For the past several weeks the editor in chief of the Inovate Daily Newletter http://www.innovateforum.com/daily has been running a series of on again off again articles on the future of CAD in the next 50 years. Since this is the kind of topic I enjoy thinking about I decided to blog about it a bit.
While I don't have the slightest idea what the future holds or where CADD will be in 2057 (for that matter I probably won't be around to care). I think it might be informative to look at where I thought CAD would be today. As the saying goes "those that don't learn from the past are doomed to repeat it".
Back in 1987 when I started using, learning, supporting and talking about CAD I thought it would be much different in 20 years than it turned out to be. Other than the improvement in computer technology CAD hasn't changed very much at least in the Highway/AEC business. I have often said we are doing nothing today that we couldn't do 20 years ago... and that is really sad.
20 years ago I thought that by the year 2000 (at the latest) CAD would allow civil engineers to practice what I call "Real Time Engineering". That with the expected advances in technology, hardware and software design highway and bridge projects would be designed, built and managed concurrently. Although we have the technology, what I didn't count on or understand was the nature of the beast.
The Civil Engineering world changes slowly. It is not enough to have the ability to do things you have to have the will and drive to not only use CAD but to apply it. While we have had the CAD and computer technology for over 20 years we have never been able to change the way the Highway/Bridge/AEC community thinks and works. So even with all the wonderful tools we have at our disposal we still basically design and build highways just as we always have.
So I hope that in 50 years my "dream" of real time civil engineering comes true but if history is any indication the CAD systems of 2057 will still be stuck at the turn of the century.
Thursday, May 31, 2007
Tuesday, May 22, 2007
2007 HEEP Area V
Just back from the HEEP Area V meeting in Budapest Hungary. Where I and my fellow "heepers" had a great time not only visiting, but discussing things with our counterparts from the the TEM Countries. I'll post a bit more later and post up a few more pictures.
Thursday, December 07, 2006
I'm back
It’s been a while since I posted anything to “R Cubed” so since there doesn’t seem to be anything on TV (although it took great discipline not to watch John Wayne in The Green Berets) and I left the book I’m reading out in the car I might as well post something. So to paraphrase my son’s famous quote “what to write? What to write?” You see that is one problem with a blogs you have to write something now and again (as soon as those talking computers come on line look out).
So what to write? During the day I can think of all kinds of “heady topics” but when I get a chance to jot them down I have trouble remembering them. Couple of things, I read a lot. Because of all the different magazines, I read during the week I have gotten pretty good at noticing IT trends and tools before they really get popular. A case in point is wikis and blogs – they seem to have become all the rage lately. I was giving presentations on using them over a year ago. Funny thing is that even though I was out in front of the curve and now that wikis are hot my organization doesn’t know they exist… so much for the prophet business.
I have talked about wikis before. In particular a specific kind of wiki called a Tiddly Wiki. I recently gave a short presentation at the 2006 HEEP International Conference held this past September in Williamsburg Virginia. If you would like to take a look at it (remember power points lose a bit without my unique translation) you can download it and other HEEP presentations at
http://iheep.vdot.virginia.gov/iheep2006presentations.htm
you can find it under Thursday presentations and the title is
“Tiddly Wiki and Things – another internet technology that you never heard of but might find useful.”
I gave two other presentations that day but I think I’ll save them for another posting.
So what to write? During the day I can think of all kinds of “heady topics” but when I get a chance to jot them down I have trouble remembering them. Couple of things, I read a lot. Because of all the different magazines, I read during the week I have gotten pretty good at noticing IT trends and tools before they really get popular. A case in point is wikis and blogs – they seem to have become all the rage lately. I was giving presentations on using them over a year ago. Funny thing is that even though I was out in front of the curve and now that wikis are hot my organization doesn’t know they exist… so much for the prophet business.
I have talked about wikis before. In particular a specific kind of wiki called a Tiddly Wiki. I recently gave a short presentation at the 2006 HEEP International Conference held this past September in Williamsburg Virginia. If you would like to take a look at it (remember power points lose a bit without my unique translation) you can download it and other HEEP presentations at
http://iheep.vdot.virginia.gov/iheep2006presentations.htm
you can find it under Thursday presentations and the title is
“Tiddly Wiki and Things – another internet technology that you never heard of but might find useful.”
I gave two other presentations that day but I think I’ll save them for another posting.
Thursday, March 02, 2006
Upgrade advice
Today it seemed like all the cadd newsletters and blogs (most of them anyway) were talking about the latest release of AutoCAD (with the catchy name of AutoCAD 2007) that is due to be released in late March. While the pundits can’t wait, and are touting all the new 3D features I’ll lay money that the average user is thinking – “Oh shit, not another upgrade.”
Having just gone through a major upgrade at work (from MicroStation J to MicroStation V8) in 2005 I can relate. For both users and the support staffs new versions suck. Not that the features aren’t cool, they rarely seems worth the pain. When you think that the average user at most uses 10-20 percent of a program’s features you have to wonder how bad we really need new ones. I know the vendors say that the users demand them but to tell you the truth I’ve never met an average user who has ever been asked about what they need – Have you?
Unfortunately the biggest problem with a new version is all the grunt work you have to do to get them installed and running. Not only are there general problems inherent in any new release, but it is rare that all the other programs you depend on will work with the new release out of the box -- this is where the problems really begin. It seems to me that users tend to skip at least every other cadd release these days. You think the vendors might take the hint…
If I could offer any advice to the cadd vendors of the about upgrades it would be this. Stop worrying about features and make sure that when they release a new version that it solves our problems rather than creating new ones…
Having just gone through a major upgrade at work (from MicroStation J to MicroStation V8) in 2005 I can relate. For both users and the support staffs new versions suck. Not that the features aren’t cool, they rarely seems worth the pain. When you think that the average user at most uses 10-20 percent of a program’s features you have to wonder how bad we really need new ones. I know the vendors say that the users demand them but to tell you the truth I’ve never met an average user who has ever been asked about what they need – Have you?
Unfortunately the biggest problem with a new version is all the grunt work you have to do to get them installed and running. Not only are there general problems inherent in any new release, but it is rare that all the other programs you depend on will work with the new release out of the box -- this is where the problems really begin. It seems to me that users tend to skip at least every other cadd release these days. You think the vendors might take the hint…
If I could offer any advice to the cadd vendors of the about upgrades it would be this. Stop worrying about features and make sure that when they release a new version that it solves our problems rather than creating new ones…
Tuesday, January 03, 2006
Happy New Year
Just a quick note to wish everyone a Happy New Year… I generally don’t make new years resolutions (hard to keep) but I will try to post to my blog on a bit more regular basis this year… So check back soon…
Thursday, December 08, 2005
New CADD Site
A couple of weeks ago I became aware of a new CADD Website that deals mainly with MicroStation but also covers a lot of general CADD topics.
The Name of the site is:
Eat Your CAD and it’s URL is
http://www.eatyourcad.com/
Check it out when you get a chance you won’t be sorry.
The Name of the site is:
Eat Your CAD and it’s URL is
http://www.eatyourcad.com/
Check it out when you get a chance you won’t be sorry.
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