BIM in Russia: Now About Modeling of an Ancient Church

Earlier,  in my blog I have several times presented the isicad.ru Big BIM Discussion. This time,  my task became much easier - thanks to a recent guest editorial by Alexander Bausk "BIM Discussion Gets Heated in Russia" published by Ralph Grabowski in his upFront.eZine #692.

Today isicad.ru presented the 15th isicad-BIM-article of Vladimir Talapoff, a professor of Novosibirsk Architecture University. This is something new: first, the paper is about modeling of an old Siberian wooden church, and, second, now Vladimir has a co-author, a nice girl - a post-graduate student who made all the modeling by means of Autodesk instruments - mainly by Revit and some minor use of AutoCAD. See a part of the model: 

The wooden church built in 18 century in Eastern Siberia: 

was in 1971 carefully moved to the open-air museum of Novosibirsk Scientific Center (where isicad.ru and LEDAS are operating):

The article states that although the BIM means available today are mostly oriented to design of new buildings and constructions, nevetherless a presented project practically proved that BIM can be applied for modeling of architectural monuments as well. The autors believe that effective information modeling of historic buildings should involve at least two different methods. One - "the traditional approach" can be used for brick and stone buildings while "discrete" method is natural for wooden and other dismountable / portable constructions. This article explains discrete approach which enables individual tracing of every element of a buiding.

I recommend you to take a look at the today's Russian publication for at least to see a lot of  pictures and examples of modeling.

Will Inventor Fusion within AutoCAD 2012 really improve popularity of direct modeling?

@dmitryushakov has just published a summary of the yesterday's twitter discussion on direct modeling with @bcourter, @DeelipMenezes, and @SeanDotson. Dmitry himself also took part in that twittering.

You can read Dmitry's article in Russian or translated by Google.

My own comment. Yes, all those interested in spreading DM (not least - LEDAS), in one degree or another, can be grateful to Autodesk. However I think that it's prematurely to count how many millions of AutoCAD users will be infected by DM: rather probably the majority will not only stay noninvolved but for quite a long time will still not go beyond 2D. In addition, a specific approach of very popular Autodesk (a concrete Fusion, combination of DM with a "historical" method) may distort a trajectory towards complete victory of a true pure DM - with automatic detection of the design intent - an approach which, for example, LEDAS is developing. But these observations do not abolish or downgrade significance of the move just made by Autodesk, be it only marketing or not.

What Publications on CAD/PLM are the Most Popular in Russia?

It seems usual for all kinds of media to announce their year-end statistics. I will now make this for the Russian versions of the isicad portal and of my blog that hopefully gives some impression about distribution of interests and preferences in the Russian market.

Top 10 of isicad.ru (from 527 publications of 2010)

1. Software renewal is rather investments than expenses. An interview with Anastasia Morozova, Field Marketing Area Team Manager, Autodesk Russia and CIS

2. What Affects Adoption of BIM in Russia? Vladimir Talapov (Novosibirsk Architecture Academy)

3. KOMPAS-3D V12 to be Released in May: Interview with Vladimir Zakharov, CTO of ASCON

4. AutoCAD 2011 brings 3D to the Mass Market. Ilya Tatarnikov (LEDAS)

5. What People Usually Mean by BIM. Vladimir Talapov

6. Is it possible to Make CAD 200 Times Faster? Dmitry Ushakov

7. To Increase Adoption of PLM in Russia We Need a Competitive Environment. An Interview with Dmitry Osnatch, Marketing Director of ASCON.

8. How We See CAD/PLM in 2020. Vladimir Malukh, Dmitry Ushakov (both - LEDAS)

9. How We Make CAD. Notes of a Russian Software Developer. Dmitry Kapyshin (CADEZY)

10. Not Just Almost Everything about Autodesk 2010-2011 in Russia. An interview with Anastasia Morozova, Field Marketing Area Team Manager, Autodesk Russia and CIS.

(Note that 9 and 10 were published quite recently).

