In late April, the 15th annual Congress on the Future of Engineering Software (COFES) was held in Scottsdale, Arizona USA. COFES is one of the most important events for the CAD industry, and each year is organized by research agency Cyon Research. Two years ago, ASCON Group used the event to announce its new CAD component, the C3D geometric kernel. ASCON subsequently formed C3D Labs to take charge of developing and marketing the kernel. This year, C3D Labs took part in COFES as an independent company with its own customers and its own vision for the future of geometric kernels. The business agenda of the congress included two technical briefings organized by C3D Labs and moderated by long-time CAD expert Ralph Grabowski, editor of the WorldCAD Access blog and publisher of the upFront.eZine newsletter. “I was impressed by the level of engagement by participants, as they took on the challenge of thinking

IBM announced that it has expanded its global partnership with SAP to deliver the SAP HANA® platform, the SAP HANA ONE service and other SAP® applications on the cloud platform from SoftLayer, an IBM Company. The SoftLayer platform has been verified by SAP to run SAP applications, including SAP Business Suite software and SAP BusinessObjects™ solutions. This extends and complements the existing capabilities provided by IBM to run SAP solutions on IBM Cloud Managed Services. With Cloud Managed Services and the SoftLayer platform, customers will have access to 40 data centers across five continents to run SAP applications for their enterprises. SoftLayer and IBM provide an expansive set of cloud capabilities for SAP solutions to address development testing, production and SAP HANA-based workloads. “Businesses today are looking for ways to lower the cost of deployment and greater efficiency in addressing new market opportunity,” said IBM General Manager of Cloud Services James Comfort.

Autodesk, Inc. has acquired Stockholm-based Bitsquid AB, the creator of the Bitsquid game engine. The acquisition brings to Autodesk expertise in 3D game development and proven technology that will enable Autodesk to supercharge its portfolio of tools for game makers through the development of a new 3D game engine. Multiple game developers have used the modern and flexible Bitsquid engine to create 3D games for next-generation consoles and PCs, and Autodesk will continue to work with many of these companies to develop the new 3D game engine. Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed. "Bitsquid has been a key success factor for Fatshark, as we’ve been able to produce high quality games with short development times,” said Martin Wahlund, CEO, Fatshark. "We are excited to see how Bitsquid evolves now that it is part of Autodesk.” In addition to acquiring the Bitsquid game engine, the acquisition of the Bitsquid team and technology will

Intergraph has announced the release of its Intergraph FreeView® application that lets users of Intergraph CADWorx Design create, publish, and share intelligent AutoCAD®-based CADWorx Plant models for viewing on an Apple® iPad®. Rick Allen, president, Intergraph CADWorx & Analysis Solutions, made the announcement during his keynote address to over two-hundred (200) attendees at CADWorx Analysis University 2014 (CAU2014) taking place at HxGN LIVE in Las Vegas, June 2 - 5, 2014.  Intergraph FreeView is free of charge, and allows for truly portable review and collaboration by letting iPad users access the intelligent information contained in their published models. Intuitive tools let users modify views by isolating sections of the model based on line numbers and component type, as well as easily hide or adjust the transparency of individual or groups of components. The three-finger view selection makes easy work of changing between various plan, elevation, and isometric views. With a simple finger-tap selection, users

GTX ® Corporation announced the newest release of its popular GTXRaster CAD®  2015 Series for AutoCAD 2015. The new GTXRaster CAD 2015 Series for AutoCAD 2015 enhancements and features include: Full AutoCAD 2015 DWG compatibility Support for Microsoft®  Windows®  8 and Windows®  7, 32- and 64-bit operating systems New User Interface with enhanced Icons, Ribbons, and Toolbars which incorporate the new Light and Dark Environments of AutoCAD 2015 Reengineered Rasterization Engine supports the new CAD entities including blocks with attributes, angled text and geometry New Installation for Windows 8 and Windows 7 PCs to alleviate any security permission issues Improved Licensing - Package and Borrow facility options for Network Flex LM licensing. PDF support, open and save a color or black and white PDF file – once open, the files can be edited and then saved to a TIF format or a PDF Intelligent Object Picking™ (IOP) raster selection enhancements include selecting raster within a Rotated Rectangle and selecting raster inside & crossing a rotated rectangle -- allowing users to have more precise raster selection Includes Raster editing

