Direct Modeling and other Top 10 topics of CAD/PLM at isicad.net

isicad.net is a modest English version of the most popular Russian CAD/PLM web resource isicad.ru published by LedasGroup. In contrast to the Russian version which aims to cover all key news and trends of the world and Russian markets of engineering software, isicad.net briefly reflects what happens at the Russian and CIS markets and from time to time publishes English translations of some original Russian articles related to the CAD/PLM domain.

Below you can see a list of Top 10 most visited articles. 

1. How to Express Design Intent in Rhino 3D :11.2009 

2. “The Future of MCAD” Roundtable Organized by isicad and upFront.eZine :09.2009         
3.The prodigal son of Autodesk :05.2009 
4. New Armor for Rhino :07.2011 
5. A brief interview with Steffen Buchwald (Siemens PLM Software) :06.2009 
6. Synchronous Technology: The Third Attempt :10.2010 
7.CIMdata evaluates PLM-market in 2010 and gives optimistic forecasts :04.2011 
8.Variational Direct Modeling: How to Keep Design Intent in History-Free CAD :10.2008 
9.The Future of MCAD: Round Table in Moscow :07.2009 
10. Bricscad Enters 3D Solid Modeling for Mechanical Design Market :01.2011  

Note that some of listed items are comparatively new and still have chances to move to the higher positions. By the way, an article “Direct Modeling -Who and Why Needs It? A Review of Competitive Technologies — by Dmitry Ushakov” published just couple days ago, judging by Google Analytics, can move to the very top of the list.    

Direct Modeling Discussion at isicad.ru Exceeds 100 Comments

Maybe some of you have read "New Armor for Rhino" by Dmitry Ushakov who artistically and in all related details reported about new capabilities of Rhino 3D demonstrated recently in London at Rhino UK User Meeting 2011. Above all, Dmitry described RhinoWorks, the LEDAS plug-in which complements direct modeling (DM) capabilities of Rhino by rejecting tree derivation in favor of a constraint set. As a result, RhinoWorks plug-in can recognize design intent by identifying many constraints automatically (coincidence, parallel alignment, equality of radii, etc.). The mechanism is based on a highly productive geometric constraint solver, a unique LEDAS solution available for licensing to third parties.

Although Dmitry received a lot of very positive references, the English version of his paper did not generate any readers discussion at isicad.net just because our modest English version of the portal does not enable commenting. But the original Russian publication of the paper provoked a hot intensive discussion which today, 3 weeks after the release, today celebrated the 100th comment with no clear signs of decay. (By the moment I finalized this post, there are already 104 comments).

The discussion has involved comparatively not so much internal technical issues of DM, but rather concentrated on its organizational context (e.g. should and can enterprise use one CAD or their diversity is practically inevitable?) and general opinions about how new technologies co-exist and compete with traditional solutions. In particular, some people from industry incline to believe that they should be a priori very suspicious to potential shortcomings of the innovations to leave vendors possibilities to emphasize advantages. Nevertheless, opponents of DM have multiply proposed the examples of models implemented in traditional CADs but, as they imagined, cannot be implemented with DM methods. Such examples were not so successful as expected:).

I can hardly recommend you to use Google translator for reading the discussion in question however, it seemed to impress Dmitry Ushakov who perhaps will write a special paper to analyze how people (mis)understand DM, which properties they mistakenly ascribe to the new technology and which advantages they do not recognize...

Best, 
David
@levin_david , @TheDavidLevin (Russian)

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The picture below is a fragment of the full cover from isicad.ru #81(Russian edition) which says "Rhinoceros is ploughing. RhinoWorks - Revolution in Direct Modeling" (NB: plough in colloquial Russian also means work very hard, ~ as a dog,...):