eDrawings on the iPad
<Sigh> eDrawings on the iPad. In all the threads on the SolidWorks forums that I read today, the single most frequent reaction was to the effect of Yay, one step closer to an Android version. “You can’t do anything meaningful with graphics on a phone”. Well, that’s true if your phone is the size of an iPhone. With Android, you’ve got the choice of what size to buy, and apps for a phone also run on tablets. Just saying. Fashion or function.
While eDrawings will be welcome in the mobile world, it’s also about 2 years late. I’m sure there are plenty of people who will be able to make use of it, but I think leaving out Android users is a mistake.
@Jim Anders
You can’t compare Apple’s market share in mobile to Microsoft’s market share in desktop. It’s just too big of a difference.
Plus, Apple’s business model ENSURES that Android, or some competitor will always exist. Manufacturers like Samsung, HTC, and others cannot put iOS on their phones even if they wanted to. Suppliers are so limited by Apple’s business model that they have to do something else just to participate in the market. When you’re such a nasty, controlling, closed shop like Apple, someone will always step up to provide an alternative. It takes a special kind of person to want to pay so much for something you’re not even allowed to use to its fullest capability.
@Jim Anders
Jim,
It couldn’t have been Windows Phone. Windows Phone has never had market share to loose. Separate stats have not even been kept for Windows Phone. Stats are kept for a combination of Windows Mobile/Windows Phone. Stats are going down b/c Windows Mobile (which once had a piece of the market share) is dying off. I suspect Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 will start to bring more mobile business to Microsoft. We’ll see.
@Ralph Grabowski
It’s not. eDrawings is written and owned by SolidWorks. (Geometric creates and sells publishers for other CAD platforms – these publishers publish data to the same native eDrawings formats : EPRT, EASM and EDRW.)
Vajrang Parvate / SolidWorks
@Pete Yodis
Ralph was talking about Windows Phone although he wrote Windows Mobile. The news was that LG was backing off from Windows Phone – although recently they have kind of backtracked on that somewhat.
-Jim
@matt
Well, if this is the case and we don’t want to be locked into one platform (and I agree on this) then hopefully, DS will release a native version of SW for Mac OS X. After all, it’s all about choice, right.
The door swings both ways. 😉
-Jim
@Devon Sowell
Where I’ve seen eDrawings most used is to convey design/drafting/model info to non-SW users, such as those people in manufacturing, tech support, field service, etc. There are a lot of people outside of the engineering department who need access to this data. eDrawings is a reasonable way to deliver this info.
-Jim
Ralph,
Apparently the reports about LG and not entirely true. They seem to be waiting for Windows Phone 8 (Apollo). Understandable. Windows Phone 8 will be multicore friendly, have support for higher display, etc… and will be friendly with Windows 8. Why release any devices now that might not get updated to Windows Phone 8, if its own release point is just 4 months away…
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2171551/lg-exit-windows-phone-market
Ralph,
You’re looking at Windows Mobile. Windows mobile is a dead platform. You should be looking at Windows Phone 7/7.5 and the upcoming Windows Phone 8. I agree the combined numbers of Windows Mobile and Windows Phone is still coming down or slowing. The numbers for Windows Phone 7/7.5 have been climbing in areas. There seem to have been a lot of Nokia Lumia 900s that have sold recently in AT&T stores, enough that Nokia has been strugling to keep up with demand in the US. I wouldn’t be suprosed if the next quarter shows that declining trend for the combined Windows mobile and Windows ohone is no longer declining. AT&T is putting alot of effort in pushing these devices b/c they are tired of being pushed around by Apple in regards to subsidizing the iPhone sales. They like having another party to move to where they don’t have to subsidize as much and can now push back on Apple a little bit. Windows Phone (not Windows mobile) and Windows Phone 8 combined with Windows 8, will be a good thing and may suprise many. I wouldn’t count it out. Important because eDrawings already runs on Windows 7 and will run on Windows 8 x86 devices without a re-write. It could run on Windows 8 on ARM with a rewrite. In that case, one software app could conceivably function on Windows 8 Arm devices, Windows x86 devices and maybe even Windows Phone 8.
@matt
Windows Mobile is down and out. Each quarter, Microsoft’s marketshare in portable devices falls, and last week LG announced it’s just not that interested in Windows Mobile anymore.
