Two Russian Geometric Kernels will be presented in detail at COFES Russia 2013

I'm sure most of you know what is COFES - Congress On the Future of Engineering Software. May be some of you have participated in this unique event, which since 2000 has been  organized in Arizona by Cyon Research. Probably regional COFES events are less known; they are held in the regions that either can provide new valuable experience to the global community or can perceive new development impulse from the global community, or both. In autumn 2010, an experimental regional COFES Russia event was held in Moscow together with the isicad Forum, and a couple of months later COFES Israel was organized in Tel-Aviv.

The next regional COFES event, COFES Russia 2013 – now in a strictly traditional COFES format – will be held in Peterhof, a world famous suburb of St.Petersburg (its key elements  were created according to the plans of Peter the Great) . The registration  is already opened.  Let us take a quick look at the agenda which is being steadily extended step by step.

First, according to the regular structure of COFES events, you can see a number of Analyst and User Briefings. Without going into the details of this genre, I'll just give a list of the names of moderators and some of the topics: Allan Behrens (Taxal Limited) - Model-Based Engineering, Peter Bilello (CIMdata) - Software Delivery: Moving to the Cloud and Changing Business Models, Nick Nisbet (AEC3) - Learning from the BIM Revolution in the UK, Jon Peddie (Jon Peddie Research), Jim Brown (Tech Clarity), Chris De Neef (Fast Track Consulting), Alex Bausk (PSACEA) - Model-Based Engineering in the Context of AEC and BIM, Peter Thorne (Cambashi) - ALM and PLM Grow Closer, Marina Korol - What Mandated BIM Might Mean for Russia, Phares Noel (Cyon Research) - Integrating of Point Clouds into the Flow of Design and Engineering…

Second, you can see a panel discussion “Perspectives on PLM” moderated by Brad Holtz, the President of Cyon Research and COFES:

Third, the agenda includes a keynote of Jesse Devitte (Borealis Ventures) and Tech Soft 3D Customer Event: why not to find new points of investments and new clients on the definitely very active market of Russia and CIS?

I want to pay special attention to the forthcoming presentation of two Russian geometric kernels.

One of them is C3D - an original kernel of ASCON, which has been for many years successfully used within the company’s flagship product KOMPAS 3D, and recently, as a component, has been brought to the open market ("ASCON Releases C3D Kernel for the CAD Component Market").  The kernel will be presented in particular at the Labs Customer Meeting to be held in the morning of May 30 (COFES Russia will be officially opened in the afternoon). Note that ASCON will also use one of the key COFES options called Technology Suite Briefing which provides an opportunity to openly discuss C3D  (and maybe other technology achievements of the company) with all participants of the event who want to know the technology and business details.

Another Russian kernel  RGK  (Russian Geometric Kernel) is currently being constructed within a national project with a leading role of Top Systems. (see “Russian National 3D Kernel”). Top Systems is known by its advanced 3D parametric CAD TFLEX (see "The Power of T-FLEX CAD Parametric Modeling") and intensive development of PLM (see the above mentioned PLM panel discussion).  At COFES Russia, Top Systems will also use the opportunities of a technology suite briefing. In addition, Russian 3D Kernel will be discussed at one of the 90-minute roundtable discussions.

Both ASCON and Top Systems have very qualified development teams that confirm a well-known fundamental math and engineering culture of Russia at a full scale. Both companies are increasingly investing in their global marketing, and COFES Russia 2013 provides one more opportunity to present their offerings internationally. (Note that ASCON and probably Top Systems will participate also in COFES 2013 in Arizona). We are looking forward to seeing interesting discussions and maybe heated debates.  

LEDAS is always (especially after selling its IP for the component products to Bricsys) lucky of keeping a position of not being a competitor to any vendors. In particular, the company is a reseller (better to say - VAR) of ASCON’s C3D  ("LEDAS to Distribute ASCON’s C3D Modeling Kernel Internationally") and at the same time is an active developer of RGK (see "LEDAS Assists STANKIN to Develop a New 3D Modeling Kernel" and 

"LEDAS Experts: How our Company is Involved in Developing Russian Geometric Kernel".
Three or four leading LEDAS experts will participate in COFES Russia 2013. 

