Sadistic Developers and User’s Interface

My background, including the first steps in my professional life, is in software developing. Nevertheless, almost from the outset of my studies and carrier path (and the more so when I forever joined the community of naïve users) I always had a tendency to react badly to what I would call sadistic developers’ complexes (or – the show of muscle, or - Machismo playing in the nerds’ heads:)) that seem to infiltrate any user’s interface; and so on a regular basis I dreamed about a perfect product.

Well, the ideal does not and cannot exist. Still, as I gradually replaced one of the early HTC and so cumbrous in every respect lap- and desktop computers with Apples, I feel how my end-user pain subsides: I know they are thinking more about us...

English translation of my Russian post was made by Olga Luckashenko.

One relatively inexpensive way to change your life: both in CAD and in general

A 2011-year record of a number of COFES-participants from CIS can now be overcome. Almost at New Year midnight Brad Holtz has updated a current list of participants  of the April Arizona event, now the list includes:

- Three representatives of ASCON who have already visited Arizona in 2011 – CEO M. Bogdanov, head of innovation department O. Zykov, and ASCON’s key technologist V.Panchenko,

- LEDAS CEO and leading technologist Alexey Ershov, and

- a bright CIS expert in AEC&BIM Alexander Bausk.

For the Russian participants, COFES-2011 was rather fruitful (see "Get back! Personal Impressions from COFES-2011"), note in particular some concrete contracts: ASCON-LEDAS (see "LEDAS Implements Variational Direct Modeling in KOMPAS-3D") and ASCON-Lightworks (see "New KOMPAS-3D V13 from ASCON integrates Lightworks Artisan") to say nothing about a lot of indirect value which for sure will be materialized in future. 

As far as I know, a number of the participants from CIS may still increase, in any case, I recommend such Russian CAD/PLM vendors as Top Systems, NanoSoft and ADEM  to seriously consider their visiting Arizona in April which might be very useful for global development of these companies. Just after his registration  for COFES-2012. A.Bausk modestly said on Twitter "Four hours before the New Year, I have done one life-changing thing: if everything comes out, wait for my tweets from a very important CAD-event".

Russia invests 690 000 000 rubles into building a national 3D solid modeling kernel

Last week, a Russian daily Izvestia published an article which announced the completion of the tender whose topic was “Building of a national 3D solid modeling kernel”. The winner is a well-known MOSCOW STATE TECHNOLOGICAL UNIVERSITY "STANKIN", one of the leading technical universities in Russia and likely in Europe. (STANKIN is an abbreviation for machine-tool institute). The main comment for Izvestia was given by Sergey Kuraksin, presented by the daily as the CEO of the engineering center of STANKIN. The CAD market perfectly knows Sergey mainly as the CEO of Top Systems, one of the leading Russian CAD/PLM companies whose offerings include 3D CAD TFlex and a developed PLM set of products. 

Another participant of the tender was TsAGI, The Central Aerohydrodynamic Institute named after N.Zhukovsky. TsAGI is world known by fundamental contributions into the Soviet and Russian aviation and space industry.

Of course the tender was open; all its minor details (see a link below) seem to confirm that although TsAGI is obviously a unique engineering institution, its skills and experience in software engineering look substantially less than those of STANKIN (especially together with Top Systems).  

The investment into the project is 690M RUR (today ~22M USD) for 3 years. Parasolid is indicated “as a functional prototype” for the project.

Izvestia gives a brief characteristics of what the modeling kernel is, mentions the component's key importance for industry, and says that today the world and Russian industry use such imported products as Parasolid and other – produced more than 20 years ago. (Note that ASCON, a leading Russian CAD/PLM provider, has its in-house modeling kernel which is so far used only for the company's products such as well-known KOMPAS 3D). 

The article also quotes some external expert opinions that are generally skeptical. One of them says that building a software is not a key point and reminds that Siemens has a very large team to maintain Parasolid. The same expert is surprised how TsAGI which has a great “experience in plane design could fail in tender with STANKIN”. Another person, a manager from SolidWorks Russia, explains that end-users do not care what modeling kernels are used in applications and added that “his company is not going to replace Parasolid with something else”.

Links:

An article in Izvestia 

All details of the tender 

STANKIN full web site in Russian , Some words about STANKIN in English 1, --- in English 2 

TopSystems , full Web site in Russian  

TsAGI 

T-FLEXCAD 12 and KOMPAS-3D V13 confirm high activity of the Russian MCAD market 

T-FLEX CAD 12 and KOMPAS-3D V13 confirm high activity of the Russian MCAD market

As the editor-in-chief of isicad.ru/net, I've just received a letter (written in English!) from the marketing department of the Russian CAD/PLM company Top Systems. The attachment included an English press-release announcing T-FLEX CAD 12. I believe this 3D CAD, quite popular at the Russian/CIS market, is really globally competitive and hope this publication: "T-FLEX CAD 12 Released" helps its promotion:

English press-releases are already quite usual for ASCON (see for example my recent overview) but it's nevertheless pleasant to see that in today's issue of tenlinks ASCON release of KOMPAS-3D V13 shares the first line with DS CATIA Sketcher:  

By the way, may be the isicad.net Top-10 will be of some interest for you:

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.    

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).

LEDAS announced the formation of Advisory Board

Together with the whole LEDAS team, I am grateful to the well-known actors of the engineering software market who kindly agreed to become members of the newly formed LEDAS advisory board:

• Ken Amann, Executive Consultant and (previously) Director of Research at CIMdata
• Francis Bernard, Founder and First President of Dassault Systèmes, awarded as being the “Inventor of CATIA”
• Brad Holtz, President & CEO, Cyon Research Co-Founder, COFES Chief Strategy Officer and Chairman, The Center for Understanding Change
• Deelip Menezes, Blogger, Founder and CEO of SYCODE, Co-Founder and CTO of Print3D Corporation
• Oleg Shilovitsky, Blogger, Independent Consultant, Founder and CEO of Inforbix

For more information (biographies, links...), please see this page of LEDAS.com .