CIMdata evaluates PLM-market in 2010 and gives optimistic forecasts

isicad is proud of its fruitful contacts with CIMdata established at least in 2006 when Ken Amann, at that time - Director of Research at CIMdata, as a keynote speaker, participated in the Second International Multi-vendor isicad Forum in Novosibirsk. Since that time isicad.ru has multiply published in Russian summaries from CIMdata global reports and other materials that contributed to the PLM awareness and progress of the Russia & CIS market.

In March (USA) and April (Europe), CIMdata has held (and will in May hold in Japan) its PLM Global Vendor Forums where in particular presented its comprehensive analysis of the state, trends, and forecasts of the world PLM market. CIMdata has kindly provided isicad with the full presentations and permitted us to publish our own summary, comments, and conclusions that probably give to many readers a rather clear impression of what, according to CIMdata, PLM is today and will be tomorrow.

As far as I understand, until now CIMdata has published only a brief press-release about the Vendors Forums, therefore I hope that the isicad article "CIMdata evaluates PLM-market in 2010 and gives optimistic forecasts" prepared by Vladimir Malukh, will be useful for many readers.

Get Back! (to COFES, to Russia, and other nice places)

Dmitry Ushakov, LEDAS CEO, published in English his personal impressions about COFES 2011. Get Back is a reference to The Beatles verse 

    Jojo was a man who thought he was a loner 

    But he knew it wouldn't last
    Jojo left his home in Tucson, Arizona
    For some California grass
    Get back, get back
    Get back to where you once belonged 

which Dmitry put as an epigraph to his article. The article just published at isicad.net is well illustrated: in particular if you click there Dmitry's portrait, you will see a readable variant of his COFES 2011 poster "Can Direct Modeling Be Both parametric and Intelligent?". 

Former CAPP Team of ASCON Will Support Autodesk Inventor and Vault

One month ago in "Team of CAPP VERTICAL Left ASCON to Implement HORIZONTAL" I wrote about a small sensation at the Russian CAD/PLM market: a team of ASCON's CAPP solution known as VERTICAL left ASCON and founded a new company called SDI Solution.

That post in particular said: "The founders of SDI Solution headed by Andrey Andrichenko, Ph.D., are going to intensively build a new CAPP system. They declared that its principles are reflected by the new company name: SDI means semantic data integration. Andrey says that all CADs are basically expert systems therefore a new trend is to change object approach by a semantic paradigm: this mainstream opens new capabilities for knowledge representation and for improvement of decision making in the CAD domain... SDI Solution announced that they have already negotiated (or will have such contacts) on a partnership with Autodesk, DS, and other global leaders".

And now, last week, Autodesk CIS distributed an official press-release "Autodesk and SDI Solution Signed Agreement On the ADN Partnership". It says that because of the strategic partnership in the framework of Autodesk Development Network, a Russian company SDI Solution will be able to early start integration of its solutions with Inventor и Vault and release  SDI solutions into the market simultaneously with releases of new versions of the Autodesk products.

There are comments saying that ADN membership does not assume any mutual responsibility of partners and does not invest anything to its members but, on the contrary, requires paying some membership fee. However Autodesk press-release is a significant advertizing signal which is obviously important for SDI Solution. And perhaps it also means something for Autodesk.

Autodesk press-release in Russian and Google-translated.

COFES 2011 Seen from Siberia: Day 3 and Day 2

COFES 2011 "Day 3 Seen from Siberia": in Russian) and Google translation.
COFES 2011 "Day 2 Seen from Siberia": in Russian and Google translation.
Rather funny Google translations:).

COFES 2011 As Seen From Siberia

COFES 2011 was opened today in Arizona. Probably Dmitry Ushakov @dmitryushakov, CEO LEDAS and co-editor of isicad.ru / isicad.net is the most geographically distant participant: his way from Novosibirsk to Scottsdale took about 30 hrs.

isicad.net and isicad.ru will likely publish more serious reports of participants, but right now I, sitting in Novosibirsk (today: +20C, sunny), will briefly retell the 1st day agenda, and quote some tweets from #COFES2011. The pictures are taken from twitter, from cadovod - one of the most popular Russian CAD bloggers, and from Oleg Shilovitsky blog. As for Dmitry Ushakov, his COFES interests are for 95% related to LEDAS but maybe remaining 5% enable him sooner or later to write an integrated report for isicad.

I love a picture of all participants from Russia because it clearly demonstrates that COFES 2011 could already be announced successful:

See my report about 1st day of COFES 2011 which is a slightly shortened (non Google) translation of my Russian report for isicad.ru.  

