Cadalyst - October 2008 - (Page 10)

cadcentral PTC Dodges ‘For Sale’ Rumors Not too long ago, PTC, makers of Pro/ENGINEER and Windchill, paid $250 million to snatch up CoCreate, known for its freeform modeling product OneSpace. But soon the tables could turn. A Financial Times report surfaced in September, indicating PTC has hired a financial institution to woo potential buyers. According to the article, the asking price is more than $2 billion, and the matchmaker is none other than investment banking firm Goldman Sachs. In June, Boston Business Journal reported that PTC agreed to a changein-control policy that promised the top executives an additional $1.9 million if the company were acquired. In CIMdata’s latest product lifecycle management (PLM) market report for 2008, PTC remained one of the five leading solution providers when ranked by 2007 revenues and market share. When contacted to verify the Financial Times story, PTC’s press office responded that the company doesn’t comment on its merger and acquisitions strategy. When asked to address the article at Deutsche Bank’s Technology Conference (September 9, Palace Hotel, San Francisco, California), Bill Berutti, PTC’s senior vice-president of corporate development, said, “Things get printed in publications all the time. As a public company, I can’t really comment on it, but our shares are always available for purchase.” UGS, a PTC rival, was acquired in May 2007 by Siemens Automation and Drives, a division of the Germanybased industrial titan Siemens AG. If news of PTC’s search for a buyer turns out to be true, the company might be of interest to Siemens AG rivals as well as a number of enterprise software giants eyeing the PLM market. By Kenneth Wong and Cadalyst editors New Cadalyst Blog: ‘Kenneth Wong on CAD’ Cadalyst announces “Kenneth Wong on CAD,” a new blog by executive editor Wong. Wellknown for his insightful, intelligent coverage of the CAD community, Wong invites readers to help shape Cadalyst’s online and print content and, in some cases, become part of the stories. He provides periodic updates about the news items he’s pursuing, gauges the readers’ interest in the topics, and incorporates their views into his writing. “Kenneth Wong on CAD,” at www.cadalyst.com/kw, also monitors the social and technological trends that can potentially alter the way CAD users live, work, and think. Wong offers his personal views on a range of subjects, from CAD vendors’ dalliances with emerging virtual worlds to the controversial remarks he overhears at industry events. Struc-Soft Struck by Bentley What do you do with a reseller that’s doing a good job? If you’re Bentley Systems, you buy it. In August, Bentley acquired Struc-Soft Inc., its exclusive North American reseller of ProSteel 3D. Montreal-based Struc-Soft sells not only Bentley products but also Autodesk products, including AutoCAD and AutoCAD LT. George Ajami, cofounder of Struc-Soft, Struc-Soft, Bentley’s exclusive reseller of ProSteel 3D, anticipated it would explained, “We anticipated this [Bentley’s become Bentley’s merger-andacquisition] might happen, so we split the acquisition target. company into two legal entities: Struc-Soft Inc. and StrucSoft Solutions.” When Bentley bought ProSteel 3D’s original developer, KIWI Software, in 2007, Struc-Soft began planning for the possibility that it too might become a mergerand-acquisition target for Bentley. At the time, Bentley and Autodesk were fierce rivals, so Struc-Soft’s management reasoned that, even if Bentley wasn’t interested in acquiring Struc-Soft, dividing the company into two entities would minimize conflicts in selling both Bentley and Autodesk products. Whereas Struc-Soft Inc. now concentrates on distributing and supporting ProSteel 3D under the Bentley brand, StrucSoft Solutions will focus on wood and light cage constructions. “StrucSoft Solutions will continue to sell and support Autodesk products,” said Ajami. “I must say, the portion of the company Bentley bought is the slightly bigger one, with about 60% of the resources.” Ajami has been named Bentley’s director of global structural professional services. Bentley and Autodesk remain business rivals, but the companies also have chosen to strike a mutually benefiting partnership to promote DWG interoperability among their products. Cadalyst Updates Benchmark Test The Cadalyst benchmark is designed to test and compare the performance of systems running AutoCAD. Cadalyst recently updated the C2008 benchmark to reflect the new 3D capabilities of AutoCAD. The previous benchmark ran the 3D models through four types of rendering: 3D wireframe, hidden, flat, and Gouraud. The new version, C2008 v5.1, matches the four visual styles used with the 3DRotate command: 3D wireframe, hidden, conceptual, and realistic. C2008 v5.1 is designed to work with AutoCAD 2008 and later. Learn more and download the Cadalyst benchmark at www.cadalyst.com/benchmark. 10 www.cadalyst.com cadalyst October 2008 http://www.cadalyst.com/kw http://www.cadalyst.com/benchmark http://www.cadalyst.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Cadalyst - October 2008

Cadalyst - October 2008 Contents Editor’s Window Cad Central SimCity for Real Designs Spring to Life — 3D Publishing Tools Make File Sharing as Easy as Opening a Book Xi MTower 2P64X — Dual Quad-Core Workstation ArchiCAD 12 — BIM Software Dell Precision M6300 — High-End Mobile Workstation Cad Manager Mcad Modeling Aec Insight Cad Cartoon Issue Indexes Hot Tip Harry

Cadalyst - October 2008

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