Planet Metrics' rapid carbon modeling software may become a module in PTC InSight.

CAD and PLM vendors may discovered a new goldmine: environmental impact assessment (also known as lifecycle assessment, LCA in short). Last year, both Autodesk and SolidWorks made advances by striking up partnerships with firms already established in the new frontier. Autodesk’s collaboration with Sustainable Minds brought about a way for Autodesk Inventor users to analyze a product’s environmental impact from an exported bill of materials (BOM). SolidWorks’ agreement with PE International gave birth to SolidWorks Sustainability Xpress.

The latest one to ride into town is PTC. With its acquisition of Planet Metric, the company vows to expand its InSight product line, made possible by its previous acquisition of Relex (June 2009). InSight remains an independent PTC product, apart from its two other project lines (Pro/ENGINEER for mechanical design and Windchill for lifecycle management).

“The core of PTC’s Insight Product Analytics solution is built upon delivering a suite of capabilities to enable bill of material (BOM) analysis for environmental performance, cost, and reliability,” PTC announces. “[Planet Metrics'] technology enables manufacturers and retailers to model, analyze, and optimize carbon emissions and energy use throughout the entire value chain, from concept to end-of-life. The Planet Metrics software includes an exhaustive, normalized database of environmental profiles and combines both analytics and intuitive heat map displays that make it easy to identify high-impact ‘hot spots’ in materials, packaging, supply chain, transportation, and disposal.”

“The science behind lifecycle assessment is complicated, often based on data that’s several years old” acknowledges Andrew Wertkin, PTC’s VP of product and technology. “It’s difficult to talk in absolutes. It takes a lot of work to get to the point where talking about [analysis results] in absolutes is even remotely possible. The idea [behind our acquisition] is to let customers quickly model parts, products, suppliers, so that they can analyze not just single parts but entire product lines.”

Planet Metrics’ offering for supply chain management, product innovation, and manufacturing is called Rapid Carbon Modeling, designed “to identify the emissions and energy tradeoffs of material substitutions and quantify embodied emissions and energy throughout the product lifecycle.”

Wertkin explains that PTC plans to deliver Planet Metrics’ features as a module inside InSight. “However, our customers, whether they’re using Windchill, MatrixOne (from Dassault Systemes), or Teamcenter (from Siemens PLM), will be able to take the results — what’s known as verdicts (did the project meet cost targets, sustainability targets, compliance?) — and load them to their PLM (product lifecycle management) systems, all the way down to CAD libraries.”

For more on this topic, read the following posts:

• “Sage Advice on Sustainability,” July 1, 2009
• “A Look at SolidWorks Sustainability Xpress (Or How Green is Homer Simpson’s Beer Can?),” Sep 3, 2009
• “Sliding into Sustainable Mindset: Test-Driving Sustainable Minds 1.0,” Nov 9, 2009

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Dassault's CEO Bernard Charles addresses the audience at SolidWorks World 2010.

A sneak peak of 3dswymer, a professional networking portal with social components.

In the SolidWorks community, Jeff Ray, John McEleney, and Jon Hirschtick are celebrities in their own rights. Users recognize the company’s current CEO (Ray) and his predecessors and cofounders (McEleney, Hirschtick) by sight. Should they come across one of them in the hallway or on an escalator at SolidWorks World, they’d introduce themselves, praise the enhancements they like in the latest release, and air their grievances about what they don’t. But Bernard Charles, the courtly Parisian CEO of Dassault Systemes, the man SolidWorks CEO Ray calls “my boss,” has long remained an enigma for SolidWorks users — till now.

This year, to introduce an electric vehicle they commissioned for the conference, Ray and Charles literally drove up to the stage together. Charles also demonstrated a feature in Dassault’s 3DVIA on iPhone, by instantly merging the 3D digital model of the electric car with a photo of the engineering team and Ray.

“We’re expanding the role of SolidWorks from the initial promise … where we said 3D mechanical desktop on every professional desk. Now it’s 3D for professionals. We’re broadening the scope and we will continue to expand the portfolio of SolidWorks …,” said Charles.

