Evan Yares, Carl Bass, Mike Riddle snag CAD Society awards

April 1, 2008

The CAD Society has honored industry gadfly Evan Yares and Autodesk CEO Carl Bass, two luminaries of the CAD industry who have often come to legal and personal loggerheads in the past.

Evan Yares, former president of the Open Design Alliance (ODA), has been named as the winner of the Society’s 2008 Joe Greco Community Award, which recognizes individuals “who have distinguished themselves by improving communication and developing community within the CAD industry.”

In particular, the Society recognized Yares “for his long advocacy for greater CAD interoperability.” To wit, he was an outspoken and the driving force behind the ODA, a non-profit group of CAD industry players best known for reverse engineers the DWG file format. As the CAD Society puts it, “Yares campaigned against monopolistic corporate practices and sought to realize a CAD industry based on shared interests.”

During the final months of Yares’ presidency, Autodesk sued the ODA for infringement of a TrustedDWG trademark that the company embedded in a revision of the file format. Even before the suit, however, there was no love lost between the two, Bass once having referred to organization that Yares headed at the time as an “arms dealer” who supplied Autodesk’s “enemies.”

Over his varied career, including a stint as a one of the first AutoCAD resellers, Yares also served as president of the CAD Society between 1999 and 2002; was co-founder and CTO of Cyon Research Corporation; and was one of the three founding members of the Congress of the Future of Engineering Software (COFES), a three-day April event during which the CAD Society awards will be presented this year.

Demonstrating that it isn’t taking sides, the Society also awarded Autodesk president and CEO Carl Bass its 2008 Leadership Award for his promotion of sustainable product design and eco-friendly construction.

At his Autodesk Manufacturing Media Summit keynote last year, Bass made clear that the company will be taking a decidedly “green” slant in both its internal policies and product lineup. For example, Revit allows architects to see how design changes in fenestration, materials, mechanical systems and technology use affects a building’s operating costs. Similarly, the company expanded Inventor so users can assess the carbon footprint of their parts and assemblies.

Considering that the COFES theme this year will be sustainable design, Bass seems a natural choice.

Rounding out the field, the Society’s third award this year, Lifetime Achievement, will go to Evolution Computing founder Mike Riddle, who developed early CAD software for micro-based computers. Evolution Computing released Interact for the Marinchip 9900 in 1979 and later formed the architectural basis for the earliest versions of AutoCAD. Riddle's company went on to produce FastCAD and EasyCAD, faster and/or cheaper alternatives to Autodesk’s 2D offerings.

The awards will be presented during COFES (April 10-13) in Scottsdale, Ariz. Heading into its ninth year, the invitation-only conference provides a forum for executives, end users, CAD and PLM vendors, analysts and members of the press to define the newest business issues of engineering technologies.

If nothing else, it will be interesting to witness the dynamic between three CAD industry heavy-weights steeped in Autodesk’s past, present and future.
www.cadsociety.org