LEDAS Labs News: Geometry Comparison Technology, Parallel Computations, Cloud Systems and Much More

Read here:  http://isicad.net/articles.php?article_num=16648

Direct modeling and armored troop-carrier

A news about Bricscad V12 which has brought direct modeling to Linux was couple days ago exhaustively promoted by a Bricsys news, posts by Ralph Grabowski and Deelip Menezes, and certainly by many others. You will not be too much surprised by my impulse to proudly remind that the underlying technology came from LEDAS - as it was formally fixed by a Bricsys-LEDAS deal from the last October.

According to that deal, a team of former LEDAS developers headed by Dmitry Ushakov, joined Bricsys software development ecosystem in the guise of a Bricsys daughter establishment - a newco called Bricsys Technologies Russia (BTR). BTR team is currently renting a part of the LEDAS offices so that both teams, although definitely working separately, can fruitfully and friendly contact.

Now I have a kind of linguistic task: to explain you a title of this post and a meaning of the picture hanging at the door of the BTR office:

Well, as you can see, the picture shows an ATC (armored troop-carrier) which in Russian is "BroneTranspoteR" (bronya = armor) - known to everyone with native Russian as BTR. Judging by a series of Bricscad V12 releases, this BTR-image is much inspiring for Bricsys Technologies Russia which is very fruitfully contributing to the recent and future results of Bricsys.

A linguistic aspect is sometimes much easier, for example, take a look at another door: the compass hints that it is about the LEDAS  project related to KOMPAS 3D of ASCON.   

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)

Direct Modeling, Horseradish Leafs, BIM, and Google Translation

Yesterday, in my Russian blog, I published post “The CAD company, which is guided mainly by the opinions of current customers, will not be needed by them tomorrow” which was inspired by some hot discussions at isicad.ru. One of the discussions was about BIM (see "BIM Discussion Gets Heated in Russia", upFront.eZine #692. The second debate which is currently actively evolves is about direct modeling and it was initiated by a recent article "New Armor for Rhino"  by Dmitry Ushakov .

One of the readers advised me to translate my post into English, at least in order to please the mentioned CAD vendors as well as Martyn Day and Francis Bernard whom I quoted. I am not able to do this because my Russian original text is rather artistic:).  Maybe Google can help? However note that the same reader draw my attention to the wonderful translation proposed by Google for two particular words related to my post. Google seems to properly  translate Russian words list hrena into horseradish leaf but if you ask to translate hrenovyi list it gives you something different. Some explanation and excuse for this is as follows. On the one hand, reversing list hrena into hrenovyi list just corresponds to transformation of leaf of  horseradish into horseradish leaf (so that hrenovyi becomes precisely an adjective which in Russian is explicitly indicated by the ending). On the other hand, a Russian word hrenovyi, for some (strange – or natural?) reasons also means rotten, lousy… . Seems Google loves this variant much more and thus translates hrenovyi list as  f*cking sheet :).

You may ask what does direct modeling and BIM  have to do with a horseradish leaf? Well, in the acknowledgement part of my post I thanked Vladimir Talapov, the author of a fresh Russian bestseller book “Introduction to BIM” (392 pp.) published with a support of isicad, who (Vladimir) presented me not only a copy of his book but also a very important supplement – a bottle of liqueur based on horseradish leafs… See here a picture of both the book and bottle in "What Do You Need to Understand BIM Better" . I can definitely confirm that Vladimir is not only a brilliant expert and promoter of BIM but also an excellent specialist in Siberian liqueurs. As for Google Translator, everyone can judge for himself: this is Google's English version   of my Russian post in question.

CAD/PLM in June: How I Saw It From Russia Or Within the Country. Part I: Top Systems and Siemens PLM

You may consider this post as a June part of an overview which almost quarterly I try to compose at isicad.net (see for example this). On the other hand, this post is to some extent an overview of my Russian posts of June. This combination has a contradiction since in the English isicad.net overviews I aim to present some key issues of the Russian market while my Russian blog of course includes some comments on events of the global market. Besides, my Russian posts usually include a lot of Russian cultural context which I am absolutely not able to transform into English…

