u p F r o n t . e Z i n e

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Issue #621 |  November 3, 2009  |  English Edition

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In This Issue

1. The upFront.eZine Tour of Russia)

      Part VII: NTP Truboprovod (last week; also available in Russian at http://isicad.ru/ru/articles.php?article_num=13400)

      Part VIII: LEDAS Group, Ltd.

             - History of Ledas

             - Software Development

      Part XI: isicad (next week)

   

2. Out of the Inbox, and our other regular columns

 

[Disclosure: Some of the firms mentioned in the "The upFront.eZine Tour of Russia" provided assistance with the airfare, accommodation, ground transportation, and meals.]

The upFront.eZine Tour of Russia

Part VIII: LEDAS Group, Ltd.  

 

Location: Akademgorodok, Russia

Date stamp: Fri 11 Sep 2009 01:22:53 PM BDST

 

I'm flying the red-eye on S7 Airlines from Moscow to Novosibirsk, the capital of Siberia whose population is two million. The SouthWest-Airlines-like flight left at five minutes to midnight, and arrived four hours later at 6:00am, local time. I get one hour of sleep. From Novosibirsk's modern airport to LEDAS' home town of Akademgorodok the drive is nearly an hour. By the time my minder Dimitry Slutsky and I part ways at the 50's-style hotel, I feel bad that I am close to snapping at him; sleep deprivation makes you do strange things. He and I had enjoyed each other's company during the three days that the 23-year-old and the 53-year-old spent together in Moscow; we continue to keep in touch.

 

LEDAS agrees to delay the meeting by an hour so that I can catch a longer nap. When I meet David Levin and Dmitry Ushakov in the hotel lobby, I don't realize my fly is open, oh, for a good hour or so. The two take me on a tour of the area, stopping at Russia's only wooden Orthodox church, and at the sandy beach of the nearby artificial lake, Ob. As the kids play in the sand on an unexpectedly warm fall day, Mr Levin tells me that this southern part of Siberia gets just two months of summer a year. "No, just one," he is wryly corrected by Mr Ushakov.

 

I am finding that Akademgorodok is one of the most fascinating places in the world. "Academic City" was built by the Russian government in the 1950s specifically as a center for scientific research, some 20 kilometers away from Novosibirsk. Those were the heady days when it was commonly acknowledged that the application of science would solve all of mankind's problems, a myth believed at the time by both the East and the West.

 

The university town has 35 research institutes. The natural forest intrudes on these buildings, as do rows of identical-looking apartment buildings. There are some single-family homes, but they are hidden among the trees and deliberately reserved for the smartest of researchers.

 

To this day, the city is still funded by the Russian Academy of Sciences, and so it looks the way it did in the 1950s -- other than the addition of fifty years of decay. Roads are roughly patched; concrete lamp posts expose their rusting rebar; university staircases are dim and reek of mildew; and the hot water is turned off at night in the town's only hotel. (The Academy runs the hotel, and doesn't want competition.) I find it all utterly fascinating, and reminds me of how far my own home town of Kitimat has also fallen in the 50 years since it was built by Alcan among the forests of northern Canada to the standards of the most modern city planning available in the 1950s.

 

Yet high school graduates yearn for a place in Academy City, so high is its reputation. As one of the LEDAS employees told me, "I enjoy being among smart people and walking through the woods [between work and home]." It's also a great place for car enthusiasts, what with some 50% of the vehicles being righthand-drive imports from Japan. The equal mix of right and lefthand driving creates no problem, I am told. And this city is central, being equi-distant from Moscow and Beijing.

 

When we arrive at the Institute for Computational Math and Mathematical Geophysics building in which LEDAS has its office, Mr Levin explains the "door culture" to me: the old wooden doors signal offices belonging to the institute, while new, alarmed, bolted, white-painted steel (or high quality polished wood) doors announce the offices of private companies.

 

History of LEDAS

We settle into the open boardroom, which we share with the ping pong table, and Mr Levin begins to relate the company's background and history.

