ASCON moves towards BIM relying on C3D kernel and A.Bausk

This step of ASCON is not a bombshell. See, for example, how the company CEO Maxim Bogdanov presented the key directions of ASCON’s immediate developments last May:

However, the news that came out on this Friday about ASCON, BIM, C3D kernel, and Alexander Bausk altogether was a kind of a sensation for the Russian CAD market. 

After his excellent simultaneous translation at isicad-COFES-Russia 2010, a series of analytical articles (such as "More or Less Optimistic Update on BIM"), participation in Arizona COFES 2012, moderating BIM-related round tables at AU Russia 2013 and COFES Russia 2013, Alexander Bausk, who has a PhD in structural analysis and is an expert in industrial (nuclear stations) AEC, became one of the most noticeable analysts on Russia & CIS market. To better understand what I mean, see for example @bauskas.

Now a prompt nano-interview with Alexander.        

Is it true that you are now a full-time employee at ASCON?

Yes, it is true. It happened three days ago.

What is your position and what is the main focus of your tasks?

I've got a position of a leading analyst in one of new ambitious ASCON projects that uses ASCON’s modeler C3D. Joining ASCON, I have not changed the key point of my personal interests and work: it is still AEC engineering. My plans to help advance BIM also have not changed and I get an enthusiastic support from my employer. I believe that together we will present some new remarkable AEC and BIM tools. 

As far as I know, until now, you have been living quite far away from St-Petersburg. Do you work with ASCON remotely, over the Internet? 

No. Now I am living in St Petersburg, and my family will move here as soon as the school year is over.

My comment

ASCON has sound competences in MCAD, PLM, AEC, and supporting technologies. All ASCON’s current solutions are very popular in the Russian market, and the company’s ecosystem is likely the most developed in comparison with other vendors operating in Russia. ASCON has very close and efficient links with the Russian industry and is aware of its specifics and everyday needs. It means that although developing and bringing a new BIM product to market is very risky, ASCON has good chances.

Anyway, I believe that an attempt to use C3D for BIM is a promising project for the geometric kernel since it might open some new (hopefully original or maybe innovative) directions of software development. Finally, I am sure that active entering into the BIM audience is, among other things, an effective marketing move to better promote the flagship ASCON solutions.

Extended version in Russian 

Just AppleStored ASCON’s 3D Machinator Game is Ahead of Angry Birds and Cut the Rope

I am not a great fan of computer/smartphone games however I found it very impressive to see ASCON’s iOS Machinator at AppleStore. For me, it was additionally interesting because couple weeks ago I published (in Russian) an article  about the company’s several new projects – at that time being somewhat secret. Now, one of those projects (previously called CORVETTE) has been unveiled under the name Machinator.

Surprisingly enough, I could not find something in English about Machinator. Really strange considering the fact that currently the game is ahead of famous Angry Birds or Cut the Rope in the local charts. So below I've quickly illustrated the game from the description of AppStore. Just for the sake of justice :)

“Remember, when you were little: you would pour Lego pieces on the floor and become overwhelmed? There were so many! But piece by piece, by trial and error you got results!”

 “Machinator is the favorite passtime for adults and kids - join us!”

“- Choose a model to assemble from the store (both free and paid models are available)

- Use your brains and assemble it

- Assemble it faster than anyone else and let everyone know about it

- Share your results with friends

- Check out the Model Store - there is sure to be something new there, something You will enjoy.”

 “The first real 3D erector set in AppStore!”

The fresh move of ASCON was immediately interconnected in my mind with the news about mobile version of RGK – the Russian Geometric Kernel. Is it the Russian mobile revolution in engineering software?

Nine participants from Russian ASCON, Fidesys, LEDAS, and TopSystems will attend COFES 2013 in Arizona

The number of COFES participants from Russia and CIS is constantly increasing. Vladimir Malukh from LEDAS-isicad was the first Russian expert who in 2009 visited COFES when the event was hardly known in Russia and the CIS; see Vladimir's isicad paper "COFES – Wish you were here".  

Awareness of COFES drastically increased in Russia and the CIS when in fall 2010 Cyon Research together with LEDAS organized a COFES-isicad event in Moscow with a keynote and general active participation of Brad Holtz.  