1. At the beginning of June, Top Systems, the second (after ASCON) Russian CAD/PLM company known first of all by its powerful Parasolid-based  MCAD T-FLEX, held its big annual conference. At the conference the company announced “PLM+” characterized as follows:  «Its fundamental distinction from traditional PLM solutions is an essential extension of integrated software environment which now covers not only tasks of life-cycle but all its accompanying processes».  (For the first time this PLM+ was briefly mentioned by Top System CEO Sergei Kuraksin at COFES-Russia-2010 seminar in Moscow). In one of my June posts  I asked Sergei “What traditional PLM solutions he means, maybe those of DS, Siemens, PTC, ARAS or even Autodesk? What are the tasks not covered by traditional PLM that are solved by PLM+? Are there any tasks solved by traditional PLM and not solved by PLM+ based on T-FLEX?...”  

My conclusion was that although Top Systems do not follow modern trends of mobility, social networking, SaaS, and other, the company can probably succeed with some big Russian enterprises, say from defense domain, that are traditionally more conservative. (Note, that Top Systems has quite a good customer base since the company basic solutions are actually effective, however until recent time, marketing of Top Systems was rather rudimentary). Finally, I wrote that such gigantomania may be a result of some inferiority complex, and, building PLM+ may help in its satisfaction:). Later, in the comment section of my post, we had with Sergei a nice discussion, and soon Top Systems has published an article which made their PLM+ concept more clear, it looks like that PLM+ is PLM+ERP (you can conclude this from the TLAs seen at the picture below).

My above mentioned post has a title “Prompt Psycho(analysis) of Some Recent CAD Publications”. Along with Top Systems, I touched there Siemens PLM and PTC. 

2. With an objective to give Russian readers my impression about «Global Launch Solid Edge ST4» I retold and commented couple posts of Roopinder Tara. I am not going to retell them for you. One small terminology nuance attracted my attention: Tony Affuso speaks not about necessity to work more with SME but with midstream enterprises. Is small not a word from Siemens PLM lexicon? At least subconsciously?  

My own opinion about Solid Edge and its future:

- ST is a successful pioneer of Direct Modeling which will inevitably win the future of MCAD (we at LEDAS are confident about this not only from publications but from our own projects),

-Solid Edge is definitely a very good system (it’s a pity that Siemens never agreed to give LEDAS trial versions or so: was this because of the  competition between D-Cubed and LGS),

- I estimate the probability for Solid Edge  to rise from its current (3rd?) to 1st or 2dn place (today kept by SW and Inventor) or even to approach them as much as 5% - practically independent of SPLM marketing efforts,

- However  we can rather probably soon hear about something like hundreds if not thousand installations of Solid Edge to one or other “Daimler-Benz”:),  

- 5% of positive probability I give to the scenarios such as «DS actually kills SW» or/and  «Autodesk makes something crazy with Inventor »:).

BTW, I am pleased to mention a remarkable and very large interview with Chuck Grindstaff, President and CTO of Siemens PLM Software taken by Alexandra Sukhanova, executive editor of the Russian language magazine “CAD/CAM/CAE Observer” published in Riga, Latvia.

Just look at the great gallery of interviews taken by Alexandra during last several years). It would be strange to retell here the interview with Chuck called “The revolution in CAD/PLM should not lead to discontinuity of innovation process”), I can only mention that he perfectly combines his CTO role (characteristics of SPLM solutions) and that of the President (characteristics of competitors and comparison of SPM with them). It looks like he is strict and biased to DS (main and dangerous competitor?), demonstrates  indulgence to PTC (not main competitor?), and does not take seriously Autodesk (not a competitor at all in SPLM key business?)… Alexandra kindly permitted me to re-publish this interview at isicad.ru, and I hope we will see an interesting discussion.  

See Part II: PTC, ASCON and Autodesk

Constraint-based parametric modeling with RhinoWorks from LEDAS: Webinar, June 8

What it's About
Register Now, Attend, and Get a $100 Discount on RhinoWorks 2.0 
  
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,...): 

Get Back! (to COFES, to Russia, and other nice places)

Dmitry Ushakov, LEDAS CEO, published in English his personal impressions about COFES 2011. Get Back is a reference to The Beatles verse 

    Jojo was a man who thought he was a loner 

    But he knew it wouldn't last
    Jojo left his home in Tucson, Arizona
    For some California grass
    Get back, get back
    Get back to where you once belonged 

which Dmitry put as an epigraph to his article. The article just published at isicad.net is well illustrated: in particular if you click there Dmitry's portrait, you will see a readable variant of his COFES 2011 poster "Can Direct Modeling Be Both parametric and Intelligent?". 

