ASCON holds its Forum "White Nights" in a place perfectly suitable for the next COFES-Russia

These days, I am at the ASCON's Forum which the company is holding for its customers at Peterhof, an outskirt of Saint Petersburg. This is really a great place, just look a Wikipedia pictures and characteristic which starts with "it is a series of palaces and gardens located in Saint Petersburg, Russia, laid out on the orders of Peter the Great. These Palaces and gardens are sometimes referred as the "Russian Versailles". The palace-ensemble along with the city center is recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

ASCON, the biggest Russian CAD/PLM company, holds its Forum for the 7th time. The key participants of "White Nights" are top managers from the Russian and CIS industries. Among the topics of the Forum, there are: optimization of the business processes, best practices from the industries, recent progress in the main ASCON's products and solutions, and other.  During the last couple years ASCON, still remaining the leading Russian CAD vendor and the only competitor of Autodesk at the local market, becomes more and more dynamic and looking at the global market: establishing its office in Germany, actively participating in COFES, and integrating some Western solutions into its products.

It is at COFES in Arizona that ASCON's managers agreed on cooperation with Lightwork Design, the world’s leading supplier of rendering solutions for advanced 3D Computer Graphics. By today, the Artisan product from Lightworks is already integrated into KOMPAS-3D V13 - the key MCAD solution of ASCON. Clive Davies, Business Development Director at LightWork Design, is a special guest and invited speaker of the “White Nights” and I have had a pleasant opportunity to prepare an interview with Clive, see "Clive Davies: ASCON is proving to be the ideal partner for Lightwork Design".

By the way, it's also in Arizona a cooperation between ASCON and LEDAS has been materialized and lead to the project of incorporating into KOMPAS some key directmodeling facilities based on the LEDAS Geometric Solver (LGS). 

The Forum starts in couple hours in an nice hotel "New Peterhof" and I hope to report on its key issues. I came to Peterhof yesterday morning to have more time to visit some local places of interest that I had seen long ago in Soviet times... Today, the place is really a very comfortable touristic site with a carefully maintained environment, a lot of restaurants, an excellent Wi-Fi all around the town, and so on. Look at some pictures below: why, after the firstsuccessful experience, not to organize the next COFES-Russia here in Peterhof?  

The hotel is near the pond - over the trees, the church is 50 meters from the hotel entrance:

Here, in the pond:

And this is also at the pond, 70 meters from the hotel: 

In the world-famous park founded by Peter the Great (15 minutes of walk from the hotel): 

And here is the key point of the place:

3D Geometric Kernels as Fishes

Today, the leading Russian CAD/PLM portal isicad.ru announced its 93rd release. As always, this release is completely presented in my editorial (in Russian).

Here I just want to attract you attention to the cover page of this release. The key point is about geometric kernel C3D of ASCON which the company recently presented at COFES-2012.  The page is designed similar to the poster of a well-known movie “Arizona Dream”  by Emir Kusturica. You need not read Russian to catch the plot, except only one thing: the letters at the moon denote Russian Geometric Kernel – the project in which Top Systems and LEDAS participate (see “LEDAS announces its involvement in development of Russia’s 3D kernel”.

Please take a look at the animated version of the cover page of N93  (made by Anna Kotova, the isicad executive editor and designer) where you can at least enjoy wonderful soundtrack from the movie.

See also «A detailed informal report on COFES-2012» by Alexey Ershov, LEDAS CEO.

LEDAS makes JETCAM to work 50 times faster

JETCAM International s.a.r.l (Monaco) recently announced  a simultaneous launch of updates to its two flagship products – JETCAM Expert CADCAM and nesting software for sheet metal and composite users, and the Premium version of JETCAM Order Controller (JOC), which provides remote ordering, geometry creation and nesting for JETCAM Expert.

Version 16.23.02 of JETCAM Expert  is the start of several end user releases planned for 2012 focussing on punching for sheet metal. The new release boasts a 50 x improvement when performing web nesting due to a completely re-written underlying core. It also includes the recently announced Prima-Power XML postprocessor for Tulus based controllers, along with many other feature enhancements across the board.

One of the key improvements in this version is a significant progress in the functional performance of web nesting (placing parts on the sheet so that, after cutting punching method, "skeleton" remains connected). The development of a new algorithmic kernel for the new version was outsourced to LEDAS whose team succeeded to accelerate related functionality of the previously already used functionality by 50 times based on the completely rewritten core algorithms. 

