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):