RhinoWorks from LEDAS Revolutionizes Direct Modeling

A new released today plug-in from LEDAS gives Rhino users parametric control over their 3D models. It brings constraint-based parametric design to the popular freeform modeling tool from Robert McNeel and Associates. RhinoWorks allows designers to edit many kinds of solid, surface, and wireframe models parametrically. It gives them full control over design intent through the application of geometric and dimensional constraints, which significantly increases the productivity when designs change. RhinoWorks unifies two previous LEDAS’ plug-ins for Rhino, RhinoAssembly and RhinoDirect, in one product. It is fully compatible with any model created by the two former plug-ins. 


Actually this original technology from LEDAS can be regularly applied and is already applied to other systems to upgrade them to MCAD or/and to enhance them by intelligent direct modeling which keeps design intent.  Dmitry Ushakov, LEDAS CEO, will give a lot of details at COFES 2011, which opens today in Arizona. 


See a clip which demostrates how RhinoWorks is editing an imported SolidWorks file.  

RhinoWorks recognizes many geometric relationships automatically (such as coincidence, tangency, parallelism, concentricity, and equal radii). This means that designers merely need add a few dimensional constraints to have full control over the design intent for their models; the rest are added automatically. An Options dialog box allows users to specify specific modes in automatic recognition of constraints.

The LEDAS technology used to build RhinoWorks can be also used and is already using to correspondingly enhance other popular systems to upgrade them up to MCAD level or/and enhance them with direct modeling facilities.

For more details incl. availability and prices, see a full press-release and a new version of www.DrivingDimensions.com. 

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.

LEDAS about ST-3 from Siemens

In addition to the common natural interest to Synchronous Technology, LEDAS-isicad has its reasons.

First, LEDAS develops its own version of direct modeling - both incorporating it into some applications and providing corresponding technology to the CAD vendors who wish to increase competitiveness of the systems they produce. Second, at isicad.ru we regularly test new capabilities of the latest versions of popular CADs and publish (in Russian) our opinions as for example "3D marches en masse with AutoCAD 2011", "New gimmicks in Inventor 2011", "On-line KOMPAS – in the isicad’s pocket", "From idea to result with SolidWorks-2011", and others.

So it's clear that for long we have wanted to practically see what is Solid Edge with synchronous technology. Unfortunately, out attempt to obtain a trial license for this product was not successful: representatives of the office of Siemens PLM Software in Russia refused to grant such license to us, explaining that staff members of the editorial board of isicad.ru also work for LEDAS.

But recently we were happy to read a detailed characteristics of ST-3 in a remarkable series of dozen posts of Deelip Menezes. Information Deelip shared with the readers have been sufficient enough for Dmitry Ushakov to arrive to some conclusions about ST3, which he formulated in his article published in Russian the next day after Deelip's publications and today published in English translation "Synchronous Technology: the Third Attempt".

Dmitry's paper is not just a retelling of ST-3 features: it characterizes fundamental constituents of direct modeling as a general new generation approach, analyzes consequences of combination of procedural and declarative features, formulates a hypothesis about what is really done in ST-3, gives a list of references including comparatively early research publications, and other.

The paper also compares ST-3 with the approach of LEDAS, in particular Dmitry says:

"... The idea (of the LEDAS approach) is that the end-users work directly with geometry – bypassing the intermediate level in the form of features. In particular, our users can manually set any geometric or dimensional constraint between any geometric or dimensional constraint between any faces, edges, and vertices of a boundary model. What is even more important that our system can automatically recognize most of geometric constraints (parallelism, perpendicularity, coplanarity, coaxiality, tangency, equal distances and radii) and take them into account performing direct modeling operations".

The LEDAS approach is emphasized in the title of one of the previous Dmitry's publications: "Variational Direct Modeling: How to Keep Design Intent in History-Free CAD, 2008, LEDAS Ltd".