Charles has been running Dassault, a household name in PLM (product lifecycle management), since 1995. He was responsible for engineering the acquisition of SolidWorks. He’s a firm believer in the power of social networking, crowd sourcing, cloud computing, and virtual universes (3DVIA Scenes, a Dassault product now in public beta, lets you create virtual environments that mimic Second Life for commercial and professional purposes). Right or wrong, his vision might invite snicker and scorn from some hardcore engineers.

Even though SolidWorks has been a subsidiary of Dassault since June 1997, Dassault let SolidWorks run its own affairs like an autonomous company. Charles’ appearance at SolidWorks World foretells an initiative to bring together Dassault’s style with SolidWorks’ tradition — something that makes certain SolidWorks users uneasy.

Professionally Linked, Socially Connected
As the conference drew to a close, Ray once again took the stage for his final keynote. “We will be delivering more new technologies in the next two and a half years than we have in the last 15 years,” he vowed, “but we’ll do it in a way that respects the way you design.”

One of those you can look forward to is a web-based bridge (through the cloud, as it were) to connect SolidWorks to Dassault’s ENOVIA V6, a collaboration platform. The approach is expected to eliminate some of the awkwardness and frustrations associated with communicating design changes via emails.

SolidWorks PLM is to be augmented with online services. The first to be released is SolidWorks Product Data Sharing. Equipped with a thin client as well as SolidWorks-integrated access, the system bypasses the need to copy files onto a shared server in order to collaborate. Instead, users log into a secure workspace, hosted on the web. (The workflow is similar to what can be done with Vuuch, a SolidWorks plug-in developed by former CEO of Seemage.)

SolidWorks Product Data Sharing also solves the collaboration conundrum between those who have SolidWorks installed in their machines and those who don’t. For the latter, the system displays assembly information in a dynamic (expandable, collapsible) assembly tree, complete with thumbnails for each sub-assemblies.

Beyond formal file exchanges, SolidWorks PLM may also be reinforced with social networking features, facilitated via a new platform called 3dswymer (currently in private beta). Complete with real-time news feeds, articles, blogs, 3D visualization windows, and user profiles, the portal appears to be put together with many features currently found on Dassault’s 3DVIA.com and SolidWorks’ 3D Content Central, with elements of YouTube and Facebook thrown in for good measure.

Can’t Stand Still
“We cannot afford to stand still at a time like this,” said Ray in his closing talk. “This is no time to relax and take it easy, not time to give up and wait for this economy to turn around. We have no choice but to get more committed to delivering great technologies and support for you … we’re not standing still; we’re committed to continue to make a difference.”

In the last few years, as Autodesk and Siemens forge ahead with their own versions of direct modeling and Mac-compatibility, as PTC advocates social product development as the new approach to PLM, the silence from SolidWorks at times seems almost deliberate. Some industry watchers, too, begin to wonder if SolidWorks has grown stagnant, has become too accustomed to doing things the way it has always done.

The technologies previewed at SolidWorks World 2010 reassure dedicated fans that the company is getting ready to kick into high gear. To those hardcore SolidWorks fans who are concerned that Dassault’s involvement may deprive their beloved company of independence, perhaps it’s worth noting that, when the two CEOs drove up to the stage together, SolidWorks’ Ray was in the driver seat.

For more, read “Part One: SolidWorks on Mac, in Cloud, with Direct Modeling, Coming to a Future Near You.”

For more pictures, visit DE’s Facebook fan page here.

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An estimated 5,000 packed the arena in Anaheim Convention Center to hear SolidWorks CEO Jeff Ray's openning keynote.

SolidWorks CEO Jeff Ray took the stage to welcome SolidWorks fans.

At 8 AM on Monday morning, SolidWorks CEO Jeff Ray took the stage inside the 7,500-seat arena at Anaheim Convention Center, to be greeted by an an estimated 5,000 SolidWorks fans. Two quarters into the breakout session, he revealed what SolidWorks users could expect to take advantage of in the not-so-distant future: “things like cloud and online computing, things like multi-touch devices … netbooks, mobile [devices], and Mac — yes, Mac!”

Clearly, he hit a nerve. The spontaneous applause that erupted in the audience was louder and longer than the initial one he received when he first walked in.