In 2011, a list of COFES participants included five persons from Russian companies: three - from ASCON, one - from a multi-vendor reseller Consistent Software, and Dmitry Ushakov, who at that time was LEDAS CEO; see Dmitry's isicad paper "Get back! (Personal Impressions from COFES-2011)".

Active participation of ASCON in 2011 was not casual. The company is the largest Russian CAD and PLM vendor with a well-developed MCAD KOMPAS 3D and intensively extending PLM set; it successfully competes with Autodesk in the Russian & CIS market. In 2010-2011 ASCON began to internationalize its marketing and partnership activity as well as to invest into development of SaaS, mobility, and other hot trends. It is at COFES 2011 where the managers of ASCON established close partnerships for example with Lightwork: see my interview with Clive Davies: “ASCON is proving to be the ideal partner for Lightwork Design“.  This direction of ASCON’s development continued quite successfully which is illustrated, for example, in some isicad-papers such as «ASCON Releases DEXMA as a Competitor to PLM 360» , «ASCON’s Mobilezation: My impressions from the “White Nights” Forum», and other.

In 2012, ASCON again sent its three managers to COFES, and now – in 2013, CEO Maxim Bogdanov will attend Arizona for the third time, now accompanied by Sergey Evsikov, Vice-President, Sales (left) and Alexander Golikov, Founder (right):

Currently, ASCON feels like a mature international actor. The company is providing technical assistance to COFES Russia 2013  to be held in St. Petersburg six weeks after the event in Arizona. Today, ASCON is emphasizing its openly distributed original geometric kernel C3D  – the foundation of KOMPAS 3D, its above mentioned cloud PLM DEXMA, and its traditional-style large PLM+ERP environment.      

In 2012, COFES invited six persons from Russia and the CIS. Along with the people from ASCON, there were Dmitry Kondakov from IRISOFT (a large Russian VAR of PTC and some other vendors), Alexander Bausk from Ukrainian Nuclear Structures Research Lab, and Alexey Ershov, LEDAS CEO – see his isicad paper ”Arizona Dream: A detailed informal report on COFES-2012”.

Now about COFES 2013 which starts approximately in 4 weeks. You can meet there a record number of persons from Russia (seven). Two guys from ASCON were already mentioned above.

Another participant is Vladimir A. Levin,  ScD, professor, Moscow State University, department of Mechanics and Mathematics, Computational Mechanics. 

Vladimir’s main field of interest is developing mathematical models of strength analysis of bodies under finite strains. Total number of publications: over 235, including 4 monographs. Vladimir is the founder and the head of Fidesys – a start-up which positions itself as a provider of a new generation CAE system for strengthen analysis and associated problems. 


After my blogpost was published, Anatoly Vershinin, Fidesys CTO, joined Vladimir in his visit to Arizona. 

There will be three persons from Top Systems: CEO Sergey Kuraksin, CTO Sergey Kozlov, and Sergey Bikulov, executive director (from left to right):.

Top Systems's set of traditional CAD+PLM+ERP solutions is quite well developed and  recognized in the Russia / CIS market. The key product of Top Systems, its MCAD called T-FLEX, is characterized as one of the most developed parametric system in the world market: see a detailed paper by S.Kuraksin and S.Kozlov “The Power of T-FLEX CAD Parametric Modeling”: Part I and Part II. Interestingly a paper which compared  T-FLEX and SolidWorks (the comparison made by a Top Systems’ partner in Poland) has become and until now is the most visited isicad publication since launching the portal.

It is important to mention that Top Systems is actively involved (both in management and development ) into the building of a new geometric 3D modeler RGK within a big project funded by the Russian Government and being implemented by a distributed team from several development centers of Russia. I believe that today, by visiting COFES, Top Systems is making an active step towards international market.

