cad

As soon as Google purchased Sketchup it was obvious that a free version would soon emerge for the mass market (Windows only at the moment). From Google's perspective it is really useful for them to have their 'virtual world' (Google Earth/Maps) populated with user-created 3D models. The best tool for the average Joe when it comes to doing this is SketchUp. My guess is the ulitimate goal from Google's perspective will be to have elements SketchUp embedded within Google Earth so that general users can quickly and seamlessly add their own 3D data whilst using Google Earth. Whether or not this happens or whether users take up the challenge and recreate their 3D world within Google is uncertain but one thing that is for sure is that 'free' SketchUp will really shake-up the relatively stagnant CAD market space.

Architosh and CADwire have feature reviews of Acrobat 3D and I must say it sounds really, really good. I am big fan of the PDF standard but not of recent Adobe Acrobat releases (the term 'bloatware' springs to mind). When I first heard that Adobe where planning on including 3D support in Acrobat I assumed it would be a token gesture in order to differentiate it from its 2D PDF competitors like Foxit (my favourite Windows pdf reader). I began to change my mind and think it was something a little more serious when AutoDesk suddenly seemed to get very anti-PDF when it came to exchanging building information. 

Reading the reviews of Acrobat 3D I can see why the people at AutoDesk seemed so worried, it has one major killer feature that really sets it apart from all the competition, a 'print screen' equivalent for 3D models. This 3D importing feature does not work at the software application level like most data importers, it skips all the difficulties associated with data format translation and plucks the 3D information directly out of the OpenGL buffer. This is a really intelligent move from Adobe, it gives their product a degree of model importing support perhaps only rivaled by Right Hemisphere.

Rachel Dalton-Taggart has posted some 2006 predictions for the CAD industry. Blog use will grow, 3D will continue to be adopted at a snails pace, Adobe may begin a flirt into the 3D market and more software companies will move their software back to the Mac thanks to its growning popularity. I think the first two are pretty good, Adobe will be too busy integrating Macromedia into their product lineup and combating competing software from Apple and Microsoft. As for Mac migration it would be nice to see but unforunately AutoDesk and now Bentley are firmly entrenched in Microsoft's proprietary DirectX API and Graphisoft did not even bother showing up to MacWorld 2006 this year for the second time in a row.