What About Mac?
Earlier, as Ray shared the stage with Dassault Systemes CEO Bernard Charles (”my boss,” as Ray called him), a mysterious machine sat on the podium, shrouded in mystery. When the time came, Ray literally unveiled a Mac, prompting a few gasps and a round of cheers from the audience.

The demo that followed showed a newer version of SolidWorks (sporting an interface that’s significantly different from current versions in the market) running in Mac OS. It wasn’t immediately clear if the prototype software code was written to run on Mac hardware in Mac OS as a native application, or if it was hosted on a remote server and made available via Internet protocols.

Later, Joe Dunne, SolidWorks’ director of technical marketing, confirmed, “We’re working on several concepts. One of the concepts is definitely running SolidWorks as a native Mac app, in addition to the no-install (browser-based) version … So you can run it on a Mac or run on a Mac machine using a browser — take your pick.”

By definition, cloud computing solutions don’t rely on a user’s hardware or OS to deliver the required functions (hence the popular term Software as a Service). A web-hosted CAD modeler is bound to be accessible to both Windows and Mac users, but addressing the demand for Mac-compatible CAD in such a fashion may not fully satisfy dedicated Mac fans, because this approach doesn’t take advantage of Apple’s hardware and OS.

SolidWorks technical marketing director Joe Dunne, before a screen that promises SolidWorks for Mac users. (Note the Mac machine on stage.)

Going from Desktop to Cloud in Three Years
As Ray recalled, three years ago, he issued a mandate to the SolidWorks research and development (R&D) team. “I want you to get us ready, to be able to provide a technology preview to our customers to show them how these new technologies [cloud computing, mobile devices, touch-sensitive devices, Mac] will help them solve their everyday problems … things that drive you nuts, like installs and updates, speed and reliability.” The first tangible proof of things to come, Ray estimated, would a “cloud-based product that starts shipping later this year.”

Oleg Shilovitsky, who maintains the Daily PLM Think Tank blog (focuses on product lifecycle management), pointed out, “Computational problems could no longer be solved just by increasing hardware, so renting computational power [delivered] in the cloud and paying for the time you use it” may emerge as one of the business model among productivity software providers.

Though most mid-range and high-end MCAD programs today offer stress analysis and some simulation features, users tend to perform these operations judiciously because of the drain of computing power associated with them. “But if the cost of computational power is cheap, it could change the way we think about these [higher-end] computing functions,” Shilovitsky pointed out.

Cloud computing promises computing-intense operations (analysis, rendering, and simulation, for example) could be made available for micro payment, with no additional hardware investment other than a standard browser. When this practice becomes widespread, as Shilovitsky predicted, users may not think twice about running an analysis or simulation session.

Direct modeling handles, in a future version of SolidWorks.

Push-pull modeling paradigm set to get more robust in the near future.

Joining the March Towards Direct Modeling
On stage, during the preview, SolidWorks’ R&D team impressed the audience with dynamic modeling and editing capabilities that went far beyond what was currently possible with SolidWorks Instant3D. Dunne said, “We’re looking at combining direct modeling and parametric editing … everyone has their own approach to it. What they didn’t do is write from scratch. We decided that’s what we’re going to do in ours.”

Dunne wasn’t prepared to go into greater details about how the new modeling approach might work with the modeling kernel SolidWorks currently uses.

In the last three to four years, SolidWorks has remained quiet on its strategy on direct modeling while its competitors roll out a series of products and proofs of concept to address this (most notably, Autodesk’s Inventor Fusion and Siemens PLM Software’s Synchronous Technology).

News of SolidWorks’ exploration of direct modeling may come as a relief to some users who see this method as an easier, faster way of working. On the other hands, hardcore parametric modeling fans may treat this with some concerns. Either way, as more vendors have begun embracing direct modeling, SolidWorks has little choice but to join the race, or risk becoming a latecomer.

For more photos from the conference, visit Desktop Engineering’s Facebook fan page.

For more on the conference, read “Part Two: SolidWorks PLM, by way of 3DVIA and ENOVIA.”

For my interview with stereoscopic display technology developer Infinite Z, conducted on behalf of SolidJott, watch the YouTube clip below:

More reports from the show floor coming later.