As for the environment and cultural program of COFES Russia 2013, you can find some hints in the agenda, take a look at the pictures in my blog, or of course look in the Internet for a huge amount of information about Peterhof and St.Peterburg.

October helps to better understand the market of Engineering Software in Russia: ASCON, Autodesk, COFES Russia, Top Systems, SW, DS, Delcam-ESI…

I have just published at isicad.net an overview of the Russian market based on the vendor's events held in October. The first paragraph of the report says:

 The cover of the 99th issue (October, 2012) of isicad.ru reflects several events related to the Russian market of engineering software (see all the covers). Some of them mainly belong to the genre of marketing. However, smart marketing not only can shape customers’ demands but in the long run transforms vendor’s virtual manipulations into their innovative software… Some important characteristics of the Russian market are described in the reports from numerous events held in October. Unfortunately, most of the links are in Russian however, I will try to give you some flavor of the state of art.

Here are the titles of the report sections:

October, 2. ASCON’s autumn harvest

October, 2-4. Bricsys Technologies Russia is moving Bricsys into the MCAD niche

BTW: ZWSOFT.ru 

Octover, 3 and 4. The First Autodesk University in Russia

October, 6. Towards COFES Russia 2013

October 8. Lotsia Soft, the Russian PLM leader?

October 16-18. Top Systems presents its successful experience of development & installation of PLM+ERP

October 18. SolidWorks has a lot of very devoted and compassionate fans in Russia: can it increase the company’s Russian market share?

October 19. Bernard CHARLES visited Moscow to announce that DS leaves its competitors alone to play with PLM

October 18-25. By hosting ESI-Russia, Delcam Ural strengthens its already strong multi-VAR position

October 25-29. SDI Solution is a partner of everybody?

October 30. Location and industrial development of Yekaterinburg attract all vendors.

See the full text of the report.

Today in Moscow Mark Zuckerberg gave Medvedev a T-shirt with "www.facebook.com/Dmitry.Medvedev"

Before Zuckerberg's visit of today, there was a scandalous Russian article accusing Mark for coming to organize an intensive Russian brain drain into Facebook. Interestingly, this article was written by a head of the largest Russian outsourcing company. However, according to the latest news (in Russian) Mr Zuckerberg had a lunch in McDonald and then a nice meeting with the Russian prime-minister: they discussed copyright laws in the Internet (Mark promised Medvedev that Facebook will always support copyright).

I believe nice meetings in Moscow, copyrights, and brain drain from Russia do not very much depend on each other.

See some English links: 

Zuckerbergscouts for Russian talent as Facebook trails VKontakte      

MarkZuckerberg in Moscow to boost Facebook's Russia presence

What is more important than a technical result of ASCON + Bricsys + LEDAS => KOMPAS-3D VDM ?

Even from a technical perspective, implementation of the direct modeling module for a mass Russian MCAD KOMPAS-3D is a non-routine event. If you are a skeptic not responsible for the success of your business, you may doubt the benefits and prospects of direct modeling as much as you like. If, however, your interests and responsibilities include enhancing competitive ability of your solutions on the global market, you cannot be behind synchronous technology, Fusion approach, Creo Direct, etc.  To stay ahead will be even better.

At the end of my message, I give links to learn about technological, historic and organizational aspects of developing variational direct modeling technology (VDM), conceived by LEDAS. However, it is more important for me to emphasize something different rather than technical aspects of our achievements. It was effectually expressed in private communications by a very reputable figure on the Russian market of engineering software: “I am not apt to underestimate the breakthrough nature of the event. It’s a real hassle to make arrangements with a single actor, but the three hardcore competitors for CAD, kernels and solvers worked it out very well. The world is changing, and this high-profile matter deserves to be communicated to the people…”.