Dmitry concludes his paper with the questions: "Synchronous technology is our future but why it has to come in the same package with an obsolete apparatus of history-based parametric modeling? These two approaches can hardly be combined due to significant conceptual differences, and as result a composed solution is controversial and unnatural for the users. Can it happen that Siemens disappoints its users with an excessive complexity of its combined solution? Would it be better to keep synchronous technology in its pure form – without linking to the traditional approach? We will not get the answers to these questions now, but Siemens solution has paved the way to other vendors who may prefer different strategies for launching s similar apparatus. That remains to be seen. In LEDAS we intend to be actively involved in the process".

PS. Perhaps this article will encourage Siemens to grant isicad/LEDAS a trial license for a new version of Solid Edge.

What could be seen and heard at COFES-Russia / isicad-2010

English-language publications about the COFES-Russia seminar held on 21 September in Moscow are for a few days behind the publications in Russian. I mean publications from the organizers since, fortunately, Russian bloggers and traditional press paid quite a lot of attention to the event: isicad tries to collect all such posts but they can hardly be translated...

Today I posted a relatively short English report about the event - albeit covering all parts of the event as well as containing 50+ characteristic photos and links to all video and audio (mostly in Russian): "What could be seen and heard at COFES-Russia/isicad-2010". This is a translation of the original, I beg your pardon for not yet corrected and polished English. All kinds of feedback are welcome.

Also the agenda of the event at its English website has just been enriched by inserting links to videos, audios, and pdfs of presentations. Access to the Forum video and audio materials is free. Access to the copyrighted presentations on the isicad web sites is available through login and password, which are passed to participants of the Forum only. The authors can of course publish their presentations on their own.

Discussing LEDAS’ heavy technological karma...

Cadovod is one of the most noticeable and bright bloggers writing in Russian about CAD. (Cadovod in Russian sounds like a person who is cultivating CAD - similar to cultivating vegetables or something…).

Recently Cadovod published an interview with me (in Russian), which might be useful for those English readers who are interested in history, current positioning, and development trends of the LEDAS Company.

Among the questions, there are:

Why did you decide to found LEDAS?

How did cooperation with DS start?

Should CAD vendors build their own geometric solvers or should they license them from Siemens or LEDAS?

Does LEDAS plan to produce its own CAD?

Why did LEDAS start building CAD-oriented applications?

and other...

We at isicad decided to translate that interview and now you can read it in English at isicad.net.

My vision of the plenary session at isicad-2010/COFES

In these remarks I would like to review the plenary (morning) session of isicad-2010 / COFES-Russia.

I must confess that initially we had hot discussions with Brad Holtz about the style of this event. Brad reasonably wished it to be a COFES Forum, and I was trying to explain that Russian vendors or (to be more precise) vendors in Russia are more used to workshops, which enable to supply certain vendor information to the audience (primarily – tell your clients about your solutions), while forums as some kind of meetings to discuss problems common to all attendees raise some doubts in the eyes of our vendors … The ends were gained by a kind of art: isicad-2010 is boldly called Forum and COFES-Russia goes by seminar – just in case... :). I take the liberty to further on refer to our common event as the Forum.

Jokes aside, overall the event has good chances to become a true Forum. First, the Working Groups and the concluding Round Table (combined with a press-conference) undoubtedly are the sites for forum discussions. Second, the final composition and format of plenary sessions justify the Forum style - if not completely, than certainly to a considerable degree. To be able to include maximum possible number of conceptual talks, we have drastically cut down the average time for presentations, introducing three options: 5, 10 and 15 minutes (excluding the Invited Talk). It is implied that to outline the essential ideas and concepts, define global trends, specify generally important problems, and the like, does not require too much time, unlike describing features of a new product or its new version. I’d like to emphasize that all speakers and companies that they represent showed full understanding of this approach and did not insist on extended time for their talks.

For advertizing, I dared translate into Russian the title of the invited talk by Brad Holtz simply as “A Vision of Global CAD/PLM Market till 2015”. In original it sounds more sophisticated: «Cyon Research Report: A vision of global market dynamics for design and engineering software, including results and implications of recent surveys of the global engineering software community».

Martin Steuer, who represents Autodesk – the general Forum partner, will focus on the issue that, gradually overcoming public skepticism, is becoming more and more pressing – the role of “sustainable design”. The established Russian translation (“environmentally rational design”) somewhat reduces the idea of globality, while an English word sustainable emphasizes fundamental concept of sustainable development which is more and more globally recognized as a scenario for survival of mankind. Thus sustainable design can be considered as a projection of a world-wide objective to our industry. Today most market leaders devote much attention to this topic, and Autodesk have accumulated considerable and generally valuable results in this field.

