Autodesk Considers 3D Piping Acquisition
This entry was posted on 1/16/2007 1:03 AM and is filed under uncategorized.
The new Autodesk Plant Solutions group, which ships its first product (
AutoCAD P&ID 2007) shortly, intends for a 3D piping tool to be its second product. It is currently weighing whether to build the product from scratch—as it did with P&ID—or to acquire an existing product and/or company.
Among the possible acquisition targets are
COADE Cadworx Plant,
Pipe Designer 3D from QuickPen, and
3DSmart from PROCAD. Of the three, 3DSmart seems like the closest match to Autodesk's technology and market vision for its plant solutions. It is compatible with AutoCAD 2007, and it supports a variety of tools from other vendors including
NavisWorks Jetstream, the popular visualization tool. It also uses Microsoft SQL Server (or SQL Express for single-user installations), a big plus in Autodesk's goal to "bring shrink wrap to plant," in the words of Autodesk Plant Solution's Mark Strassman.
--RSN 