This time, LEDAS will be represented by the company’s COO Nikolay Snytnikov – PhD, who despite his young age (30) has already passed through a hard many-year school of participation in a cool outsourcing project for Dassault Systems (as a developer and manager), and currently he is a manager of the LEDAS part of RGK - the Russian Geometric Kernel. Within RGK, LEDAS is responsible for the development  of Boolean operations,  fast NURBS library,  some parallelization tasks, and other hard problems (see “LEDAS Experts: How our Company is Involved in Developing Russian Geometric Kernel” by A.Ershov and N.Snytnikov). Nikolay's background is in parallel computing so his visit to NVIDIA GPU Technology Conference 2012 resulted not only in a series of best-read isicad reportages but seems to bring useful knowledge to the RGK project. Since LEDAS does not compete with any CAD vendor, the company is a partner of both Top Systems and ASCON; the latter has used LEDAS service to integrate direct modeling facilities into KOMPAS 3D and is now relying on  LEDAS support in distribution and commercialization of the C3D kernel.   

As an internationally recognized provider of components (such as geometric solvers, direct modeling modules, and other) and highly-qualified software development services, LEDAS is well-known to the global market. After selling its IP to Bricsys in 2011, LEDAS has been  focusing on services, and recently the company shareholders have established an US business entity to better serve its clients worldwide. On the other hand, competence, skills, experience, and creativity enabled LEDAS experts to formulate a number of new project/technology ideas related to some hot topics of engineering software such as interoperability, etc. Nikolay Snytnikov is going to Arizona to strengthen some existing contacts, to seek for the new service contracts, and to look for the partners interested in joint business projects. As a member of the editorial board and a fruitful writer for isicad.ru, Nilolay will also send us his reports from the Arizona event.

What were the most important developments/events FOR the Russian market of engineering software in 2012?

This survey was organized by isicad-Facebook; it included several initial options and a possibility to add those preferred by the followers.

The obvious current winner is “ASCON entered the global market with its geometric kernelC3D”; the second is “The First Russian Autodesk University”, the next are “Release of Nanocad 4/4.5 with open API” and “Start of the Project on the RGK - Russian Geometric Kernel ”… - you can easily catch almost all the others from the key words at the screenshot below.  

Note that those who voted are mostly people of the expert level.

Current results of the survey were today analyzed by Dmitry Ushakov in his paper at isicad.ru. Interestingly, some people decided that an isicad-paper “On comparison of SolidWorks and TFLEX” is itself a noticeable event of 2012; as you can see from a chart in Dmitry’s paper, this comparison at isicad.ru was uniquely visited 14 000 times (and resulted in 1000+ comments).

 C3D, RGK, and some other products and projects mentioned in the isicad survey will be presented at COFES Russia 2013 (May 30 – June 1, Petergof-St.Petersburg ).

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.

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): 

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.

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) 

  

One relatively inexpensive way to change your life: both in CAD and in general

A 2011-year record of a number of COFES-participants from CIS can now be overcome. Almost at New Year midnight Brad Holtz has updated a current list of participants  of the April Arizona event, now the list includes:

- Three representatives of ASCON who have already visited Arizona in 2011 – CEO M. Bogdanov, head of innovation department O. Zykov, and ASCON’s key technologist V.Panchenko,

- LEDAS CEO and leading technologist Alexey Ershov, and

- a bright CIS expert in AEC&BIM Alexander Bausk.

For the Russian participants, COFES-2011 was rather fruitful (see "Get back! Personal Impressions from COFES-2011"), note in particular some concrete contracts: ASCON-LEDAS (see "LEDAS Implements Variational Direct Modeling in KOMPAS-3D") and ASCON-Lightworks (see "New KOMPAS-3D V13 from ASCON integrates Lightworks Artisan") to say nothing about a lot of indirect value which for sure will be materialized in future. 

As far as I know, a number of the participants from CIS may still increase, in any case, I recommend such Russian CAD/PLM vendors as Top Systems, NanoSoft and ADEM  to seriously consider their visiting Arizona in April which might be very useful for global development of these companies. Just after his registration  for COFES-2012. A.Bausk modestly said on Twitter "Four hours before the New Year, I have done one life-changing thing: if everything comes out, wait for my tweets from a very important CAD-event".