The story has its own heroes. On the part of ASCON – this is, first of all, Vladimir Panchenko, one of the leading ASCON production engineers and analysts, who has studied capabilities of VDM technology from all sides. He made the key contribution to architecture of its efficient integration into KOMPAS. Vladimir is the KOMPAS-VDM project leader on behalf of ASCON; combining in-depth competence, insistence on high standards and enthusiasm. He continuously supported the project and will support its advancement. 

On the part of LEDAS - the project leader, Alexei Istomin, a capable young mathematician and software engineer, who has become an effective, up-and-coming manager in course of the project progress.

On the part of Bricsys – this is, first of all, an outstanding founder and CEO of the company, Erik de Keyser, for who the long-term strategic interests are much more important than any superficial considerations about localized benefits and tactical competition, related to possessing VDM technology, LGS geometric solver used in VDM, and implementing VDM into the company’s own CAD - Bricscad. By the way, I recommend you to follow the work of the next Bricsys conference in Amsterdam where Eric is going to announce new developments - likely not less important than a year ago.    

I would like to specifically emphasize the role of Kolomna, a small town in Moscow area which is a key place of ASCON’s software development projects. Apart from Vladimir Panchenko, this unique town is the work place of, for instance, one of the principal ASCON founders, as they say - "the KOMPAS Mum", the Head of the KOMPAS-3D development unit in Kolomna, and just a charming woman – Tatyana Yankina (see "ASCON Faces"); as well as Nikolai Golovanov, the author of KOMPAS-3D geometric kernel, who published several fundamental books on software engineering, an industry classic. 

It is impossible not to mention the not-yet-fully-exposed role of the phenomenal Kolomna pastille in the success of ASCON technology (see the picture of it at the end of the story). Even in mid of XIX century, the most famous Russian composer Peter  Tchaikovsky used to come to Kolomna to taste this pastille and probably to be inspired for his Swan Lake ballet. Today, the town has an excellent museum of pastille which always attracts a lot of tourists. Who knows maybe specific ingredients of the local pastille nourish the developers of KOMPAS:). 

Kolomna is certainly very special, but the decision about the ASCON project was obviously made in St Petersburg at the ASCON HQ; and we must emphasize the innovative courage of the company top executives, which has been robustly unfolding lately. As you can see, the project is transcontinental (A - Novosibirsk, LEDAS, B - Kolomna, ASCON-KOMPAS, C - St Petersburg, D - Gent, Belgium, Bricsys): 

You can learn about variational direct modeling and its implementation as well as about transition of VDM to Bricsys and its life there from

• Variational Direct Modeling: How to Keep Design Intent in History-Free CAD 
• Direct Modeling - Who and Why Needs It? A Review of Competitive Technologies   
• Adding Intelligence to Direct Modeling   
• How to Express Design Intent in Rhino 3D   
• MenhirsNV Acquires Intellectual Property Rights from LEDAS   
• HowDirect Modeling Transforms Cinderella into the Princess .  

One of the dozens of types of the Kolomna pastille (a nice side-effect of the ASCON-LEDAS contract): 

In October, Dassault Systemes will throw a VIP-bomb at Russia

Since 2004, initially together with its Key Distributor – IBM, Dassault holds its PLM Forum in Moscow. In one form or another, isicad was lucky to take part in these events, here are our richly illustrated reports: PLM Forum 2004, PLM Forum 2005, PLM Forum 2006, PLM Forum 2007, PLM Forum 2008, PLM Forum 2009 , PLM Forum 2010,  PLM Forum 2011.  Note that isicad is a part of the Ledasgroup whose software development branch has for a long time been a close outsourcing partner of DS. 

DS has always shown great interest in Russia – taking into account the country's huge potential for industry and economic development. One of the proofs was that Francis Bernard, the DS Founder, its first president, and actual inventor of CATIA, in 2005 became the first director of Dassault Systems Russia.  Also, we could see how, from year to year, the Forum was attended by more and more high ranked representatives of the Paris office. 

