Tech Soft 3D’s new VizStreamer tool aims to speed up web-based CAE development. Plus, God weighs in on design software.
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Tech Soft 3D, a developer of engineering software development toolkits, has announced VizStreamer, a new tool to enable web-based CAE visualization.
“The move to the web has not been as fast as expected,” Andres Rodriguez-Villa, Tech Soft 3D’s director of CAE, told me.
There was a time not long ago, before AI was the biggest trend since slice planes, when it seemed like every engineering software platform would wind up online. And while there are now plenty of web-based engineering applications, there are still a lot of tools that remain bound to the desktop. With VizStreamer, Tech Soft 3D wants to help them get to the web.
As its name suggests, VizStreamer is a tool for rendering CAE data in a web browser. It uses WebGL, which Tech Soft 3D says will reduce operating expenses by eliminating the need for server-side GPUs, and it does not require comprehensive rewrites of an app’s core functionality.
“You can actually take your existing desktop application and feed the streamer and get up and running on the web quite quickly,” Rodriguez-Villa said.
VizStreamer doesn’t do all the work of bringing CAE applications to the web. Rodriguez-Villa said developers will still need to build a user interface and send events back to the application, but he estimates that VizStreamer will save at least half of the effort of developing for the web.
“It’s a hard thing to take into account the specifics of CAE to make it as lean as possible—you don’t want to stream unnecessary data. So we have a lot of expertise there,” Rodriguez-Villa said.
The new tool is part of Tech Soft 3D’s Ceetron Envision SDK, and is available now with on Envision for Web license. Rodriguez-Villa will showcase VizStreamer during a presentation on May 20, 2025 at the upcoming NAFEMS World Congress 2025 in Salzburg, Austria.
God, Autodesk
The company that makes AutoCAD wants you to stop calling it that. That flagship CAD software may be the reason Autodesk exists today, but the company makes other software too. In case you didn’t know, Autodesk software can Make anything.
Wait, sorry, that’s the old slogan—now it’s Let there be anything.
That’s right. The company that makes AutoCAD has transcended its humble origins and is now the preferred software vendor of God Himself. It was revealed not by a burning bush, but a sixty-second ad spot during a Denver Nuggets game:
What an honor for God, whose Earthly form is that of actor Tony Hale, to be involved in one of the “boldest brand transformations” in Autodesk history. Not so bold as to air the ad outside the U.S., but still.
What better way to pay “tribute to the brilliance of [Autodesk’s] customers” than for the Lord to pass over said customers and bestow all His praise upon the company from which they buy AutoCAD. Blessed are the meek, after all.
By the way, I haven’t mentioned this before, but the Buddha is a big fan of this newsletter. Subscribe to reach nirvana!
Siemens introduces new AI agents
Automate 2025 is underway in Detroit this week, and Siemens took the opportunity to announce new AI agents for industrial automation.
According to Siemens, the AI agents will enhance Siemens’ Industrial Copilots, which are the interfaces with which users interact. The Design Copilot in NX, for instance, “enables users to ask questions in natural language, quickly access detailed technical insights, and streamline complex design tasks”—in other words, a chatbot.
The new AI agents will “power [Industrial Copilots] behind the scenes” by working with other AI agents, including third-party agents, which will someday be available on the Siemens Xcelerator Marketplace.
“With our Industrial AI agents, we’re moving beyond the question-answer paradigm to create systems that can independently execute complete industrial workflows,” said Rainer Brehm, CEO of Factory Automation at Siemens Digital Industries. “By automating automation itself, we envision productivity increases of up to 50% for our customers – fundamentally changing what’s possible in industrial operations.” (Why not make it 100%, since we’re just envisioning numbers?)
This reminds me of Dassault Systèmes’ recent introduction of “generative experiences” and “virtual companions,” which make the same distinction between behind-the-scenes AI automation and the user-facing interface. Then, as now, I find it all a bit too abstract—as if some top-down AI mandate is being presented as a concrete solution, details TBD. I’ll try to hunt down those details next month, when I’ll be in Detroit for Siemens Realize Live 2025.
For more from Automate 2025, follow Engineering.com Editor-in-Chief Rachael Pasini, who’s live on scene.
One last link
Should you be worried about microplastics from hospital IVs? Technical thinking: PVCs, IVs, and questioning risk is a thought-provoking new article from Design World’s Mark Jones, who goes against the grain on this topic (see Microplastics are bad, but ignoring science is worse).
Got news, tips, comments, or complaints? Send them my way: malba@wtwhmedia.com.
