CAD Personalities

Martyn Day writes extensively on CAD from his base in the UK, where he is the editor of MCAD Magazine and AEC Magazine.

Roopinder Tara, April 12, 2006

When journalists get together, as they often do at press events and trade shows, Martyn Day's rants and impassioned monologs provide the highlights. TenLinks tries to find out what makes Martyn tick.

1. Your company has both print and online publications? How do you see them evolving?
   We generate most of our revenues through our print magazines. Whatever will replace paper has yet to be invented. However, our web presence will grow. If our print titles are at risk, it's because manufacturing is being shipped out of English speaking countries to China and India. I am most concerned about the magazine dying because we don’t have any engineers left.
2. What is the biggest difference in the CAD culture in the US and the UK?
   The UK tends to be very price sensitive. For example, AutoCAD LT is HUGE here, despite it costing around $1,500 a seat. Ouch!
3. What company do you have the hardest time dealing with? Why?
   There are so many! Currently it’s Bentley Systems. I’ve almost resorted to going to a medium to contact them. Luckily, I have an inside source. I have difficulty with UGS and Dassault getting past their PLM mantra to talk in normal language. Then there’s Autodesk that dumps about 50 products for us to review all at once...
4. What was the last book you read?
   Auschwitz; The Nazis and the Final Solution by Laurence Rees. I went to Poland a few years ago and the place has never left my memory.
5. As a child, what did you want to do when you grew up?
   Astronaut, musician, bionic man, cowboy. My parents took me for a horse riding lesson when I was 4 so I came in my cowboy outfit. My Dad said I could wear my twin pistol cap guns. However, the instructor would not let me stand on the horse's back and shoot. I never went back.
6. Your favorite drink?
   Alcohol: red wine; non-alcohol: apple juice.
7. Electronic device you can’t live without? My Mac laptop. It wakes me up in the morning, is my land line phone (skype), stereo, video recorder, newspaper.
8. If a movie was made of your life, who would play you?
   The guy who plays mini-me.
9. If you won the mega lottery, what would be your first purchase?
   Ummm. A toss-up between an old Medici Palace in Tuscany or some land to have Sir Norman Foster design a villa for me, incorporating a Chuck Hoberman transformable roof.
10. How do you stay fit?
    Sometimes I walk as far as 20 feet to my car every morning.