Shaun Murphy

My definition of large seat installations is 10 seats or above. Teams of this size tend to need EDM to remain productive and from treading on each others toes. I cannot commit for ASTI but from their current progress I would expect a preview version this month with a final release coming soon there after based on customer feedback.

Be assured TeamVault is still an active product within IronCAD and is being maintained and used successfully in many locations. Having an Engineering Data Management solution for IronCAD is key to our strategy going forward. The only real change is that IronCAD is leveraging the expertise of a strategic partner to deliver TV as a standalone product. This frees IronCAD to focus on what it does best and lets our partner do what they do best. Most large seat IC installations are already utilizing TV so the only market growth for the product was to non IronCAD using installations. IronCAD felt that it should stay focused on 3D Mechanical Design and that it was best to address this new market through a strategic partner (ASTI). As soon as ASTI releases their version of TeamVault we will make that information available on the website. The functionality of the ASTI product will be TV plus some new additions in the viewer area, updated platform support and improved support for AutoCAD 2004.

TeamVault is being used successfully by a number of companies worldwide. Currently IronCAD no longer offers TeamVault as a standalone product through its CP network. Instead the TeamVault functionality is only available from IronCAD through a custom consulting contract to multi-seat IronCAD installations. For those customers who want to continue using TeamVault as a standalone EDM system IronCAD has formed an agreement with Applied Software in Atlanta, GA to offer a fully compatible version of the TeamVault functionality. To check the availability of this new solution in your area please contact Applied Software directly (404) 633-8660 (www.asti.com).

The article in Sweden was referring to a beta version of a new IronCAD Add-On product currently under developed by a company called R&R Sales to address the need for 3D fixturing setups for the CMM world. We have been collaborating on this development effort over the last several months. The product should be released by R&R in November. It utilizes the new SmartSnap Assembly (as it is now called) capability made assesible through our API mentioned previously by Chris. Examples of what this new add-on product can do will be posted on our website sometime in November. It runs on top of IronCAD 6.0 PU2 and it is way cool. I hope this helps clear up some of the confusion.

Greetings friends of IronCAD; I thought you might be interested in a customers view of why they prefer IronCAD to Solidworks. There are many other people out there who would prefer to work the IronCAD way; they just dont know it exists. These are the things IC does better: Island sketches, SW can only do single continuous line in sketch. No base feature required. Working in the Assembly environment is way better. In SW it is awkward to design new part in the context of the existing parts. IC still wins the learning curve. I trained my replacement at Forte in one day. IC does not require Center Lines, points, axiss. IC does not require exclusive use of planes. In IC there is no X, Y, Z. The biggest draw back in SW is all this talk about design intent. How can you predict your entire design at the clean sheet phase. And once you start down a path you are locked in. SW calls making parts in the Assembly environment as "In Context Design", yet, I have yet to see any documentation on how to do it. And that is because, how do you write a manual on "design intent". There is a bunch of Parent/Child stuff in SW that IC doesnt require. SW drawing package is a little better, but IC is catching up. I have yet to see how part properties is used in SW. They are not using any at Ray O Vac (ROV) so I figure it doesnt exist. I Design with IC and simulate with SW. Cheers

You can stop looking for the old deform face tool. It was removed with the introduction of the new surfacing functionality in 6.0. We are sorry for any inconvenience this might have caused. Our rationale for this action was based on the feedback we gathered that hardly anybody was actually using it and the belief that the new surfacing functionality would be an adequate replacement.

I hope you don't mind me offering an IronCAD perspective into this very interesting thread. So here goes; First what I agree with: 1. IronCAD is a lot better product than what it gets credit for 2. Awareness is important when establishing brand preference 3. Smaller companies can be more responsive to individual needs So how do we get more brand awareness? Placing an advertisement is one way but there are lots of others which I will get into later. Magazine advertisements do help with brand awareness but they do not always lead directly to sales. For a company the size of IronCAD we have to make sure that all every dollar spent leads directly to a sales opportunity. We have tried magazine advertising and the return on investment did not justify continuing the practice. Would it have in the long term, maybe but we do not have that luxury of finding out. Placing an ad now when people are not buying would be a waste of our resources with no possible return. We will revist magzine programs when the economic climate improves. So what are those other ways that we are trying instead: 1. Partnering with other products. Last year we did this with Rhino and VisualMill. The Rhino one was very successful and we will be repeating that with an exciting follow-on announcement late Q1. We will be looking for others. 2. You can utilize the web. We did the Virtual MCAD show with IB Systems which generated a lot of awareness and leads. We will be doing another one in March, so stay posted. 3. You can do feature ads on the web. You should be seeing some posted on MCADcafe real soon. 4. You can do press releases that get distributed to nearly every CAD manager in on form or another. We have a goal of at least two a month. 5. You can talk with the press and analyts. Joe Greco and I have been talking regularly to improve our mentions in his articles. You should see the effects of that in all he writes. He is planning to do a IC 6 review. We are also going to visit key press and analysts in a press tour that should lead to extra mentions. These kinds of activities I call guerilla marketing. We will be doing more of these kinds of things to keep the IC name out there. In addition to what we are doing you can also play a part. You can keep up the great word of mouth promotion that you have been doing. We have a Tell A Friend program that will give you cash and other types of incentives for your effort. Take advantage of those offers. In closing I would like to say that IronCAD is getting stronger. We have a number of activities under way that will increase the level of development on the product and get us additional third party offerings based on the IC platform. Thank you for your loyalty to the product you will not be dissapointed. I have been with the product since it was first conceived back in 94 and I intend to stay with it until the vision is completed. Regards Shaun M.

quote:Originally posted by tcooksey : Hi Shaun, Troy Cooksey here. I am a toy engineer/designer in Cincinnati Ohio. Iron Cad is my primary design package, but I heavily use Rhino to process data from a variety of 2D and 3D sources ( Illustrator drawings to 3D files from animation studios). I build many free form shapes in Rhino that I bring into Iron Cad and integrate them into the parts or start with these forms as the basis of a part. I then shell them and add ribwork and mechanical details. The combination of the two packages has worked really well for me. Most every project I do these days utilizes both very heavily. Rhino's big weaknesses are lack of a feature list and shell command. Iron Cad's big weakness is the lack of strong sweeps, lofts and curve network surface generation tools, but it handles imported shapes from Rhino extremely well ( anything from spaceships and robots to squirt guns and baby doll bodies). I could not get along without either one. id=quote>id=quote> Hi Troy; Thanks for the feedback. Would it be OK to use some of what you said as a quote that we would like to use in a Inovate Rhino joint promotion? It will really help to show that people out there have already found the combination helpful. Also let me know how comfortable you are with using your name or company name or just to use the general description you gave in your e-mail. Regards Shaun M.

Marketing would like know who uses Rhino along with IronCAD in their design work. Please specify the following in your response. Company name and what types of prducts you produce. How often do you use Rhino with IronCAD? What are each products strengths? Thank You ahead of time

IronCAD marketing would like to get your opinion about kernel preference. Please take some time to fill out the poll below. Your feedback will determine our direction as we move forward. Regards Shaun M.

quote:Originally posted by Wim: Since you have a partnership with Merry Mechanization, are there gonna advice you on the sheetmetalpart of Ironcad on how to improve it in the future. Can you keep us informed what there suggestions are? id=quote>id=quote>I am sure MMI will be providing feedback on improvements they would like to see in IC's sheet metal functionality. IronCAD plans to take their input very seriously when planning future revisions of the software. They are an industry leader in the sheet metal area and we are excited to have them as a Channel Partner.