The 5-minute talk by Oleg Shilovitsky is the introduction to the agenda of No.1 Working Group: "Trends in PLM” and an invitation to active participation in discussions. Besides, Oleg believes that the boundaries between not always clearly defined PLM, ERP, PDM, CAD,.. should and will become more precise in the future... Today these boundaries are mostly tentative, thus the solutions are far from being steady and reflect a mesmeric magic of Three-Letter-Acronyms (TLAs)...

Representatives of those vendors that successfully implement such solutions in real markets on a daily basis, may justly disagree with magically vague interpretations of such concepts as PLM. The presentation of Laurent Valroff and Artem Avedyan (Dassault Systemes) promises to demonstrate to us that development of today’s TLA is related not only or not so to the need for significant clarification of basic solutions, but rather to expansion of the field of employment of such solutions. The expansion that may turn out to be quite radical and not so obvious.

Sergey Kuraksin will certainly his express not less (and possibly even more) pragmatic vision of PLM. What kind of magic we can talk about if Top Systems has developed and is implementing a PLM-package, understood not only as a full-scale world-class system for which there is real demand, but also as a system with important embedded qualities so vital precisely for a Russian market. Perhaps the global market should pay more attention to this solution?

The 5-minute talk by Deelip Menezis is the introduction to the agenda of No.2 Working Group: “Intelligent methods of 3D-modeling”. Whatever you may say, but the issues of geometry concern majority of vendors and users, therefore any news that some cure-all solution has been found (direct modeling? synchronous technology?) leave no one indifferent, and today every global CAD leader must have an actual or an announced solution in this field. However, Deelip Menezis, who is familiar with all such solutions of the industry leaders, recently wrote in his blog that in Moscow he would state that contrary to the rumors the problems of geometry were not solved at all (“nothing is further from the truth”).

After such Deelip’s statement, the 15-minute presentation of Bruno Chollat “The Role of 3D Direct Modeling in the Product Development Cycle” will be especially interesting to listen to. Bruno represents SpaceClaim, which is positioned as the leader in the field of direct modeling, and, judging by the title of his presentation, he interprets this technology as today’s reality.

Another counterbalance to a useful Deelip’s skepticism will be the 5-minute talk by Dmitry Ushakov, of LEDAS. The company is developing a version of direct modeling, which emphasizes the end quality – automated support of user’s intent rather than technically important and actually supported by LEDAS characteristics (parameterization and history-free design). At No.2 Working Group Dmitry plans to give a more detailed account of the opinion of LEDAS experts the true essence of intelligent 3D-modeling.

According to the preliminary statistics, the most popular Working Group, and its agenda, promises to be WG-5 "New Business Models for CAD/PLM market (cloud computations, open code, free platforms…)". It is not surprising that ultimately everyone is interested in business... Nanosoft Company recently has broken into the market with sensational business models, first of all, based on a free-of-charge platform. Thus, the presentation of Nanosoft CEO Maxim Egorov should be of special interest: we hope to learn about the company’s experience, possible evolution of its business policy and even “unclassified” plans. This presentation can be the introduction to WG-5, which will also be moderated by a Nanosoft representative Dmitry Popov.

Most certainly WG-5 will have an exciting discussion as ASCON has registered as one of the active group members. The title of a short introductory presentation “Russian CAD companies will not wait for imported wings to take off to clouds”, which on behalf of ASCON will be delivered by Oleg Zykov, is self-explanatory. At WG-5 Oleg hopes to support his plenary talk with a short demonstration.

IT history goes along with the drama of software developers: to some extent their heroic intellectual deeds and breakthrough are often devaluated by subsequent hardware development. It is simply my flirtatious self-irony: in fact I am convinced that achievements and endeavors of software programmers are not in vain, they will always be required and their devaluation is not possible… Still, new hardware capabilities certainly open totally new horizons and software developers must be extremely sensitive and closely follow hardware development so their next heroic deeds are not based on obsolete platforms… That is why the talk of Anton Dzhoraev (NVIDIA) is so important to us. “New graphical capabilities to support next CAD generation” will round up the plenary morning session. Anton will continue his talk at WG-6 “New Hardware Technologies for Engineering Software”.

