Another diabolic conspiracy from the mind of Autodesk corporation?

Did anybody of you guys heard on this web site: http://www.spaceclaim.com/ ?

According to their contact information, they are located near SolidWorks
corporation headquarters in Concord, MA (the same street)! they have nothing
to offer on the site and the name sounds suspicious ( does it implies to
wasted space or vice versa?)
Sounds a little bit like an attempt to make a joke on the cost of
solidworks.

Hmmm.....I'm intrigued

Gil

 

well.........forget what I wrote folks..... according to Whois the domain
belongs to a domain wholesale firm which bought several Spaceclaim.***
domains.... I guess it is just a marketing trick, or isn't it?

Still I remain curious.....

 

No, It's for real. They are a startup cad company trying to rethink the
parametric process based way of modeling. Interesting concept, but I
haven't seen anything concrete from them yet. Mike Payne is involved,
if that name means anything to you.

 

Looks like the domain is owned by Blake Courter who at one point (maybe
still?) was the Director of MCAD Business Development for PTC.

 

See my response in the Rhino newsgroup.
Did anybody of you guys heard on this web site: http://www.spaceclaim.com/
?

According to their contact information, they are located near SolidWorks
corporation headquarters in Concord, MA (the same street)! they have nothing

to offer on the site and the name sounds suspicious ( does it implies to
wasted space or vice versa?)
Sounds a little bit like an attempt to make a joke on the cost of
solidworks.

Hmmm.....I'm intrigued

Gil

 

Matt,
I'm glad you corrected my impression......at the end it's all in my head,
and Autodesk is not lurking between the shadows

Although I have to state that bringing to the web such a web site, is a very
bizarre and unprofessional way to start a start-up (at least from my point
of view), but on the other hand what really counts, is the final product.

cheers,
Gil

 

Don't you read the posts from poor clueless?
It's the latest & greatest.
Even though he's only had nasty things to say about the people involved
in his prior name-dropping posts (when he got the names right <G>).
"Vector algebra" probably has him all confused.

 

I guess it is just a marketing trick, or isn't it?

It's a real software company, really developing design software. In
January I was introduced to a guy who eventually joined them in a
senior role. We keep in contact on and off.
Sorry about the vague answer - I do not know what I can say or cannot
say. I know that Rich has monitored here - Rich, care to pipe in? Let
them know about your gaols, niche, etc? Might be a great way to find
out what folks are looking for.

Things I feel OK saying:
1) it is real.
2) I know of some companies involved, and I have never heard anything
about AutoDesk (since that is brought up in a way that feels
negative... I think these folks should get a fair shake)

Now it's just me talking - I still think there is a great opportunity
in the CAD marketplace for someone to come out with a revolutionary
package (and this is not to say SpaceClaim is that package).
My design spider-sense says that the BREP can be replaced with
something else with fewer limitations and more design flexibility (but
creates manufacturable data unlike the tesselated solutions I know of).
I keep seeing, in my limited exposure, different interfaces that drive
the same underlying math (BREP or tesselated geometry). Of course,
others who walk circles around me when it comes to knowledge of
software cores might pipe in with other extant options.

Ed

 

Ed,
Thanks for clarifying me that this a real software start-up with a real
product goal. what I wrote was from pure ignorance, and the fact that I'm
not familiar with who is who in the CAD vendor field.

Their web site seemed to me very unprofessional and immature (the web site
has no concrete info to offer and on every page there is a sentence which
says "if you like to know more write to us an e-mail and we will give you
the specifics personally" + there is no demo to view or beta program to
participate in), so this is what rose my suspicion and lack of trust
worthiness in my point of view. but on the other hand it is only a web site,
so I guess I'm wrong, and should wait for the end product or at least to the
beta or demo to come out.

Thanks for correcting and enlightening me

Gil

 

Don't confuse BREP with other things, such as NURBS.
Most/many systems today are BREP (rather than CSG)
and use NURBS as well. Which seems fine.
A NURBS surface can be approximated by polygons but
polygons are almost never exact & the NURBS cannot
(AFAIK) be recalculated from a polygon mesh & assure
the same surface (in the general case). Huge cloud-of-points
problem just to begin with.

A NURBS surface can be interpolated to the compute precision
(or nearly so) of the system. A polygon mesh is interpolated to a
precision when created & that's that. It would also seem to use
a huge quantity of data & memory compared to a parent NURBS
(or other somewhat similar "true") surface.

A NURBS surface, while it does have limitations (hard to
approximate things like trig or exponential functions well,
which are nice analytics), does very well represent many
surfaces and also has the advantage of being translatable
to other systems & applications and having good chance
of remaining unaltered.

Try translating from system A to system B. Then from system
B to system A. If you get garbage back .... or cannot even
translate to begin with ....

 

I don't know much about the protocol of these startups, but I agree
with you that it doesn't look like it has much substance and would
likely have come to the same conclusion as you if it hadn't been for
the accident of an introduction in January.
They used to have some of their people on a page, but even that is gone
now.