Inventor and Alias: how is this relevant?

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Well, I’ve checked around, and it looks like Mr. Grabowski is the only one reporting Autodesk integrating Alias and Inventor. The first mention was actually a year ago. The second mention just this week, was more explicit. You have to scroll down to the Q&A section to see it, but there is a definite intention to make Inventor and Alias work together. Further news is that Autodesk has also acquired Mudbox, another shape concepting tool. Did they do that just to keep Dassault from getting it? CAD reporting is going to turn into a full-contact sport. Autodesk is getting nasty and doesn’t seem too concerned about letting it show.Bundling Alias with Inventor isn’t going to happen overnight, nor is it going to be cheap when it happens. The real question is what is going to happen to SolidWorks because of this? I’m sure that SolidWorks has known or anticipated this shotgun wedding between the ugly duckling Inventor and the beautiful swan Alias for some time. It would be just like Autodesk to take a leading product (Alias) and use it to prop up a wannabe (Inventor). Since Solidworks seems to be tied to Autodesk’s tail in many respects, it only seems natural that SW will retalliate. But how?

Just so you know, this is completely the product of my imagination. I haven’t received any special information from anyone. I’m just putting together pieces of the puzzle that are available to everyone. What we call a wag – wild ass guess. I’m not trying to affect wall street stock prices or giving away information, I’m just taking a completely uneducated guess. Cuz there’s gotta be something happening.The only software which is higher on the surfacing totem pole than Alias is Icem. Which is owned by Dassault, a recent acquisition, as a matter of fact. So, Where do you go with that? Does Icem loan out some of its technology to a new mid-priced tool to work with SW? Is there a version of SolidWorks bundled with full-on Icem that can actually handle class A styling? Is it simply a translation link between SW and Icem like the ones between SW and SurfaceWorks or SW and Rhino?

Did anyone catch Ricky Jordan’s recent post on Cosmic Blobs Pro? Cosmic Blobs is old news, and actually so is CB Pro, having been around for three years or more. Instead of thinking about Cosmic Blobs as a kids toy, which it actually is, why not think of it as a conceptual shape modeler? Not Alias, but maybe Maya-like (more like mesh modeler for game or animation characters). It’s not that much of a stretch. Not that there is any valid functional comparison between CB Pro and Maya or anything, even 3dsmax, but just comparing the ideas of shape concept modelers. SolidWorks seems to be actively doing something with the CB Pro line, it has a very active website and one guy who is simply fanatical.

Anyway, I would not be surprised to see something announced at SolidWorks World centered around shape concept modeling, and there are several directions in which this can go. Is SolidWorks going to continue in the CAD vein and create a new NURBS modeler somewhere between Rhino and Sketchup to compete with Alias? Or are they going to slip into that vague morass called “3D digital content creation” and make a mesh modeler to compete with the myriad other mesh modelers out there, but from a product development standpoint?

And beyond that? Who knows? SW won’t take this Alias-Inventor thing lying down, I’m sure of that. Even if they aren’t very concerned with fixing my curve-feature-absorbed-in-a-sweep-feature bugs, they know exactly what Adesk is doing, and they’re up to something.

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