Inside… Or Switch to an Unlimited Site License
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Tom Lazear Archway Systems, Inc. 2134 Main St. #160 Huntington Beach CA 92648 714 374-0440 phone 714 374-0441 fax [email protected] Versa Central California: Greg Crossley PO Box 382 Prather CA 93651-0382 559-977-9105 Northern California George McMeans 56 Nichols Ave Point Richmond CA 94801 CAD 510 231 0502 Versatile Computer Aided Design www.versacad.com Volume 5 Apr 04 Number2 simplicity and then to automatically make a 3D model Upcoming Events when the file is taken into a 3D such as MicroStation for Hope to see you at one of these events. Call for tickets: presentation. Or, take the layout and the elevation and April 23 Skills USA Riverside using the Group –Iso command that is unique to April 23, 24 CELSOC Anaheim VersaCAD, and make an isometric line drawing without May 17-21 UGS-PLM Anaheim ever leaving VersaCAD. Rhino 3D and Frank Gehry VersaCAD’s Breakthrough Pricing Frank Gehry Architects is one of the leading architectural firms in the world. They use a variety of software tools to Makes Pirating Software Legal do their way-out buildings including Rhino 3D, VersaCAD has announced a new method of pricing MicroStation, Catia and AutoCAD. Here is a model of a software more in line with what users want. For years, museum in Germany done in Rhino, courtesy of Reg users have wanted to copy software freely and put it on any Prentice their IT manager. computer when the need arises. To answer that need, VersaCAD is now available as a site license at a price that is set according to the size of the organization. A company with as few as 5 employees can enjoy the benefits of a site license for just $1000 per year, or up to 10 employees for just $1500. That means they can give the software to anyone involved with one of their projects so the office and field people can use the electronic form of the drawings. “The VersaCAD Unlimited Site License has enabled our field personnel and others to view market and facility drawing files on the spot whenever needed,” states Scott Limbacher, Vice President of Construction and Maintenance for Stater Bros. Markets. “We already knew that VersaCAD was a versatile and easy to use CADD VersaCAD shown at 4 tradeshows program as we have been using it for many years. The new VersaCAD was license agreement gives us remarkable flexibility and ease presented at CITEA, of mind.” Existing users can continue with the old pricing the EAST Inside… or switch to an Unlimited Site License. conferences in Little Who's who at Archway Systems..........2 VersaCAD and 3D Rock and Report: More on Changing CAD.........2 An interesting, little known fact about VersaCAD is its Sacaramento and News from VersaCAD users .............3 compatibility with 3D software such as Rhino 3D or also at CAROCP in Training Class Schedule ......................3 MicroStation. VersaCAD allows for z coordinates on all Pomona. Over 30 Versatile Computer Aided Design.......3 symbols in a symbol library and allows for assigning z students attended Content is King....................................3 coordinates to geometry such as lines and circles. That workshops at the Tim Barnett………..…...………..…...3 makes it quite easy to do all the layout work in VersaCAD EAST conferences. Strange Cal Rules……………….…....4 TransMagic……….....……… ……....4 using VersaCAD’s keystroke efficiency and menu Who’s who at Archway Systems Erik Wordal Training in Cal coastal Arlene Black Admin and sales Rick Plummer Mftr consultant and sales Tom Lazear Admin, Sales and training Greg Crossley Central Calif office George McMeans Sales & training in Nor. Cal. Josh Lazear Webmaster Mike Lazear Programming & support Dan Lazear Administration Sandy Lazear Accounting Greg Hamano Support & Training Jeff Martin Civil Consultant and training Oscar Diaz Solid Edge Training REPORT More on the Changing CAD World The January newsletter addressed the changes taking place in the world of CAD software supply. In just the past few months there have been even more changes: First there was the big announcement that EDS sold their CAD division, UGS PLM Solutions, for 2.05 Billion dollars. Amazing. That is over 2 times their annual sales. But, it is understandable when you consider that the new standalone company is one of the three largest CAD companies in the world, alongside Catia and Autodesk. All three have about the same dollar volume of sales annually, although Autodesk sales have dropped off the past couple of years and Catia is a bit below UGS. This shows the value placed on being a world leader in manufacturing CAD software, which UGS surely is with their Solid Edge, I-deas and Unigraphics products. UGS is the standard at world leading manufacturing companies including GM, GE, Boeing Military and more. Solid Edge itself has grown to be the standard at