Quickies: Hexagon, Bentley – oh, and Yale wins hockey crown
I'd normally be writing this week about COFES, the annual engineering software gathering in the Arizona desert, but I didn't attend this year. Shocking, right? Instead, I played hookey to watch the best collegiate athletes in the US play hockey. Every year the US...
Myanmar highlights infrastructure opportunity
A fascinating article caught my eye earlier this week; it perfectly sums up all that is wrong with our infrastructure and the significant benefits if only we could summon the will (and cash) to fix it. The country of Myanmar (formerly known as Burma) has suffered...
Open Like a Book: CAE
We are proud to announce that the following article written by Monica Schnitger appears in the April/May 2013 edition of Economic Engineering: Open Like a Book The roots of simulation software are in universities and government labs, where researchers developed tools...
Bentley & Siemens tie plant design & automation
Earlier today, at the Hannover Fair, Bentley Systems and Siemens Industry Automation Division announced an extension of their collaboration -- this time for the process industries. Last November, the two companies signed a memorandum of understanding to integrate...
Quickies: SolidWorks talks kernels, ANSYS acquires
There's never a dull moment, is there? Kernels and marketing 101 Earlier this week SolidWorks CEO Bertrand Sicot took to the company blog to talk about the future of the core SolidWorks product, add-on offerings and which kernel will be used where. You may recall that...
CD-adapco: physics, usability & performance
CAE user conferences, for me, are all about fighting to understand. I'm an engineer but not a scientist, so I'm usually OK in these very technical presentations until the equations start flying. Then I can easily veer off-track as I try to figure out what's important...
ExOne wants to displace traditional manufacturing
I discovered ExOne earlier this year, when I did a quick survey of the 3D printing universe for a client. ExOne's rapid prototyping machines use glass, sand and metals in a binder jetting process that (the company says) is faster and can make larger prototypes than...
Exa ends year on weak note, looks to growth in F2014
Exa Corporation reported lackluster results for the quarter that ended January 31, 2013, but says that business has already picked up, leading to optimism for fiscal 2014. CEO Steve Remondi told investors that the budget delays seen in FQ4 are largely behind them and...
Bentley ‘hits stride’ and $550m in revenue
Bentley Systems today gave a glimpse into how the company fared in 2012 and what it thinks 2013 will hold. Bentley is privately held so this disclosure is unusual but, as CEO Greg Bentley told us, his customers prefer a company without drama. It would appear that they...
Rounding out earnings: Delcam and MuM set records
We're just about done with companies reporting earnings for the year ended December 31, 2012, and it was, by all appearances, a solid year. Lots of uncertainty about what lies ahead but, in general, most companies saw an increase in the numbers and types of customers...
CD-adapco’s STAR conference: space, smoke & more space
As is usually the case, CD-adapco's annual STAR Global Conference aims to teach much more than one human can absorb in a few days. I usually walk away with my brain spinning, but energized and excited by the potential of CD-adapco's solutions to help explain the world...
Quickie: Autodesk acquires Firehole Composites
We interrupt our stream of tweets for a news bulletin .... I'm at the CD-adapco user conference so this has to be quick (so far, we've had great company and user presentations, been challenged to be better leaders by Mr. Gene Kranz himself and seen, from afar, a...
ESI’s FY13 revenue up 16%, minor contribution from OpenCFD
ESI Group reported yesterday that revenue for the 2013 fiscal year (ended January 31) was €109 million, up 16% from last year. This includes a contribution of €343,000 from OpenCFD, acquired in September. Excluding acquisitions, organic revenue growth for the year was...
A bit of business: Google to kill its Reader app
Quite a few of you read this blog via Google Reader and, since I'm beyond grateful that we talk every couple of days, you need to know that Google will be dropping support for Reader this summer. That means that if you do nothing, we'll stop talking and neither one of...
P3: Infrastructure wave of the future?
Imagine you're a town manager with aging infrastructure and a growing population: How do you build enough schools to meet projected demand? Boost the capacity of your water and wastewater treatment facilities? Revamp bridges that now carry twice as much traffic as...
Additive manufacturing roars into 2013
Additive manufacturing (aka 3D printing) is hot right now, making appearances in the US President's State of the Union speech, popular crime-fighting TV shows and all over social media. But is it just hype over something about-to-happen, or are companies actually...
Box.com tries cloud end-run for the AEC market
I use cloud storage for all of the usual reasons: always-on access makes it easy for me to work wherever I am. I can collect the files relevant to a project in one place, create a backup of important works-in-progress and collaborate with others without emailing large...
ANSYS revenue up 11% in Q4, looks at 10%-13% in 2013
ANSYS today reported results for Q4 and full-year 2012 that, while good, highlight the slow growth in Q4 of the company's non-Apache products. Since ANSYS has been such an aggressive aggregator of simulation technologies, it wouldn't surprise me to see more deals as...
Quickie: 3D Systems closes Geomagic acquisition
As expected, 3D Systems today announced that the Geomagic deal has closed. To recap, 3D Systems paid $55 million in cash to add Geomagic's 3D design, sculpting and inspection scan processing solutions to its portfolio. Geomagic is expected to be accretive to earnings...
Autodesk beats for Q4, disappoints in outlook & gets a new look
Lots of big news from Autodesk in the last 24 hours, including Q4 results, guidance for the new fiscal year, and a branding makeover. Q4 was better than expected on many fronts, but cautious guidance for 2013 caused the share price to drop 5-ish% this morning before...