Comments on: Hey, I was Actually Right

By: ScottH

ScottH — Fri, 10 Nov 2006 00:48:03 +0000

Rob said:

“CATIA is a not an Airbus proprietary format.”

I didn’t mean to imply that; I should have structured my sentence better. I’m a very happy user of Dassault’s Solidworks software.

I first heard of the Airbus CAD problems at Evan Yares’ blog:

http://www.evanyares.com/the-cad-industry/2006/10/17/killing-your-company-with-cad.html

but he didn’t explain exactly what the problem was. Thanks Rob for filling in the rest of the story.

In the post I referenced above Evan Yares (he’s president of the Open Design Alliance ( http://www.opendesign.com/ ) which promotes developing standard formats for exchanging CAD data) talks about government intervention being the only way to make universal exchange of CAD data possible.

For example it would be nice to be able to open a Solidworks file in Inventor or CATIA and vice versa with no loss of features, but writing that interoperability into law seems like a good way to curtail innovation in the design of CAD software. I’d rather let the market work things out on its own; it may cost more (needing to buy two or more programs and spending time cleaning up data created in another program) but you get lots of great new features each year.

By: Rob

Rob — Thu, 09 Nov 2006 21:54:54 +0000

I work for the company who makes CATIA: DASSAULT SYSTEMES.
CATIA is a not an Airbus proprietary format.

The problem Airbus was one of culture. As you know Airbus is split between
Englands, Spain, France, Germany; likewise their software.
In fact, Airbus is/was using 2 different versions of the software, with
some of the features only being supported in the newer version.
They ran into problems when the new features couldn't be converted into
the older version, since the functionality didn't exist. The public
reports mention that it had to do with wiring mostly.

Boeing on the other hand, a commercialized (not gov't) entity for the most part, chose to work
with one version of the DASSAULT SYSTEMES software suite. They are already saving money,
and are one schedule (I know from experience that it's aggressive and that deadlines are not pushed
back due to gov't bureaucracy)

That being said.
I think this is a good example of why Gov't should not be in business.
Bureaucracy causes too many delays.

By: Josh

Josh — Thu, 09 Nov 2006 08:35:24 +0000

The link to the popular mechanics article is broken. It is missing the final “l”.

By: Matt

Matt — Thu, 09 Nov 2006 05:08:05 +0000

The irony is that the A380 makes even less sense for the European market than it does here in the States. All it could possibly be good for is long-haul P2P flights. New York–London, LA–Tokyo, MAYBE New York–LA but probably not. Certainly not flights between EU members.

By: ScottH

ScottH — Thu, 09 Nov 2006 04:32:05 +0000

I’ve heard horror stories about CAD drawing problems with the A380 program; apparently errors were introduced into the part files when they were converted from their original formats into CATIA (Airbus’ CAD software) format and back again. I understand Boeing also uses CATIA; I wonder what their experience with file conversion is?

By: ArtD0dger

ArtD0dger — Thu, 09 Nov 2006 03:49:42 +0000

The smart aircraft manufacturers are clued to this too. Used to be on a short flight you just knew you'd be stuck on some slow, noisy turboprop that shakes your fillings out. But now, you often get one of those nice Canadair regional jets. They're fast, smooth and quiet, just like a regular jumbo jet without so much jumbo.

Don't the folks at Airbus actually, you know, fly?

By: R.Hikmat Kartadjoemena

R.Hikmat Kartadjoemena — Thu, 09 Nov 2006 01:42:14 +0000

Agree on all the issues made by the writer.

By: Fred

Fred — Thu, 09 Nov 2006 00:54:04 +0000

The A380 has Concorde disease. It’s the same kind of grand governemnt jobs program that has all the political priorities first and maybe they will get around to making an airplane, too.