Evan Yares Wins CAD Society's Joe Greco Community Award

Industry honors advocate for interoperability

Denver, CO. April 01, 2008 -- The CAD Society, the industry association of CAD users, today announced Evan Yares, former president of the Open Design Alliance, as the winner of its 2008 Joe Greco Community Award.

Yares’ distinguished career as a consultant, writer, developer, and reseller in the CAD industry was recognized by the Society, particularly for his long advocacy for greater CAD interoperability. During his eight-year tenure at the Open Design Alliance (ODA), Yares pursued strategies that emphasized cooperation between users as well as between software vendors. Often outspoken, Yares campaigned against monopolistic corporate practices and sought to realize a CAD industry based on shared interests.

The Open Design Alliance (ODA) is a non-profit consortium of software companies, developers, and users committed to promoting the open exchange of CAD data. The OpenDWG format that the ODA developed, and which Yares advanced, attempted to keep design data free of propriety restrictions, which not only aided interoperability, but also served to secure data for archival preservation.

Yares was also co-founder Cyon Research Corporation and acted as Chief Technology Officer for the consultancy which explored the business issues of CAD and 3D software for leading companies in the fields of engineering and software.

In 2000, Yares was one of the three founding members of the Congress of the Future of Engineering Software (COFES), a 3-day event that brings together the top software developers, engineering end users, and analysts for intelligent conversation and debate about the engineering automation industry.

The CAD Society's Joe Greco Community Award is awarded each year to one individual who has distinguished themselves by improving communication and developing community within the CAD industry. The award has been renamed in memory of industry analyst and editor, Joe Greco, who passed away three years ago. At the time, Greco was President of the CAD Society.

“For many years, Evan has been a singular figure in our community;” says CAD Society President Michael McGrath, “an insightful and determined visionary who has worked to bridge the technological divides that cannot be achieved through competition alone.”

Yares served as the CAD Society as President between 1999 and 2002.

Yares began his career engineering industrial and process controllers. His experience with the business side of CAD software started with in his position at CADD Source, one of the first AutoCAD resellers. From 1986 to 1996, Yares was Principal Consultant at Design Automation Systems, which pioneered the first 3D CAD solutions. Yares founded his own independent consultancy, the Yares Organization, in 1998.

The CAD Society Contact:
Michael McGrath
President
The CAD Society
president@cadsociety.org

Press Contact:
Lauren Koziel
Strategic Reach PR
(303) 487-7406
lauren@strategicreachpr.com

About The CAD Society

The CAD Society (www.cadsociety.org) is a not-for-profit industry association with the goal of fostering community and encouraging open communication among those who make their living within the CAD industry including AEC, mechanical, manufacturing, and GIS. The CAD Society is dedicated to creating an informative community and improving the tools its members employ in order to get their jobs done. This is achieved by providing an open forum of communication, which helps to illuminate the practices of industry vendors. It has been a leader in creating interoperability guidelines that encourage software vendors to develop applications that can openly share data.

About COFES

The ninth annual Congress on the Future of Engineering Software (COFES), meets at the Scottsdale Plaza Resort, Scottsdale, Ariz., April 10-13, 2008. COFES, a mainstay event of the engineering software industry, provides an intensive conference atmosphere where private and public discussions are held. Attendees are executives, end users, CAD and PLM vendors, analysts, and members of the press who work together to define the newest business issues of engineering technologies.

COFES is an invitation-only event. To find out more information and to request an invitation, please visit www.cofes.com.

This release was published on openPR.