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...

AutoCAD 2011: Marching to the Masses with 3D and a Pleasant Make-up

As soon as the magic September 25 came, isicad.ru published (in Russian) a detailed review of the AutoCAD 2011 novelties.

The author of the review, Ilya Tatarnikov (LEDAS), suggests that the 2011, compared with somewhat fundamental advancements of AutoCAD 2010, does not demonstrate any revolutionary steps. However it contains a couple of new important features – as well as a number of new useful details that look like a pleasant make-up.

As one of the key features of AutoCAD 2011, the isicad review characterizes functionality enabling automated generation of constraints while creating geometric objects (inferred constraints). Such facilities considerably accelerate design process and reduce user efforts. “Inferred constraints for sketching” certainly is not a market innovation, it can be found in many parametric systems, e.g. in SolidWorks, NX, Autodesk Inventor, and LEDAS Driving Dimensions for SketchUp.

The review presents a lot of new functions announced in AutoCAD 2011: surface modeling tools, point cloud support, polyline editing improvements, hatch command enhancements, create / select similar objects, hide / isolate objects, and others.

The author grouped several essential 3D-related improvements: along with 3D modeling workspace, the user now has «3D Basic», which provides access to some 3D-instruments with a minimum set of not always necessary buttons, at the same time, «3D Modeling» now includes 5 new predefined styles of visualization, support of 3D-mise (3D-Connection), projection of 2D geometry to 3D-objects, means to analyze (zebra stripes, curvature, draft) surfaces and solids, etc.

The paper states that despite the emergence of several new features of 3D modeling, AutoCAD still lacks parameterization in this area: history tree is not accessible; one cannot specify geometric and dimensional constraints in 3D. In this aspect, we can expect further improvements in version 2012 or the following releases (remember how long it took Autodesk to implement 2D-parametrization in AutoCAD). Without 3D-parameterization, AutoCAD can be compared with SketchUp or Rhino, but not with SolidWorks or even Alibre Design.

In Russian the isicad review is titled «3D marching to the masses with AutoCAD 2011». Well, 3D is definitely important while marching to the masses is sometimes profitable, isn’t it?

Pay attention at What's inside AutoCAD 2011? by Ralph Grabowski.

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