@matt
You want cheap? Look on eBay for “Android 4.0 Tablets.” Hundreds of them, ranging from $85 to $250 (7″, 8″, 10″) with decent specs. For fun and for $155, I bought an 8″ white Android 4 tablet with 1024×768-resolution 5-touch capacitive screen, 1.5GHz CPU,. 8GB RAM (expandable to 40GB), USB host (can plug in any keyboard), HDMI out, and runs Angry Birds (g) and Flash.
Cheap enough to take into the field, and if is ruined, get another one.
(I know what I’m getting into. Last year, I bought a lower-speced model from eBay, had fun mucking about with it, for there exists a sub-culture that works to optimize Android for these cheapo tablets. But now I thought it was high time I had a white tablet.)
@Neil
It’s my understanding that eDrawings is written by Geometric (I could be wrong on this), and so DS SolidWorks is having to pay for this outsourced programming. This may explain the $1.99 charge.
I really like the edrawing viewer on windows. It is fast and simple good for design presentations. The easm files are of manageable size. It worked better in 2007 than the new 2012 version. It works nicely using skype with a shared window.
@HoffY
During the past 14 years, I’ve seen very few people use eDrawings(I forget the year it came out). I agree, its clunky and not very useful, to me anyway. I never use it. I don’t even install it.
It seems like it has potential, but like so many things, DS SolidWorks has mismanaged/ignored it.
Devon
Am i the only one that hates eDrawings? Its always been a really painful thawn in my side when i’ve used it on PC. Sure the idea of it and the functionality is great. But when it comes to starting the application and having to do any of it.. omfg! No matter what system i use it on it always chugs like Crysis on a Pentium II-300 with a VooDoo2! The view manipulation controls are completely NOT like SolidWorks and regardless.. completely NOT intuitive. I wont list any more of my frustrations with it. I was hoping for MORE functionality (or at least the same done easier and more efficiently) but in newly written software so its got a chance at being more stable/featureful/better to use/ having been coded in this century….
And for Android.
It’s the visionary Jedi Bernard thing. I mean when he is dancing on stage with joyous anticipation for the immersive crowd/cloud 3D experience leveraged future he does afterall hold an IWhatever as his lightsaber. 🙂
@Pete Yodis
Yeah. I’m all for that. I’m not familiar with the Windows offerings, but I don’t see any reason why they should be excluded. I see Win Phone stuff as up and coming. It’s the iSheep zealots who seem to deny anything else is worthy. No one is asking for much, just a port of a view/markup. This should be a no brainer for a company so concerned about mobility.
I think the conversation has missed Microsoft as a coming player in the tablet and phone space. They are taking the approach of an app working not just on the phone and tablet, but also on the desktop as well. Sort of the android approach. The fragmentation will be less than android and the hardware choice more than Apple. The x86 platforms will support legacy software – menaing anything that runs on Windows 7 will run on x86 Windows 8 devices. Now throw in the fact that intel x86 processors are entering the mobile market for phones and tablets and showing good performance and battery life – I would want to add Microsoft to the conversation, since SolidWorks and eDrawings are already developed and running on Windows.
@Vajrang Parvate
The dogma that we should all be using the same device like sheep has a terribly… “goose-steppy” quality about it. Exclusive rather than inclusive. Do you really want customers, or are we too much of a bother?
If we all drove the same car and wore the same shoes and only ate borscht, everything would be much cheaper. Are you old enough to remember the USSR?
iPhone users don’t understand using a phone for what you “should” use an iPad for for two reasons: first, it’s too small for visual content, and second, iPhone has yet to produce a 4g version where large data consumption is actually practical. Two problems you don’t have to have on Android.
And Mr. West claiming that Android phones are more popular because they’re “cheap”? Apple has always charged extra for the fashionability of the logo. The option that makes apple phones more expensive is internal storage, which on many Androids is a user upgradable option. Again, you’ve got the choice.
And we’re all in tears about how hard it is for CAD developers to develop stuff for their customers. I’m sure developing n!fuze was much easier. DS can make their choices. It’s not hard to see how anti-customer you are becoming.
http://pocketnow.com/iphone/dropbox-integration-causing-headaches-for-ios-developers?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+pocketnow+%28pocketnow.com%29&utm_content=Netvibes
@matt
There is at least one that makes Android much harder to embrace :
(I’m not saying it’ll never happen, but simply why it’s a lot harder)
Apple has done to the development platform on mobile devices what Microsoft did to the development platfrom on desktop in the ’90’s. Viz. provided developers a unified hardware + software target and really, really good development tools.
