Showing posts with label PTC. Show all posts
Showing posts with label PTC. Show all posts

11/14/2011

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).





9/20/2011

Six main implementations of direct modeling will be compared by eight parameters at Autodesk Forum in Moscow


On Sept, 22 at Autodesk Forum in Moscow, Dmitry Ushakov, LEDAS CEO, will deliver an invited talk “Who and Why Needs Direct Modeling?”.

    Dmitry was an ideologist and initiator of the LEDAS project on direct modeling, he proposed an original approach to DM, called Variational DM, with emphasis on keeping design intent, see links below. By today, LEDAS has made a considerable progress in industrial implementations of VDM: in the end-user products  Driving Dimensions SketchUp and RhinoWorks as well in two projects on incorporation of VDM into widely-known CADs outsourced at LEDAS.  

    Along with explanation of what is DM, Dmitry will outline eight features of DM and, according to (un)availability of these features, he will present his comparison of DM implementations in SpaceClaim, SPLM, LEDAS, DS, Autodesk, and PTC. 


Taking into account his audience, Dmitry will pay some special attention to Inventor Fusion.  The article based on Dmitry’s Moscow presentation will very probably be published at least at www.isicad.net.

Links:


7/05/2011

CAD/PLM in June: How I Saw It From Russia Or Within the Country. Part II: PTC, ASCON, and Autodesk

See Part I: Top Systems and Siemens PLM

3. We at isicad/LEDAS are very sorry that due to technical reasons we could not take advantage of the generous and kind invitation from PTC to attend a recent PlanetPTC at Las Vegas. I tried to extract some information especially interesting for me from twitter, from Oleg Shilovitsky, and again from Roopinder Tara. Here for the purposes of my amateur psychoanalysis I took a repeatedly quoted phrase by Jim Heppelmann “We don’t call it CAD anymore. I think we can assume that all design is now computer aided.  It’s not 1970.” Well, maybe traditionally subordinate role of PDM in relation to MCAD was for a long time haunting Heppelmann (the founder of quite/very successful WindChill) and then, finally, he has got a chance to win back by killing Pro/E, especially as such killings did just come into fashion:). Oedipus complex? I feel sympathy for the PTC at least because of its Soviet/Russian origin and by the fact that today for many of its software development managers the Russian language is native. However I do not believe that this PTC can by the overall income approach DS and Autodesk.  

Maybe because today people are very much excited by Creo, we could last week see such a twitter discussion:

The day after tomorrow (6) at the Rhino user conference in London, Dmitry Ushakov will demonstrate how the LEDAS Driving Dimensions module transforms Rhino into MCAD and how it can enhance any CAD with direct modeling facilities.    

4. ASCON, the leading Russian CAD company, is known not only by its strong KOMPAS 3D MCAD as well as PLM components but also by practical achievements in SaaS, and more generally – by their serious attention to modern trends in CAD/PLM industry. ASCON is increasing its marketing activity by investing obviously considerable resources. Of course, they organize a lot of events, in particular often coming to the end users in the cities and towns all around Russia and CIS. But last week the company held a comparatively unusual conference “Technologies of ASCON” where my attention was attracted by a statement made by the ASCON director of business development Evgeniy Bakhin: “We want our original geometric modeler to become a product to be worldwide distributed independently of KOMPAS 3D”.

Several days later, at the big event in Saint-Petersburg on PLM in shipbuilding,  Alexey Petrov, the ASCON deputy director for working with key customers, made a presentation with a message that big Russian customers, such as from defense, because of economical and security reasons, should prefer national Russian PLM solutions. This message, couple years ago more intensive, is for sure a part of marketing which maybe is reasonable (I mean - effective) when addressed to the defense customers. Alexey demonstrated a chart from IDC (however from 2007 ) which shoes that more than 70% of CAD related software in Russia is imported:

5. Autodesk CIS is implementing its Big Marketing Project called SAPRYAZHENIE (see here   about the Russian language trick with this name as well as characteristics of the project itself).  The team of Autodesk managers and experts, together with active members of the Autodesk CIS community (today – 3000+ registered members), including related bloggers, are subsequently visiting 13 cities in Russia and CIS where they with real triumph meet local Autodesk today’s and potential users: tell them about fresh products and solutions, give prompt technological consulting, explain business schemes, etc. In June, the event was held in 5 cities in European, Siberian, and Far East regions, in some cases situated 10 000 km from each other… From all what is known, heard, and seen, one can conclude that Autodesk is very smartly addressing young generation of engineering software users: kindle their interest and enthusiasm by the methods and in the language mostly natural and effective for youngsters. Note also that by the beginning of their road show, Autodesk CIS released the first issues of “The Autodesk CIS Community Magazine  which also integrates their user community…

6/19/2011

Shashlik with Oleg Shilovitsky

Today, in Raanana, Israel, I met Oleg Shilovitsky. We ate several types of shashliks/kebabs and discussed some issues of mutual interest. Among them (the issues, not shashliks): semantic methods in data management, prospects of PTC, Autodesk, DS, ASCON, TopSystems, what are chances of SolidEdge, business of Inforbix, business of LEDAS, iPhone-4, Twitter, COFES, isicad, and many other.  