Top 10 of David Levin Russian Blog (from 215 posts of 2010)

1. Cloud: the Most Fashionable Word in CAD?
2. AutoCAD for $50 or The torrents.ru Case
3. From AutoCAD 2011 and KOMPAS-3D to SolidWorks-2011
4. DS Wants to Kill AutoCAD
5. AutoCAD 2011 is More Cool than Ashton Catcher and Avatar
6. Working Days of CAD Market Competition
7. Innovative Economy in Russia: Inevitable Future or a Dream?
8. On a Reflex of Contempt for What is not a Short-term and Freestuff: in CAD and in General
9. SolidWorks, PLM, and Enovia Meet in Clouds
10. What is New in Autodesk Inventor 2011

Now - some simple conclusions:

- Autodesk and ASCON are definitely the most popular CAD vendors in Russia,

- Inventor hardly enjoys popularity of Autodesk, however its popularity at the level of SW, DS, PLM,... is perhaps honorable for Autodesk,

- People are VERY sensitive to the topics of (il)legal software which from my point of view reflects a considerable progress in overcoming the problem in Russia - definitely an important topic to discuss separately,

- People are more and more interested in technology, trends, overviews, test drives... - if they trust the authors:),

- As always and everywhere, people are obviously attracted by topics of competition, conflicts between vendors, ..., whatever flavor of sensation...

All about AutoCAD for Windows, Mac, Linux, clouds, and other

On 7 October, Vladimir Malukh by skype interviewed Miikka Arala, EMEA Industry and Marketing Development Manager at Autodesk.

Ten questions were about:

- CAD as SaaS

- 3D parameterization for AutoCAD

- Direct modeling for AutoCAD

- AutoCAD: Windows vs Mac

- AutoCAD for Linux

- Mac/Linux vs cloud-based

- Handy multi-touch functionality

- AutoCAD and conceptual design

- AutoCAD and stereo display

- Will DS entering DWG-business impact AutoCAD marketing and pricing?

See full English and Russian texts of the interview.

AutoCAD for $50: Scandalous Suspension of torrents.ru in Moscow

Yesterday a discussion section of the Autodesk Russian web site was attacked by numerous angry users of torrents.ru. The Autodesk web site administrators had to clean up their pages from obscene words blaming Autodesk as guilty for temporary closing of the very popular torrents.ru which then moved from Russian hosting to rutracker.org.

The closing was initiated by the Moscow prosecutor's office which opened an investigation against the web site. The investigation has found that torrents.ru users downloaded illegal software – in particular, those of Autodesk and of 1C (the largest and a very popular Russian ERP vendor). For example, a purchase of AutoCAD for the price $50 was traced to torrents.ru.

As I can conclude from the discussion at the Autodesk Russian web site, the company denies any explicit or implicit suggestions that these actions would have been performed on behalf of Autodesk which got the news in the same way as all other people – from the media, meaning that law executors never ask the right holders what should be done to lawbreakers.

For me, the key point of this episode is that among angry comments at the forums there was no blaming of the illegal software downloading. In particular, in a related discussion at isicad.ru (where I am the editor) one of the angry CAD professionals, an active visitor of isicad.ru who does not look like a friend of Autodesk:), argued that the prosecutor's decision was not fair because (a) “in Russia you can buy illegal software everywhere almost for free; this is a basic feature of Russian mentality” and (b) can’t believe that Autodesk did not itself initiate the case.

So, many people in Russia believe that a simple and straightforward interpretation of the torrents.ru case (and similar cases) is improbable; and prefer looking for some underlying reasons. A nice example is an opinion – repeatedly expressed at some web forums – that recent severity of the Moscow prosecutor's regarding torrents.ru is related to a current visit of a USA high-tech delegation to Russia (see my post John Donahoe, CEO of eBay, joined Twitter in Siberia): i.e., the Russian authorities are pointedly demonstrating to the international community their strong commitment to combating against illegal software and more generally – to establishing the rule of law in Russia.

Whatever it is, the actual trend is positive: compared to 90% of illegal software in the 90s, today this indicator is estimated as 70% or less. My own impression is that, in spite of the above mentioned comments, social mentality (at least in high tech) is slowly but definitely developing in the right direction.

One of the sources (in Russian): a Vedomosti newspaper article.
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