This year, the event has been rebranded into 3DExperience Forum and is going to set a record that is unlikely to be ever surpassed. Take a look below at the official list of the DS attendees and judge for yourself (in brackets – some comments from isicad). 

1. CEO Bernard Charles (some of the isicad experts will not be surprised if Bernard meets Putin or Medvedev or somebody close to them)

2. EVP Monica Menghini

3. Vice-President Marine and Offshore industry Alain Houard (NB: there is a huge project to build a number of helicopter carriers based on a French license);

4. Vice-President Transportation and Mobility Olivier Sappin (NB: AvtoVAZ is increasingly more oriented to Renault);

5.  Vice-President Energy, Processes and Utility Stephane Declee (nuclear energy is a very attractive sector of the Russian industry where Bentley and Intergraph are already quire successful);

6.  VP Sales Aerospace and Defense Patrick Fardeau (these industries are traditional for DS – also in Russia, however a competition with Siemens needs more and more attention and efforts).

7.  Paris people from 3DVIA, as well as from Academia, Customer Goods, and Retail.

You can take a look at the Moscow 3DExperience Forum web site (in Russian)  . 

Just published at isicad.net: The Power of T-FLEX CAD Parametric Modeling. Part I - with 30 video clips

isicad.net has just published "The Power of T-FLEX CAD Parametric Modeling. Part I"  by CEO and CTO of Top Systems, a leading Russian privately held CAD/PLM company which this summer celebrated its 20^th anniversary. The company is known first of all by its well-developed parametric MCAD system T-FLEX, which is quite popular in Russia and CIS and, probably, when supported by a powerful marketing, could become popular globally. You can find some characteristics of T-FLEX in “T-FLEX Parametric CAD” by Deelip Menezes , “The Russian MCAD Market” by Ralph Grabowski, and in multiple publications of isicad.net – such as for example  “T-FLEX CAD 12 Released”.
  

Experts and developers of Top Systems has accumulated a huge competence and experience in engineering software, and nobody was surprised to learn at the beginning of 2012 that Top Systems became one of the key contractors of the Russian Geometric Kernel project.

Top Systems has step by step built a full scale PLM environment – also integrated with a number of ERP-modules. Some intermediate results of this direction were presented at seminar COFES-Russia/isicad-2010. I hope that attendees of the planned COFES-Russia/isicad-2013 will be able to learn much about the latest PLM-results of Top Systems – called PLM+.

Interesting to mention that couple days ago, I wrote in @levin_david: “Today the isicad.ru article (from May 21) which compares SolidWorks vs Russian T-FLEX received a comment No.1000  http://bit.ly/OvjgOQ“.  I believe that Top Systems has not yet realized its full potential and hopefully this richly illustrated paper will increase global awareness of the company, its solutions, and competence.  

Part II soon to appear. 

Summer memories: Barcelona

Today the summer is over, and now, in Siberia, I reminisce couple days spent in Barcelona with my two (from six) grandchildren. These are some pictures and videos with minimum comments. 

We already know that Barcelona has won 2-1:

At the market Boqueria:

Columbus vs the man of today? :) :

The kids, lunch, and Olympic Games:

Simple Spanish/Catalan guys: 

The Basílica i Temple Expiatori de la Sagrada Família is known by everyone as the Number One attraction of Barcelona and a masterpiece of Gaudi (click to enlarge):

I wonder what could this gentleman tell to a girl to make her so happy (click to enlarge):

This Catalan word sounds for me more expressive than all its translations that I know:

Montjuïc (according to Wikipedia translated as 'Jew Hill' in medieval Catalan, or is perhaps related to the Latin phrase Mons Jovicus ('hill of Jove')) together with its "colored and music" fountain is one of the top 10 city attractions. A view from the hill is really great (make a full screen):

Frankly, I did not understand why thousands of people compete to occupy comfortable places and are waiting 2-3 hours to see how he fountain starts. But they do wait, and they obviously are happy.     

