1)  We care.  Those are our people out there.  Politics only enter into that
obligation as regards procurement.  Never break faith with those who have
not broken faith with you.  It sounds cherry, but that is what team means.

2)  They use ANYTHING to make repairs.  During one brouhaha, the repair guys
told me they collected soda cans, cut them, and used them patch flak holes.
They will disassemble and reassemble anything from spare parts even if the
vendor told them not to.  There are no Radio Shacks in the Indian Ocean.

3)  Real-time X3D can do things PDF can't do.  Drilldown IS the problem.  It
is faster and much more informative to jump to the correct viewpoint and
auto rotate into position.  It is also easy to convert the CAD drawings into
X3D than any PDF.  Try chat inside PDF.  Now try it inside even the cheapest
3D with freeware and unencumbered IP.  If your customers don't get this,
then they are about to spend themselves poor.

4) Parts handling databases are already advanced.  That bit most of us
understand.

5) Running forever.  See B52 and HAWK.  Hardware systems often outlive
software operating systems and programming languages.  Not news.

len


From: david.lyon@p... [mailto:david.lyon@p...] 
Sent: Wednesday, November 01, 2006 10:50 PM

I couldn't tell you. It amazed me when I found out and still even to  
this day to find that all/most modern steal warships *still* carry  
extra planks of wood to do (conflict) repairs. The reason is that it  
can be made quickly into anyshape and is strong enough to be  
indespensable. Makes a lot of sense actually when you think about it.

My own response is that I don't think the particular war machine that  
you are talking about is that interested in keeping things going and  
in good running shape forever like some other countries in the world  
that I can think of - not look too far away :-)

Therefore not much need for technical catalogs and parts lookups...  
just sell the junk off to a so called Allied country and let them fix  
it. Make a new one and use that for a while till the paint fades or  
the seats wear.

I work with parts-lookup products on a regular basis and can tell you  
that they are more and more sophisticated every year. PartSmart is  
quite a good product and does most things that you are talking about.  
The europeans have lots and many are slick.

3D is not so important. Most drawings can be reasonably represented in  
PDF as long as sufficient drilldown is provided.

Parts price handling is another ballgame however. And is a real  
problem in the industrial world. In the last 24 hours alone, we loaded  
85,000 new parts into one particular product database.

There's still a lot of room for improvement in that area..