino is working within?

No idea. Well, actually we have a good idea from the WIP (Work in Progress) users what industries they are in, but WIP/Beta users are often very different from the people that actually buy.

How is the development process going?

As expected. We are in no hurry. There are no unexpected bottlenecks.

What stage are you at?

The stages are:

1. Core functionality with a prototype U/I.
2. OS X U/I design and development
3. SDK and macro/scripting language
4. Plug-ins

Currently, we are about 80% of Stage 1.

What are the challenges you’re facing/issues that you’re seeing?

OS X U/I design and development will be something completely new for us. Apple has offered to help. We really have no idea how long this will take. Our goal is to have a real OS X application.

We expect Rhino OS X will feel very different from Rhino for Windows. Also, the SDK and marco/scripting language is all new work. Currently we use all the of the standard Windows tools like VBScript, .NET, C#, etc.

None of these are available for OS X, but there is a very rich set of development tools… just completely different. All the plug-ins will have to be rewritten. Not just ours but all 3rd party products. Many will not be ported, but hopefully there will be some new ones that are OS X only.

Are you going to implement multi-touch support and how?

I think it is already in. Just a few things that work as expected.

Any idea of a commercialization timeline?

Sometime after Rhino 5 ships. I expect it will be a couple of years. Hopefully we will already have more than 100,000 users by then.

What's the ultimate goal?:

Most important. Our goal is a real OS X application that OS X users love… not a weird Windows port.

Final Thoughts:



iRhino or Rhino OS X is intriguing compared to some of the complex shape description and surfacing based tools coming on stream now. Firstly, it runs on the most basic of hardware and runs very well. I've been using it, without issue at all in terms of stability, on a first generation MacBook Air - which has all the graphics processing of a chocolate bar. That can't be said of other tools at all.

There's absolutely no doubt that this system will be released and made commercially available only when its reach a state of near perfection in terms of linking into the OS X UI and interaction methods. How its being developed, in a public manner, with constant consultation with users from Rhino's wide spectrum of users is fascinating. But ultimately, it's the fact that McNeel that's developing this tool means it'll be something special, fairly priced across the globe and it'll work. I've just got updated and I'll put together some thoughts in the next few weeks to give you an idea of what it can do.

Sign up now and get working www.irhino3d.com. After all, it's free. For a good long while yet.

Is Autodesk bringing AutoCAD to OSX?

It seems that someone's flicked the switch at Autodesk, with OS X implementations cropping up across many of its industry division. Media and Entertainment has new versions of Mudbox to compliment the existing tools like Maya. More recently, the Manufacturing Solutions team has launched the 'mother of all surfacers', Alias on OSX to go along side the existing SketchBook Pro product (all of which we'll be covering in some depth shortly).

But now it seems that the grandaddy of them all, AutoCAD, is going to get a look-in too, if customer demand shows there's a market. Shaan Hurley, over at his Between the Lines blog, has a Customer Survey, where the team is looking for interest in an OS X port, what industries and demographics that interest comes from. From there, one assume, they build the justification case (or not).

But what I found truly intriguing was the comments below the post, which go from the benign "i cannot install my autocad 2009 on apple mac.why?its for windows only?" and while there's a fair amount of anti-mac sentiment, there are some fascinating details, such as:

I represent an international yacht design firm and we have been with Autocad and other Autodesk products for nearly 2 decades. Last year we have been moving over to some Macs because we getting just too fed up with hardware/software interface and stability issues. We use a lot of very specific Windows developed software because of our niche industry but we manage to get everything running just fine in VM ware using either XP32 or Vista64bit versions. However it remains a pain running in a shell, disk access through the virtual network link for one slows things down. Anything which can run in the native operating system would be a massive plus. Autocad still remains our core program to push out 2D working drawings and as a result remains the single most used program in the office. Getting that native on a OSX instead of windows would be a big plus. The cost of the hardware is irrelevant in a professional environment compared to any downtime due to software/hardware problems. In the office you just want a machine which works and keep working Macs have proven to be far more reliable to us than any Windows based PC in the past year.

Posted by Alexander Simonis of Simonis Voogd Design

There was one common negative theme there, with one commentor questioning market share, with "you're looking at 3~6% of the computers in the world" - from talking to the Alias team in particular, there's a much much larger percentage when you boil it down to the Creative user, whether they be in architecture, industrial design or elsewhere.