During those waiting hours, some local people are making their business:

However a Russian child with his spontaneous parody overdanced all businessmen:

The Fountain is alive:

T-FLEX CAD – the King of Parametrization

This week, the Russian CAD/PLM company Top Systems celebrates its 20 years. Founded during difficult economic post-Sovient times by graduates of "STANKIN" (Moscow Technological University), Top Systems vigorously developed and released a full-scale parametric CAD called T-FLEX and soon after became one of the leaders of the market of CAD-related engineering software created in Russia. By now, Top Systems offers a broad spectrum of CAD+PLM solutions partially extended to the ERP direction.

See English publications about Top Systems in «The Russian MCAD Market» by Ralph Grabowski,  «T-FLEX Parametric CAD» by Deelip Menezes, as well as at http://www.tflex.com and www.isicad.net .

Today, isicad.ru published the first part of the article “T-FLEX CAD – the King of  Parametrization” (in Russian) in which two key founders of the company, Sergey Kuraksin (CEO) and Sergey Kozlov (CTO), in many details and with 32 video describe their approach and achievements regarding  parametrization  in T-FLEX CAD. The photo below taken from this paper shows the authors 20+ years ago.

Russian national platform or Microsoft?

Couple weeks ago, Russian IT and Internet community was very (positively) excited by a new Russian  Minister of Communications and Mass Media of the Russian Federation. 

Nikolai Nikiforov is only 30, until recently whole career of this graduate from Kazan university was within Internet. Nikolay is known by a successful implementation of the 4G LTE in Tatarstan region and by practical progress of the installment of electronic government solutions in the region.   

Today, the Russian daily VEDOMOSTY announced that Mr Nikiforov rejected an earlier existing project of implementation of the Russian national OS (probably based on Lunix). The new minister strongly believes that a much more pragmatic approach is to make a special strategic deal with Microsoft assuming special prices, application of cloud technologies for governmental services, and other. The negotiations with Microsoft has already begun. According to VEDOMOSTY, Nikiforov's decision resulted in a conflict in his ministry and resignations of some people who believe that Russia is capable (due to qualification of its specialists) and obliged (due to the national security reasons) to develop its own OS and basic platform.  

My personal opinion is that yes, it's true that Russia is potentially capable and probably obliged to implement its own platform but it does not mean that such a project can actually be efficiently organized, financed, managed, industrially implemented, installed, reliably maintained,  and so on. Which means that, maybe unfortunately, Microsoft provides more efficiency and national security for Russia...    

About Mr Nikiforov (English)

Source from VEDOMOSTY (Russian) 

DS increases its annual sales in Russia by 30%

Laurent Valroff, the director of DS Russia, was recently interviewed by the Russian review “Expert”. Two key points of the answers are

- Rumors of the death of Russian industry are greatly exaggerated,

- PLM solutions in Russia are distributed faster than globally: the fact which DS has been successfully using.

Mr Valroff has mentioned some Russian industries that rather actively assimilate modern technologies of engineering, digital design, simulation, and manufacturing: space & aircraft, automotive, shipbuilding, defense, energy, industrial equipment, and production of apparel and consumer goods. In contrast to them, electronics, medical equipment, and pharmaceutics are technologically not well developed, while in the West these sectors are today main drivers of the demand for high tech. As for AEC, this very large sector of Russian market still did not completely recover from the crisis of 2008.  

Mr Valroff gave two examples of the success stories: one related to nuclear energy stations, another - to modernization of AutoVAZ which is being implementing together with Renault. In the latter case, a new DS platform 3DEXPERIENCE can already be used.

Mr Valroff said that in 2011, DS increased its sales in Russia by at least 30%. During next three years, DS plans to double their sales in Russia.

Source (in Russian)

ASCON successfully held its customer forum in a strikingly nice place near St.Petersburg

I have just published at isicad.net a comparatively long article describing a recently held ASCON’s Forum which demonstrated strong aspiration of the company to become global.