Russia invests 690 000 000 rubles into building a national 3D solid modeling kernel

Last week, a Russian daily Izvestia published an article which announced the completion of the tender whose topic was “Building of a national 3D solid modeling kernel”. The winner is a well-known MOSCOW STATE TECHNOLOGICAL UNIVERSITY "STANKIN", one of the leading technical universities in Russia and likely in Europe. (STANKIN is an abbreviation for machine-tool institute). The main comment for Izvestia was given by Sergey Kuraksin, presented by the daily as the CEO of the engineering center of STANKIN. The CAD market perfectly knows Sergey mainly as the CEO of Top Systems, one of the leading Russian CAD/PLM companies whose offerings include 3D CAD TFlex and a developed PLM set of products. 

Another participant of the tender was TsAGI, The Central Aerohydrodynamic Institute named after N.Zhukovsky. TsAGI is world known by fundamental contributions into the Soviet and Russian aviation and space industry.

Of course the tender was open; all its minor details (see a link below) seem to confirm that although TsAGI is obviously a unique engineering institution, its skills and experience in software engineering look substantially less than those of STANKIN (especially together with Top Systems).  

The investment into the project is 690M RUR (today ~22M USD) for 3 years. Parasolid is indicated “as a functional prototype” for the project.

Izvestia gives a brief characteristics of what the modeling kernel is, mentions the component's key importance for industry, and says that today the world and Russian industry use such imported products as Parasolid and other – produced more than 20 years ago. (Note that ASCON, a leading Russian CAD/PLM provider, has its in-house modeling kernel which is so far used only for the company's products such as well-known KOMPAS 3D). 

The article also quotes some external expert opinions that are generally skeptical. One of them says that building a software is not a key point and reminds that Siemens has a very large team to maintain Parasolid. The same expert is surprised how TsAGI which has a great “experience in plane design could fail in tender with STANKIN”. Another person, a manager from SolidWorks Russia, explains that end-users do not care what modeling kernels are used in applications and added that “his company is not going to replace Parasolid with something else”.

Links:

An article in Izvestia 

All details of the tender 

STANKIN full web site in Russian , Some words about STANKIN in English 1, --- in English 2 

TopSystems , full Web site in Russian  

TsAGI 

T-FLEXCAD 12 and KOMPAS-3D V13 confirm high activity of the Russian MCAD market 

T-FLEX CAD 12 and KOMPAS-3D V13 confirm high activity of the Russian MCAD market

As the editor-in-chief of isicad.ru/net, I've just received a letter (written in English!) from the marketing department of the Russian CAD/PLM company Top Systems. The attachment included an English press-release announcing T-FLEX CAD 12. I believe this 3D CAD, quite popular at the Russian/CIS market, is really globally competitive and hope this publication: "T-FLEX CAD 12 Released" helps its promotion:

English press-releases are already quite usual for ASCON (see for example my recent overview) but it's nevertheless pleasant to see that in today's issue of tenlinks ASCON release of KOMPAS-3D V13 shares the first line with DS CATIA Sketcher:  

By the way, may be the isicad.net Top-10 will be of some interest for you:

The isicad.net Overview of the Russian CAD/PLM Market, May-October 2011

Here are some key topics of the overview:

- After 5 years of successful work for Autodesk CIS, Alex Tasev becomes head of PTC CIS and reports outstanding results of PTC at CIS market

- Dassault Systemes and Siemens PLM extend their Russian offices and demonstrate good spirit

- SolidWorks is still inarticulate in Russia in spite of very much respect to its software

- Top Systems emphasises its extended PLM orientation and integrates with Autodesk Inventor

Marketing and Internet in Russia

- Autodesk CIS Forum held on 21-22 of September was the most striking event of the year

- ASCON is probably the most dynamic company at the Russian CAD/PLM market

- LEDAS extended the range of its business interests and genres

- Bentley Systems becomes much more visible at the Russian market

- NanoCAD 3.0 2011 ~ AutoCAD LT 2009

The full overview is here .  The cover page of N25 (see below) has been inspired by a well-known fair-tale and an article “How Direct Modeling Transforms Cinderella into the Princess” (see a link in the overview). Please click the picture to enlarge and see a flash animated version (i.e. not for i-devices).