 

LEDAS consists of a team of strong mathematicians, along with software and mechanical engineers who have more than ten years of experience in industrial software. Of the 30 employees in research and development, 7 are PhDs, ten have their Masters, and ten their Bachelors degree. Yet the average age is only 28. They consider themselves comparable to the programming talents at D-Cubed (England), Spatial (USA), and Geometric (India).

 

Like all the other Russian companies I visited, this company's pre-history dates back to Soviet times. David Levin and some of the others worked from 1972 to 1996 in the academy’s Artificial Intelligence lab. But in 1996, Dassault Systemes invited them to apply constraint programming to CATIA, and as a result they developed CATIA V5's knowledge-based engineering components. (Exigen commercializes this technology for business support applications.)

 

In 1999, the team decided to switch away from academic life to be independent and to become businessmen, and so founded LEDAS. (The company's name is based on David Levin's name.) They wanted to benefit from the scientific research environment found in Akademgorodok, and create a kind of CAD center of excellence. They remained in this city to easily hire top graduates from the local universities.

 

LEDAS Group has since expanded into other areas. For example, the Isicad division was created in 2004 to create involvement of the entire CAD community through publications, seminars, and so on.

 

The primary product is the LEDAS Geometric Solver (LGS), which competes against D-Cubed from Siemens. Work on LGS began in 2000; by 2002, Dassault Systemes recognized LEDAS as a significant partner to whom important science-intensive industrial projects could be outsourced, and not just theoretical scientists. The first license was sold in 2004.

 

In 2007, the company changed its strategy from only licensing LGS technology to selling LGS applications as well, such as the Driving Dimensions and Variational Direct Modeling plug-ins for Google SketchUp, Rhino, and the Open Design Alliance.

 

The company currently makes most of its income from the outsourcing of very difficult mathematic algorithms. Located in Russia means that consulting costs just $25-$45 an hour. But they want to extend their product line based on LGS, find an optimal balance between products (sales) and outsourcing (consulting), and increase software sales from 15% to 50% of revenues.

 

Software Development

Alexey Ershov comes into the boardroom. As director of R&D, he tells me about the research and development projects that have been implemented and are still underway. For instance, there is the online constraint solver at ledas.com, and the ground-breaking agreement between Ledas and ODA to add constraints to DWGdirect. The line of products includes Ledas Scheduler, Ledas Math Solver, Geometric Solver, Mechanical Simulation Engine, Collision Detection, and Geometric Measurement.

 

Then the director of product management, Dmitry Ushakov, provides me with more technical details of their technology. (Attendees of last May's ODA conference in The Netherlands will remember Mr Ushakov's stunning presentation.)

 

Most MCAD systems already do parametric modeling (which is always history-based), while variational modeling is history-free. Both deal with parameters; Mr Ushakov explained to me that the difference is in how they support changes:

    - In history-based parametric systems, changes force the model to be rebuilt from the tree.

    - In history-free systems that support parameters, changes resolve simultaneous constraints in the model.

History affects only solid parts; most MCAD systems are history-free in sketches and assemblies. Strictly speaking, they support history tree for sketches and assemblies, but model updates in these areas are constraint-based; i.e. they use variational approach based on D-Cubed technology for the most part.

 

The idea to find companies who don't use variational direct modeling yet (a small market), or to find new markets, such as in  3D direct modeling as with KeyCreator, CoCreate, and Siemens. For instance, their current plan for Rhino consists of two steps: (1) adding constraint-based assembly design and kinematic simulation (already done), and (2) adding variational direct modeling (history-free geometry editing with constraints and driving dimensions).

 

He noted that SketchUp does not have full LDM, just topological relations and user-defined constraints. When a user selects the circle of a cylinder, LDM also selects the cylinder and all related features. To the user, it looks as if they selected the entire object. This is similar to Synchronous Technology (except that we don't know what is inside synchtech, because Siemens keeps that secret and protects it by patents).

 

Finally, Mr Ushakov demoed his software on a Mac to prove that Russian developers indeed do write CAD products for the Mac!

- - -

Next week in upFront.eZine: the work that Isicad performs, and the software produced by LEDAS.

 

LEDAS Group

http://www.ledas.com

 

Head office: Akademgorodok, Russia

Founded: 1999

Ownership: Private

Employees: 30+

Annual revenues: Not revealed.