The titles of the paper paragraphs give some idea of the content:

1. General info from CEO

2. 3D-kernel as a strong marketing message

3. How ASCON reacts to global trends

4. LOTSMAN-PDM:AEC for Android/iOS as an example of how ASCON reacts to the market trends

5. Customer’s presentations

6. My meetings with ASCON’s top managers

7. ASCON’s corporate review “Stremlenie” (Aspiration)

8. Peterhof: an ideal place to hold an efficient international event.

9. One of my recommendations to ASCON.

Here is the paper and this are some pictures of the place in question (from Google pictures, click to enlarge):

ASCON holds its Forum "White Nights" in a place perfectly suitable for the next COFES-Russia

These days, I am at the ASCON's Forum which the company is holding for its customers at Peterhof, an outskirt of Saint Petersburg. This is really a great place, just look a Wikipedia pictures and characteristic which starts with "it is a series of palaces and gardens located in Saint Petersburg, Russia, laid out on the orders of Peter the Great. These Palaces and gardens are sometimes referred as the "Russian Versailles". The palace-ensemble along with the city center is recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

ASCON, the biggest Russian CAD/PLM company, holds its Forum for the 7th time. The key participants of "White Nights" are top managers from the Russian and CIS industries. Among the topics of the Forum, there are: optimization of the business processes, best practices from the industries, recent progress in the main ASCON's products and solutions, and other.  During the last couple years ASCON, still remaining the leading Russian CAD vendor and the only competitor of Autodesk at the local market, becomes more and more dynamic and looking at the global market: establishing its office in Germany, actively participating in COFES, and integrating some Western solutions into its products.

It is at COFES in Arizona that ASCON's managers agreed on cooperation with Lightwork Design, the world’s leading supplier of rendering solutions for advanced 3D Computer Graphics. By today, the Artisan product from Lightworks is already integrated into KOMPAS-3D V13 - the key MCAD solution of ASCON. Clive Davies, Business Development Director at LightWork Design, is a special guest and invited speaker of the “White Nights” and I have had a pleasant opportunity to prepare an interview with Clive, see "Clive Davies: ASCON is proving to be the ideal partner for Lightwork Design".

By the way, it's also in Arizona a cooperation between ASCON and LEDAS has been materialized and lead to the project of incorporating into KOMPAS some key directmodeling facilities based on the LEDAS Geometric Solver (LGS). 

The Forum starts in couple hours in an nice hotel "New Peterhof" and I hope to report on its key issues. I came to Peterhof yesterday morning to have more time to visit some local places of interest that I had seen long ago in Soviet times... Today, the place is really a very comfortable touristic site with a carefully maintained environment, a lot of restaurants, an excellent Wi-Fi all around the town, and so on. Look at some pictures below: why, after the firstsuccessful experience, not to organize the next COFES-Russia here in Peterhof?  

The hotel is near the pond - over the trees, the church is 50 meters from the hotel entrance:

Here, in the pond:

And this is also at the pond, 70 meters from the hotel: 

In the world-famous park founded by Peter the Great (15 minutes of walk from the hotel): 

And here is the key point of the place:

3D Geometric Kernels as Fishes

Today, the leading Russian CAD/PLM portal isicad.ru announced its 93rd release. As always, this release is completely presented in my editorial (in Russian).

Here I just want to attract you attention to the cover page of this release. The key point is about geometric kernel C3D of ASCON which the company recently presented at COFES-2012.  The page is designed similar to the poster of a well-known movie “Arizona Dream”  by Emir Kusturica. You need not read Russian to catch the plot, except only one thing: the letters at the moon denote Russian Geometric Kernel – the project in which Top Systems and LEDAS participate (see “LEDAS announces its involvement in development of Russia’s 3D kernel”.

Please take a look at the animated version of the cover page of N93  (made by Anna Kotova, the isicad executive editor and designer) where you can at least enjoy wonderful soundtrack from the movie.

See also «A detailed informal report on COFES-2012» by Alexey Ershov, LEDAS CEO.