The Android landscape (versions in use + hardware variants) is looking more and more like the Unix landscape in the ’90’s. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Unix_systems. There’s a pretty similar situation on the development tools side as well.
I recently aquired an iPad and if anything else the display quality is amazing. I didn’t buy it with the knowledge that I could run eDrawings on it, but was happy to pay $1.99 yesterday for the eDrawings app. One of the principal reasons for the iPad was to use as a preview device for pictures I take on my digital SLR camera.
The downfall of an iPad is that it does not have an accessible file system for the user. this is why you have to load your content through the iTunes store, Dropbox, email or similar, which is all cumbersome, to put it politely. But I did find an app called FileAppPro in the apple store that creates your own accessible file system on your iPad. This allows you to transfer files directly from your PC to your iPad, even over the network without direct connection. I highly recommend this app or any other that will let you create your own accessible file system on an iPad. I bought the 64 GB version of the iPad so that I can back up my Word, Excel, pdf and pst files on my iPad and this would have been impossible without creating a usable file system on the iPad. I can even store SW part and assembly files on the iPad, but not as usefule if they cannot be opened on the iPad.
Ubuntu for Android is coming and if Solidworks chooses to ignore this then they’re in very serious trouble! Then again who cares Solidworks is being replaced.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-57424335-94/androids-new-ally-against-the-iphone-ubuntu/
I presume with the arrival of SWv6B or is that C? eDrawings will be redundant. Most likely then Dassault did just enough to be trendy coming up with an iPad version, although it is a really a bit late to release it and appear to be a tech savvy company. The CAD in the cloud fixation has proven to be very disruptive to SW business in general. I’m guessing not only won’t there be an Android version but the iPad version won’t be updated either short of a few UI tweaks. Pity about the 1.99. Seems more of an annoyance than a legitimate money earner. In fact where I live the inconvenience of paying tiny sums like this is pretty much a barrier to adoption. A give away would have been good PR like handing out say SW pens, posters or caps. Free apps is one of the reasons I bought an Android tablet rather than an iPad. Here again SW marketing hasnt quite hit the sweet spot like it should had it been free and Android been included. Still at least its an improvement on n!Fuze 😉
I understand developing for iOS in favor of Android first due to the popularity of the iPad, but Matthew West from SolidWorks said there were no current plans for an Android version. That, IMO, is shortsighted. I guess this mean no phone versions either which is a bigger market and user base and most likely always will be.
@matt
Matt,
Those are not my words. And yes, I think these words are a bit over the top. I was just providing other links that painted a different picture of iOS vs Android.
Please don’t misunderstand me. I’m not advocating that DS should not come out with an Android version. My point is that it’s reasonable for them to have addressed the iPad first.
-Jim
You’ll pardon me if I’m not buying that.
@matt
I understand that. But I think realistically the larger tablets like the iPad are a much more practical viewing tool than smartphones and one can understand why DS started off with the iPad.
For example, I have AutoCAD WS on both my iPhone and iPad. I rarely, if ever, use it on my iPhone. These type of CAD viewing/markup apps really cry out for the larger screen size. IMHO.
-Jim
@Jason
There are many sources for stats…
http://techcrunch.com/2012/04/26/apple-will-one-day-rule-the-world/
http://macdailynews.com/2012/04/26/report-6-of-top-10-enterprise-devices-using-good-technology-are-ios-97-of-tablets-are-ipad/
http://www.forbes.com/sites/ericsavitz/2012/04/25/apple-q1-u-s-smartphone-mkt-shr-59-vs-36-year-earlier/
http://macdailynews.com/2012/04/27/apple-remains-1-global-smartphone-leader-samsung-overtakes-beleaguered-nokia-for-cellphone-lead/
-Jim
I am sure they will create an Android version. The fact that it is 1.99 is something that shocked me. I fully expected it to be free like AutoCAD WS, Inventor Publisher Mobile, Design Review, and Force Effect for Simulations (my current favorite since I can take DXFs from it).
This just might be a case of putting out the first one they got done and testing the waters. Autodesk did the same thing and released Android versions of some of the apps after they were known to be popular. Usually it was a 6-9 month lag from them to program for the other OS.
