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13 Sep 2007

From LGS to LGS-Toolkits: LEDAS proposes new computational components

Integration of variational design functionality into a CAD/CAM/CAE application is now easy as 1-2-3

LEDAS, an independent component software provider, a leader in computational tecnhologies based on constraint programming and their application in product lifecycle management and enterprise resource planning, announces its new strategy aimed at providing ready-to-integrate toolkits of computational software modules for developers of commercial CAD/CAM/CAE applications. Having analyzed the experience of its customers in development of applications based on LGS, LEDAS is now working on creation of a set of toolkits (software components), which can be used for radip development of advanced variational design applications.

Parametric design is a revolutionary CAD paradigm, which allows users to change the geometric shape of a designed product by assigning new values to its parameters. An important feature of advanced parametric design systems is the ability to link geometric elements and their parameters with logical, dimensional and engineering constraints. Parametric design with constraints is called variational. In particular, it has the following main advantages over the traditional, history-based approach:

Dependencies between parameters can be set at any design stage, between any entities, independently from the order of their creation,

Cyclic dependencies are naturally allowed,

Under-defined models with remaining degrees of freedom can be designed.

Variational design unleashes designer?s fantasy and creativity, allowing to create a model in any convenient order, with as many degrees of freedom as needed. However, developers of variational design applications face the problem of finding solutions to large simultaneous systems of constraints. This barrier is effectively removed by the LGS geometric constraint solver developed at LEDAS. The LGS offer on the market of CAD software development is unqiue: for just $1,190 (the cost of the development licence for LGS 2D Light) any sofware development company can integrate variational design functionality into its applications. LGS geometric constraint solver is a software library, which implements a set of advanced mathematical algorithms for solving large systems of constraints. Using heuristic know-how approache for decomposition of an initial problem into its smaller subparts, LGS solves problems with thousands constraints in an interactive mode. Its application programming interface (API) allows to integrate the solver into any software application for featuring it with variational design functionlity.

Until now the development of LGS-based CAD applications required additional efforts: developers had to link together a set of software modules (often provided by different vendors), create additional modules and carefully debug the final application (in cooperation with component software providers). A series of ready-to-integrate software toolkits, based on efficient computational components around LGS, will reduce significantly the expenses for typical CAD applications development: the corresponding programming task will make an application from a set of standard elements provided by LEDAS. Each of these software toolkits will also include a detailed technical documentation (Programmer?s Guide) and a sample demo application with an open source code, which can be used as a basis for customer’s application development.

In 2007-2008 LEDAS plans to ship two LGS-based software toolkits for easy development of 2D sketching and 3D assembly design applications with variational functionality. In the next few years the set of toolkits will be extended with new software components for development of wireframe and surface design, solid modeling, kinematics simulation, parametric geometric data exchange, and other CAD applications. More details about these toolkits, their added value, and advantages of variational design applications for the end-users are described in a white-paper entitled «Using LEDAS Computational Software Toolkits to Shorten Development Cycle of Variational CAD Systems», which can be downloaded at the LEDAS web site free-of-charge: http://www.ledas.com/download/.

«Our geometric constraint solver LGS has been on the market since 2004. During these years we, together with our customers, acquired significant experience in development of different commercial CAD applications with variational design functionality based on LGS,» says Dmitry Ushakov, Chief Technology Officer, LEDAS Ltd. «Now this experience is offered to any CAD software development company, including small ones. Variational design, the paradigm implemented in high-end and mid-range CAD software, is now available for developers of low-end CAD and specialized applications.»

«Among potential customers interested in LGS there are many start-up software development companies, which have not yet overstepped the limits of universities and research labs,» says Vladimir Malukh, Director of PLM Sales and Services, LEDAS Ltd. «We actively collaborate with them, enabling — to implement full-scale end-user applications, based on our technologies and software components, under very restricted budget. Our strategy of entering the market with a series of ready-to-integrate software toolkits, which allow implementing a competitive CAD application in just several months, is focused on such small companies, but certainly big players can also benefit from our new technological achievements.»

About LEDAS

LEDAS Ltd. is an independent software company founded in 1999; it is based in Novosibirsk Scientific Centre (Akademgorodok), Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Science. A leader in constraint-based technologies, LEDAS is a well-known provider of computational software components for PLM (Product Lifecycle Management) and ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) systems: geometric constraint solvers for CAD/CAM/CAE, optimization engines for Project Management, Work Scheduling and Meeting Planning as well as interval technologies for Knowledge-Based Engineering and Collaborative Design.

The company also provides services for PLM and ERP markets: software development, consulting, reselling as well as education and training. More information about LEDAS is available on the Internet at: www.ledas.com.

Contact

LEDAS Sales and Marketing Department
Phone: +7 383 3356 504
fax: +7 383 3356 256
email: info@ledas.com

From LGS to LGS-Toolkits: LEDAS proposes new computational components

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