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Diagram of the Blue Twilight robot's kicking mechanism.

3D view of the kicking mechanism.

Rendered view of the kicking mechanism.

On January 9, Alex Anderson and his teammates from Blue Twilight were among a crowd of 1,500 that had assembled inside University of Minnesota’s Northrop Auditorium, shouting and cheering like the teenage mob that once greeted The Beatles in their American debut on the Ed Sullivan show. But the source of thrill for Alex and his friends weren’t music; it was heavy metal.

The date marked the official start of Minnesota FIRST Regionals, eagerly awaited by FIRST Robotic Competition team members, their fans, parents, and mentors. This year, kick off is more than a figure of speech, because the challenge is “Soccer with a Twist.” As seen in the demonstration clip below (from FIRSTWorldTube channel on YouTube), each team must attempt to score by kicking, rolling, and shooting a standard soccer ball into designated goals.

According to the official rules of the breakaway (April 1-3), the contest involves an “autonomous period, a two-minute ‘teleoperated’ period, where human players control the robots to score points, and a 20-second ‘finale’ period, where the robots will attempt to climb a ramp or hang above the playing field.” Needless to say, the kicking mechanism will play a critical role in each robot.

Ed Anderson, Alex’s dad and the team’s CAD mentor, observed, “Since the bumper can be a certain range of heights above the ground, and the ball is allowed to go under the bottom of the bumper to a maximum penetration of six inches, we reasoned that at maximum penetration, the maximum elevation we can put on the ball as we kick it is determined by the bottom edge of the bumper.  To determine that elevation, we needed to plot a line tangent to the ball and coincident with the foremost bottom corner of the bumper, then calculate that line’s angle from horizontal. [PTC's] Pro/ENGINEER [the team's choice of CAD] did all the heavy lifting for us, and when we raised or lowered the bumper, it steepened or shallowed the angle automatically also, so we could get immediate feedback on our possible kick angle.”

When Alex needed help animating the kicking mechanism, he contacted Todd Kraft from PTC, who, as Ed remembered, “was incredibly helpful” in visualizing “what the actual kicking surface would look like.”

In the team’s blog, the last update (Jan 23)  reads, “Lots of team parents volunteered and started cutting the wood needed to build the field for this years game, Breakaway … Things in the other groups are still progressing smoothly, and everyone is optimistic and working hard.”

To view a photographic chronicle of the team, go to Desktop Engineering’s Facebook fan page.

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Autodesk Project Butterfly flutters towards cloud computing, or CAD in a browser window.

Need to edit, review, annotate, or share DWG files? Don’t bother launching AutoCAD. Just launch Internet Explorer or Mozilla Firefox.

Last week, Autodesk Project Butterfly took flight, fluttering towards the computing cloud to join its cousin Project Twitch. Like its predecessor, Project Butterfly teases us with the the promise of browser-based CAD. According to Amjad Hanif, Autodesk’s senior director of product management for emerging products, nearly 4,500 people rode on the wings of Butterfly during the week it emerged from the development cocoon.

Made possible by Autodesk’s acquisition of VisualTao, Project Butterfly lets you upload a DWG file into a remote server, then edit, annotate, and review it with a number of collaborators. The preview code is stable and easy to run. It works like a simplified version of AutoCAD or AutoCAD LT embedded inside a browser window. Familiar commands and functions — zoom extent, rectangle select, polyline, to name but a few — are arranged in the ribbon-bar menu. The absence of File > New suggests that, at least in this early stage, the technology is not recommended for creating a drawing from scratch; it’s better suited for editing, redlining, and annotation.

While snapping to the objects’ corners or edges is relatively easy, snapping to midpoints of lines or centers of arcs proves challenging, because inference lines (the dotted lines that automatically appear to guide you with your placements in AutoCAD and AutoCAD LT) don’t always appear.

In my test run, I encountered a few noticeable moments of latency, especially when executing higher-level commands like Mirror or Scale. (The delayed response made the mouse seems sticky.) Hanif said studying the latency issue is a priority for the development team.