 

Primary software: LEDAS Geometric Solver for 2D and 3D

Base price: Licensed

Additional software available: Driving Dimensions, and others

Commercial licensees: 25  

 

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[621]

 

Out of the Inbox

Ashlar-Vellum releases Service Pack 2 for Cobalt 8 3D modeling, Xenon 8 drafting, and Argon 8 rendering software. New features include:

    - Non photo-realistic sketch rendering

    - Layer sets

    - User-defined shortcut keystrokes

    - Other enhancements and bug fixes

http://www.ashlar.com

 

MIE Solutions ships QuoteIt! Estimating Software 10.4 for the sheetmetal and machining industries; includes exploded bill of materials and detailed reports. No-charge demo available at http://www.mie-solutions.com/mie/index.php/MIE-QuoteIt  

 

The Geomagic Labs Web site has a technology preview of Parametric Exchange for NX for creating native Siemens NX CAD models directly from scan data captured by Geomagic Studio software. Similar software is available for Pro/E, SolidWorks, and Inventor. http://labs.geomagic.com

 

ITI TranscenData ships Proficiency Collaboration Gateway v8.1 with 3D Completion Wizard for NX, 2D Wizard for CATIA V5, and a faster geometry engine. http://www.transcendata.com

 

Nemetschek North America localizes the 2010 versions of its Vectorworks software for Austria, France, Germany, Italy, Liechtenstein, Switzerland, Belgium, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands. http://www.vectorworks2010.net  

 

ShapeSpace is adding its PartBrowser Enterprise software to Aras Innovator. http://plmportal.co.uk/PartReuseGetPaper.aspx  

 

Delcam adds two modules to its PowerINSPECT inspection software: PartAligner for setting up portable inspection equipment, and Tubing for inspecting pipework. http://www.delcam.com

 

SYCODE releases ESRI Shape file import plug-ins for AutoCAD, Bricscad, IntelliCAD, and Rhinoceros. In addition, they have twelve data exchange add-ins for KeyCreator. Details at http://www.sycode.com

 

And Sustainable Minds now works with Autodesk's Inventor to estimate environmental and health impacts of designs. http://www.sustainableminds.com

 

- - -

These were some of the news items posted during the last week at the WorldCAD Access blog <worldcadaccess.typepad.com>:

And at the Gizmos Grabowski weblog <worldcadaccess.typepad.com/gizmos>:

Hardware News

All of 3Dconnexion's 3D mice now supports SolidWorks 2010 on XP, Vista, and 7 (once SW SP1 is available). http://www.3Dconnexion.com

 

People/Companies on the Move

Sescoi opens a new branch office in Seoul, Korea. http://www.sescoi.com/kr

 

Viewpoint Construction Software signs up Source One Solutions as its first channel partner. http://www.viewpointcs.com

 

TransMagic signs up Cadenza Software as a Master Reseller for the Nordic countries. http://www.cadenza.se

 

Colortrac closes its offices in Golden CO and relocates to Chantilly, Virginia. http://www.colortrac.com

 

New Books/eBooks

"Vectorworks Architect and Essentials Tutorial," 2nd Ed.

by Jonathan Pickup

Book with CD; $75 each.

Sample chapters at http://www.nemetschek.net/training/guides.php#architect-tutorial

 

The entire Tailoring AutoCAD series is now available for AutoCAD 2010:

- Volume I: Tailoring AutoCAD 2010

    $25.80; http://www.upfrontezine.com/tax

- Volume II: Tailoring AutoCAD CUI 2010

    $25.20; http://www.upfrontezine.com/cuix

- Volume III: Tailoring Dynamic Blocks 2010

    $17.40; http://www.upfrontezine.com/tdbx

- Volume IV: Tailoring QuickCalc (no changes)

    $5.40; http://www.upfrontezine.com/tqc

- Volume V: Tailoring-AutoLISP-DCL-Diesel (no changes)

    $27.00; http://www.upfrontezine.com/tadd

Save 20% by purchasing the entire set of five volumes for $80.00 through http://www.PayPal.com on the account of grabowski@telus.net

 

