NOVEDGE Blog

Greg Milliken is the CEO of Alibre. Greg is one of a kind — he has an impressive track record of success as an entrepreneur and executive in the CAD and 3D world. Greg can look at ideas with an open-minded curiosity, never taking anything for granted.  He is a very busy guy — it […]

Doug Halliday is the Business Development Manager specializing in manufacturing at Adobe. Doug's main focus is on Acrobat 3D and its applications for design and manufacturing. Recently he started a blog where he talks about Acrobat 3D and shares his experiences with the Acrobat users community. I first met Doug when, after posting my impressions […]

Victor Gonzalez is the CEO of Next Limit Technologies, a Spanish company known for the the famous Maxwell Render, a sophisticated rendering software based strictly on physical equations of light transport. After a long phase of beta testing, Maxwell Render enjoyed instant success upon its recent release. In order to know more about the company […]

As usual our monthly newsletter was sent out late at the end of the month. Every month I make plans to be ready by the middle of the month and every month something gets in the way. Not that I’m complaining about it. Writing the newsletter is a very interesting activity. It gives me the […]

The term blogosphere started as a joke but quickly became a common word to indicate the community and the social network of blogs and bloggers. Like every other community, the blogosphere has its own style, guidelines, and customs. These rules are a way for the blogger community to recognize its own members and to define […]

Ron Fritz is Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Tech Soft 3D, the company that makes the famous HOOPS3D, a graphics toolkit used by several design applications. The impressive list of TechSoft3D customers includes Alibre, Autodesk, Bentley, Fluent, IronCAD, MSC.Software, PTC, SolidWorks, and TransMagic. After a long phase of apparent immobility, the announcement of some new […]

Robert McNeel is the CEO of Robert McNeel & Associates, the company that makes the famous CAD modeling software Rhinoceros, simply known as Rhino 3D. Novedge has been a McNeel reseller since the opening of our online store. The recent release of Rhino 4.0 was a great opportunity to learn more about Robert and the […]

Antonio Pellizzaro is the Lead Developer of Actify, the software manufacturer of the SpinFire product line, a group of applications for CAD data visualization and sharing. Actify and Novedge are both located in San Francisco, a few blocks away. I invited Antonio to participate in the following interview: Can you tell us a bit about […]

Sean Flaherty is the CEO of Nemetschek North America, the American branch of Nemetschek AG, the German company that is well known worldwide for products like VectorWorks and Allplan. Novedge has been a VectorWorks' reseller in the United States for a few years. The recent acquisition of Graphisoft by Nemetschek was a great opportunity to […]

Alex Mazzardo is the Managing Director at EVOQE, the worldwide publisher of the solidThinking product line, a suite of applications for industrial designers (CAID – Computer Aided Industrial Design). A few days ago EVOQE launched Modeler, a new product, and updated the entire solidThinking line. Taking advantage of the fact that Alex is Italian (like […]

I like "CAD Data Visualization," another may prefer DDC (Digital Design Communication), someone else might like the ambitious acronym PDC (Product Design Collaboration), but whatever name you choose, this kind of software program has been around for many years. The central idea is to provide affordable ways to visualize the content of a CAD file […]

In the last few years several companies from around the world have entered the market in the development and commercialization of CAD, CAM, and graphic software. Some are from countries that have a long tradition of software production, such as France with Dassault. Others, from countries such as India — with a background in outsourcing […]

The latest versions of Microsoft Internet Explorer and FireFox offer a powerful new feature: they allow you to run a search directly from the browser without having to open a Google or Yahoo page. This is handy and convenient, and can save us a few clicks for every search we run (several per day, in […]

After keeping us waiting for years, Robert McNeel finally released Rhino 4.0. It's a completely new version of the popular Rhinoceros 3.0 NURBS modeler, mostly known by its nickname: Rhino 3D. Rhino 4.0 includes over 800 improvements based on users' feedback The development team put a lot of effort and energy into improving a product […]

Someone created a "simple" video to tell us a story. It's the story of our online life! And this someone is Mike Wesch from Kansas State University (Digital Ethnography blog). The connection between the video's story and CAD and Graphics Software is deeper than what may first appear. Thanks to Chris Anderson, The Long Tail […]