To test out the co-editing function, I teamed up with DEVELOP3D’s Martyn Day, a fellow CAD reporter. Most viewing and markup programs facilitate collaboration sessions involving more than one user, but they generally let one user control the session while others remain idle (that is, one person edits while the others watch). By contrast, Butterfly lets both Martyn and I edit the same drawing simultaneously.

Butterfly is a technology still in metamorphosis, so subsequent updates are destined to be nimbler and faster. In time, it may develop into a new specie of CAD, free to float in the cloud and land on a browser upon request, unencumbered by hardware requirements.

For more, watch the video clip below (where Martyn Day put in a cameo appearance in the form of a gray mouse).

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Two weeks after its settlement with Autodesk in the civil case stemming from its use of DWG, SolidWorks gives up its DWG-related trademarks.

Two weeks after its settlement with Autodesk in the legal wrestle over DWG, SolidWorks is giving up its DWG-related trademarks.

Yesterday, SolidWorks filed papers with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office’s Trademark Trial and Appeal Board (TTAB) to withdraw its application for DWGgateway trademark and surrender its DWGeditor trademark. Furthermore, it withdrew its opposition to Autodesk’s applications for DWGX and RealDWG trademarks (records available at the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board’s online inquiry system).

SolidWork’s retreat leaves Autodesk with near-exclusive right to the use of DWG.

What About ODA?
In January 2007, Autodesk’s filed a petition against ODA with the TTAB to cancel ODA’s DWG-related trademarks (specifically, OpenDWG) on the ground that DWG is “[Autodesk's] name for the proprietary file format and technology underlying many of its key computer-assisted design (CAD) software products …” Therefore, Autodesk reasoned, “The Registrations [of DWG-related terms as ODA trademarks] have resulted in and will continue to result in confusion in the trade and in the public. Petitioner [Autodesk] has been and will be damaged by the Registrations because, among other things, Petitioner uses a variety of DWG-related names and trademarks with similar goods and services …” (excerpt from papers at TTAB’s archive).

When Autodesk’s civil case against SolidWorks went on trial, Autodesk’s case against ODA before the TTAB was suspended, pending outcome from the former. Now that the civil case has come to an end, the trademark case against ODA must resume.

Over the years, ODA has been gradually expanding its business beyond its initial emphasis on DWG. In 2003, ODA officially changed its name from OpenDWG Alliance to Open Design Alliance. But a significant portion of its members rely on having access to ODA’s reverse-engineered DWG libraries to develop DWG-compatible software products.

Expressing his personal view, ODA president Arnold van der Weide said, “I think what we should do is stop litigating and resolve our issues through normal discussions instead.” Despite the distraction of the trademark case against his company, van der Weide said ODA membership is growing.

Autodesk’s Official DWG Policy
Autodesk’s guideline for legal notices and trademark gives you a good idea of how the company feels DWG should — and should not — be used:

DWG has served and now serves as an Autodesk trademark. Autodesk has never precluded, and does not seek to preclude others from either using .dwg as a file extension or from making software that is compatible with the Autodesk DWG file format. The status of DWG as an Autodesk trademark means, however, that certain uses by others of DWG as a brand, without prior permission from Autodesk, are not permissible.

For Autodesk’s official words about the settlement, read the announcement here.

For background, also read “Open Design Alliance Caught in the Autodesk-SolidWorks Legal Tangle,” July 13, 2009.

For court documents from this case, visit CAD/Court, a site devoted to tracking technology-related lawsuits.

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The series of figures above, submitted alongside Apple's patent application, gives clues on how the technology would work.

Apple wants you to use your head more — quite literally.

On December 17, the company filed a patent for “Systems and methods for adjusting a display based on the user’s position” (US patent application #20090313584). It’s described as “an electronic device for providing a display that changes based on the user’s perspective … For example, the electronic device may include a camera operative to detect the position of the user’s head. Using the detected position, the electronic device may be operative to transform displayed objects such that the displayed perspective reflects the detected position of the user.”

Technology blogger Houston Neal (Manufacturing Software Advice) points out Apple could easily use iSight camera, incorporated into many Mac machines, to facilitate this head-turning technology.

“Using [Apple's new technology] for computer-aided drafting/manufacturing seems like the logical application,” he observed. “Of course with further development, it could be used in other types of programs and in other industries (architecture, building information modeling, health care).”

