MCAD Tech News #205
4 Apr, 2007 By: Jeffrey RoweA new kid on the block stakes a bold claim in the tough MCAD marketplace. Ten or twelve years ago a huge influx of solid mechanical modelers hit the MCAD market. Many applications came and went during this period as the market became educated and saturated. Some soared, but more than a few crashed and burned. The past couple of years have been relatively quiet, with few full-blown MCAD products being introduced. In March, however, newcomer SpaceClaim Corp. announced the launch of its flagship product, SpaceClaim Professional 2007. Founded in September 2005, SpaceClaim is backed by Kodiak Venture Partners and North Bridge Venture Partners, a couple of significant players in the venture capital community. SpaceClaim is located in the building that housed SolidWorks in its formative years and is just a few hundred feet from SolidWorks' current headquarters in Concord, Massachusetts. Although I have no personal experience so far with SpaceClaim Professional on which to base an opinion or user's perspective, a few weeks ago I participated in a conference call while a SpaceClaim representative demonstrated some of the highlights of the new product, and Mike Payne, the company's CEO commented on the demonstration and fielded questions with the assistance of other members of the development and marketing team. Payne is no stranger to the CAD industry. Prior to SpaceClaim he had been near or at the top of Spatial Corp., Dassault Systemes and PTC. He also was a cofounder of SolidWorks and served as the company's first vice-president of R&D from 1994 to 1999. Needless to say, this guy knows the MCAD industry. Read more>> By Kenneth Wong Some time during the Fall of 2005, Luke Johnson, a student at the University of Bridgeport (Bridgeport, Connecticut), dispatched a somewhat perplexing questionnaire to a handful of friends and relatives. The young man wanted to know if they were pleased with their emergency flashlight radios: which features they liked best, which they liked least and why. He'd also been ambushing random people on the streets with similar questions. At times, he could be seen wandering along the aisles of electronic stores, scrutinizing the differences among various brands of flashlight radios. But Johnson wasn't thinking of buying one; he was actually designing one quite unlike those that were already on the market. Read more>> Mark Your Calendar: MCAD Events Webcast: Next Generation Product Documentation Third Annual Synergis Technology Expo 18th Annual National Collegiate FM Technology Conference For Cadalyst's full calendar of events, click here. what's new at cadalyst.com 3D in AutoCAD? You Tell Us! Learning Curve (AutoCAD Tutorial): To Whom Do You Attribute That Information? Online Archives: Click here to view an online version of this newsletter and past issues of MCAD Tech News. Cadalyst Daily Update
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