DataCAD Software & Services GmbH has announced the availability of the latest release EditNC v10.2.1. All R10 users should install this new version. The CNC program editor is designed to complement CAD/CAM systems, and provides powerful capabilities for manual G-code programming. EditNC includes a large number of CNC programming features like: edit, review, calculate, analyze, compare and backplot. With EditNC manual G-code programming becomes as easy as child’s play. Data can be converted quickly and easily, a fast data transfer to the machines is possible. Various file analysis like min/max values or calculation of cycle times are done rapidly with EditNC. EditNC version 10.2.1 offers a great number of new features, like the new extract program file function that splits a file into multiple files, each containing a single program segment. The new merge program function quickly locates missing sub programs and merges files. The backplotter supports G65 and G66 macro calls, variables, macro

Bluebeam® Software announced that they are working together with Citrix to give Citrix ShareFile® full integration with Bluebeam Revu® for iPad, enabling mobile professionals to more easily access, manage and share project files digitally. ShareFile is a popular cloud storage service within architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) and other document-intensive industries, for which Bluebeam is the leading developer of PDF-based markup, measurement and collaboration solutions. Traditionally, AEC, oil and gas, manufacturing and other technical professionals have been faced with the challenge of managing huge sets of large format printed documents and drawings. On larger projects, sheets of paper can total in the hundreds or thousands—and when revisions are made, multiple copies of revised document sets must be generated and distributed to all project stakeholders. Transporting paper copies from the office to the field and back again adds time to demanding schedules. With most project teams pushed to do more in less time and under budget,

Altium Limited introduced WEBENCH® Altium Connector, a collaborative effort between Altium and Texas Instruments (TI) to blend TI’s award-winning WEBENCH power design and simulation tools with Altium’s leading EDA tool suite Altium Designer. This powerful platform provides design engineers with the first end-to-end analog circuit design and simulation environment, including everything from creating the power supply and simulating the complete circuit to creating the printed circuit board (PCB) layout. The new WEBENCH® Altium Connector is a seamless interface between Altium Designer and TI’s online WEBENCH® Power Designer. By downloading WEBENCH® Altium Connector, design engineers are able to create a custom WEBENCH power supply from within the Altium Designer platform. The power supply design can be easily created in WEBENCH, and exported and simulated offline inside Altium Designer, giving engineers the opportunity to further customize and integrate the design into a larger circuit. The offline WEBENCH simulation engine can be used to simulate any

Stratasys Ltd. announced that it will hold its Annual General Meeting of Shareholders (the "Meeting") on Thursday, July 10, 2014, at 9:00 a.m. U.S. Central Time, at the Stratasys NASH Building, 9600 West 76th Street, Eden Prairie, Minnesota. The record date for shareholders entitled to vote at the Annual Meeting is Tuesday, June 10, 2014. To view an unabridged version of this press release, visit: http://investors.stratasys.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=852629

OPEN MIND Technologies AG is presenting for the first time at Manufacturing Surabaya (11 to 14 June 2014 in Surabaya, East Java, Indonesia). OPEN MIND will introduce the CAM solution hyperMILL® Version 2014.1 at their local distributor’s stand – PT Jaya Metal Teknika. The CAM system hyperMILL® is the ideal link between design and manufacturing. Its machining strategies comprehensively exhaust the possibilities of modern machining centres. OPEN MIND will present a visualisation solution with the new hyperMILL® ShopViewer in Surabaya. Manufacturing processes can be checked and simulated next to the milling centre on the monitor. hyperMILL® ShopViewer noticeably improves the traceability of the manufacturing process with display, analysis and documentation of processed CAD/CAM data in the workshop. Optimized CAD for CAM users There are more new features in hyperCAD®-S, the CAD section of the CAM Suite: The "deformation" module for the targeted deformation of geometries is a powerful modification tool. It allows the global or local modification of component areas, which