In essence, Apple’s technology could make it possible for you to rotate, zoom, pan, and tumble your 3D CAD models in PTC Pro/ENGINEER, Autodesk Inventor, or SolidWorks simply by tilting or turning your head.

After years of near-exclusive focus on Windows platform, some CAD software developers are turning their attention to Mac OS. Autodesk is publicly entertaining the idea of AutoCAD on Mac (April 2009). Siemens PLM Software has already released its high-end CAD package NX for Mac (June 2009). If Apple’s technology comes to fruition, it will give other CAD developers one more reason — and a strong one at that — to take a serious look at the Mac platform.

Neal created the video clip below to demonstrate how Apple’s technology might work (note that it’s a mock-up, not a real demonstration of Apple’s patent-pending technology):

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An assembly design loaded in Pro/ENGINEER Wildfire 5.0, the latest release featuring dynamic editing.

The digital manikin in Pro/E Wildfire 5.0.

You may use the digital manikin (which I nicknamed Bob) to verify line of sight and ergonomics.

In release 5.0, PTC’s flagship MCAD package Pro/ENGINEER Wildfire takes on some of the characteristics of its direct-modeling cousin CoCreate (PTC acquired the company and the software in December 2007). The new release marks the debut of Dynamic Edit, or what many of us now refer to as push-pull modeling. But at its core, Wildfire 5.0 remains a parametric program.

The other noteworthy addition is a digital manikin, which I nicknamed Bob for easy reference. If you routinely work with heavy machinery, you may use Bob to verify clearance, ergonomics, and accessibility (for example, making sure Bob doesn’t need to be in an uncomfortable pose to operate a certain lever or control panel). To use Bob as a fully functional feature, you need a Pro/E manikin license.

The two-part video review below provides more details on Bob and other new features in Wildfire 5.0. For more, wait for the print review of the software, set to appear in an issue of Desktop Engineering soon.

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Is SolidWorks infringing on Autodesk's DWG trademark with these logos? That was one of the issues a jury would have deliberated if the two sides hadn't settled their case.

On Tuesday morning, a crowd of more than 30 potential jurors walked into a courtroom in San Francisco to weigh in on the fate of three letters: DWG.

To be precise, they’d been summoned there to decide on case 3:08-cv-04397-WHA, in which Autodesk alleged SolidWorks of unfair competition, false advertising, trademark infringement, unfair business practices, and a whole lot more.

“Design software users associate DWG with Autodesk and its successful software products,” Autodesk argued in its original complaint (filed in September 2008). Therefore, the company feels its rival SolidWorks is “seeking to trade off of or undermine Autodesk’s accumulated goodwill … by using the term DWG in product names, domain names, and associated websites [such as DWGseries.com, DWGnavigator.com, and DWGgateway.com] …”

As it turned out, a jury was not needed. At 20 minutes past midnight, the lawyers from both sides came to an agreement to settle the case. Perhaps it was a wise move on Autodesk’s part. By settling the case, Autodesk avoided the risk involved in letting the Court decide whether it has exclusive right over its cherished DWG.

Legal Maneuvers
In a memorandum issued on December 31, 2009, the presiding judge, William Alsup, noted “a main issue was whether plaintiff Autodesk, Inc. has a common law trademark in ‘DWG.’ ”

SolidWorks argued “trademark law is meant to promote competition by protecting a firm’s reputation, and not to inhibit competition by allowing a trademark owner to control and monopolize a useful and functional product feature.” Since Autodesk uses .dwg as a file extention (in other words, a functional feature), according to SolidWorks, “no trademark rights were possible.” Alsup noted, “there was considerable force to this argument.”

Autodesk narrowed the scope of its the claim by insisting it was seeking “trademark protection only for [DWG's] use as a word mark — namely, to have exclusive use of ‘DWG’ in packaging, advertising, and marketing materials used in connection with the sale of its goods and services.”

So what if SolidWorks — or anybody else, for that matter — uses DWG as a file extension? The judge felt necessary to get clarification from Autodesk. Hence, the following exchange, as recorded in Alsup’s memorandum.

Will You Disavow?