RhinoWorks from LEDAS Revolutionizes Direct Modeling

A new released today plug-in from LEDAS gives Rhino users parametric control over their 3D models. It brings constraint-based parametric design to the popular freeform modeling tool from Robert McNeel and Associates. RhinoWorks allows designers to edit many kinds of solid, surface, and wireframe models parametrically. It gives them full control over design intent through the application of geometric and dimensional constraints, which significantly increases the productivity when designs change. RhinoWorks unifies two previous LEDAS’ plug-ins for Rhino, RhinoAssembly and RhinoDirect, in one product. It is fully compatible with any model created by the two former plug-ins. 


Actually this original technology from LEDAS can be regularly applied and is already applied to other systems to upgrade them to MCAD or/and to enhance them by intelligent direct modeling which keeps design intent.  Dmitry Ushakov, LEDAS CEO, will give a lot of details at COFES 2011, which opens today in Arizona. 


See a clip which demostrates how RhinoWorks is editing an imported SolidWorks file.  

RhinoWorks recognizes many geometric relationships automatically (such as coincidence, tangency, parallelism, concentricity, and equal radii). This means that designers merely need add a few dimensional constraints to have full control over the design intent for their models; the rest are added automatically. An Options dialog box allows users to specify specific modes in automatic recognition of constraints.

The LEDAS technology used to build RhinoWorks can be also used and is already using to correspondingly enhance other popular systems to upgrade them up to MCAD level or/and enhance them with direct modeling facilities.

For more details incl. availability and prices, see a full press-release and a new version of www.DrivingDimensions.com. 

New Head of Autodesk Russia Came From Microsoft Headquarters

Today Alexey Ryzhov, before the director of strategy and business development in the developing countries at Microsoft, became the head of the Autodesk Moscow office (Russia and CIS countries). 

Alexey Ryzhov has over 15 years of professional experience in the information technology industry. He has been working in several international companies in Russia and abroad, and, since 1999, has held various positions at Microsoft, Russia. In 2007 he was invited to Microsoft headquarters in Seattle, where he held the position of Director of Strategy and Business Development in developing regions of EMEA, APAC, LATAM.

Alex (1973) was born in Moscow and in 1995 graduated from the Physics and Mathematics Faculty of the Moscow People's Friendship University. He also has a MBA in Strategic Management, University of California.

Note that Autidesk is very successful in Russia and CIS but the office was more that one year working without a formal head. I don't know how about other countries but in Russia assignment of a head of such office is always considered as a small sensation.

News from Russian CAD/PLM Market: Nov 2010 - March 2011

I have just published an isicad.net overview related to couple recents months. In the first part you can find couple general facts related to the Russian market and/or reflected in our English publications: 

• Space & CAD in Russia: 50 Years Since Gagarin’s Flight,
• What Publications on CAD/PLM are the Most Popular in Russia?
• CAD Revolution: Inevitable and Already Started
• A Hot Discussion around BIM at isicad.ru
• "The Dassault Systemes Success Story" by Francis BERNARD
• From COFES-Russia and COFES-Israel to The Big COFES at Arizona
• Russian Social Networking: In and Beyond the CAD/PLM Market
• Microsoft in Russia: +25%
• CAD for military service
• In 95-99 usage of illegal software for biz in Russia decreased by 20%.

In the second part of this paper, I present some news on the activity of particular vendors (mainly at the Russian market): ASCON, Autodesk, Dassault Systemes & SolidWorks, Intergraph, LEDAS, and some others.

See a full paper "News from Russian CAD/PLM Market: Nov 2010 - March 2011".

Space and CAD in Russia: 50 Years since Gagarin’s Flight

On 12 April is the 50th jubilee of the first man flight to the space. Rocket and space technology has always been on the cutting edge of technological progress; however, back in 1961 developers of “Vostok” could not use CAD because such tools simply did not exist – the first CAD prototype, as we understand it now, appeared only in 1963. Russian Principal Designer Sergey Korolyov, and his colleagues used traditional engineering tools for that period – a drawing board and a slide rule.

The article published at isicad.ru with a support of the PTC office in Moscow outlines modern situation in the Russian space industry. In particular the overview is based on the story presented by Alexander Philatov, the Head of the IT Department of “Progress” Samara Space Centre - the company that for over fifty years has been producing legendary launch-rockets, originating from R-7: “Vostok”, “Voskhod”, “Molnia”, “Soyuz” - that Russian cosmonauts used to fly and that delivered automatic stations to the Moon and other planets. Today at “Progress” everything works on the basis of 3D models – from master-geometry to specific mock-up workpieces. “Progress” uses a lot of CAD and PLM tools from various vendors and the paper gives some impression how all this software co-exists in Samara.