Is CAD software following the same path of web browsers? According to some small-size 2D CAD vendors (as reported by  Ralph Grabowski) there are too many free CAD systems and too long lasting free trials around. As a CAD reseller I should agree, and maybe I should say: free software is not good! But I […]

I would like to use the space of Novedge blog to announce a very interesting event I am organizing for BAIA, the Business Association Italy America. The event will take place here in San Francisco Thursday February 8, at Cooley Godward Kronish LLP on 101 California Street, 5th Floor. The sponsors are Cooley Godward Kronish, […]

I know it's already February, but that's the way things go! We wrote the January issue of our newsletter in January, but always something comes in to delay the final steps. This month the newsletter looks richer than usual. The size of the e-mail message is about 27 Kb, excluding the pictures. The first copies […]

I'm proud to announce that Novedge is now offering the power, security, and user protection of PayPal checkout. According to PayPal, 43% of North American online shoppers have used PayPal, while 24% of North American online buyers consider PayPal their favorite way to pay online. Starting today, Novedge customers have the option to choose between […]

Ajax used to be a product to clean the kitchen, but not anymore! Now Ajax means "Asynchronous Javascript and XML" and is ubiquitous on the web. Even when we are not aware of Ajax we benefit from it: this technology makes our browsing faster and more enjoyable. Ajax is a group of technologies that support […]

By virtue of selling so many design products a very typical conversation we have with customers is about what product best fits their needs. Of course different customers have different needs but I have tried to abstract the selection criteria. Here are what I believe are the five key things to keep in mind when […]

we are just starting to recognize that we are all part of an online community Last Saturday afternoon, intrigued by Guy Kawasaki post, I put together a short list of CAD blogs for my own pleasure and interest. It was a simple list with all CAD blogs I read sorted by Technorati ranking. I thought […]

If you listen to the buzz about blogs and bloggers you may get the wrong impression and you may assume you can quit your day job and start blogging, with Google AdSense as the new reliable source of income. If you take a closer look at the key numbers you may find out that a […]

in 3D designers need to master the art of creating parametric CAD models I was pleasantly surprised to see so many readers going through my recent post about the slow transition from 2D to 3D. Several readers left thoughtful comments explaining why they still use 2D technologies and tools. I really appreciate their feedback. I […]

It was Christmas when the December issue of Novedge monthly newsletter began to leave the Novedge mail servers heading to the inboxes of over 70,000 subscribers. In order to keep the flow of the rest of the e-mail traffic, the newsletter is sent gradually over a span of 3 or 4 days. This way we […]

It’s that time of year for predictions and forecasts. I'll take up the challenge, try my best to look into the crystal ball, and tell you what I see for CAD for the year ahead. More Internet Internet will become even more pervasive for CAD systems and users. We will use the Internet more for […]

Order processing is easily dismissed as a non-strategic component of a company's success. At Novedge we believe that order processing is a key part in assuring the best purchasing experience for our customers. I'm the person in charge of the order processing and I personally take care of most of the orders that come to […]

For as long as I can remember, sophisticated 3D CAD systems have been on the verge of fully replacing the supposedly inefficient 2D CAD systems. For years it has been considered just a matter of time before the obvious advantages of 3D systems would push traditional 2D systems out of the market, all with great […]

We recently added a user friendly CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) software (CFD-CADalyzer) to our offering that brought back memories of a decade old marketing catch phrase. I remember when in the 90s the idea that FEM/FEA was "moving to the left" started to go around. It basically meant that the latest generation of FEM/FEA products […]

I read the interesting post of Ralph Grabowski about fat CAD systems and how the Internet can change the way users purchase CAD software. First of all, let me say that I agree with Ralph. Most CAD systems are packaged with an incredible collection of features, each one of them cannot be purchased separately or […]

When we interact with a 3D computer model to analyze it or change its shape, a 3D scene appears on the screen as seen through a virtual camera. In order to look at the object from a different direction, zoom in or out, or to pan to a different area we need to move the […]

Since Novedge started its website a few years ago, we have been publishing our newsletter almost every month. It's our tradition and a way to stay in touch with our customers and friends. Every month we write and put together a group of short articles about the products in our catalog, combining news and technical […]