JETCAM Order Controller v8.50 provides a remote method of ordering components or assemblies within JETCAM Expert, and this latest version provides a raft of benefits and improvements. The CAD import engine has been completely rewritten and now supports JETCAM Expert’s Single Component Automatic Processing (SCAP). This allows JOC users to remotely and automatically create geometry files from multiple CAD drawings and tool them for a punching or profiling machine with just a few clicks of a mouse. Upon receiving instructions from JOC, JETCAM will automatically process the queued files and report back once done. Users of JETCAM’s Remote Control Processing (RCP) module for JETCAM also benefit from a new streamlined interface. JOC also includes a comprehensive reports designer and generator, allowing for customized reports to be easily designed and implemented.

JETCAM was founded in 1986 to develop and market software systems for computer numerical control programming of punching and cutting machines used in sheet metal fabrication and composite cutting. By 2012, has over 12,000 licences granted to enterprises in more than 80 countries around the globe. Its customers include such well-known names as Embraer, Bombardier Aerospace and Red Bull Technology. JETCAM is a true customer-driven company: development of CrossTrack, a system to manage orders, materials and assemblies, was initiated upon customer requests. Together with JETCAM Expert it forms an automated order processing system that independently generates a CNC code for any machine.

At the end of 2010, JETCAM started transfer of its software product development to LEDAS. Today, a big team of LEDAS developers is continuously and successfully working within several JETCAM projects. 

See also: "From the Prague Spring to a Siberian summer" and Related press-release of the JETCAM International .

LEDAS announces its involvement in development of Russia’s 3D kernel

Just want to give you these links:
LEDAS Assists STANKIN to Develop a New 3D Modeling Kernel (press-release)
Russian National 3D Kernel (overview by Dmitry Ushakov)
LEDAS: How our Company is Involved in Developing Russian Geometric Kernel (my interview with LEDAS managers).

They have had a chance to see SolidWorks 2015

Every month a Russian CAD/PLM web portal isicad.ru produces a virtual release by publishing a market review, distributing an editorial column, designing a special cover page, composing a pdf with the most interesting articles of the last month, and other. Although all this is intended for those who can read Russian, I hope some of the others will not consider as a spam the information I am giving below.  

The yesterday-issued cover page of February was inspired by SolidWorks World 2012 and obviously by “Back to the Future”. The key title under the picture says: “What will happen with SW in the future?”:

By today, our collection of monthly cover pages contains 40 pictures always intended to reflect some important monthly market developments: please take a look at them here (some of them are flash animated). Our monthly reviews are typically composed by Vladimir Malukh, the LEDAS/isicad leading CAD expert. His review from February “SolidWorks 2015 will be implemented!” as well as the full long list of his articles since 2007 can be found here.

My February editorial was called “Love for a software system: is this the engine or brake of its progress?”, the title inspired by a recent Randall Newton’s remark about the problems SW has with its customers who adore the system. The links to my previous monthly papers can be found at this page.

The monthly pdf digest as usual contains the most visited articles (but not news neither press-releases), the 105 pages issue of February is here.

If you decide to use any automatic tools for translation of, say, my editorials, please don’t be too surprised or disappointed: usually these texts are quite sensitive to the context/ discourse of Russia and national communities.  

    

Note that the isicad project also supports a modest English version of the isicad portal. At this web site you can easily find some English articles/reviews reflecting developments of the Russian and CIS market. Recently I’ve outlined this web site in my paper “NURBS, BIM, orRevolution: which topics are most attractive for the readership?”. This is a small collection of the English cover pages (see the page with this set of pictures):

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.   

ASCON opens its office in Munich

The office named ASCON Software Germany GMBH has been established to support local partners and customers in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. Today, ASCON emphasize its abroad activity on indirect sales so its office in Munich will be oriented on training of partners and implementing marketing projects. The office has three employees including one with 20-year IT experience and a manager with 10-year experience in MCAD support and training.

ASCON provides a rich spectrum of PLM solutions however the most known company’s product is MCAD KOMPAS-3D localized for English and German.

ASCON is currently very active in establishing and expanding its international presence including participation in COFES 2011 and COFES 2012 and establishing  partnerships with Western companies. It also is rather sensitive to development of technological aspects.

Source: ASCON opens its first abroad representative office in Munich (in Russian). 

Some related links (in English):

New KOMPAS-3D V13 from ASCON integrates Lightworks Artisan 

ASCON Announces the Release of KOMPAS-3D V13 

LEDAS Implements Variational Direct Modeling in KOMPAS-3D 

COFES 2012 (list of key participants)