Our conclusion: life is hard but very interesting. 
Just our thoughts:) 



5/10/2011

An overview of automakers’ PLM systems: Siemens PLM Connection and Russian TV

Yesterday automotiveIT.com published an overview of automakers’ PLM systems. It's interesting to compare a table and comments from this article:


with a slide recently demonstrated at Siemens PLM Connection 2011 as likely a proof of a full victory in a PLM-race in automobile industry:

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isicad.ru in its news (in Russian) complements the automotiveIT overview by the following comment.   

    "We calculated the number of references of products from every PLM-vendor:
- Siemens PLM (NX, Teamcenter, Tecnomatix): 34 systems at 15 automobile companies
- Dassault Systemes (Catia, Enovia, Delmia): 21 --- at 12 
- PTC (Creo, Windchill): 7 --- at 5.
    Siemens PLM is actually the leader however Siemens PLM and Dassault Systemes have comparable number of customers. Moreover if we consider CAD domain, CATIA has 10 customers against 8 of NX and 5 of Creo. The slide from Siemens PLM Connections is of course not lies but its relation to the reality and selectivity can be compared with a news from today's Russian state TV".

I do not believe and do not insist that such technology of seleciton and presentation is a unique invention of Siemens or Russian TV:) 



5/01/2011

How Extreme Sport Help in Organizing PTC Innovation Forums in Russia

All I ever heard about marketing managers (at least in Russia) proved my impression that they are the most busy people, constantly organizing something important, moving in space-time with cosmic speed. Last week I was lucky to interview Elena Krasnikova, Marketing Manager, PTC Russia, and this confirmed my impression once again. A formal reason for this interview was an invitation to isicad.ru to become the main information partner of the 7th (in Russia) Annual PTC Innovation Forum , but I also wanted to better understand the nature of work in marketing, difficulties, joy, motivation, etc.

In May-June the PTC Forums will be held in four cities of Russia and CIS: Elena gave a lot of details about their agenda, participants, and speakers. PTC plans to start distribution of localized Creo in Russia already in June. Besides the Forums we spoke about relationships with partners and competitors. Elena made her comments on a planned COFES-Russia-2012. It turned out, btw, that Elena is a fan of extreme sports...

This big interview was published in Russian, a Google translation is here.


4/11/2011

Space and CAD in Russia: 50 Years since Gagarin’s Flight


Gagarin

On 12 April is the 50th jubilee of the first man flight to the space. Rocket and space technology has always been on the cutting edge of technological progress; however, back in 1961 developers of “Vostok” could not use CAD because such tools simply did not exist – the first CAD prototype, as we understand it now, appeared only in 1963. Russian Principal Designer Sergey Korolyov, and his colleagues used traditional engineering tools for that period – a drawing board and a slide rule.

The article published at isicad.ru with a support of the PTC office in Moscow outlines modern situation in the Russian space industry. In particular the overview is based on the story presented by Alexander Philatov, the Head of the IT Department of “Progress” Samara Space Centre - the company that for over fifty years has been producing legendary launch-rockets, originating from R-7: “Vostok”, “Voskhod”, “Molnia”, “Soyuz” - that Russian cosmonauts used to fly and that delivered automatic stations to the Moon and other planets. Today at “Progress” everything works on the basis of 3D models – from master-geometry to specific mock-up workpieces. “Progress” uses a lot of CAD and PLM tools from various vendors and the paper gives some impression how all this software co-exists in Samara.

The paper describes in much details the CAD-PLM environment at "Progress" which along with PTC soluitons includes those from ASCON, Autodesk, DS SolidWorks, and Siemens PLM Software. It also mentiones how "Progress" successfully communicates with Samara State Aerospace University.

12/23/2010

Autodesk, DS, Geomagic, IBM, Kubotek, PTC, Siemens, and other at COFES-Israel

The COFES (Congress on the Future of the Engineering Software) events that are annually held in April in Arizona by Cyon Research are quite well known as probably the only international multi-vendor conference with no direct marketing flavor. If you don’t know COFES visit www.cofes.com. This year the main global conference was complemented by two regional forums: in Moscow (in September) and in Tel Aviv, Israel (last week).