THE COURT: … Will you disavow, from here to eternity and for the rest of the universe, that the world has a right to use .dwg as a file extension, and you’re not going to try to assert, here or anywhere else, that that use as a file extension violates any law?

MR. SABRI [Autodesk's lawyer]: Your Honor, it may be the case it violates patent law. We’re not addressing that today. I will state –

THE COURT: … If you are trying to monopolize .dwg, you and your company are in big trouble.

MR. SABRI: We absolutely are not, your Honor.

THE COURT: Well, then disavow it.

MR. SABRI: Autodesk cannot –

THE COURT: You’re not disavowing it?

MR. SABRI: I am disavowing it, your Honor. Autodesk cannot state claims against functional uses of .dwg, and the distinction between a word mark DWG and the functional uses I believe will be very clear by this presentation.

THE COURT: I want to hear you say we disavow it.

MR. SABRI: We disavow any claims against functional uses of the .dwg, your Honor.

In Alsup’s view, “No one has ownership of file extension designations … because such designations are inherently functional. Any programmer or computer user anywhere is free to designate file extensions as they see fit, without worrying about trademark violations.”

Unsettled Settlement
In the words of Zusha Elinson, a reporter for the legal website Law.com, the judge was “less than thrilled with the parties’ stipulation as part of the agreement that the court had held the trademark valid.” He asked the attorneys to rewrite the agreement on the fly.

The final agreement, filed on January 5, states, “The parties stipulate that the letter string ‘DWG’ is a valid trademark owned by Autodesk for computer-aided design (CAD) software and related services … the Court will enforce the stipulation between the parties without adjudicating the issue on the merits … All other claims and counterclaims are dismissed with prejudice, including Autodesk’s claim that SolidWorks has engaged in false advertising or unfair competition … the dismissal of a claim under this paragraph shall not be deemed an adjudication of the merits of such claim.”

In other words, the parties had come to an agreement between them that the trademark for DWG belongs to Autodesk, but the Court did not rule on the merit of this claim. Aside from this brief stipulation, the terms of their settlement remain confidential.

For clues to the nature of their settlement, we may wait and see if SolidWorks begins removing DWG from its domain names and marketing literature. If you’re using .dwg as a file extension, you can be reasonably certain Autodesk cannot come after you for trademark infringement, because you have Honorable William Alsup’s memorandum on your side.

But what if you use DWG in other manners, for example, in product branding? Does that amount to trademark infringement legally? The jury is still out — quite literally — as the settlement prevents it from weighing in on the issue in this case.

For Autodesk’s official words about the settlement, read the announcement here.

For background, also read “Open Design Alliance Caught in the Autodesk-SolidWorks Legal Tangle,” July 13, 2009.

For court documents from this case, visit CAD/Court, a site devoted to tracking technology-related lawsuits.

For more, read Zusha Elinson’s report on the final day of the trial at Law.com.

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DE contributing editor Kenneth Wong's mug shot, for being caught red-handed with a Sonoma red HP Mini 210.

Mini PCs that can recognize an owner’s face, tablet PCs with engraved aluminum display panels, workstations with ready-to-use video conferencing software — these are just a few of of the new toys with which HP plans to entice you this year. By the time you’re reading this, many of them might be on the way to Las Vegas in crates and cardboard boxes, getting ready to greet you on the exhibit floor of 2010 CES (Jan 7-10).

Bite-Size PCs
The resurgence of netbooks prompted HP to think small. Available in black crystal, Sonoma red, or Pacific blue, the new HP Mini 210, 2102, and 5102 weighs less than 3 lbs each. While 210 (starting $299) is described as a “companion PC for consumers,” 2102 (starting $329) is listed as “ideal for mobile professionals.” 5102 (starting $399) is HP’s first touch-enabled netbook. Less than one-inch thick, they make sleek, slim eye candies. Intel Atom CPUs and HD screens give these bite-size machines impressive processing power and visual experience.

For security, you may rely on the built-in face recognition software. When this feature is activated, critical points on your face (for example, the distance between your pupils, the tip of your nose, and your lips) act like password. The stubborn mini will refuse to unlock itself if the face it sees in the integrated camera is an unauthorized user. But if you’re the paranoid type that think even that’s not secure enough (perhaps you worry that someone might trick the software with a photograph), you can combine it with password protection.

