What does it all mean?

The headline at AECnews.com today reads "Autodesk sues Open Design Alliance for trademark infringement".  What does this mean for the CAD industry?

I'm no expert on this subject but from what I can deduct from the articles I've read most of the major CAD companies are members of the Open Design Alliance.  Depending on how the litigation plays out this could have some far reaching effects for the large players in the CAD industry.  SolidWorks would of course be impacted in the DWG Series of products if offers its customers.  Would SolidWorks ability to read an write DWG files be affected?  I'm not sure.  The CAD world has come to rely so heavily on the dwg file format I'm not sure anyone can fully determine the impacts of this case.  I'll leave you to read the articles on both sides and determine your own "right & wrong" conclusions. 

I would like to add a few thoughts of my own.  I've been in situations where translating a CAD file from one format to another (ex. iges to SoidWorks) or a different version of the same format (ex. dwg 2006 to dwg R14) can be a real problem.  The lose of time, amount of rework and ultimately money spent trying to convert file formats is completely unnecessary.  Most CAD companies spend a lot of time talking about interoperability and compatibility of file formats.  It seems however it's mostly talk because after having spent many years in the CAD industry I'm still running into file compatibility issues.  Sometimes the issues are from CAD system to CAD system and sometimes its the same CAD system which can't read/write an older or newer version of its own file format.  I for one am tired of it.  The nature of design is collaboration with a number of people and typically those people use a variety of software types.  Not having a dependable, reliable, transparent and universal file format that can be shared by all members of a design team leads to one thing.  Wasted time, energy and money!  When will the CAD software companies of the world put their heads together and develop a truly shareable file format?  CAD companies talk about how their product is the best for design yet they hinder design by not allowing a way to truly share it openly with others.   This subject can be (and has been) debated many ways but for me it really ends in two questions. 

Is the ultimate goal of the worlds CAD companies to globally promote and elevate design?

Is the ultimate goal of the worlds CAD companies to generate revenue?

Does anyone have an answer?

Comments

[Ricky Jordan]

Great subject Rob

I'm right there with you in your frustration with interoperability issues. I have fought it for years and while I have seen SOME improvement across the industry, we still are no where near where we should be.

As far as your questions go, here are some thoughts.

If I had to name one "Ultimate goal" for all CAD companies, I would say that increasing sales is probably going to drive the boat. Yes, I know I am stating the obvious, but a by-product of that can often be increased interoperability. By increasing import and export formats, the CAD companies are giving their customers & prospects more reason to buy their product. SolidWorks in particular has done a good job of continually adding data exchange formats over the last several years and some of those added formats have saved me some serious time. I think some of the CAD companies putting a really good effort towards it, but I sure would like to see more efforts in this area from ALL of them.

The core problem with 2D neutral data formats is that DXF & DWG are so heavily embedded in the industry. At least with 3D formats with have several "flavors" to choose from. The only other mainstream 2D format that still pops up from time to time for me is .DGN (MicroStation) and that those occurrences are usually years apart.

What the industry really needs is a true 2D neutral format so that everyone is not forced to deal with a single company that may or may not be thinking in the best interests of the users. With more and more companies moving to 3D, hopefully it will become less and less of a headache. With each passing day I have to deal with 2D data less and less, but I don’t think it will completely go away anytime soon.

So lets assume for a moment that AutoDesk is able to shut down the Open Design Alliance. Would they even license their DWG import/export routines to companies like SolidWorks and UGS? I'm not even going to guess on that one but after seeing some of the history between the companies, one is left to wonder. Honestly, I can’t see AutoDesk pulling this off, but I guess stranger things have happened in the courts. I guess we will all have to wait and see……