The Forum in Tel-Aviv was attended by about 80 people who represented all CAD/PLM
market leaders and a lot of interesting companies including international analytical agencies.


There were fourteen 12-minutes talks (including opening and concluding speeches) sectioned into four sessions. 45-minute breaks enabled some interesting informal meetings, for example I succeeded to talk to those 5 persons with whom I had had plans to meet.

Condensed format of both forums in Russia and Israel could not provide time for one of the key points of the Arizona COFES, its possibility to talk during outdoor walks. Here in Hilton Tel-Aviv the outdoor could be implemented by coming out to the terrace and feel envy to those relaxing on the beach – which was especially exciting for those who came to Israel from snowy and frosty countries.


All the presentations were quite interesting, but I would give the first three places to correspondingly: Brian Shepherd (PTC), Chris De Neef (Fast Track Consulting, Belgium), and Eitan Yudilevich (BIRD Foundation, Israel).

In his concluding remarks, Brad Holtz characterized further COFES plans: for sure the next key event will be the full-scale 3-day COFES-2011 conference "Innovations in the Face of Complexity" in Arizona.


My brief characteristics of all the presentations along with 17 photos are given in the isicad.net article "Innovations Should be More Practical, Less Political. COFES-Israel Forum Report". There one can also read my comparison of COFES-Israel and COFES-Russia.

One point from that comparison is the following. Today in Russia, the topic of innovation is politically loaded, it goes top down and is mainly monopolized by the state. Therefore, people in labs and in small companies who practice innovations, automatically - according to the fundamentals of Russian culture, consider and interpret innovation ironically if not worse. However no politics, profanation, or irony can cancel the processes objectively demanded by society and history. I’d prefer to see a situation in Russia when practicioners consider innovation as not only politics and discuss such topics more seriously and pragmatically. At the same time, I don’t want to be considered naïve. Obviously such general and global topics like innovation, independently on countries, are inevitably politicized and give opportunities for additional profits to politicians and analysts: be such profits materialized or reputational or other. Really important is what then happens with innovation itself...

See also official page of COFES Israel and related posts in Oleg Shilovitsky blog.


10/29/2010

Russian CAD/PLM Market: May-Oct, 2010


If you don't receive by e-mail my quaterly overviews of the Russian CAD/PLM market, you can take a look at a web variant of the today's report at isicad.net. Below I put an introduction for this paper.

Basically, we use news, press-releases, and papers published earlier at isicad.net. However few actors of the Russian market produce English publications about their local activity in Russia. In important cases, we try to retell their Russian news just in our own words. Since autumn of 2009, we’ve got a great support from bloggers and journalists who write in English and visit(ed) Russia: this started from a remarkable series of Ralph Grabowski and then was continued by Deelip Menezes, Oleg Shilovitsky, and hopefully, Martyn Day.

isicad.ru has no data from vendors about current volumes of their sales but general situation at the Russian CAD/PLM market is characterized by:
- nobody mentions crisis,
- everybody publishes news about new contracts and organizes big conferences and seminars everywhere in Russia.

My own formulations of companies' news in few words are as follows:
- 1C with its huge small-ERP reselling network and together with APPIUS is getting closer and closer to PLM,
- ASCON strongly emphasizes its SaaS / cloud service but does not forget improving its MCAD,
- Autodesk CIS is more and more improving communication with mass Russian market,
- Dassault Systemes promotes its social networking and continues working with big industries,
- LEDAS reconfigures its business and persistently moves towards implementation of direct modeling and its applications,
- Nanosoft continues promotion of its native free platforms but balances this by more reselling of Western products,
- PTC is enhancing its (already strong) distribution network,
- Siemens PLM promotes its ST3 and continues working with big industries.
- Top Systems announced that they have a full-scale world-class PLM.

See the whole paper with a dozens links here.

4/29/2010

Brief isicad-Overview of the Russian CAD/PLM Market: Jan-Apr, 2010



This is a brief overview of the news from Russian CAD/PLM market in January-April just published at
http://www.isicad.net/. A general impression is that the recession is over; at least actors of the Russian market stopped complaining and became active and hopefully productive.

I. Some topics considered traditional, or hot, or isicad-related

Aviation:
· Russian RRJ project became materialized and today everyone is aware or at least has heard from the media that such project was impossible without CAD/PLM
· Launch of the Russian Raptor-like 5G Fighter is one of the most impressive news of the reported months
· In April there was a big Russian conference called “PLM for aeronautical engineering: development, design, manufacturing”, see an announce (in Russian).