The best device for viewing your files in the field is the device you have on you. So ignoring the phone market is foolish as there are a lot Android phones out there. And as Matt mentioned, some of these have fairly large screens.
Android market share continues to rise at a faster rate than iOS (http://goo.gl/DWz91).
@Jim Anders
Jim, yes, in tablets, no one disputes that. But what you’re ignoring is that tablets aren’t the only things you can view stuff on.
Apple has made a clear distinction between phones and tablets. Android has blurred the lines. Which is fine. The larger android phones (and there are a lot of them) can be used in many cases like tablets.
It doesn’t make any sense to alienate half of your customers.
@matt
Matt,
Apple is still by far the #1 leader in tablets and iPad is huge in the business world. I doubt DS is making decisions purely because they’re Apple fans. There are a number of reasons. Market share is the obvious one. Google’s screw-ups with regard to OS fragmentation is another. Android’s poor support of Enterprise/Network standards (such as IPsec) is another. So, a good amount of criticism should be leveled at Google for their implementation efforts.
I know you’re not a fan of Apple – but instead of viewing this as bad news because DS didn’t support Android – I think it’s worthwhile looking at this in a positive light for the huge number of iPad users who have been clamoring for this capability for a long time. I frankly don’t get too wrapped up in platform religion wars or hyping one vendor over the other. I use and recommend what works and works best.
-Jim
@Mike Puckett
Mike – Yes. Thanks for that post on Dropbox. I will try it on Dropbox and SkyDrive later today. I understand the ease of emailing a SW eD file but for those of us who are implementing solutions for business/enterprise – a file repository is really needed.
I can understand how Android users feel left out. I guess in many ways it’s like Macintosh users who feel left out because there’s no native version of SolidWorks for MacOS. People often cite that there’s just not enough Macs in the corporate world to make SolidWorks for Mac a priority (although Autodesk would say otherwise). The same can be now be said for Android tabs and eDrawings.
-Jim
@matt
Apps that are developed on iOS can easily be targeted for iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad. There’s no inherent advantage in Android for this. I suspect the only reason for eDrawings to be released on the iPad and not (yet) the iPhone is purely based on screen size and functionality.
Put another way…there is no technical reason why there couldn’t be a version of eDrawings for the iPhone.
SolidWorks exposes their reasoning for ignoring Android:
So from this I suppose we should expect that in the future Apple will be the only distributor of “smart” mobile hardware. Despite the fact that Apple just fell to #2 (from the same publication).
If this is part of the decision making process at DS, I wish them all the best. There is no need for DS to take sides, there is no reason they can’t embrace both Apple and Android.
@Jim Anders
Jim,
There are many cloud applications and services that are already working with the eDrawings app including all the services you mentioned (Dropbox, SkyDrive, Box and Google Drive. In my blog post I show how to use DropBox:
http://www.mikescadblog.com/2012/05/edrawings-for-ipad.html
I had never used DropBox before so I set it up last week just to use with this app and it works very well.
One thing I should have included in my original post, but didnt, was the simplicity of opening a SolidWorks file directly from an email. Have someone email you a file and see how easy it is to just open it.
I can’t really speak as to the future development of different platforms, but you hit the nail on the head. Apple, for now, owns the tablet market, but if you follow the tech industry you would see that their market share has been droping in that arena. Where they once owned over 95% of the market, and are now down in the 70’s as Android tablets gain share. So stay tuned!
Right. That’s my point. Hence the title of the post. If developed on Android, it would go to tablets and phones, usable on both.
It works very well. With one exception – they really need to add file access support for cloud-based file support like Dropbox, SkyDrive, Box, Google Drive, etc. And hopefully after that access to PDM Vaults, etc.
I suspect Android and Win8/Metro support will come soon, but it’s clear that at the moment the iPad is the de-facto standard in the business world. Part of the problem is that Google has really made it difficult for developers to rely on a stable, consistent (across all devices) development platform.
And Apple just has done a really good job in the business environment with iPad…
http://www.apple.com/ipad/business/
-Jim
PS: I’ve since discovered that eDrawings for iPad does indeed work with Dropbox and Microsoft SkyDrive. You just need to select the file on the server and then specify to open said file with eDrawings. Works great!
eDawings is for the iPad, not the iPhone.
Display size is 2048-by-1536-pixel resolution at 264 pixels per inch (ppi) or 7.75″ x 5.82″.
Does it work? The rhino ipad viewer has very nice interaction.