LEDAS makes JETCAM to work 50 times faster

JETCAM International s.a.r.l (Monaco) recently announced  a simultaneous launch of updates to its two flagship products – JETCAM Expert CADCAM and nesting software for sheet metal and composite users, and the Premium version of JETCAM Order Controller (JOC), which provides remote ordering, geometry creation and nesting for JETCAM Expert.

Version 16.23.02 of JETCAM Expert  is the start of several end user releases planned for 2012 focussing on punching for sheet metal. The new release boasts a 50 x improvement when performing web nesting due to a completely re-written underlying core. It also includes the recently announced Prima-Power XML postprocessor for Tulus based controllers, along with many other feature enhancements across the board.

One of the key improvements in this version is a significant progress in the functional performance of web nesting (placing parts on the sheet so that, after cutting punching method, "skeleton" remains connected). The development of a new algorithmic kernel for the new version was outsourced to LEDAS whose team succeeded to accelerate related functionality of the previously already used functionality by 50 times based on the completely rewritten core algorithms. 

JETCAM Order Controller v8.50 provides a remote method of ordering components or assemblies within JETCAM Expert, and this latest version provides a raft of benefits and improvements. The CAD import engine has been completely rewritten and now supports JETCAM Expert’s Single Component Automatic Processing (SCAP). This allows JOC users to remotely and automatically create geometry files from multiple CAD drawings and tool them for a punching or profiling machine with just a few clicks of a mouse. Upon receiving instructions from JOC, JETCAM will automatically process the queued files and report back once done. Users of JETCAM’s Remote Control Processing (RCP) module for JETCAM also benefit from a new streamlined interface. JOC also includes a comprehensive reports designer and generator, allowing for customized reports to be easily designed and implemented.

JETCAM was founded in 1986 to develop and market software systems for computer numerical control programming of punching and cutting machines used in sheet metal fabrication and composite cutting. By 2012, has over 12,000 licences granted to enterprises in more than 80 countries around the globe. Its customers include such well-known names as Embraer, Bombardier Aerospace and Red Bull Technology. JETCAM is a true customer-driven company: development of CrossTrack, a system to manage orders, materials and assemblies, was initiated upon customer requests. Together with JETCAM Expert it forms an automated order processing system that independently generates a CNC code for any machine.

At the end of 2010, JETCAM started transfer of its software product development to LEDAS. Today, a big team of LEDAS developers is continuously and successfully working within several JETCAM projects. 

See also: "From the Prague Spring to a Siberian summer" and Related press-release of the JETCAM International .

LEDAS announces its involvement in development of Russia’s 3D kernel

Just want to give you these links:
LEDAS Assists STANKIN to Develop a New 3D Modeling Kernel (press-release)
Russian National 3D Kernel (overview by Dmitry Ushakov)
LEDAS: How our Company is Involved in Developing Russian Geometric Kernel (my interview with LEDAS managers).

They have had a chance to see SolidWorks 2015

Every month a Russian CAD/PLM web portal isicad.ru produces a virtual release by publishing a market review, distributing an editorial column, designing a special cover page, composing a pdf with the most interesting articles of the last month, and other. Although all this is intended for those who can read Russian, I hope some of the others will not consider as a spam the information I am giving below.  

The yesterday-issued cover page of February was inspired by SolidWorks World 2012 and obviously by “Back to the Future”. The key title under the picture says: “What will happen with SW in the future?”:

By today, our collection of monthly cover pages contains 40 pictures always intended to reflect some important monthly market developments: please take a look at them here (some of them are flash animated). Our monthly reviews are typically composed by Vladimir Malukh, the LEDAS/isicad leading CAD expert. His review from February “SolidWorks 2015 will be implemented!” as well as the full long list of his articles since 2007 can be found here.

My February editorial was called “Love for a software system: is this the engine or brake of its progress?”, the title inspired by a recent Randall Newton’s remark about the problems SW has with its customers who adore the system. The links to my previous monthly papers can be found at this page.