New hardware technologies certainly cover state-of-the art broad-format printing that will be generously demonstrated by HP – the general Forum sponsor. In the lobby HP will organize a display/exhibition of its new products and their capabilities will be discussed at WG-6. HP capacity will be further demonstrated at the exhibition of students projects.

See also Round Tables and Their Moderators... and Media at COFES-Russia... .

Round tables and their moderators at COFES-Russia / isicad-2010

Several days ago, I presented those who confirmed their participation in COFES-Russia / isicad-2010. Now – about the moderators of the working groups (WG). WG is a round-table which is intended not only to discuss an important topic but also to formulate results of the discussion and present them to the final joint round table combined with a press-conference. See the event’s agenda with the links to the detailed description of WGs.

I hope those who know Oleg Shilovitsky and Deelip Menezes will not be surprised to see them at the Moscow event not only as bloggers but also as moderators and speakers.

Oleg has over ten years successfully been working as the CTO at (ENOVIA) SmarTeam, and I believe that today he uniquely combines a very rich practical experience with corporate independence and striving for profound analysis on what’s next in PLM and around?

Deelip’s company SYCODE makes plug-ins for practically all CADs, so he must know everything. On the other hand, if you look through Deelip’s blog (for example try to search direct modeling) you can see that he thoroughly and meticulously studies the most fresh, trendy and actively developing methods for direct modeling, synchronous technology, ... and all that stuff which we codified in the name of Working Group 2: "Intelligent methods of 3D modeling”. People from at least SpaceClaim and LEDAS who are practically working in this domain will actively participate in WG-2 but Deelip is universally informative and independent...

Elena Konvisar has been in marketing for many years, today she manages this direction in a respectable integrator company NEOLANT, and is well known as an experienced moderator of round tables with participation of many CAD vendors of the Russian market: see for example, "CAD vendors without ties: a full transcript" (in Russian) . Elena asked Oleg Shilovitsky to help her: this time Oleg is involved as an active connoisseur and promoter of modern means of work in social networks.

Vladimir Talapov is for a long time productively working with students in Novosibirsk Architectural University. Vladimir has a Ph.D. in mathematics and combines the talents of a practical teacher, uninhibited brilliant orator and polemicist (see for example the article "Modern design industry is a world of greedy predators” – in Russian), as well - a connoisseur and promoter of advanced industrial technologies. The isicad-2010 exhibition presents many projects made by Vladimir’s students.

Topics related to the free platform, open source, etc., not accidentally fell into the hands of Nanosoft: see The upFront.eZine Tour of Russia. Part VI: Nanosoft. Anyone who looks at the "Who's Who" section on the company’s web site, understands that Dmitri Popov is the best candidate for being a moderator: he is from Siberia, he holds a Ph.D., and he is the author of a textbook, he was working for Xerox, he wrote a system of parametric design and he is a fan of summer skiing in the Alps ...

In the hardware working group we plan to consider several new products. Similar to the new software (WG-2), it was decided that discussion will be hold by an independent expert - Vladimir Malukh who, with his broad competence, can play a role of a customer presenting the entire field of engineering software. Vladimir is also known as an experienced moderator of round tables.

Autodesk is one of the apparent leaders in the field of AEC, in particular, in the solutions that extend design to the full cycle of integrated modeling of buildings. Pavel Hanzhenkov is the head of AEC sector at the Russian office of Autodesk with a previous experience in a similar position at Honeywell: his practical expertise has been evidently expressed in the vital topics that Pavel proposes for the discussion at WG-7.

Detailed description of all working groups is available here.

LEDAS Responds to D-Cubed / Siemens PLM Software

For obvious reasons, I reproduce a guest editorial (by Dmitry Ushakov, director of product management at LEDAS, Novosibirsk Russia) just published by Ralph Grabowski in his u p F r o n t . e Z i n e, Issue #646. The only additional remark is that the technologies in question will be openly and in details discussed within one of the working groups in September at COFES-Russia seminar in Moscow.

