SolidWorks using the Catia V6 Kernel?
Deelip has been at SWW10 this week, and I just ran into him today. Here are Deelip and John Picinich. Deelip writes a blog and John is a highly respected SolidWorks reseller, friend, and commenter on this blog when the topic warrants. SolidWorks World is really about meeting people like this that mostly just get to interact on the web.
Anyway, the point of this blog post is that Deelip took a picture of a computer screen showing SolidWorks running in one of these “cloud” configurations, meaning across a network, on a Mac or on a netbook, and the SolidWorks program showed SolidWorks V6 on it.
This image is from Deelip’s blog, and you should go over there to read his interviews with Jeff Ray and Shaun Murphy. Jeff Ray’s comments were fairly predictable, but Shaun took the rather extraordinary route of admitting the obvious, which of course no one expects.
Anyway, back to the picture. This likely means that the software running on the “cloud” is SolidWorks using the Catia V6 kernel, which has been a big topic of speculation on this and other blogs. One of the top 5 search phrases for folks landing on this site is “catia v6″, so people are out there looking for information on V6. Remember that the Catia V6 kernel is the one that has a lot of direct edit capabilities, among other things.
There is more to say here, but I’ve got to go for now. This mornings session starts soon with the new features to be delivered in 2011.
Talk amongst yourselves.
We all know that Professional OpenGL Graphic Card has very minimum difference in hardware level compare with gaming card, This has been proved 7 years ( or more) ago. Just think about this: it’s almost impossible to set up a production line for “professional chips” in any wafer fab.
Hardware vendor might spend more money on QA of professional OpenGL driver, but that doesn’t meaning we have to paid double or triple times money for that piece of shit.
I started soft-mod or hard-mod my graphic card from gaming card to a “pro” card since SW2003, now still doing the same thing, and I don’t feel very significant difference with using modded cards.
While your gaming card can handle millions of polygon in realtime with complex texture and rendering, why it can not do the same thing with CAD model? Isn’t that simple enough to understand?
Hopefully SW2010 can bring some fresh air.
It doesn’t really matter what the underlying technology is it is the way it is programmed that matters. OpenGL speed and stability varies widely on different platforms and applications. Example. Maya OpenGL on Mac is rocket fast on a standard Mac card. Same machine FormZ OpenGL is a lot slower. Moving to Windows and SolidWorks performs a lot faster than Inventor with the same card. Deelip, Alibre may well have used Direct3D since the start but 99% of Alibre users moan about the slow speed of graphics in Alibre Design, and compared to SolidWorks it is like wading through treacle on a cold day.
The other factor here that SolidWorks, unlike others, makes use of the card technology in things like RealView – which we are only just starting to see how this can be used in conjunction with PhotoView 360.
OpenGL is not going to go away. Apple and Linux use it and combined that is a significant proportion of the workstation and high end PC market.
I certainly hope SolidWorks decides to support DX and the cheaper gaming cards. It would help us implement more seats here as we have to justify the cost for Solidworks plus the beefy workstation and graphics card.
As I see, it would help SolidWorks’ bottom line.
Long story short, as long as CAD systems are going to be mainly run on Windows, CAD vendors will be better off adopting Direct3D over OpenGL. Wisely or just by chance, Alibre decided to use Direct3D from day one and it looks like it is paying off for them. Other CAD vendors will have to make the transition some day.
Deelip Menezes
http://www.deelip.com
Graphics card/OpenGL issues in SolidWorks are like an ‘open sore that doesn’t heal’. The idea that you must use the “SolidWorks Certified” video drivers (which is usually not the current) to ensure compatibility is silly.
I still see some users continue to have problems even with the correct driver.
And while Realview eye candy does have some benefits, D3D has similar capabilities as evident in the Inventor product..
Both ATI & nVidia support both…
Why the hesitation to add D3D support?
I so want to see the counter to this, but somehow I doubt any VP’s will be speaking up. please do. From a graphics standpoint I like the OpenGL stuff. From a price and development standpoint,I like the DirectX10.
This Inventor development response opens up a lot of points. I don’t see how a company can ignore the amount of effort OpenGL is taking.
It would be a big up front cost for SOlidWorks I imagine, but, dang, the benefits of less debugging and Q&A, better margins, better options for users. why is it even a question?
What’s this? I can save hundreds of dollars for each and every computer I upgrade, every time I upgrade? It saves Autodesk (and thus theoretically SolidWorks) money? My video performance will actually improve AND cost less?
So, the question is, will we see this in Solidworks 2010? I can think of no more important enhancement. Period.
Wow. That is an answer! Interesting point on the variety of video hardware issues, and new OS configurations? hmmm.