Computer Graphics World

July 2009 46 n n n n Visualization the data-rich 2D and 3D files in a way that was viewable by those without a CAD sys- tem. Because buying additional licenses of professional software just to let the ex- tended team members view, inspect, and annotate the CAD files isn't a reasonable proposition, businesses turned to CAD viewers, simple desktop applications that let you see the CAD files but prevent you from editing the geometry. Informative Graphics, a viewing technology supplier, made a name for itself with its product Brava for just that purpose. Recently, AfterCAD, which entered the viewer market with its AJAX-based After- CAD Insight, made a decision to float its viewing and markup tool in the cloud. Re- naming its offering as AfterCAD Online, the company began delivering its software via the Web to subscribers for as little as $39.95 a month. e vendor also spiced up its viewer by adding 3D support, powered by the open-source game engine Ogre. To prove what their software can do, most software suppliers would provide a trial version, to be downloaded and installed on the user's local machine. With SaaS suppli- er AfterCAD Online, the solution is much simpler. e company uploads a series of 2D and 3D files to its server, and then lets potential subscribers view the files within its browser-based viewer. With the same viewer that you would use as a subscriber, you can view, pan, zoom, rotate, take mea- surements of different 2D/3D blocks, and even place one or two annotations. "We created our own online file system and added the visualization and markup applications to that environment," says Chris Boothroyd, AfterCAD Online's CEO. "is is like Microsoft SharePoint for CAD, whereby companies can have their own branded, shared spaces to work with clients in a 100 percent browser-based environment." According to Boothroyd, AfterCAD uses its own patent-pending technologies, several dual-core Dell blade servers (for file storage, user accounts, work spaces, and other uses), and two blade servers that take DWG and PDF files and render them into AfterCAD's Webdoc format. In addition, the company has invested in a pair of 3D rendering blade servers, each with four off- the-shelf Nvidia graphics cards. is setup is reinforced by a load balancer from Bar- racuda Networks and several redundant blade servers for backup, staging new fea- tures, and fail-over. "We have a multi-tenant SaaS solu- tion (multiple users sharing the same computing architecture) to support up to a petabyte (more than 1000tb) of files, which we figure will max out [at] around 3000 to 5000 simultaneous clients," says Boothroyd. "We offer a managed services option for clients (SaaS Platinum)—the ability to have us purchase, configure, and host their own branded multi-tenant solu- tion for their engineers and clients. For a license fee, they can unbolt that setup and mount it in the rack behind their own fire- wall as an enterprise installation." Boothroyd reveals that AfterCAD is now an Adobe Solutions Partner and that the company is working closely with the graphics giant to integrate AfterCAD On- line with Acrobat 9 and Adobe LiveCycle ES. "In May, we'll be introducing our new 3D view and markup technology to the public SaaS product lineup, where people can upload, share, view, and mark up 3D files created in SketchUp and 3D PDF," says Boothroyd. ese new functions are targeted at the mechanical CAD and architectural CAD users in pursuit of LEED certification. Support for Google's SketchUp is a timely enhancement for the architectural crowd because Google's intuitive 3D modeler has become the architects' preferred tool for early concept exploration. On-demand Graphics Computing in the ethereal dimension has caught the attention of not just soft- ware developers, but also hardware devel- opers, including Hewlett-Packard. e computer maker has incorporated remote visualization, a form of cloud computing, as a value-added feature to its workstation line. Known as Remote Graphics Software (RGS), HP's utility lets you access the computing and visualization horsepower of your workstation over a standard net- work. Simply put, RGS lets you remotely tap into the processing power of an HP workstation from another machine to per- form computing-intensive tasks, such as rendering. With this method, you can load large geographical datasets and 3D files, edit them, animate them, and interactively HP's Remote Graphics Software lets off-site users connect to a workstation via a standard network, making it possible to use a regular computer to do workstation-level computing.

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