The minis come with HP CloudDrive software so you can deposit your documents in virtual storage. It also comes with HP QuickSync software so you can synchronize it with your primary PC. If you’re planning to be away from sockets and outlets, you can have up to 10 hours of battery life.

HP Mini 210 in Sonoma red

An Illustrated Touch
HP TouchSmart tm2 (starting $949) is an upgrade of the HP tx2. The new touch-enabled tablet is clearly designed to appeal to those with a sense of aesthetics. It’s decorated with swirling patterns (dubbed Riptide) on the back of its rotatable, reversible display panel. The protective sleeve features matching design. You can use it either as a notebook or a sketch pad. In case of the latter, you may use the preloaded Corel Paint it! Touch software to paint with your fingertips, right on the touch-sensitive HD display. In photo editing and image sorting applications, you may use your fingers to zoom, pan, and rotate. Its processing power comes from an Intel Core 2 Duo chip, reinforced by an ATI Mobility Radeon card.

HP TouchSmart tm2 tablet PC with engraved Riptide patterns

Notable Notebooks
The new lineup features HP ProBook 6440b/6540b (starting $949) and HP EliteBook (starting $1,249). Available with 14-inch or 15-inch display, ProBook comes with a 2 MP Webcam and spill-resistant keyboard. EliteBook is built to meet military-standard durability tests and preloaded with HP SkyRoom video-conferencing software. For graphics, you can choose Intel Unified Mobile Access (UMA) or NVIDIA cards.

HP ProBook 6540b featuring Intel Core i7

Workhorse
Conforming to the skittish consumers’ frugality, HP meets them with an entry-level workstation, HP Z200 (starting $769, available in February). It’s aimed at “small business segments with engineers and designers using Autodesk AutoCAD, photographers using Adobe Photoshop, and power office users,” according to HP’s spec sheet. It runs on Intel Core dual-core processors or Intel Xeon quad-core. The tool-free chassis lets you open up the unit to service it or upgrade it without fidgeting with screwdrivers. Expanded PCIe, FireWire, a whopping 11 USB slots, SATA, eSATA, storage bays, and an optional Blu-Ray writer round out the setup.

HP Z200 workstation running Pro/ENGINEER

Energy and Environment
Social and environmental consciousness is evidently the new principle in HP’s product development. ProBook comes with HP Power Assistant to let you know how much power you’re consuming. TouchSmarth tm2 is supposedly BFR/PCV-free, as part of HP’s move  to eliminate “all uses of brominated flame retardants (BFRs) and polyvinyl chloride (PVC) in its computing products by 2011.” The workstation Z200 boasts “ENERGY STAR 5.0 qualification, 89% efficient power supplies, and HP WattSaver technology, which, when activated, consumes less than 1 watt in off mode.”

In many of its packaging, HP declares it now uses “molded pulp,” made of completely recycled content from post-consumer and industrial-paper materials. It also plans to use “plastic pallets for consumer and commercial freight shipments, which reduce CO2 emissions by reducing weight.”

A complete lineup of this launch is listed below with starting prices:

• HP TouchSmart tm2 ($949, available now)
• HP Mini 210, 2102, 5102 ($299, $329, $399 respectively, available now)
• HP ProBook 6440b, 6540b Notebook PCs ($949, available now)
• HP EliteBook Notebook PCs ($1,099-$1,499, available now)
• HP Pavillion Elite HPE (price unknown, available now)
• HP Compaq 8000f Elite Business PC ($849, available February)
• HP Compaq 8100 Elite Business PC ($849, available February)
• HP Compaq 8000 Elite Business PC ($799, available now)
• HP Z200 Workstation ($769, available February)
• HP ZR22w and HP ZR24w Performance Displays ($289-$425, available February)
• HP Compaq LE19f and HP Compaq LA22f Widescreen LCDs ($179, available February)
• HP Compaq L2105tm 21.5-inch Widescreen Touch Monitor ($299, available now)

For more, watch the slide show below (hover your mouse over image and click on “info” to see caption) or see the photo album at DE’s fan page on Facebook.

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