Two new vendors have joined the mechanical design automation community in recent months, Alibre Inc. and CollabWare Corp. These companies are noteworthy, not so much for the software they provide, but for the way they provide it. Both companies are application service providers (ASPs), who make engineering-related software accessible on a pay-as-you-go basis from their Web sites. They are also being joined by familiar faces in the MCAD world—MSC.Software (formerly the analysis software vendor, MacNeal Schwendler Corp.), Engineering Animation Inc. (EAI), and CoCreate—that also rent engineering application software over the Web.
展开▼