The paper describes in much details the CAD-PLM environment at "Progress" which along with PTC soluitons includes those from ASCON, Autodesk, DS SolidWorks, and Siemens PLM Software. It also mentiones how "Progress" successfully communicates with Samara State Aerospace University.

See a full paper “Space & CAD in Russia: 50 Years since Gagarin’s Flight”. 

Inforbix Demonstrates Product Data Application to Deal with Diverse Data Sources and Formats

First announced in Nov 2010, Inforbix, a new player in the product data management field, recently entered into new phase of its business. The company ran Beta testing program, refreshed website and published new videos. isicad.net contacted Oleg Shilovitsky, Inforbix CEO and founder, who kindly agreed to answer our questions. Here are some of them:

• You have a strong PDM background: previous ten years you worked at SmarTeam. What advantages gave it to your new business?
• Inforbix develops a cloud-based product data search, right? Do you plan to extend your technology with other PDM functions - data management, collaboration, CAD integration, revision management?
• Your technology is based on automatic gathering of meta-data from product data files. What CAD file formats do you support?
• Do you plan to retrieve product data from PDM systems or only from file system?
• Do you plan to be a SaaS provider - or you will provide only software? What sales channels do you use?

See a full interview with 11 Q&A illustrated by 4 nice videos. 

Version 6.0 of LEDAS 2D Constraint Solver Parametrically Controls Bounded Geometry

LEDAS Ltd today announced version 6.0 of LGS 2D, the company's 2D geometric constraint solver. As the core technology of parametric software packages, LGS 2D allows users to express design intent in sketches and drawings through geometric, dimensional, and engineering constraints.

Previous versions of LGS 2D modeled only untrimmed geometric objects, such as points, infinite lines, and full circles. Version 6.0 adds the ability to deal with boundary geometries, like segments, circular arcs, and elliptic arcs. It also computes more natural solutions, as preferred by most CAD users.

LGS 2D 6.0 implements segments and arcs as new types of entities. Jointly, they are known as edges. Edges can be interpreted as new kinds of geometric objects and as ternary constraints. Through edges, any LGS-based application can provide users with full parametric control over their drawings, which is unreachable when the geometry is modeled with unbounded objects (i.e., lines, circles, ellipses) that are connected with two incident points.

Edges are implemented as a new add-on module for LGS 2D named LGSProfiles, it is licensed with LGS 2D at an additional price.

Also version 6.0 produces more natural solutions for several constraint scenarios. The solver implemented two new techniques to minimize changes to the model, and to keep the sketch as close as possible to the initial drawing. These techniques work effectively for scenarios with one to three unsatisfied constraints, which are typical for interactive sketcher applications.

Since the first commercial release in 2004, LGS 2D and 3D software components have been licensed by a dozen CAD/CAM/CAE vendors, who have embedded them into their applications successfully.

The LGS 2D and 3D geometric constraint solvers are used as parametric engines for 2D sketching and drawing, direct 3D modeling, assembly design, motion analysis, and other applications. LGS 2D/3D are cross-platform software packages running on 32- and 64-bit versions of Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, *BSD, AIX, HP-UX, and other operating systems. LGS 2D and 3D have a C-style API for easy integration into a broad range of software applications using a variety of wrappers, such as .NET, Java, and C++.

See a detailedl press-release (with links to video) about Version 6.0 of LGS 2D Constraint Solver.

April 3: The Report of the Siberian Spring was Greatly Exaggerated

The report of March 27

isicad.ru N80: Cloud CAD Against Drawing Board

The monthly overview by Vladimir Malukh from the just issued N80 of isicad.ru (in Russian) include in partucular:

- during the company press-conference, ASCON organized a competition between its cloud KOMPAS 3D and a drawing board,

- The Bolshoi Theater has licensed a number of Autodesk products; in April-November the "Russian Community of Autodesk Users" will attend 13 cities of CIS to meet local users,

- INTERMECH released a unique system which can find geometrically similar shapes for Autodesk Inventor, Solid Works, Solid Edge, NX, ProEngineer и KOMPAS 3D,

- for the first time in history SolidWorks in Russia will be supervised by DS...

See Vladimir's review of March in Russian and google-translated.

N80 aminated cover page reflects the above mentioned news about Bolshoi. You don't need to know Russian language to catch the essenses of a lot of previous cover pages (click to enlarge - sometimes animated).