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.

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.

About DS Marketing: The Road to CATIA V6 and SolidWorks through Facebook

On October 14, Alexey Ershov, CTO LEDAS attended Dassault Systemes’ PLM Forum, traditionally held in Moscow hotel Radisson Slavyanskaya. The purpose of Alexey were business negotiations and meetings, though along the way he served as a correspondent of isicad.ru, preparing a report from the Forum and taking an interview with Thierry Collet, Dassault Systemes Vice-President on marketing and education.

Here some of the questions:

• Some customers still use CATIA V5 and even CATIA V4. What are your thoughts about CATIA V6 market history as Vice President, Global Marketing & Education?
• In Russia SolidWorks is considered as a mature solution with a rich set of features, probably, the best in its class. Perhaps, there is a big potential for SolidWorks market growth (by the way, it is for sure used illegally by many engineers). Why Dassault Systemes does not endeavor to promote SolidWorks as much as CATIA, in particular, has no SolidWorks representative office?
• CATIA Geometric Modeler (CGM) is a new product on the market although it has been used internally in CATIA for a long time. What is the reason to make it a public product now?
• Certainly CAA licenses are less popular than CATIA itself. Do you have a specific strategy to sell CAA licenses in rather small Russian market?
• A significant part of Russian industry is giant factories inherited from the USSR. Do you use any specific ways to deal with their bureaucratic apparatus and style of decision-making?
• What is an impact of social networks on marketing and sales – in Russia and worldwide? Are social networks able to penetrate the world of big corporations or, maybe, they are useful for selling CATIA to smaller customers?
• Was your experience at Oracle useful at Dassault Systemes? Is it hard to “switch” from ERP to CAD or these areas have a lot in common? Do you think that business processes in all world-level corporations are just the same?
• Is Dassault Systemes’ 3dvia.com service commercially successful?

See a full text of the interview.

See an illustrated report of the DS PLM Forum.