(12.09.2019) This year’s CADFEM ANSYS conference will take place in the Kongresspalais in Kassel, Germany on October 16-17.  We will of course be there and we invite current and prospective customers (and anyone with a serious interest in 3D visualization for CAE) to visit our booth.  We will be represented by my colleagues Dr. Tor Helge Hansen, CEO and Frode Brandt, our VR/AR/MR expert (and one of our most senior developers on thick client technology), plus me.

Without having checked with the organizers, we expect 700 non-CADFEM participants and 30-40 exhibitors.  We also expect 110-130 presentations, spread out on three parallel tracks, about the usual stuff (FEA, CFD, FSI), but also about newer technologies like additive printing, pervasive simulation across the life cycle, CAE analytics, AI, and digital twins.  For more information about the conference, see https://www.simulation-conference.com/en/.

cadfem-ansys-simulation-conference-2019

CADFEM expectations

A very interesting question that I am hoping to come to grip with during the conference is whether all these newer technologies have entered into the slope of enlightenment in Gartner parlance, and whether they could rather be described as old stuff.  If yes to the latter, what is then the next epic thing in CAE?

Another interesting question that I am hoping to explore during the conference is how the CAE vendor landscape will unfold over the next ten years.  Essentially, will this space continue to be dominated by the usual suspects = the current major solver providers like ANSYS, DS Simulia, Siemens, Altair, and MSC, or will there be completely new players in this space?  If you think this is a naive question, you should ask the branch manager of your local bank about what they think of Facebook’s, Amazon’s and Apple’s strategic postures in banking.  I did indeed decide to do some super-simple research on M&A activity in CAE space to try to detect novel and interesting patterns (using the Owler database, reviewing around 10 CAE majors and going back 2 years), but there were no traces of really eye-opening acquisitions in CAE space, just many, many smaller acquisitions of niche providers in traditional CAE or at least in fields adjacent to CAE.  But we will see what thought leaders in CAE have to say about this issue over a conference beer.  Which is really what CADFEM is about: sharing industry insight in an informal context.

Ceetron Cloud Private

Focus for us Ceetron folks this year will be Ceetron Cloud Private, a packaged offering for creating CAE private clouds. You may want to take a look at our fresh from the oven whitepaper about Ceetron Cloud Private, see https://ceetron.wpengine.com/3d-visualization-whitepapers/, as preparation for the conference.  The whitepaper is targeted at managers with responsibility for CAE IT infrastructure, but may be of interest to any CAE end user with a need for central storing, viewing, and sharing of CAE models within the security architecture of own organization.

Again, you are cordially invited to our booth.  If you want to set up an appointment with one of us, just send me an email at grim.gjonnes@ceetron.com.  We hope to see you there.

To Marie-Louise Dähne, Alexander Kunz, and the rest of the CADFEM organizers: We are as always looking forward to this year’s CADFEM.  We appreciate the efforts that you guys are putting into this event, which really is an outstanding meeting place for the European part of CAE space.

Grim (and Tor Helge and Frode)