My conclusion: in contrast to 2006 or even to 2008, PLM in Russia is no longer exotic or considered skeptically.

Clouds: As everywhere, people in Russia are very excited about clouds. Google gives you a lot of conferences and seminars on this topic. One example is a conference organized in Moscow by HP “Cloud computations: education, research, software development”. See also my English blog post Clouds in Russia.
COFES Russia Seminar: The seminar together with isicad-2010 Forum will be held on 21 September 2010 in Moscow (http://cofes.com/Russia , http://isicad.ru/2010). Brad Holtz, President of Cyon Research and COFES, will be the keynote speaker. Among other participants well-known experts and bloggers Deelip Menezes and Oleg Shilovitsky. See the press release Cyon Research announces COFES Russia Seminar in partnership with LEDAS and my blog-posts:
· COFES-Russia Seminar and Multi-vendor Forum isicad-2010 in Moscow
· HP and PTC support COFES-Russia Seminar in September 2010.
www.isicad.ru has definitely become a leading Russian CAD/PLM portal. Frankly, if we mean actually CAD/PLM then it’s the only professional portal with its own strict selection of publications. Along with everyday news and press-releases, the portal publishes more and more analytical articles and reports. PLMpedia is a unique collection of articles related to CAD/PLM and presenting information on companies, products and solutions, media, persons, etc. Today, this electronic encyclopedia contains about 1200 very carefully selected articles. Traffic of both web sites is steadily growing, now being around 1000 attendees per day.
II. Some news from CAD/PLM vendors at the Russian market

ARAS: now – in Russia RUPLM company (with unidentified location but a sounding name!) presented to the Russian market a Russian version of ARAS Innovator.
AVEVA: its Russian business thrives AVEVA Group, a well known provider of engineering lifecycle solutions to the plant, power and marine industries, reports that sales of its AVEVA NET Information Management solution have surged in Russia. The company gives some names of big Russian enterprises that have recently become AVEVA customers.
ASCON, the Largest Russian CAD/PLM Company, presented its 2009 results and plans for 2010. In 2009 the company attracted 650 new customers, while the overall number of the companies using ASCON solutions exceeded 5400. Sales reached 544.2 million Rubles (approx. $18 million); in comparison with 2008 the level of revenue decreased by 28%. On the whole, the company closed 2009 with operating profit and positive net profit margin. More details (in English) about ASCON report can be found in my blog.

As for reports in Russian, isicad.ru published detailed illustrated interviews with ASCON top managers: V.Zakharov, director of software development, and D.Osnatch, marketing director.

Autodesk changed the head of its Russian office. As everywhere globally, the key Autodesk action during the reported period was a release of its 2011 series. Autodesk Russia office kindly and timely provided isicad.ru with all necessary materials so that we could promptly publish overviews for Russian readers: on AutoCAD, Inventor, and Revit. The first paper was reflected in my blog post: AutoCAD 2011: Marching to the Masses with 3D and a Pleasant Make-up.
Among other Autodesk-Russia news note that Ministry of the Russian Federation for Civil Defense, Emergencies and Disaster Relief has chosen Autodesk 3ds Max for building a full data base of 3D Geo models for Russian cartography, see my blog post.

A big Ukrainian gas company “UzhNIIGiproGas” has recently purchased 200 licenses of AutoCAD MEP after it decided to use the Autodesk solution instead of «Bentley PowerDraft».
Dassault Systemes and JSC AVTOVAZ officially confirmed successful implementation of DS CATIA software for designing new car models. AVTOVAZ, best known to the world for its LADA brand, is the leading car manufacturer in Russia. More than a quarter of the cars sold in Russia are manufactured by AVTOVAZ. Every year the company enriches its product line with new car models or modifications as well as with multiple new configurations of the existing ones. Despite the economic crisis, AVTOVAZ intends to continue renewing its product line.

(Note that in February 2008, AvtoVAZ and Renault signed a strategic partnership. The aim was to accelerate the growth of AvtoVAZ, to renew and expand its vehicle range, to develop the Lada brand in order to consolidate its leading position on the Russian market and finally to create value for the Renault group. According to “Auto-rumours” website, Avtovaz and Renault plan to produce five new joint models based on Logan; the web site reports that the management will be done by Nissan).
IRONCAD officially came to Russia. After 13-year existence of its 3D modeling system IronCAD LLC announced that “3D Industry group” would from now on be the first official IRONCAD reseller in Russia. The Russian website of 3D Industry group does not provide any information on the status and location of this reseller.