WorthWhile Web

http://blogs.zdnet.com/open-source/?p=5102

"Why Android is beating Windows Mobile"

by Dana Blankenhorn

 

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/how_to_turn_your_windows_7_computer_into_a_wireles.php

"Turn Your Windows 7 Computer Into a WiFi Router In 5 Minutes, Free & No Hardware"

by Jolie O'Dell

 

http://abovethecrowd.com/2009/10/29/google-redefines-disruption-the-“less-than-free”-business-model/

"Google Redefines Disruption: The “Less Than Free” Business Model"

by  Bill Gurley

 

Letters to the Editor

Re: The upFront.eZine Tour of Russia

 

"Isn't nano 10 to the *minus* 9th power? E.g. 1nm=10e-9 meters."

    - Donato Mangialardo

 

"A CAD industry executive once related to me that he discovered a large number of (unlicensed) seats of his company's high-end CAD software being used in Russia. He found out thereafter that it was the CIA that had arranged it. I don't remember if he told me whether this was before or after the breakup of the Soviet Union. I'm guessing, probably just afterwards."

    - Evan Yares

The editor replies: "Interesting. I wonder what the rationale was?"

 

"I'm sure by now you've heard this many times, but, THANK YOU for making the newsletter so much easier to read! The new font and layout makes it quite easy for those of us with failing vision :)

"I have also enjoyed the in-depth coverage on CAD in Russia. It was eye opening to read what is and what has happened there. I'm sure everyone that reads your ezine is better informed on what is developing in our industry."

    - Paul D. Fiore, Senior Physical Designer

    Sargent & Lundy, LLC

The editor replies: "The change happened by accident by switching to an updated version of the mass mailing software I use. But I too need larger fonts and icons these days!"

 

Re: CoCreate

"Thanks for the mention of CoCreate 16.5. CoCreate hasn’t had its own website for a while now, so www.cocreate.com doesn’t work. Everything about CoCreate can be found on the CoCreate product pages on www.ptc.com."

    - Libby Fink, Manager Corporate Communications

    CoCreate Product Line Europe

 

Re: Dynamic Blocks

"Hopefully I can learn enough about chaining [with dynamic blocks] to make this worthwhile even though I am stuck using 2008. By the way I am still trying to find a good 3 button mouse with a wheel on it."

    - Jack Foster

The editor replies: "Chaining in AutoCAD 2010 works just as well as for 2008. I found, however, that chaining is less capable than I had hoped. 'Like is to like.' For example, a move that is chained to a rotate rotates. I had hoped rotating a door handle would slide a deadbolt, but no such luck."

"The best mouse I have found so far is Logitech's V470. Problem is that it is Bluetooth mouse, and so does not work with most computers."

 

 

Spin Doctor of the Moment

"Autodesk is committed to delivering software that meets and exceeds our customers' functionality requirements, while providing them the broadest possible choice of operating systems. Autodesk and Microsoft share a goal of making the tasks our customers perform every day easier and faster."

    - Chris Bradshaw, chief marketing officer, Autodesk

    http://pressreleases.autodesk.com/index.php?s=118&item=646

 

Notable Quotable

"The Always-On Culture had been feeling oppressive for a while now. Nobody will ever care how many Twitter followers I had or how SEO-optimized [search engine optimized] my blog was."

    - Hugh McLeod

    http://gapingvoid.com/2009/11/01/turning-down-the-volume/

 

 

Thank You to Our Subscribers & Donators

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Contact!

upFront.eZine is published every Tuesday, except during summer and Christmas vacation. Editor: Ralph Grabowski. This newsletter is read by over eight thousand subscribers in 70 countries. Your comments are welcome! Deadline for submissions is every Monday noon.

 

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Entire contents copyright ©2009 by upFront.eZine Publishing, Ltd. All rights reserved worldwide. Letters sent to the editor are subject to publication. Article reprint fee: $250 and up. All trademarks belong to their respective holders. "upFront.eZine," "The Business of CAD," and "On your desktop every Tuesday morning" are trademarks of upFront.eZine Publishing, Ltd. Letters to the editor may be edited for clarity and brevity. Translations and opinions expressed are not necessarily shared by upFront.eZine Publishing, Ltd.