"All About D-Cubed's 2D DCM" (in #645) was especially interesting, since the name of the company I work for (LEDAS) was mentioned. In answering upFront.eZine's question about competitors, D-Cubed's Dr Howarth said that "For the DCM geometric constraint solving components, LEDAS, based in Russia, is a relatively recent entrant". May I make a correction?

LEDAS Ltd. was established eleven years ago -- in 1999. Seven years ago, we began selling our technology component LGS 2D, a direct competitor of D-Cubed's 2D DCM. Our component is designed to support parametric sketching/drawing in 2D/3D CAD/CAM/CAE applications. Since then, a dozen software companies have licensed LGS 2D, as well as our 3D version, LGS 3D (our component that is a competitor of D-Cube's 3D DCM), and embedded them successfully into their applications. So, while we are ten years younger than D-Cubed, we are not new.

From our point of view, the primary difference between us is that D-Cubed is a part of a big vendor, Siemens PLM Systems; we are independent. Siemens PLM Systems competes in the CAD/CAM applications market against other companies who license D-Cubed's components. Do these companies receive the same level of technical support and functionality as do divisions inside Siemens? For example, are any competitors able to license Siemens' synchronous technology? This is not a question that our customers need to ask, for all of our technologies are completely available to them, because we do not compete with our customers.

We are aware of Dr. Owen (founder of D-Cubed) and his remarkable contribution to the field of geometric constraint solving. At the same time, it is worthwhile mentioning the contributions of other researchers. Among them are Prof. Hoffmann from Purdue University (USA), Prof. Michelucci from Université de Bourgogne (France), and Prof. Clement from Dassault Systemes (France), as well as other pioneer researchers whose work on solving geometric constraints go as far back as 1975.

Constraints Solved to the Users' Satisfaction
Whereas algorithmic issues have been elaborated enough during the last thirty years, there are just a few commercial geometric constraint solvers on the market. In my opinion, it is not enough to only solve the constraint satisfaction problem. What is also needed is a way to find a solution that best corresponds to the expectations of end-users -- this is called natural behavior, and sometimes depends on the subjective opinions of users. The maturity of a particular commercial technology for constraint solving is based on continuous improvement in the quality of its solving procedure. This process is driven by requests from customers who use the solver in different contexts.

LEDAS also does research in constraint solving. It seems that our team is somewhat similar in its scientific and technical background to the one Dr Howarth works with; in particular, about half of our developers have their Ph.D.s and many others have a good chance to receiving it. This brain power is necessary, because the development of CAD components combines strong mathematical, computer science, and software engineering know-how. We actively collaborate with universities, such as the ongoing research at Purdue University (USA) in the field of CAD user interfaces. Together, we are improving constraint-driven freehand sketching, which is the key to building robust sketch-aware systems and sketch-based interfaces for future CAD systems.

Some customers who license our technology are not only traditional CAD vendors (Tecnos G.A. and CD-adapco), but also firms who embed our LGS 3D component into custom CAD systems. Joe Gibbs Racing of NASCAR, for example, is using our software to assemble suspension parts onto the chassis. Other customers prefer to exploit our mathematically-skilled team to develop proprietary key components, such as for CATIA V5, which has been on the market now for several years.

Last year, we collaborated with Open Design Alliance, a non-profit consortium of over 2,000 software developers, to integrate our LGS 2D geometric constraint solver into their Teigha platform, and is fully compatible with the DWG 2010 file format. Now our solver is available to ODA members who require constraint support for their applications.

Constraint Technology for the Future
One of Dr. Howarth's interesting points is regarding the future direction for geometric constraint solvers. We share his vision of increasing the use of 3D solvers as the engine for a new generation of direct modelers. For us, this is an important field of research. As direct modelers become more popular, the question becomes how to keep design intent in a history-free environment. To answer the question, LEDAS is now developing our "variational direct modeling" (VDM) technology.

(VDM allows users to intelligently modify any parameter in a direct modeling system, while design intent is automatically recognized by our engine and expressed as a set of geometric and engineering constraints. We have developed a plug-in for McNeel & Associates' Rhinoceros direct modeling software, which allows anyone to evaluate our VDM technology.)

I trust that this addition to the Dr. Howarth interview is useful for readers of upFront.eZine, and I am available to answer further questions at ushakov@ledas.com."

[Dmitry Ushakov is director of product management at LEDAS, Novosibirsk Russia.]
http://www.ledas.com/