LEDAS announced RhinoDirect, a new plug-in that parametrically edits history-free 3D geometry in Rhinoceros, implemented (together with Open Design Alliance) parametric drawing tools compatible with the DWG 2010 file format, shipped LGS 3D v3 to take a major step towards full-scale variational direct modeling – technology that creates design intent by combining the simplicity of history-free geometric editing with the power of constraints, and added movie recording and localization to RhinoAssembly, the ultimate tool for assembly design and kinematic simulation of mechanisms downloaded by more than 5,000 Rhinoceros users worldwide.

Initially Nanosoft became sensationally known by its policy formulated as “Native Russian CAD-for-free instead of expensive CAD from abroad” (see for example Ralph Grabowski’s notes on his meeting with Nanosoft). This business direction is still pursued in a somewhat more realistic way but at the same time Nanosoft has step by step extended its policy based on patriotic slogans by becoming a distributor of ArchiCAD (a virtual building solution from Graphisoft) and Altium (CAD-for-radio electronics).

PTC also as Autodesk changed the head of their Russian office and during a couple weeks in April organized PTC Innovation Forum’10 in four big Russian cities: Moscow, St-Petersburg, Ekaterinburg, and Novosibirsk. PTC and its Russian business partners (Solver, Pro/Technologies, PTS, and IRISOFT) presented updates of PTC key products, explained company business approaches, and demonstrated successful applications including those in the space industry. The isicad photo galleries give impressions about forums in Moscow and Novosibirsk. It seems that PTC has a good potential to increase considerably its share on the Russian market: of course, the company has objectively interesting solutions but I believe that one of the factors is that after several years of relative silence today PTC is considered in Russia as somewhat fresh:).

SAP: Gazprom decided to pay SAP 80 000 000 Euros for its software. It’s not very clear to what extent the software is PLM related but Gazprom’s name and the amount of money make the deal worth mentioning.

Siemens PLM Software organized in late March its traditional Moscow Forum “Siemens PLM Connection 2010”. According to its organizers “the event was very successful, however, since it was intended especially for customers, no press-reports should not be expected”.
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2/15/2010

HP and PTC support COFES-Russia Seminar in September 2010

Earlier I already presented COFES-Russia Seminar and Multi-vendor Forum isicad-2010 in Moscow . Today I want to announce that Hewlett-Packard and Parametric Technology have decided to become the event’s partners.

HP is mainly interested to present to relevant audience the company’s large format printing solutions that are becoming more and more popular in Russia. Above all, the Russian CAD/PLM market is excited by the prospects of democratization of 3D-printing recently outlined by the entrance of HP into this market domain. For sure, the audience will expect to hear news about all kinds of HP hardware – not excluding cloud computations as they mentioned at the HP web site. HP will also support the event’s exhibition of printed projects developed by students in CAD, architecture, design, and other related fields.

Today PTC demonstrates growth not only in financial indicators but also in general activity including marketing. For instance, during this spring in four Russian largest cities the company will hold its “Innovation Forum” (isicad is invited to become the general information partner of this event). At COFES-Russia, PTC will in particular organize a working group to discuss topical issues of CAD technology.

Earlier Autodesk and Dassault Systemes also became partners of the COFES-Russia and isicad-2010 Forum.
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1/21/2010

Autodesk and PTC change heads of the offices in Moscow

Just after long (1-10 January) Russian New Year vacations it was announced that Alexander Tasev decided to leave his position of the head of the Autodesk Russia & CIS to continue his career beyond the company. As the company's notification says, Alex was 5 years running development of the Autodesk business in Russia & CIS and has contributed a lot into achievements of the company and unprecedented growth of its business in the region. Alex willingly cooperated with isicad: gave his interview to isicad.ru and isicad.net, participated in the International multi-vendor CAD/PLM Forum isicad-2008, etc.

Since January 15, Rudolf Danzer, an Autodesk Vice-President on Emerging Countries will temporary keep position of the head of the Russia & CIS office. Thanks to support of the Moscow and West-European Autodesk officers, Mr. Danzer has kindly gave his answers to the brief questions of isicad.net and isicad.ru, see his interview: "I am excited to be more directly in touch with the day-to-day running of the Autodesk business in Russia".

Couple days later, Mr. Valery Pragin was nominated as the head of the PTC office in Moscow. Mr. Pragin was for quite a long time working as a high ranked maneger at Intergraph and IBM PLM offices in Moscow. Valery says he likes PTC "because the company offers their customers not products but rather advantages"...
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