The monthly pdf digest as usual contains the most visited articles (but not news neither press-releases), the 105 pages issue of February is here.

If you decide to use any automatic tools for translation of, say, my editorials, please don’t be too surprised or disappointed: usually these texts are quite sensitive to the context/ discourse of Russia and national communities.  

    

Note that the isicad project also supports a modest English version of the isicad portal. At this web site you can easily find some English articles/reviews reflecting developments of the Russian and CIS market. Recently I’ve outlined this web site in my paper “NURBS, BIM, orRevolution: which topics are most attractive for the readership?”. This is a small collection of the English cover pages (see the page with this set of pictures):

Direct modeling and armored troop-carrier

A news about Bricscad V12 which has brought direct modeling to Linux was couple days ago exhaustively promoted by a Bricsys news, posts by Ralph Grabowski and Deelip Menezes, and certainly by many others. You will not be too much surprised by my impulse to proudly remind that the underlying technology came from LEDAS - as it was formally fixed by a Bricsys-LEDAS deal from the last October.

According to that deal, a team of former LEDAS developers headed by Dmitry Ushakov, joined Bricsys software development ecosystem in the guise of a Bricsys daughter establishment - a newco called Bricsys Technologies Russia (BTR). BTR team is currently renting a part of the LEDAS offices so that both teams, although definitely working separately, can fruitfully and friendly contact.

Now I have a kind of linguistic task: to explain you a title of this post and a meaning of the picture hanging at the door of the BTR office:

Well, as you can see, the picture shows an ATC (armored troop-carrier) which in Russian is "BroneTranspoteR" (bronya = armor) - known to everyone with native Russian as BTR. Judging by a series of Bricscad V12 releases, this BTR-image is much inspiring for Bricsys Technologies Russia which is very fruitfully contributing to the recent and future results of Bricsys.

A linguistic aspect is sometimes much easier, for example, take a look at another door: the compass hints that it is about the LEDAS  project related to KOMPAS 3D of ASCON.   

ASCON opens its office in Munich

The office named ASCON Software Germany GMBH has been established to support local partners and customers in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. Today, ASCON emphasize its abroad activity on indirect sales so its office in Munich will be oriented on training of partners and implementing marketing projects. The office has three employees including one with 20-year IT experience and a manager with 10-year experience in MCAD support and training.

ASCON provides a rich spectrum of PLM solutions however the most known company’s product is MCAD KOMPAS-3D localized for English and German.

ASCON is currently very active in establishing and expanding its international presence including participation in COFES 2011 and COFES 2012 and establishing  partnerships with Western companies. It also is rather sensitive to development of technological aspects.

Source: ASCON opens its first abroad representative office in Munich (in Russian). 

Some related links (in English):

New KOMPAS-3D V13 from ASCON integrates Lightworks Artisan 

ASCON Announces the Release of KOMPAS-3D V13 

LEDAS Implements Variational Direct Modeling in KOMPAS-3D 

COFES 2012 (list of key participants) 

  

Who should pay whom? An AECCafe-isicad dialogue

This (see below) response from AECCafe seems to me unreasonable if not ridiculous. I believe media is interested to expand its readership especially to a huge not English-speaking country, isn't it? However I may be wrong because not fully comprehend the laws of this business... And would it be a violation of IP rights if isicad.ru will just retell this article of AECCafe? BTW, what could be the price for translating into English and publishing, say, of our own review of the market trends or its update for Autodesk Forum 2011? Would appreciate any instructive comment. 

Hi

We're running a leading Russian CAD-portal isicad.ru. Recently, I've read your article "Top Ten AEC Technology Trends of 2011" and found it quite interesting. So far I ask your permission to translate this article into Russian and publish it at our isicad site.

Kindly,

Vladimir Malukh, isicad.ru editor, LEDAS director for PLM services

Hi Vladimir ,

Yo can republish this article for US $500. Let me know if you are interested.

Thanks, 

Sanjay Gangal, AECCafe.Com