Alcoa, Amada, ….L3 and other leaders. So, UGS is a strong and profitable company with a very bright future. UGS has promised that it is business as usual and they will keep all of their resellers and employees. Archway has announced breakthrough pricing for VersaCAD. Users have long complained about complicated licensing methods and have longed for the ability to freely and easily install a favorite software on any computer they like at any time they want to meet their needs without having to worry about licensing or being accused of being a pirate. All the pirating within a company is evidence of the desire of users to do that. A recent article in the Orange County Register Business section related the companies recently burned by the Business Software Alliance, which organization’s function in life is to police companies and find those that illegally have copied software on more computers than they paid for. Examples in the article included a hardware-product distributor in Aliso Viejo who settled for $200,000 to cover illegally copied software. A manufacturing company in Illinois settled for $120,000. Recognizing the fact that honest management have no idea that the copying is going on, and that many employees don’t realize that they are breaking the law, Archway decided to do something positive about the problem. So, the Corporate site license was introduced. Small companies pay very little for the corporate license which also includes a year of updates and phone support. The annual subscription starts at $1000 per year and increases with size of company. Subscribers get increased company productivity and the peace of mind to know that they are legally using software and that they will not be surprised one day when the software cop catches them cheating. Bentley has now passed Autodesk as the networking leader. Not the networking that you might be thinking of, but, the networking between engineers, architects, vendors, contractors, manufacturers and all the others that must pass files of their designs from person to person and company to company. Interoperable file formats has been a cry of users from the beginning of CAD. Much time is spent just converting from one file format to another. Bentley ‘s new release of MicroStation and the applications that run on top are now the most interoperable of all CAD. MicroStation v8 2004 Edition, can edit more releases of AutoCAD than AutoCAD itself. MicroStation reads every release of AutoCAD DWG or DXF from 2.6 through 2004, and, without translation edits the file and can then return it in the same format. And, MicroStation’s editing tools are superior to AutoCAD’s. So, what you have is a super-AutoCAD. But, that is not all. MicroStation can read and write all versions of MicroStation files dating back to the 80s. And still further, MicroStation can read and write these formats in the standard version of MicroStation at no additional charge: IGES, STEP, SAT, X_T, CGM and more. Unequivocally, MicroStation v8 2004 Edition is the world leader in “networking”. Civil engineering software is another area where there have been some changes. Bentley Systems really dominates the area of road and rail design, two of the hottest construction categories at the moment. Bentley’s MicroStation is the standard CAD in 48 of the 50 state DOTs as well as the federal DOT. In addition, Bentley’s InRoads is the most comprehensive road design software on the market and is standard at 25 DOTs. Also, Bentley owns Geopak (standard at 15 states) and MX which is popular in Europe and standard in at least one state. During the past year, Autodesk acquired CAiCE which is standard in one state. Watch for market battles in this segment since infrastructure design is hot in every state. CAD in schools is under severe pressure due to state budget problems, the emphasis on the 3 R’s, and the aging of technology educators. Many high schools are dropping technology education altogether. Hopefully, for the sake of US productivity, this is just a cycle and technology education will reemerge even stronger. Training Class Schedule can take them into MicroStation, VersaCAD or really any Archway offers a variety of training classes using the modern software. There is a search engine with it. Try latest of each software. Classes are 1 to 4 days in duration this, get your free password, then login and launch the and cover subjects in depth using certified materials. building database called CADBlocks. Then, search for Classes are offered in Solid Edge, SolidThinking, Rhino, modular buildings. You will see several manufacturers MicroStation and VersaCAD. All classes are 8:30 am to 5 listed. Choose one and drill down until you find the size pm. We now have three locations: our Huntington Beach and style you want. Then, download all the drawings for it training center (HB), Riverside CA (RS), and Bay area in dwg.